Trump’s empty bluster worked until he took on the pope and Iran

Until recently, President Trump always found a way to fail forward, through a combination of spin, threats, payoffs and bluster.

OK, that’s the simplistic interpretation. The fine print tells a less-glamorous story: a man born on third base who spent decades insisting he’d hit a triple.

Still, it’s hard to argue with success. When Trump entered politics, he redefined the rules of the game. Rivals who tried to outflank him on policy detail, ideological consistency and institutional norms found themselves either vanquished or assimilated by the Borg.

By my lights, only once during Trump’s admittedly chaotic first term did he run into something that his playbook couldn’t at least mitigate or parry: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the final year of his presidency, reality refused to negotiate, and political gravity reasserted itself. It turns out, viruses aren’t susceptible to the Art of The Deal.

But then, miraculously, Trump wriggled through legal jeopardy, bulldozed his way past more conventional Republicans and Democrats, and re-emerged victorious in 2024.

If anything, that comeback reinforced the idea that Trump could survive anything by virtue of his playbook.

By the start of his second term, he’d made impressive headway in co-opting not only individuals but also major institutions within big tech, the media and academia.

Even in foreign affairs, Trump’s sense that any problem could be solved via force, intimidation or money was confirmed when he captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and installed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as a sort of puppet leader. Everyone has a price, right?

Unfortunately for Trump, no. Not everyone does.

Lately, the president has encountered a different kind of resistance — adversaries motivated by something bigger and more transcendent than money, power or the avoidance of pain.

In dealing with Iran, for instance, Trump has confronted people operating under a wholly different set of incentives. It’s a regime guided by a mix of ideology, radical religious doctrine and long-term strategic interests that don’t always align with short-term material gain.

(Now perhaps, having punished Trump enough already, Iran will finally come to the negotiating table. But even if that happens, it will have occurred after exacting a steep price — so steep, in fact, that it may already be too late for Trump to plausibly claim a win.)

It turns out, you can’t easily intimidate or pay off a true believer who isn’t afraid to die and believes they have God on their side.

A similar (though obviously not morally equivalent) dynamic is now also on display in the form of Trump’s skirmish with Pope Leo XIV, a man who commands moral authority. He opposes the war in Iran (“Blessed are the peacemakers”) and has demonstrated a stubborn refusal to back down to Trump’s attempts at bullying.

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said during a tour of Africa. It’s a remark that the American pope seemed to implicitly be aiming at the American president.

Here’s what Trump doesn’t understand: There are still pockets of the world where concepts like faith and national identity outweigh tangible incentives. Where sacrifice and suffering are an accepted part of the plan.

When facing these sorts of foes, Trump’s usual operating system starts to look less like a cheat code and more like a category error.

But he can’t see this because Trump is always prone to a sort of cynical projection — of assuming everyone views the world in the same base, carnal, corrupt way he sees it.

Whether it was his incredulity that Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland, rhetoric that seemed to discount the motivations of those who serve and sacrifice in the military, or his affinity for nakedly transactional gulf states, the pattern is familiar: a tendency to view decisions through a cost-benefit lens that not everyone shares.

To be fair, that lens has often served him well. In arenas where power, money and leverage dominate, Trump’s approach is eerily effective.

But after years of taming secular, “rational” opponents, he is fighting a two-front war against people who see their struggles as moral and spiritual.

They aren’t stronger in a conventional sense. But they are, in a very real sense, less susceptible to Trump’s methods.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Donald Trump finds himself facing adversaries who aren’t just immune to his usual Trumpian playbook but are playing a different game altogether.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”