At home and abroad US policy chaos has one constant: Trump's self-interest

[babylonsister]

At home and abroad US policy chaos has one constant: Trump’s self-interest
When Putin blamed the 2020 US election result on mail-in voting he bolstered a Trump obsession – just one example of the blurring of international goals and domestic grievances
David Smith in Washington
Sun 24 Aug 2025 05.00 EDT

snip//

That an American president might take advice on how to run elections from a Russian dictator – who wins sham polls in a landslide while his opponents disappear or die – would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

But it was not so surprising from Trump, who has made a habit of blurring the boundary between domestic policy grievances and foreign policy goals. He is uniquely vulnerable to manipulation, critics say, because he views national and international affairs through a single prism of self-interest.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “In Donald Trump’s world there’s no significant distinction between what he does internationally and what he is doing domestically because all centers on himself. There’s no ideological through-line or consistency.

“It’s all about what serves his own personal interests. The notion that you would roll out the red carpet for an internationally wanted war criminal 19 months after he murdered [opposition leader] Alexei Navalny would be vomit-inducing in any context. But given Trump’s long history with Vladimir Putin, I suppose it should be expected.”

more...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/24/trump-policy-putin-summit