Trump biographer says 'anxiety' about midterms is driving most of his decisions

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the announcement of new fuel economy standards, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 3, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

New York Times reporter Tyler Pager says even President Donald Trump’s allies are fretting at how badly his unpredictability is maiming Republicans for the midterms.

“President Trump, who considers himself a master deal maker, has never made any secret of his belief that the secret to winning at negotiation is to keep the other side off balance,” said Pager. “But a year into his second term, his act is starting to wear on both allies and adversaries, some of whom are starting to view him as so mercurial and unreliable that they appear willing to consider waiting him out or turning away from him rather than enduring the abrupt starts, stops and humiliations that can accompany engaging with him.”

In foreign policy, for example, Trump’s tariffs, immigration agenda and his pressure campaign on American universities amount to an unpredictable horde of “threats, retreats, twists and turns,” which leave people at the negotiating table “feeling at times that they are being used to score political points and that there is little purpose to engaging on substance when his moods and demands can shift in an instant.”

“What Trump is identifying as unpredictability is actually anxiety about his electoral prospects,” Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien told Pager.

O’Brien added that Trump is “aware that he’s going into a possibly daunting midterm election and he’s throwing these Hail Mary passes in order to try to cultivate voters, to demonstrate that he’s in charge, to seek retribution from perceived enemies.”

“But I don’t think it has anything to do with unpredictability in the service of great deal making,” O’Brien said.

And even some of Trump’s allies privately concede to Pager that “his penchant for unpredictability has drawbacks, most often for the economy.”

“The president dangles trade wars with frequency, and when he is peeved, tariffs are often doled out as threats on social media. So even when a deal is struck, the other parties are never fully sure Mr. Trump will not try to change the terms,” Pager reported.

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