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When President Trump spoke at the Saudi Future Investment Initiative on Friday, he offered a pristine example of what he calls "the weave." What detractors take for incontinent verbal rambling is, in his own telling, genius-level embroidery of a rhetorical mosaic.
While spinning his tapestry of soundbites, the wartime president declared that the Iranians "have to open up the Strait of Trump -- I mean, Hormuz. Excuse me, for -- I'm so sorry, such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say he 'accidentally said' (chuckle), now there's no accidents with me. Not too many. If there were, we'd have a major story. No. Well, we had that with the Gulf of Mexico. Remember the Gulf of Mexico? And one day I said, 'Why is it the Gulf of Mexico?' "
Trump then digressed -- sorry, weaved -- for a while about the "renaming" of the Gulf of Mexico before getting back to the war.
If you watch the video, the "joke" about renaming the Strait of Hormuz was clearly deliberate. Trump said it was no accident. He has a tendency to float outrageous ideas as jokes to see how they fly -- remember his "joke" that Canada should become the 51st state? Whether a joke or trial balloon, it was a terrible thing to say, and even worse idea, lending rhetorical confirmation that the president's ego -- and imperialist ambitions -- is the author of this war.
But I don't want to write a whole column about this relatively minor inanity. I just bring it up to illustrate a point. The president you see ad-libbing whatever pops into his head is the president we've got. When the commander-in-chief weaved in some observations about the Saudi crown prince "kissing my ass" because Trump isn't a "loser" like previous American presidents, that was him, too.
In other words, there is no secret serious, detail-oriented Trump with "encyclopedic molecular knowledge" about matters of state, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims. What we see is what we've got.
This is very hard for some people to believe, and even harder for some people to acknowledge. These twin difficulties are the origin of all those cliches about Trump being a three- or four-dimensional chess master thinking many moves ahead of us mere checkers-playing mortals. When Trump does something unexplainable or indefensible, the best explanation and best defense for his superfans is to simply say the ways of Trump are mysterious, but rest assured he has a plan.
Entering our second month of the war with Iran, the superfans who oppose this war, for various reasons, are left in a pickle. How could this leader with an oak spine, unassailable instincts, deep knowledge and wisdom make such a mistake? How could the man they've defended as a genius for so long make what is in their eyes such a monumental blunder?