28/01/2026 lewrockwell.com  26min 🇬🇧 #303106

Is Donald Trump Playing 27-Dimensional Chess ?

By  Ron Unz
 The Unz Review

January 28, 2026

I've never liked Karl Rove, but I've always respected his competence as a political strategist given his success in winning two presidential terms for an idiot like "W."

Soon after his patron left the White House amid record-low approval ratings, Rove became a weekly columnist at the Wall Street Journal. Although I've almost never read any of the many hundreds of op-eds he subsequently published, I've usually glanced at the titles.

So his most recent piece  "Is Trump Trying to Lose the Midterms?" caught my eye, and not only did I read it all the way through but I actually agreed with almost every word.

He opened his column by declaring that he found Trump's behavior "mystifying."

A year ago Tuesday,  Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president. It's been a year of rapid movement, controversy and upheaval. It's also been utterly mystifying.Why does the president keep doing things that are against his political self-interest?

He went on to note that the immigration issue had been a central reason for Trump's 2024 victory, but the president seemed to be snatching a huge political defeat out of the jaws of victory:

On the lost-opportunity front, look no further than the president's extraordinary achievement in securing the Southern border. He stopped the flood of illegal migrants. He was right. We didn't need a new law, only a different president.Yet Mr. Trump didn't take a victory lap to publicize the success. If he had gone to the border, Hispanic and Democratic local officials would have thanked him for removing the tremendous burden on their hospitals, food pantries, social services and public safety. That image would have been powerful and lingered.Instead, the White House has turned a major win into a major drag on the president's approval: 58% of Americans and 66% of independents disapproved of Mr. Trump's handling of immigration in a Jan. 12 CNN/SRRS survey. The administration's pledge to focus on expelling violent criminal aliens-" the worst of the worst"-was widely popular. But Team Trump misplayed its hand by going a good deal further. Dispatching Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Home Depots to grab day laborers, or to other places where otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens congregate, is unpopular. These expanded ICE sweeps are turning voters against Mr. Trump. In a Jan. 12 Quinnipiac University poll, 57% of all voters and 64% of independents  disapproved of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws.The Trump administration made the situation worse by describing Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent earlier this month, as a "domestic terrorist" and fomenting further chaos in Minneapolis. In a Jan. 12 CNN/SRRS survey, 51% of Americans said ICE was making cities "less safe."

A few weeks ago my own lengthy review of that issue had come to very similar conclusions:

Rove also sharply questioned Trump's bizarre determination to acquire Greenland, with our president repeatedly declaring that if necessary he would invade and conquer that barren, frozen wasteland:

As puzzling as his mishandling of immigration is Mr. Trump's insistence that for national security, Denmark must surrender Greenland. For weeks he made it sound as though he might even invade-clarifying only on Wednesday morning that he won't go to war with a NATO ally. That he threatened so long to use force hasn't endeared him to voters. Eighty-six percent of Americans oppose taking Greenland by force-including 68% of Republicans and 94% of independents,  according to a Jan. 12 Quinnipiac poll. And they're right to. An invasion would destroy NATO and gravely damage American trade and political ties. Only China and Russia would have profited.What makes this still more confounding is that the U.S. already has a treaty allowing it to establish military bases in Greenland. Yet Mr. Trump has insisted America must own the land outright, which even without the possibility of war is a political loser. Quinnipiac found 55% of Americans oppose "trying to buy Greenland" while 37% support it.

But even more peculiar were Trump's economic policies, especially his constantly changing tax rates on our three trillion dollars of imported goods and his attempts to eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve. Most recently, his administration had begun a criminal prosecution of outgoing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump himself had previously appointed to that position.

That isn't even the most unhinged moment from the first year of Trump 2.0. Remember "Liberation Day" last April ? He levied tariffs willy-nilly, even on places with which we have trade surpluses or no trade. For months the president has attacked the Federal Reserve's independence to set interest rates, roiling markets...He  called voters' affordability concerns a "hoax," then moments later claimed he'd address them...On Saturday, he announced a 10% tariff on imports from European countries that criticized his threats to invade Greenland and warned he'd raise it to 25% if the Danes didn't strike a deal by June 1. On Tuesday, he suggested he'd send Americans $2,000 "tariff rebate" checks without congressional approval.

