Insights into Trump's Small Business Mentality

I was watching Morning Joe on MSNBC a few hours ago, and they were talking about some of the basic reasons why Trump could not get his head around his role as President.

Trump still thinks like a small businessman.  A small businessman has to view the world through the lens of cash-flow.  Cash-flow, that is, short-term income and expense balances, are usually not pressing concerns for large companies, but they are for small companies, like those Trump owns.  In those sorts of businesses, it is a zero-sum game; for someone to win, someone else has to lose.  If you're negotiating agreements with other countries, that mindset obviously will not work; all parties have to be convinced that everyone came away with a win.  Furthermore, Trump seems to feel that even if the US has succeeded in negotiating a wonderful win-win deal, that he has to convince his 'people' that he's the winner, and the other countries are losers.  This makes for unhappy relations with numerous foreign nations, that will come home to roost.

Trump is a very ungracious, mean man.  The small businessman in Trump comes naturally, because he always acts like a cornered raccoon, even if he isn't cornered (and he isn't a raccoon).  It could be a pose, in which case it is a very ungracious pose.  He must have viewed the international agreements of his predecessors, and thought to himself: They (the foreign governments) know that we're going to be nice.  We're too nice.  He thinks he's doing us a favor by showing the various regimes we have to negotiate with that we're not nice, and we're unreliable, and we do not keep our word, and we're capricious, changeful, and inconstant.  That helped him intimidate his antagonists when doing business: take this deal, or there might not be another one.  In foreign policy, in contrast, no president is forever; all any foreign government needs to do is to wait.

Watch the episode for yourselves.  I did not watch the whole thing, and there might be other insights that are helpful.  They're helpful in understanding Trump, and to see why Trump cannot grow out of his incompetence.  The habits and characteristics that have made him successful, in college, in business, and on TV, are not ones that help the US.  They will continue to ruin us.  He depends on disguising his fails with a glamorous scintillating cover.

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