President Donald Trump's cascading failures in the Iran war — from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the collapse of his regime-change fantasy — stem from a single fatal flaw: the president doesn't actually believe other people have agency, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued Wednesday.
And that leaves him vulnerable.
"Over his decades on the public stage, we have seen little to no evidence that he believes in the existence of other minds," Bouie wrote, calling Trump "without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office."
The result, Bouie argued, is an administration that keeps getting blindsided by entirely predictable consequences of its own actions, from public outrage over DOGE, to backlash over the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Iran's decision to close the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against Gulf state allies.
None of it, according to Bouie, was planned for.
Trump appears to have expected Iran to fold the same way Venezuela did earlier this year, a "replay fantasy" that has since crashed into a more complex reality, Bouie wrote. That has left him trapped in an "escalation spiral," in which the president has no choice but to keep doubling down when one approach fails.
Bouie pressed the question of why the White House fails to see what others could easily predict.
"This gets to the real problem. Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him," he wrote, slapping the president with the label of a "consummate narcissist."
Trump's flaw is an opportunity for opposition, Bouie added. He is "a weak and deeply unpopular president," who also happens to be "cursed with a kind of blindness," wrote Bouie. That means he cannot see that his "opposition is real," and won't see it when it acts, Bouie concluded.