Over the course of the last year or so, many Trump supporters have pointed to the string of unlikely victories that propelled him to the White House and argued that he was playing three-dimensional chess. I think the temptation to consider Trump a tactical genius should be avoided. For every political masterstroke, you could point to an inexplicable decision that dragged him down; for example, attacking Khizr Khan and his wife, and floating the idea that Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the JFK assassination.
A better way of assessing Trump is that he sometimes has preternaturally good instincts when it comes to dealing with the media, even while he may not even be conscious of what he’s doing. Trump is hardly the most successful developer or businessman to come out of New York City, but he’s managed to get its pugilistic press to spend the last three decades arguing over his claims to greatness. Basically, Trump is Rain Man for trolling the media.
