Trump Believes in “Madman Theory.” But He’s Actually a Madman 

PAUL GIGOT, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Would you use military force against a blockade on Taiwan? 

DONALD TRUMP: I wouldn’t have to, because [President Xi Jinping] respects me and he knows I’m f— crazy. 

— October 17, 2024 

I believe three words from Trump’s answer. 

According to The Divider by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, a chronicle of Trump’s first term, “Trump was well aware of his unhinged reputation and at times sought to exploit it.” The authors noted that he once told his Ambassador to the United Nations before she spoke with North Korean officials, “Make them think I’m crazy,” and that he once told his Attorney General, “Do you know what the secret is of a really good tweet? Just the right amount of crazy.” 

As Trump’s response to Gigot shows, he wants to both convey the impression that he’s mad and that there is a method to the madness—crazy is how Trump prevents war, not starts it.  

Trump and his loyalists will no doubt try to claim this week’s dose of crazy once again did the trick. Threaten to end a civilization. Notch a two-week ceasefire. Art of the deal, right? 

Wrong. Representative Jim McGovern punctured that logic in a pithy social media post: “So he’ll stop bombing Iran in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz … which was open before he started bombing Iran.” 

For the last six weeks, Trump didn’t just act crazy, he went crazy. And he doesn’t have much to show for it beyond higher energy prices and a body count.  

He launched a joint U.S.-Israel military operation without any inkling of an imminent threat while the Iranian government was engaging in diplomacy with American diplomats through an Omani mediator. The military campaign assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader and other top officials in clear violation of our international treaty obligations and potentially constituted war crimes by striking civilian infrastructure.  

Trump has been erratic when talking about the operation’s objectives. He encouraged the Iranian people to overthrow their government, then dismissed the idea as a suicide mission, then insisted “regime change” was already achieved thanks to his assassinations, even though the new leaders rose from the old guard. He claimed America didn’t need Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, then assured that the Strait would open “naturally,” then demanded on Easter morning, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” He insisted the operation would end the Iranian nuclear program—after claiming last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer already “obliterated” it—then shrugged off the fact nuclear material remains underground and accessible to the Iran government.   

And amidst talking to the media and the public about the war, Trump would often abruptly ramble about his ballroom and other unrelated personal fixations.  

After nearly 4,000 killed and 40,000 injured without any strategic objective attained, that Trump finally employed his crazy reputation to forge a two-week cease fire agreement should not bring anyone relief. What Trump has shown is a willingness—or worse, a compulsion—to not just say crazier and crazier things, but do crazier and crazier things. If he ever had the capacity to rationally calibrate “just the right amount of crazy,” in no way does he have it now. And we have a little more than 1,000 days left of the Trump presidency—plenty of time to reach lower depths of insanity. 

The so-called “Madman Theory” was not invented by Trump, but by Richard Nixon. According to the memoirs of Nixon aide H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon told him during the 1968 campaign, “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.” 

Nixon was completely wrong. He sent his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to the Paris talks with plans to play the crazy card and end the civil war in Vietnam on favorable terms. Kissinger got nowhere. Haldeman recounted, “Henry found the North Vietnamese absolutely intractable. They wouldn’t even negotiate” because they knew “the American people had turned against the war.” In turn, Nixon “would either have to proceed with his threat of force or take the opposite route completely, walk out.” Nixon would escalate the war over the course of his first term, fail to defeat the North, and sign a peace agreement in January 1973 that withdrew support for the South, setting up the North to claim the capital of Saigon two years later.  

Nixon also verged on being a genuine madman, at least when he was drunk, which was not uncommon. According to The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, “The CIA’s top Vietnam specialist, George Carver, reportedly said that in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, ‘Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike… The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning.’” 

Our data pool may be small, but the available evidence suggests that presidential adherents of Madman Theory are more mad than great theorists.  

I’m not a neurologist nor a psychiatrist. I can’t tell you if Trump has early-stage dementia, narcissistic personality disorder, sociopathy, or some other cerebral affliction. No matter how many times Trump assures us that he crushes every cognitive test he takes, we’ll never get a specific diagnosis. But we don’t need a specific diagnosis to recognize with our eyes and ears than he is not in a sound state of mind and should not be trusted with command of the United States military.  

From the murderous boat attacks to the military’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to Operation Epic Fury, Trump’s appetite for risk, callousness to loss of life, and willingness to threaten wanton destruction has grown and we can expect it will continue to grow, unless he is stopped.  

Those closest to Trump have the power to do the right thing for humanity. “A majority of the principal officers of the executive departments” can declare in writing, under the 25th Amendment, that Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and give J.D. Vance (hardly a gift to Democrats) the title of Acting President. If Trump did not accept the declaration, a two-thirds supermajority in both the House and Senate could codify the declaration.  

Of course, the likelihood of people who have been sycophants to Trump activating the 25th Amendment is close to nil. But that should not stop the rest of us from sounding the alarm that Trump is manifestly unfit, that he’s a danger to the world, and that a Constitutional mechanism exists to end this nightmare. 

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