In recent months, Trump had bombed and attacked some nine different countries, in each case without any Congressional approval. But Rove noted that he nonetheless seemed outraged that he hadn't been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his actions:

Last Thursday, he accepted Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado's gift of her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize medal as if he had earned it...And in a missive almost too over the top to believe, he recently tried to bully the Norwegian prime minister because the Norwegian Nobel Committee hadn't awarded him the Peace Prize. Because of the perceived slight, Mr. Trump wrote, "I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace."

 

Considering all these facts, I doubt that too many intelligent Americans would question Rove's conclusion:

The Trump presidency wasn't normal even in his first term, but something is different now. Americans are increasingly unnerved by the president's rambling appearances and late-night screeds. Whether it's age or advisers who can't check his worst instincts, Mr. Trump is acting in ways no American president has. His downward spiral has led 58% of Americans and 66% of independents in the CNN/SRRS poll to describe his second term as "a failure." If his team can't turn things around, he'll help defeat his party this fall and damage the country for years.

Rove's appraisal of Trump's presidency was hardly unique. Just a few days earlier the first two pages of the Journal's Weekend Review section had published  "Is Trump Losing Joe Rogan, America's Most Important Swing Voter?" As our country's most popular podcaster, Rogan's support had been a crucial element of Trump's upset 2024 victory:

In February 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously lost Walter Cronkite when the renowned news anchor told Americans he could no longer accept the president's assurances about the war in Vietnam.This week, President Trump may have lost Joe Rogan for the prosecution of his own war-this one on immigration......As Cronkite was in his time, Rogan is now an essential barometer of national sentiment in a fractured and suspicious age...The three-hour audience he provided Trump on the eve of the 2024 election, and his subsequent endorsement, is regarded by many as a pivotal moment in that contest. Certainly, Trump seemed to think so, inviting Rogan to the Oval Office.Earlier this week, though, the podcaster recoiled when faced with the particulars of Trump's signature campaign promise to undertake the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in American history. In particular, Rogan appeared shaken by the death of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman who was shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent under contested circumstances...Later, Rogan would invoke the Nazis when describing the masked and militarized ICE agents roaming Minneapolis streets. "Are we really going to be the Gestapo ? 'Where's your papers?' Is that what we've come to?" he asked..."He has a huge audience, and a lot of people listen to him, both directly and indirectly," Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the left-leaning New America think tank, observed. "So when he says 'enough with this ICE brutality!' he is clarifying an uncertain and possibly ambiguous moment for many people, and coming down firmly on the side of civil liberties"...Guests on "The Joe Rogan Experience" range from UFO enthusiasts, Hollywood A-listers and scientists to fellow comedians of varying degrees of fame. In one of his most famous episodes, he enticed billionaire Elon Musk to smoke a joint, provoking a noticeable dent in Tesla's share price. Rogan's podcast has also served as a breeding ground for a generation of younger stars, including Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who popularized  the "manosphere" and infused MAGA with youth and testosterone...Rogan is a UFC commentator and Trump a fan. The UFC chief executive, Dana White, told Rolling Stone that he made it a mission to bring Rogan on board MAGA before the 2024 election.Rogan's Trump interview-which was released less than two weeks before Election Day-has been viewed 61 million times on YouTube, and prompted Democrats to lament how they lost the podcaster. When Trump celebrated victory, White joined him on stage and thanked "the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan"...Yet even before Rogan's comments this week, there were signs that he was growing uneasy with the president's maximalist second term. He questioned the snatch-and-grab operation to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, objected to the renaming of the Kennedy Center, accused the Trump administration of trying to "gaslight" people over the Jeffrey Epstein files and called out Trump for mocking Hollywood producer Rob Reiner after he and his wife were found dead in their home.Immigration, though, may stand apart, as an issue that was the fulcrum of Trump's campaign. In the president's telling during his epic rallies, illegal immigrants are to blame for everything from housing shortages to rampant crime and economic decline. To often thunderous applause, the then-candidate promised to mount the largest deportation in American history.So what changed for Rogan?Part of it may be the video. The gruesome footage of Good's killing has gone viral, like that of Floyd before her. It has also been accompanied by clips on social media of masked ICE agents who look as though they're in a foreign war zone-not Minnesota."I mean, when people say it's justifiable because the car hit him, it seemed like she was kind of turning the car away," Rogan said, appearing to reject the administration's attempt to portray Good as a domestic terrorist seeking to run over an ICE agent.

