Is Donald Trump Being Played by His Own Team?

Wanna bet on who really has the cards?

Mar 02, 2025

Friday night, I watched the video of the last ten minutes of the Oval Office ‘presser’ with President Zelensky. And like most people who yearn to breathe free both here and abroad, I felt that what I witnessed was a travesty — an internationally broadcast betrayal of America and the Promise of Liberty, equality, and Justice. It’s not unlike the feeling I had watching the Trump mob assault the Capitol on January 6th.

But, while watching this the first time, and then watching again several times, I began to realize that there was something amiss. Many commentators also seem to have had this sense, with some suspecting that the sudden confrontation at the end was a set-up. Others have laid blame with one or another of the main protagonists as having failed to act presidentially or professionally.

But I perceived something else. Something that I have been feeling more strongly every day. And I think it’s something worth sharing and discussing because I haven’t seen this perception or argument made anywhere else.

Instead of being surrounded, as he was in his first term, by a phalanx of caretakers, he’s now surrounded by a nest of liberty-takers, a collection of venal opportunists who have found, in The Donald, the perfect vehicle to exploit for their own purposes: a man-child deeply wounded and embittered by having his monomaniacal sense of untouchable magnificence violated by being subject, by the ‘weaponized’ liberal state, to the trials and tribulations — and accountability — of ordinary suckers.

Trump 1.0 → Trump 2.0

Trump 1.0 was a a classic American pitchman and political charlatan. He was a carnival barker with a hugely inflated ego and an insatiable need for adoration and riches.

He talked a big bad gangsterish game, but he had people around him who were normal Republicans and understand they were dealing with an extremely troubled, but high-performing narcissist. Despite their frustrations and occasional horror, they genuinely helped Donald to learn the presidential game and to mostly work within parameters that he has worked within and refined over a lifetime.

This succession of normies acted much like his daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared and a few others had for many years - as a bulwark helping to protect him from his worst instincts.

Trump 2.0 seems to have, in a manner of speaking, transitioned. He is now often taking-on the role of a full-fledged tyrant consumed by hatreds and grievances that appear to have stripped him of any worry of overplaying his hand or any semblance of empathy or sympathy for the fate of others.

I’ve been really wondering about this because his new attitude has appeared to be one that he does not inhabit as consistently as one might expect. He can range in his speeches from rambling monologues about Hannibal Lector to wholesale attacks on the “fake media” and pet-eating immigrants — to annexing Greenland, Canada, and the Gaza Strip.

And now he has come right out and declared his sympathy for his most venal puppet-master, Vladimir Putin.

But as president, with the exception of tariffs, tariffs, and more tariffs, he has pretty much stopped describing exactly what he plans to do — where all of this leads.

This now comes mostly from others, like Office of Personnel Management Director, Russell Vought, who directed the creation of the Project 2025 playbook, Elon Musk his new ‘best boy,’ and J D Vance, his vice president for insulting allies.

Trump is with the Project but not Of It

I now believe Donald Trump when said he disavowed any association with or real knowledge of Project 2025. Of course he didn’t know much about it.

He didn’t read the damn thing. He never even reads his one-page briefings. He sure as hell didn’t read the 900+ pages of the Project 2025 plan!

Now, I don’t believe him when he said he’d never heard of Project 2025. But I do believe that he had barely a clue, really, about what was in that document let alone what sort of ideology drove its creation and the development of its agenda and plan of action.

The New Favorite Son

Further, I believe I have teased-out one more incredibly important element of Trump’s transition to the meaner and more vicious Trump 2.0. So now, a bit of pop-psychology:

Elon Musk came along in the aftermath of key members of Papa Trump’s family having pretty much abandoned him to his own resources after the January 6th debacle and his years of wandering in the stolen-election desert.

Elon suddenly started showing up at the rallies leaping up and down like an enraptured teenager. He brought to the stage a youthful exuberance along with an enthusiastic ‘Dark Maga’ salute.

He adopted the kind of muscular, ebulliently entitled, aggrieved, and avenging billionaire son or ‘son-in-~~law~~-lieu of-Jared’ that Trump never had.

Trump was taken, even moved, by this surrogate spawn-of-a-bast**d.

