Donald Trump does not do "policy" in the sense that the State Department understands it; he does "vibes" in the service of the brand. His recent two-day excursion to Ireland, as detailed by The Guardian, was less a diplomatic mission and more a victory lap for his resort in County Clare, punctuated by the kind of rhetorical grenades that keep the professionals in the room awake at night.
By Tom Beckwith ·
When a billionaire flies across the Atlantic to visit his own golf resort, he isn’t thinking about the sacred geometry of national borders or the blood-soaked history of sectarian violence.
By Maya Ellison ·
There is a particular kind of governance that treats the architecture of statecraft as a backdrop for personal branding, and we watched it unfold in Dublin with the precision of a…
By Dana Whitfield ·
Donald Trump treats the map of the world like a real estate portfolio—something to be flipped, consolidated, or rebranded if the optics look "cool." During a trip to watch the…
By Ray Dombrowski ·
The fundamental currency of public life is trust, and it is a commodity that cannot be printed or legislated into existence by mere declarations of "second chances." What we are…
By Klaus Berger ·