is a blowhard, shallow-thinking, park-level checkers player who finds himself at a world championship chess tournament. Honestly, I'm not trying to straw man your position here; I'm saying that I can comprehend how people could lean in that direction with their view of the man. To me, however, such views badly misunderstand the phenomenon of the man.
(And please, understand that none of what follows here is aimed at you personally. You're *clearly* open-minded about the most difficult of subjects, which is why you fit in so well here :-) I'm greatly enjoying this exchange; none of this is transmitted in an offensive or contentious tone)
A lot of people see 'reality TV star' when they see DJT. This is understandable because, for most of us, that's how we came to know of him. But here's the thing: he was on The Apprentice because he had already become a billionaire based on his own shrewd business sense. The Apprentice wasn't what made DJT, unlike most TV personalities for whom the GOAL is to get on a primetime slot somewhere--it simply enhanced his brand and profile. Again, I'm not trying to straw man you; I'm trying to elucidate that I think I understand *how* people can support the narrative that he's a blundering blowhard who's mostly interested in stroking his own ego.
Trump made a comment during the campaign where he described himself as one of the smartest people in the world (he might have even put a number to it, somewhere between 150-160 IQ?). His detractors instantly cried foul, and Snopes even attempted to undertake the task of disproving this (to them) self-evidently absurd claim. They got a hold of some of his official test scores from his college days, crunched the numbers, and triumphantly declared!...that his IQ is probably between 145-150, based on the best available information. Not a generational intellect, to be certain, but also a trait of his character that doesn't get enough press in my opinion ('Bill Clinton the Rhodes Scholar' was pounded into our heads ad infinitum, no?). He's a legitimately smart-bordering-on-brilliant human being who took $10million of his dad's money and turned it into billions--and he did it WITHOUT authoring some world-changing innovation, like a touchscreen phone, a new refining process for crude oil, a better mousetrap, etc.. He did it by out-playing the best and the brightest in the arenas of real estate development, government bureaucracies specifically designed to stop people from doing what he did, and shrugged off enough potentially-career-ending lawsuits to kill a small country.
When I think of this guy in those terms, which terms I think are *accurate* representations of the man and his achievements, I can't help but think he's playing four moves ahead while everyone else is playing 2-3 moves ahead. He defeated the RNC single-handedly; he defeated the DNC single-handedly; he defeated the media single-handedly. Any one of those could reasonably be viewed as a fluke, but in combination they paint the picture of a hyper-capable competitor who understands better than most of his enemies OR allies how to win the game at the highest levels.
All of that said, I lean in the direction you describe when it comes to worrying about his approach and how it will play out with someone like Lil Kim--who I think deserves most of the generally-spurious claims made of DJT's character--on the world stage with nuclear weapons involved.
And personally, I've always thought that N. Korea was part of a 'protection racket' on China's part. "Oh, we'll do what we can to keep those crazies in line up there, but we're going to need some trade concessions in order to make it happen..." (lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum for the last forty years). So unless a country is willing to sanction China in addition to N. Korea, what's the point? China, knowingly or not, has been leveraging the N. Korea situation to Chinese benefit for decades--why would they willingly give up that kind of leverage?
And I'll say it again: I didn't vote for the guy.