Trump Can Be Manipulated - And Most World Leaders Now Know It!

The United States has had a variety of presidents from different political parties. Some had great leadership abilities. Some were exceptionally smart. Others recognized their limitations and surrounded themselves with intelligent people. And others used their long experience in government to benefit their presidencies.

They were not all successful domestically, but they all had one thing in common - none of them were controlled or manipulated by foreign leaders or governments.

Until now.

Donald Trump is different. He has no government experience. He has no leadership ability (beyond using his bigotry to control his own base). He has limited intelligence (which is fading even more as he ages). He has surrounded himself with sycophants instead of competent and intelligent aides. And he has a massive ego.

These dubious assets have combined to make him vulnerable to being manipulated.

The first to recognize this was Vladimir Putin. In Trump's first term, Putin took advantage of this in Helsinki. By holding the line in a non-combative way and using a massive amount of flattery, he easily manipulated Trump - causing Trump to doubt his own intelligence agencies and accept the Russian line of thinking. Trump left Helsinki thinking Putin was his friend.

Kim Jong Un was the next to manipulate Trump in that way.

In this second term, Netanyahu has used the same technique to manipulate Trump into siding with Israel instead of pursuing a Mideast peace (as Trump had promised to do).

Western leaders were the last to recognize Trump vulnerability. They were used to rationally discussing facts with U.S. presidents and coming to reasonable conclusions and agreements. But facts mean nothing to Trump (he makes up his own "facts") and he is incapable of a rational intellectual discussion. The result was our allies were being treated worse by Trump than our enemies.

But they are beginning to learn. Recently, the UK's prime minister and the EU's president both used excessive flattery and a non-combative manner of disagreeing to win lower tariffs than expected (without actually having to sign any agreement).

And after watching Putin again manipulate Trump at the Alaska summit, the leaders of several Western nations schooled Zelensky on how to manipulate Trump. Zelensky's last White House visit, in which he tried to discuss facts with Trump, had been a disaster.

This time was different. Visiting the White House with several other European leaders, Zelensky showed he had learned well. He, and the other European leaders, opened the discussions with lavish praise for Donald Trump. Then they presented their views in a non-combative way. The result was Trump agreeing to a security guarantee for Ukraine - something he had been refusing to do in the past.

It's sad and very worrying that Trump can be so easily manipulated by foreign leaders. But at least our friendly allies now know how to counter the manipulation of Trump by our enemies. That may be the best we can hope for, since Trump is not smart enough to know when he is being manipulated.