On Saturday morning the latest killing by ICE agents in Minneapolis claimed the life of a 37-year-old American citizen under circumstances that seemed even more outrageous and illegal, with all the facts laid out in a very convincing video by an experienced combat veteran:

 Don't Believe the Government, This Was Murder

 Don't Believe the Government, This Was Murder

As acclaimed journalist Glenn Greenwald noted in his own discussion of the incident, not only were the facts absolutely clear-cut in this particular case, but it was equally obvious that all the government officials were blatantly lying. Greenwald particularly condemned the "Israelization" of American society, in which anyone killed by the government is immediately denounced as "a domestic terrorist."

One of the main excuses provided by Trump's minions was that the victim had possessed a perfectly legal handgun for which he had a permit, a handgun that he had never touched let alone attempted to draw. For many decades conservatives had always expressed their fervent support for the Second Amendment, so Greenwald noted how strange it was that so many of them had now totally reversed their position on that issue.

 Why are US officials lying about latest ICE killing?

 Why are US officials lying about latest ICE killing?

Personally, I find it absolutely hilarious that huge numbers of dim-witted right-wingers have now loudly declared that government agents should be authorized to summarily execute any American citizen who exercises his legal right to own and carry a handgun.

Obviously, the video-recorded killings of American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis for employing their own constitutional rights represents only an extreme example of our current situation. Indeed, this is merely the visible tip of what is likely a very large submerged iceberg of other such crimes and illegalities.

For example, a video aired on the Young Turks channel reported the story of a 17-year-old American citizen working at a Target store who was abducted by a squad of masked ICE agents, hustled into an unmarked van, tortured or badly beaten, then left terrorized in the parking lot of a local Walmart.

Vice President JD Vance is a graduate of the Yale School of Law, and  according to his public statements all ICE agents are completely immunized against investigation or prosecution by local authorities for any crimes they might commit, including beatings, torture, or murder. Furthermore, since they are masked and displaying no names nor forms of personal ID, simply identifying the ones who were accused of committing any such crimes might be quite difficult.

All of this has fully confirmed the prescient concerns that Andrew Anglin had raised six months ago, which seem to be coming true far more quickly than anyone had ever expected:

I also find it noteworthy that most of these ICE agents seem to wear no standard issue uniforms, but merely various forms of semi-military-style clothing or gear, making it difficult to even determine whether they are actually the government agents that they purport to be.

For example, that same Young Turks video also mentioned that there seem to be a growing reports that masked individuals claiming to be ICE agents have begun abducting young women from local city streets, hustling them into unmarked vans, and sexually assaulting them, with many but not all of the victims being Latinas. It's obviously difficult to know whether these perpetrators are actually legitimate ICE agents exploiting their positions to obtain some extracurricular fringe benefits or merely criminals pretending to be in that category.

As these stories increase in number and begin circulating, I think that support for ICE and the presidency that enabled its outrageously rogue behavior will continue to decline.

Although the immigration enforcement policies of the Trump Administration seem extremely counterproductive or even disastrous, not least from a political perspective, support for ICE agents and their recent shootings still seems quite strong in the comment-threads of our own very lightly moderated website.

I think this is mostly due to the natural tendency for despairing, unhappy individuals to see things that aren't actually there and continue to believe whatever they want to be true.

As many might remember, during the first term of President Donald Trump there was a widespread tendency among his ardent supporters to claim that many of his seemingly stupid, incompetent policies were actually subtle moves in a deeper and brilliant political strategy. According to them, Trump was playing 3-D chess while his confused critics could only comprehend checkers. Indeed, that sort of defensive excuse became so common that it was soon regularly ridiculed by sarcastic responses that Trump's obvious failures constituted devious steps in his 27-dimensional game of chess.

