For a man who demands unconditional loyalty while giving none himself, Trump has been remarkably tolerant of J.D.’s very public attempts to distance himself from the war. What’s going on here?
I’m speculating, of course, but I suspect that Trump is trying to send a message to his anti-war MAGA supporters through the back door that he is still one of them at heart. J.D.’s job in his administration, other than to reverse engineer his incoherent utterances into something that makes sense, is to keep the band from flying apart. That’s probably what he’s doing here, too.
It isn’t working, just as his attempts to keep the techno-aristocrats and the populists on the same page can’t succeed in the long run.