Political leaders can, of course, change their policies but generally they cannot change their personalities.
Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher – even those who disliked her policies would agree – was one of the great personalities of British politics. She was highly organised and very determined. She also boasted about being resolute, saying that “the lady is not for turning”, and portraying herself as “the Iron Lady”.
Yet even over the bitter struggle in 1981 about Irish republican prisoners who starved themselves to death Mrs Thatcher proved, as the cliche puts it, that politics is the art of the possible. Publicly she took a hard line – that the IRA were terrorists – but secretly engaged in negotiations to end their hunger strike.
The Thatcher example is instructive because right now diplomats, members of the US Congress, political journalists and many of us as citizens are trying to make sense of Donald Trump’s hardline policies in his second term as president that will begin on January 20.
We all know the threats and promises about ending the Ukraine war in 24 hours, his scepticism about Nato, steep tariffs on trade, pumping more oil and attacking “woke” ideas (whatever they are). Diplomatic cables to and from foreign embassies in Washington will query about what Mr Trump’s hard-nosed soundbites will mean in reality.
But perhaps the clue to Mr Trump’s second presidential term lies less with policy proposals and more with the president’s personality. Will he, like the Iron Lady, talk tough but inevitably make deals?
A new movie offers a clue. It is based on Mr Trump’s early business life, long before he showed any interest in politics, and is a highly entertaining insight into the personality and character of the next president of the United States. It’s called The Apprentice and is directed by the Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi.
Rather than featuring Mr Trump in The Apprentice reality-TV series, it portrays him as an actual apprentice, learning about business in New York City in the 1970s and '80s from the sinister figure of Roy Cohn. It’s a riveting watch.
Mr Trump, played by an excellently cast Sebastian Stan, is, as one critic put it, “horribly convincing”. The movie shows Mr Trump as a somewhat lost-yet-ambitious young man from a difficult family, seeking in Cohn a father figure to guide him. Cohn – again with excellent casting – is played by the Succession actor Jeremy Strong.
In real life, Cohn was notorious as a fixer and a bully, someone who worked on the anti-communist witch-hunt of the 1950s with senator Joe McCarthy. He also represented various mafia figures. In 1986, he was disbarred for unethical conduct after he tried to get a dying client to make Cohn himself the beneficiary of his will.
In the film, Mr Cohn advises the young Mr Trump that if he wants to succeed in the ruthless world where US business, politics and law intersect, then he must follow three rules. Those rules are: first, attack, attack, attack. Second, admit nothing, deny everything. Third, always claim victory, never admit defeat.
You may be able to understand why Mr Trump’s lawyers in 2024 sent a “cease and desist” letter to the film’s producers after its premiere. The producers presumably enjoyed the resulting publicity. A biopic is, of course, not real life. However, the film’s narrative does help us analyse the subsequent career and behaviour of this most enigmatic political leader.
Mr Trump does seem to follow the three Cohn rules of business and political survival. Attack, attack, attack sounds like the Trump campaigns in 2024, 2020 and back in 2016. Calling Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” at every turn was the embodiment of “attack”. Admit nothing, deny everything also strikes a chord.
It reminds viewers of the events of January 2021, when Mr Trump refused to accept that his actions helped foment the Capitol Hill riot. And “always claim victory, never admit defeat” is of course precisely what Mr Trump did when he lost the November 2020 election. He still claims he won.
Does any of this help diplomats and foreign leaders predict what Mr Trump will do next? Not precisely. But it does offer clues as to how to deal with a president whose policies seem difficult to understand in detail but whose character is decipherable.
In his ghost-written book, The Art of the Deal, Mr Trump insists that negotiations begin with him demanding the maximum and yet being prepared to negotiate in the end, providing that he himself can boast of being a “winner”; that can translate into politics, too.
The film also offers clues about the kinds of characters Mr Trump likes to surround himself with as he prepares to launch his second term – Elon Musk and others in Mr Trump’s inner circle have a track record of extraordinary success often based on making the boldest claims and demands.
Of course, political life is not a movie. Political actors will not stick to the Trump script. But when The Apprentice becomes The President on January 20, we can at least expect a hugely interesting drama.