Thus, Trump had won the Republican nomination and the presidency based upon his promise to "build a wall" against immigrants from south of the border, but no wall was ever built. Trump had promised to improve our relations with Russia, but after absurdly being accused of being a Russian intelligence asset, he backtracked and did nothing. Trump cycled through numerous chiefs of staff and other top administration officials, hiring and firing them in rapid succession. But during all that time, many of his devotees continued to interpret all these failures and erratic actions as clever moves in a breathtaking strategy that would ultimately checkmate his opponents.

As his 2020 reelection campaign approached, these foolish beliefs became the nucleus of the bizarre QAnon movement, whose advocates urged doubters to "trust the plan." The QAnon supporters claimed that Trump was gradually laying the groundwork not merely for his own reelection, but for the total defeat of the nefarious secret political elites who for generations had actually ruled our country from behind the scenes. These fearsome enemies were often characterized as being Satanic pedophiles, who had infiltrated and controlled nearly all our powerful institutions.

In early 2020, a disgusted White Nationalist named Brad Griffin who blogged under the pen-name "Hunter Wallace" published a good piece summarizing all of Trump's numerous betrayals and failures, while ridiculing the so-called "Q-tards" who continued to still support him in worshipful fashion.

  •  Trump's Chumps
  • Brad Griffin • Occidental Dissent • February 6, 2020 • 2,500 Words

Just as Griffin argued, there actually turned out to be no such "plan" and Trump's political enemies used their near-total control of the electronic and social media to ensure Biden's victory in 2020 and drive Trump from the White House.

Believing that the election had been stolen from Trump by ballot fraud and rigged voting machines, a huge number of enraged Trump loyalists, many of them ardent QAnon followers, traveled to Washington to support their hero, and hundreds of the most determined of these stormed the capitol building in January 2021. A woman named Ashli Babbitt was shot dead, several others died in the violence and confusion and many of the rest were eventually tracked down, arrested, and imprisoned. The anonymous "Q" commenter who had misled them all soon vanished from the Internet, and the gullible Trumpists gradually recognized that they had all been tricked and deceived.

Yet against all odds, Trump somehow managed to revive his fortunes and stage a political comeback, more through the stupidity of his Democratic enemies than anything that he himself did. Their vindictive legal prosecutions of the defeated Trump made him a hero and a martyr in the eyes of most Republicans, giving him the media oxygen and sympathy votes that allowed him to easily recapture the Republican nomination in 2024.

During the previous four years, the insane "open borders" policies of President Joe Biden and his administration had allowed an unprecedented 10 million unauthorized foreign migrants to enter this country. That disaster, together with growing evidence of Biden's obvious senility, completely doomed his reelection chances.

Facing certain defeat in November, the Democratic Party leadership forced the already-nominated Biden off the ticket, a political maneuver previously unknown in American presidential history. But they foolishly chose to replace him with his totally unqualified and equally unpopular Vice President Kamala Harris, whose elevation did little to improve the prospects of the Democratic ticket.

The result was that Trump won a victory that November, returning him to the White House, and although his plurality in the popular vote was rather narrow, it was the first that he had ever enjoyed.

During his first term, many members of the American political establishment had been terrified by the horrors that a seemingly loose cannon like Trump would unleash. But instead he did little or nothing, having been quickly tied up in knots by the Russiagate investigation. Indeed, Trump did so few major or newsworthy things during those four years that I only  very rarely even discussed his activities in the dozens of articles I published during that period.

With Trump now eight years older, most expected that this second term would merely be a repeat of blustery words and angry tweets without any associated actions. But instead the last twelve months have seen Trump become one of the most consequential presidents in our entire history, successfully intimidating Congress into near total submission and using waves of legally dubious executive orders to grant himself essentially monarchical powers, powers far greater than those that any previous president had ever attempted to exercise.

Although Karl Rove's WSJ column had given considerable attention to the political insanity of Trump's immigration policies, the strategist had suggested that our president's economic and tax policies might have been even more "unhinged" and I can't dispute that.

