TDS

I've been trying to find a good analogy to explain to MAGA people how Trump is viewed outside the US. I think I have one.

Do you ever play a friendly round of golf with friends? Or a friendly poker game? There is often a small wager to make it interesting. But everyone plays honestly (because who cheats against their friends?), everyone pays their debts afterwards with a smile.

Then one of your friends, Sam, brings along his friend Don, and of course you welcome him into the group and invite him to play.

After a while, you start to notice that Don cheats. Sometimes it's small things - he duffs a putt and doesn't count it, or he gives himself a 3-footer. But gradually it gets more brazen. He takes six shots but says he feels he deserved a 4, so writes down a 4 on his card.

And when the games are over, Don has made a great discovery. If he wins, everyone pays him what they owe. But if he doesn't win, he can just find excuses not to pay. Say "I'll pay you next week" (and then maybe forget the next week) or "sorry, I don't have my phone with me today."

At first they are plausible excuses, and you give him the benefit of the doubt, after all you're among friends. But soon it becomes more brazen: "I didn't deserve to lose", "I was so unlucky", "You need to give me a break, I've lost 3 weeks in a row," "The odds against that King coming up on the turn were 50 to 1, it's not fair..." eventually getting to the point of "I'm just not paying, you can't make me, we have no written contract."

If you look at this from a purely financial point of view, over the first few weeks of behaving like this, Don does actually end up with more money - he wins more often because he cheats, he gets paid when he wins, he doesn't always pay when he loses. So, if you are simple enough, you could conclude this is a really great tactic.

It's just that eventually the friends don't call Don anymore, don't invite him to play with them, even advise others not to play with him.

And poor Sam, who introduced Don to the group, has lost a lot of credibility, and will need to put in a lot of work to regain the trust of the group. It will involve him volunteering to pay all the debts that Don owed (as a matter of principle, not because his friends will demand it), it will demand him apologising to them for inviting Don into the group.

But eventually, Sam is a decent guy and his friends will learn to trust him again. Meanwhile, when Don calls Sam to go play golf, the call will go to voicemail and will not get a reply.

This is the optimistic scenario.