1000D chess

So what is Trump doing right now on guns? He is giving into the immediate hype and over-reaction, despite that we know he isn’t like that; he is angering his base very deliberately, despite that we know he is smart enough to realize he is doing that. He is playing right into the Democrats hands… or so it seems.

Remember that Trump is above all else a strategic negotiator. Don’t look at the one move, look at the final resulting position. Take DACA for example, he pretended to give in on the issue and forced the Democrats to admit that they don’t actually care about DACA, it’s all about open borders and no immigration security. The deal failed on their end while Trump looks like the hero willing to calmly negotiate.

Same on the government shut down. He turned that right around on the Democrats. Things simply do not stick to Trump. Like watching a grandmaster play chess, somehow the opponent’s attacks just aren’t quite doing anything and despite maybe looking good early on just sort of dissolve away… while the grandmaster’s position solidifies. You’re not quite sure how he did it, but he did.

How many examples of this do we need from Trump? Nothing sticks to him. You attack him and he gets stronger. He uses your own weight against you.

He is a very middle of the road common sense sort of person, almost anti-ideological. He knows most of his base is ideological though, and his enemies are the most ideological of all. So he gets to play their silly pathologies off of each other in a theater game, to his own benefit. His base hysterically over-reacted early on against him in the DACA amnesty issue too, and Trump came out ahead, not only because he got what he wanted but because he depowered the other side.

I really doubt that Trump will make any actual moves on gun control. What he will do is play the reasonable middle of the road negotiator trying to find compromise. That compromise position will fall apart because of Democrats demanding too much and because of Republicans refusing to vote for it in the House, and Trump knows it. Then at the end of the day he will have zapped the political capital from his opponents to be able to do anything else on the issue whatsoever.