We annually import more than three trillion dollars of foreign goods, and Trump's many Imperial Decrees have changed our tariff tax rates on these, doing so at weekly or even daily intervals, always based upon his personal will or personal whim. There have been countless absolute monarchs and mad dictators, but I've never heard of one who ever behaved in such cavalier fashion, so it seems unlikely that any major country in the entire history of the world had ever so frequently changed its trade or tax laws.

Most recently, Trump  claimed the authority to control the financial activities of every corporation in America, including its dividends, buybacks, salaries, and bonuses:

An  executive order posted Wednesday evening said companies "are not permitted in any way, shape, or form to pay dividends or buy back stock, until such time as they are able to produce a superior product, on time and on budget."

Earlier Wednesday, Trump said in a Truth Social  post that he would limit executive pay to $5 million, but the dollar figure wasn't included in the executive order.

Around the same time, Trump gave  a wide-ranging two-hour interview to four New York Times journalists, and his own statements were of similar boldness. He declared that he had no regard whatsoever for international legal niceties or normative traditions and was only restricted by his own personal morality, as he chose to interpret it:

And he said that he did not feel constrained by any international laws, norms, checks or balances.

Asked by my colleagues if there were any limits on his ability to use American military might, he said: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind.  It's the only thing that can stop me."

This seemed an alarming indication of megalomania, far beyond anything I'd ever seen expressed by any petty Third World despot, let alone by the elected leader of a top world superpower.

Trump's total lack of introspection or willingness to seek objective advice has naturally sometimes led him into dead-ends. Although he successfully kidnapped the president of Venezuela in a commando raid, his stated intent was to gain control of that country's oil reserves, which he claimed were the largest in the world. But most of  those huge reserves were merely a statistical fiction, with estimates of the crude that is actually available for economic recovery being more than 90% lower than that absurdly exaggerated figure. So Trump's gross violation of international law had produced little economic benefit.

Moreover, Trump had expressed his total confidence that under American control Venezuelan production could quickly be dramatically boosted. But  an important story a few days ago in the WSJ explained that none of the major oil companies wanted to go into Venezuela and invest the many tens of billions of dollars necessary to rebuild that country's decrepit oil infrastructure. Not only would any such project be extremely risky, but since Trump had been promising to reduce oil prices to $50 per barrel, any such oil that eventually did become available would be uneconomical to extract. That was obviously a major problem for Trump.

But as  I joked at the time, our president might have an obvious solution, based upon the same methods he had used with such effectiveness a few weeks ago. Trump could just send out his Delta Force commandoes to kidnap all the oil company CEOs and hold them hostage until their companies agreed to invest at least $100 billion in Venezuela!

Immigration raids and tariff hikes, no matter how counter-productive or irrationally designed, were at least part of normal politics, and I suspect that many of the voters who supported Trump in November 2024 had done so in hopes that he would implement these measures.

However, I doubt that a single American voter had chosen Trump because they hoped that he would decide to invade and conquer Greenland.

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I've been following American politics for nearly a half-century, and during many of those decades our public life has been heavily dominated by extremely militaristic and aggressive factions such as the Neocons. But in all those years, I can't remember anyone ever suggesting that Greenland had any strategic or economic value whatsoever, merely being a barren, frozen wasteland that was home to a few tens of thousands of impoverished Eskimos, though these days the politically-correct have demanded that they must always be called "Inuit."

Karl Rove had also spent his lifetime in politics and was just as puzzled as I had been.

Perhaps Trump and his closest advisors are such geopolitical geniuses that they have discovered something that no other American strategic thinker had ever noticed throughout the entire twentieth century. But then again, perhaps not.

Prof. John Mearsheimer is one of our foremost figures in the Realist school of foreign policy, and when he was recently asked why Trump wanted Greenland, he began laughing, almost uncontrollably.

In describing Trump's recent foreign policy endeavors, including those involving Greenland, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs applied a wide range of characterizations, including "delusional," "unhinged," and "crazy," and behaving like a three-year-old. He suggested that no president in our national history had ever acted in such a manner:

As the longtime chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson had regularly participated in the highest decision-making circles, and he described Trump's behavior at Davos as something out of an "insane asylum."

