Michael Knowles

So they said, OK, well, Trump always chickens out.

And that's what they're now saying about Iran.

Trump said he was going to nuke Iran and committed genocide of the Persian people, and then he didn't do it.

What a chicken.

Trump always chickens out.

And whatever helps you sleep at night, whatever helps you to try to make sense of the world, if you guys are so befuddled as Bill Kristol is, that's fine by me.

But this is a completely unfair understanding of what Trump is doing here.

Because Trump always chickens out, taco implies, it assumes, I should say, that Trump actually wants the things he's claiming to want.

But we know for a fact that Trump claims to want much more than he actually wants.

One of the first guys 10 years ago to tune people into this fact was Scott Adams, who was one of the great readers of Trump.

Scott Adams, who is an expert in persuasion tactics, really made his political career after his Dilbert career.

He made his political media career observing all of Trump's strategies of persuasion, one of which is that Trump always talks past the sale.

Trump says he wants 300% tariffs on a country, and then he walks it back.

He's conciliatory, and he makes a deal at 50%.

But he really wanted 50% all the time.

300% is totally ridiculous.

Trump writes about these things in his book, The Art of the Deal.

So it's a totally unfair attack on him because it is assuming that he wants something that he is telling you he doesn't actually want.

It's an incoherent criticism.

We should call taco, it should be tactical accentuation of critical objectives.