Trump sucks at negotiating because he's 'deeply unkind' and 'wants to make others feel like losers': Historian
President Donald Trump has long billed himself as a master negotiator, but so far he has done much more deal breaking than deal making.
Appearing with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Thursday, Tulane University historian Walter Isaacson said Trump has absolutely no ability to imagine ways that the United States could get something out of a negotiation unless the other side gets thoroughly defeated in the deal.
"He's the type of person who says, 'In order for me to win, others have to lose,'" said Isaacson, who has written a biography about late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. "He can't find the win-win situation. He doesn't have the empathy -- or sort of the feeling -- for other people to say, 'Let's figure out how we can make it work.'"
This creates trouble, Isaacson says, because the president doesn't seem to understand that the Chinese economy and the American economy are linked -- and that if he hammers China's economy, it will harm American exports.
"That is not, it seems to me, in his DNA," he said. "He's a deeply unkind person who wants to make others feel like losers."
Scarborough then chimed in to say that is not the mentality that any good negotiator should have, because you want people to feel good about making deals with you in the future.
"That's how you negotiate, and yet it's just not in Donald Trump's psyche at all," he said. "We're not day traders, we're in it for the long run!"
Watch the video below.