These are all individuals of enormous public credibility and stature, and I'm pleased that they are now willing to speak so plainly about the predicament faced by our unfortunate country.

Over the last year the titles of my own articles on Donald Trump had already included phrases such as "Looney Tunes...Mad Emperor...President Caligula."

Individuals all across the ideological spectrum are gradually coming to this same disheartening conclusion. Greg Johnson is a prominent White Nationalist, and back in 2016 he had published articles  hailing Trump as the long-awaited God-Emperor of the Alt-Right movement, though by April 2017  he had grown disillusioned. My impression was that he supported Trump in 2024 though without much enthusiasm.

But then a few days ago he published  "Time to Replace Trump," an article in he repeatedly used the word "insane."

Trump threatened to take Greenland by force and to impose U.S. tariffs on several European countries (including Norway and Finland) that opposed Trump's Greenland Grab...

My reaction was summarized by a Trump supporter who shared Trump's message with me: "I'm beginning to think the Dems are right that Trump is insane." When I looked at X, it was clear that a lot of other people felt the same way. It wasn't noteworthy that Leftists agreed, since they are stopped clocks. What was noteworthy is that people on the Right were drawing the same conclusion.

Why does Trump's message seem insane, i.e., detached from reality?

First of all, Trump seems unable to grasp the fact that the government of Norway does not award the Nobel Peace Prize, even though he has been informed of this.

Second, the argument that since an organization in Norway did not award Trump the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump no longer needs to think purely of peace (in relation to Denmark, no less), sounds like narcissistic rage and lashing out.

Somehow most people manage not to attack their neighbors without the bribe of the Nobel Peace Prize. But Donald Trump is different. Unfortunately, he is different in a bad way. He is acting like a gangster threatening war if he is not appeased with shiny trinkets.

This sort of narcissism is not abnormal for a spoiled child or a man slipping into a second childhood. But it is abnormal for a fully functional adult. What makes it seem insane is that a fully functional adult would know that he should hide such feelings. Trump feels no shame or need for concealment. This is a sign that he is out of touch with reality...

It seems insane to threaten war and economic sanctions to get something we already have, especially since it alienates our European allies, demoralizes Trump's supporters, and emboldens his enemies.

As for Greenland itself, a frequent commenter on our website  passed along some plausible-sounding things he'd heard about that large, desolate island:

Another thing that comports with your arguments about Greenland - it is one of the coldest places on Earth.

I spoke with someone today who had a relative in the US military who was stationed in Greenland in the past. This person said that Greenland is simply way too cold for drills and other oil/mineral extraction equipment to operate for most of the year. He said most residents of Greenland can only take showers for 6 months of the year because it is too cold to run water for the other 6 months.

In addition, this person said that the American military servicemen on the island file an inordinate amount of injury claims due to the cold/harsh climate conditions in Greenland, which makes it very hard to work there (I assume the same is true for non-military workmen there). He said that this is one of the reasons why the US military only sends a fraction of the military troops that they're permitted to under the existing Greenland agreements — there's just no point in sending US troops there.

He joked that if Russia or China fired off a few nukes from Greenland, the missiles might freeze before they could be launched.

Our standard world maps employ the Mercator projection to present the elements of our spherical globe on a rectangular display, and this severely inflates the apparent sizes of those landmasses such as Greenland that are closer to the poles.

So I strongly suspect that our ignorant president looked at one of these and mistakenly assumed that Greenland was far larger than it actually is and that its acquisition would expand our national territory by some enormous amount. A map displaying more accurate sizes might have considerably reduced his enthusiasm:

Indeed, if he'd been shown one of those latter maps, he might have diverted his plans for territorial expansion in a far more fruitful direction as  I explained in a comment of my own:

I still say that Trump should have instead announced he was going to conquer and annex Antarctica:

(1) It's many times larger than Greenland, so large it would have more than doubled the size of the U.S., making our country the largest in the world, well ahead of Russia.

(2) It's an actual continent. So Trump would be forever known as the only American president who conquered an entire continent.

(3) Everyone likes penguins and they could have replaced the bald eagle as our national symbol.

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