It wasn’t long before this clever boy convinced ‘Papa Don’ that he knew exactly how to ‘own the libs’ and bureaucrats while destroying most of the governing and cultural infrastructure that they have built to emasculate American men and denigrate ‘real’ Americans.

Entranced by this shining star of a proxy son, his new space cadet, Trump gave him a ‘get-out-of-oversight’ license to knock down all the earthly liberal building blocks he can. And he assured this very good bad boy that not even the sky is the limit.

So Musk took command and Donald took a back seat. And the proof is in the pressers. Just look back a bit to the most recent Oval Office presser featuring the giddy Elon Muskreant.

[Elon Musk takes questions from reporters as President Trump looks on in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images]

Almost all commentators agreed: It was Musk’s show. Donald just sat at his desk looking sleepy and disengaged.

Musk did the same thing again during the most recent Cabinet meeting.1

J D “The Lance” Vance

And then we had the fiasco of the Oval Office Presser with Ukrainian President Zelensky, where J D Vance so clearly showed us how pliant and dependent Donald Trump has become.

Here are excerpts from the Associated Press of the final 10 minutes of that presser.2 Notice how Vance forcefully shouted Trump out of his normal, theatrical shtick into a belligerent, grievance-filled rant.

Vance: “For four years, the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is, maybe, engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing . . ..”
“ . . . Zelenskyy: “Yes, but during 2014 ‘til 2022, the situation is the same, that people have been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him. You know that we had conversations with him, a lot of conversations, my bilateral conversation. And we signed with him, me, like, you, president, in 2019, I signed with him the deal. I signed with him, (French President Emmanuel) Macron and (former German Chancellor Angela) Merkel. We signed ceasefire. Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go … But after that, he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean . . . ?”
“. . . .Vance: “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict . . . “
”. . . Trump: “ . . . The problem is I’ve empowered you (turning toward Zelenskyy) to be a tough guy, and I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States. And your people are very brave. But you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty, but you’ll fight it out. But you don’t have the cards. But once we sign that deal, you’re in a much better position, but you’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest. That’s not a nice thing . . . “

It was just so striking.

JD Vance provided the belligerent tone and content for Donald Trump’s pivot to a rant about disrespect, lack of gratitude, presumptuousness, and, essentially, failure to kiss the ring.

The Totalitarian Trio

Trump has turned over the execution of the once-seemingly inconceivable objective of eradicating our progress in establishing democracy to his newly appointed Greatest totalitarian hits trio.

Director of the Office of Personnel ~~Management~~ Mugging, Russell (Project 2025) Vought;
Thr newly crowned Prince of Contempt-for-Grubby-Earth-Bound-Humans, Elon Musk; and
The insufferable a**hole and destroyer of American alliances, JD Vance.

And now, as never before, Trump has been able to just sit back and sign Executive Orders that trigger the carrying-forth of ‘his’ will at a seemingly endless list of targets and enemies. These include just about everything that defines, upholds, or enforces our laws and order, as well as all of the people who have contributed directly or indirectly to the indignities and suffering inflicted upon him.

But . . .

Is that really who Trump is? And is this really how he thinks he can make his presidency HUGE — the BEST ever?

Or, and this is the big, $65B question: Is Trump maybe being played by the assortment of ideologues, corporate shills, patrons, and Muskreants who have bought their ways into the tattered remnants of Trump’s mentally and emotionally traumatized state of being?

I’m still gathering data and evidence about this. I could be on to something here in suggesting that Trump is not entirely himself at this point, and is being played by people with their own agendas and enemies lists.

And wouldn’t that be a major shock for Trump if he were to hear such an observation, such claims being discussed in public—maybe even live on Fox News and the Joe Rogan Experience?

Hmmmm. Seems like that would be a shocker.

Or perhaps this is all just, well, you know, speculation. Fake News.

Could be.

I guess we wouldn’t know unless people started asking the question about whether Donald trump is being played at his own game. Maybe if it gets some traction, like if some political leaders, journalists, town hall attendees start asking this question, we will get some answers.

Maybe. Could be . . . Only time will tell.

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Thanks! Jon.

Jon Thinks Out Loud

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