By Josh Marshall//Talking Points Memo
Not long after Trump got into the presidential race in 2015, I heard from a New York City real estate lawyer/executive. This wasn’t a member of one of the big city real estate families but someone who had worked for more than one of them at a very high level and had observed Trump for years up close. He described Trump’s practice of catching people off guard with behavior that was so unpredictable, wild and above all aggressive that he was often able to get his way. Knocked back on their heels by his outrageous and sharkish behavior, they wouldn’t know how to respond. They would be so stunned and flummoxed they’d just let him get away with things.
We see something very similar unfolding in Trump’s foreign policy, if you can call it that. He engages in a pretty basic process of taking things, daring the nominal referees to do something about it and then handing off assets to cronies and and oligarchs.
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