THE MOST ERATIC PRESIDENT IN THE WORLD

National Review

 

The Most Erratic President in the World

By Jim Geraghty

February 4, 2026 10:42 AM

 

On the menu today: This is one of those newsletters that I know is going to irk a lot of people, but I absolutely loved writing it. While you can read this edition of the newsletter, it is probably best read out loud in the style of the narrator in the Dos Equis commercials, preferably with some upbeat Latin jazz in the background.

 

Trump’s On-Again, Off-Again Relationship with . . . Everything

 

He’s the rare kind of immigration hardliner who wants more H-1B visas.

 

He’s warned that illegal immigrants are taking “Black population jobs, the Hispanic population jobs, and they’re attacking union jobs too” . . . and also proposed giving green cards to any foreign student who graduates from a U.S. institution of higher education.

 

He added his own name to the Kennedy Center . . . and then shut it down for two years for renovations.

 

He pledged that the addition of a new ballroom to the White House “won’t interfere with the current building” . . . and then tore down the East Wing.

 

He’s convinced a deep state within the federal government rigged the 2020 presidential election against him while he was president in his first term . . . so he wants to end states’ running their own elections and for the federal government to take over the running of elections nationwide.

 

He began his presidency by beating Hillary Clinton after a furious, no-holds-barred campaign . . . and now says of the Clintons testifying before the House Oversight Committee, “I think it’s a shame to be honest. I always liked him. Her, eh, she’s a very capable woman. She’s better in debating than some of the other people, I will tell you that. She was smarter, smart woman. I hate to see it in many ways. I hate to see it.”

 

He’s the man who worked closely with the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo on his first three Supreme Court nominees . . . and who now contends Leo is a “sleazebag” who has ‘the legal system RIGGED.”

 

He understands the far-reaching consequences of the failures of the state government in Minnesota and lamented that current Governor Tim Walz is “so whacked out” . . . and he urged Republicans in that state to nominate MyPillow guy Mike Lindell as their gubernatorial nominee.

 

He’ll insist that the New York Times is “failing” and irrelevant, and then post three times in one night about one story in the paper about Harvard. He publicly rages about the newspaper being “fake news,” then granted the paper’s reporters a two-hour, on-the-record interview in the Oval Office.

 

He boasts of “restoring law and order” . . . while issuing pardons for 1,500 convicted January 6 rioters and 88 additional pardons so far, including for Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, and former Representative George Santos, sparing the convicted the costs of a collective $298 million in restitution that was supposed to be paid to the victims of their crimes. He then warned, “The biggest problem our Country has is that the Democrats are SOFT ON CRIME! They want to protect the Criminal, violent and vicious as they may be, at the expense of our great American Citizens and Patriots.”

 

He’s been infamously critical of the Germans . . . while adopting their system of capitalization.

 

He declared that illegal immigration coming across the U.S. border with Mexico constituted an “invasion” . . . in a statement celebrating a literal U.S. military invasion of Mexico during the Mexican-American War.

 

He spent much of 2025 warning that Zohran Mamdani was “a communist, a guy that’s going to take the money and throw it out the window” . . . and then after meeting Mamdani declared, “We agree on a lot more than we would have thought. . . . I feel very confident that he can do a good job. . . . I would feel very, very comfortable being in New York and much more so after the meeting.”

 

He pledged that America will never be socialist, Marxist, or Communist . . . and then arranged for the federal government to take an ownership stake in U.S. Steel, MP Materials USA Rare Earth, Intel, Trilogy Metals, Lithium Americas, Vulcan Elements, ReElement Technologies, Westinghouse, xLight, and Nvidia.

 

He promised “a dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone” from the tariff revenues . . . and then told reporters that he didn’t remember making that promise.

 

He vehemently opposed the release of the U.S. Department of Justice’s documents about Jeffrey Epstein . . . until he suddenly endorsed the proposal and signed it into law.

 

He calls himself “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House,” but also contended that those protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot carry firearms: “With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t. You can’t walk in with guns, you can’t do that.”

 

He boasts that he is “the most pro-life president in history,” but told House Republicans that they have to “be a little flexible on Hyde,” which bars federal funding for abortions.

 

On foreign policy, he sees himself as the consummate dealmaker and a peacemaker and yearned to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When he didn’t get it, he texted the Norwegian prime minister, threatening to annex Greenland.

 

He’s the man who bombed the Iranian nuclear program, setting it back two years . . . who is now sending his envoy Steve Witkoff to have talks with the Iranians about the future of their nuclear program.

 

He created a new international “Board of Peace” . . . and then invited Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to join as members.

 

He boasted that Putin had agreed to a cease-fire in Ukraine for a week . . . and then his press secretary said he was “unsurprised” that Putin had broken the cease-fire.

 

He has repeatedly lamented the terrible casualties of the Russian invasion of Ukraine . . . while insisting that “Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed.”

 

He oversaw a near-perfect mission that took out Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro . . . and then left Maduro’s right-hand woman and vice president, the “terrific person” Delcy Rodríguez, in charge.

 

He is . . . the most erratic president in the world.

 

He never drinks beer, but if he did, it would explain a lot . . . and it would probably be Dos Equis. Stay stable and genius, my friends.

 

ADDENDUM: A rare moment of disagreement with Noah Rothman . . . I don’t think we’ll ever see any serious “Biden nostalgia” take root within the Democratic Party or its chattering class, nor the electorate. When the Harvard-Harris survey finds “53 percent said the economy is ‘worse than it was under Biden.’ And only 47 percent believe Trump’s economy outperforms Biden’s,” that strikes me as frustration with the current guy, the same way Iranian protesters were chanting “long live the Shah” as the biggest metaphorical middle finger available to the current ruling mullahs. The percentage of Iranians who genuinely want to see Reza Pahlavi returned to power, and/or have fond memories of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi are pretty limited — certainly not enough to overthrow the regime and establish a new form of government. But the percentage of Iranians who are so fed up with the Ayatollah and the mullahs that they’re willing to chant a version of, “You’re so awful, we miss the last guy who we thought we hated,” is considerably larger.