The Financial Times recently published a comment from an anonymous major oil company executive vis-à-vis investment in Venezuela, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country…”

Recently, I endured a couple of weeks of people outside the United States explaining to me, indeed lecturing me, on what the Trump administration’s cabal’s strategy, objectives and purposes are; to which I wearily responded that what makes President Donald Trump and his claque of close advisers so frightening is the lack of any clear strategy, purpose or thought-through objectives — it’s a random walk.

A random walk

A random walk is a mathematical model of a path made of a series of random, independent steps, like a drunkard’s unpredictable journey, used to describe phenomena from particle movement (Brownian motion) to stock market fluctuations, where each step’s direction or length is chosen by chance, often with equal probability, but with statistical patterns emerging over many steps.

There is a pattern, but it’s bizarre. Trump and his courtiers are dogmatic single-issue zealots who reject any facts, any information that might contradict or undermine their latest idée fixé — half-formed notions drive them — a collective gestalt frequently detached from objective reality. Any random thought may fall into abeyance for a while, but it will abruptly reappear, more dogmatically, irrationally and relentlessly than before.

Take, for example, canceling the US mid-term Congressional elections. One should not discount the possibility of Trump trying to cancel the 2026 US Congressional midterms, even though he lacks the power to do so and attempting to cancel them might guarantee the impeachment and conviction he fears. Trump has repeatedly maundered: “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election…”

“How we have to even run against these people — I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’”

His explanation of why is: 

“You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me …. I’ll get impeached.”

When asked about this, the toxically vacuous White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt resorted to her usual ad hoc explanation — Trump was just joking: 

“The president was simply joking … He was saying, ‘We’re doing such a great job, we’re doing everything American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”

As usual, neither Trump nor his courtiers grasped the constitutional reality of what would likely happen if he and the Republicans tried to cancel the elections, thus accusing his critics of dour humorlessness (an approach they are now re-utilizing in response to Trump’s flagrantly racist portrayal of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys).

A US Congressman’s term officially ends at noon on January 3rd of the odd-numbered year following their election, as established by the 20th Amendment; a Senator’s on the sixth year. So all of the House ceases to be members of Congress, unable to vote after January 3rd of 2027 unless re-elected; one-third of the Senate, 33 Senators, will also, unless re-elected, cease to be members of the Senate — 20 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

Now, envision a situation where Trump attempts to cancel the 2026 midterms. There’s a basic problem, he can’t … it’s not up to him whether the election happens or not, it’s constitutionally entrusted to the individual US states: 

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Solidly Republican “Red States” might obey, maybe even Republican counties and municipalities would, but Democratic “Blue States” and marginal states would go ahead with their elections. The result would likely be, as of January 4th, a massively Democratic House that would instantly impeach Trump (and Vice President JD Vance), and a Senate that would be circa 50–54 Democrats (based on current polling) and 33 Republicans out of 80–84 members. In such a Senate, it would only take 53 votes (remember the Red States that obeyed Trump’s cancelation order would have elected no one to replace their term-expired Senators) to convict.

Random policies, random strategies to implement them

The problem is that Trump’s “jokes” turn into reality. His trade war with Canada was driven by his demand that Canada become part of the United States (an outcome that, inter alia, would mean electoral doom for the Republican Party.) In August 2019, his first administration spun his earliest comments about annexing Greenland as not serious… and by late 2025, it was yet another idée fixé. Notions that initially appear completely unserious, even facetious, rapidly turn into hard policies — and trade and tariff wars.

In general, the adoption of policies by the US Administrations follows a process — admittedly, within the Bush administration, “stove-piping” (bypassing established procedures for review by the national security apparatus) became common, leading, for example, to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation’s multiple failures in 2003–8 — discarding and rejecting input from experienced subject matter experts from various disciplines provide on decisions, plans, etc.

But the Trump cabal has abandoned any remote semblance of process — if Trump or his courtiers, or those with access to him, have a notion or scheme, there appears no process for considering necessity, means or consequences — it becomes an instant obsession of the administration, that does not go away, but keeps reappearing, driving ever weirder paroxysms. There are so many examples: Canada as the 51^st state, abandoning Ukraine, seizing Greenland, random tariffs, blocking wind farms, persecutions, meritless prosecutions, the Nobel Peace Prize (any peace prize)…

It has been widely pointed out that the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement with Denmark granted the US the right to expand its military presence to pretty well any level necessary for its defense from, say, Russia or China — including setting up additional bases (although by all accounts an assignment to the Thule base is considered somewhat of a punishment detail in the US military). Somewhere along the way, Trump developed an obsession with Greenland — it could literally have been anywhere, Iceland, even Ireland.

These obsessions then rapidly escalate — so now Trump announced a 10% tariff on those countries that took steps to obstruct a US military invasion of Greenland in a surprisingly and unusually coherent (for Trump) 445-word post, albeit one filled with bullshit. The tone and the complete sentences point to someone other than Trump ghost-writing it — most likely White House advisor Stephen Miller; they reflect his signature boorishness. Trump then backed off the threat to invade in yet another post, but the nature of his administration suggests this obsession will reappear in yet another.

What “random tweet” is next?

This is the central frightening aspect of the Trump administration— no one can predict what its latest “brain-fart” (and I use the term advisedly) will be, the next “random fucking tweet.” Demand Iceland become the 52nd State — Trump’s incoming ambassador just “joked” — did that come from Trump? Ireland too? Surrender more of Ukraine to Russia? Offer Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China in a fit of pique? Invoke the Insurrection Act and send regular troops to occupy Minneapolis? Chicago? New York? A travel ban on the entire EU?

What’s frightening about the Trump administration is not merely its lack of any meaningful constraints from the Supreme Court or the supine and groveling Republican majority in Congress, but the lack of any predictable or identifiable logic to its behavior.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.