U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to the media on the day of a NATO leaders' summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Reporter Michael Weiss and former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos spoke on The Bulwark podcast late Tuesday night, detailing the reasons CIA Director John Ratcliffe may have suddenly flown to Moscow. But at the close of the conversation, the two chatted about the intelligence that U.S. enemies, and likely allies, have about the psychological profile of President Donald Trump.
As they questioned what Ratcliffe might be doing in Moscow, Polymeropoulos explained that the one thing the U.S. intelligence committee does is speak to its enemies, knowing full well they're enemies. So, it isn't unusual that Ratcliffe would be meeting with a U.S. adversary.
He added, "And, you know, I will say that these things come out," Polymeropoulos said about Ratcliffe's visit. "We're going to, you know, there will be enough leaks because the one thing that CIA director Ratcliffe's and his PR team ... [are] really good at is leaking to reporters. Don't be surprised if you get an email saying, you know, behind the scenes this is is what we really talk about."
Weiss cited two possible schools of thought about Trump's foreign policy: First, it's that Trump is merely minding his own business.
"Number one, Trump is just — his mind is rice pudding. He doesn't really know what he's doing. He just knows that he's angry. He's resentful. He wants things and he knows that he has a better chance of getting them from our friends and allies than he does from our adversaries because he treats our adversaries with utter deference, just utter abject, humiliating deference," said Weiss. "And then he treats our allies and friends like s——. Like they're our adversaries."
The second school of thought, he continued, comes from those who think Trump has some "grand strategy" to "scheming."
"It's really to destroy the West or to destroy NATO, weaken our alliances, and basically bring the Russians in from the cold, and I don't know, establish these warm and fuzzy relationships with our historical adversaries," said Weiss. "And you know, admittedly, it's hard to figure out. I mean, I tend toward the former explanation."
"I just don't give him that much credit," Weiss noted.
"I mean, again, he thought he could go to war with Iran, do regime change on the cheap, no boots on the ground, an air war, slot in Oman ... a few Kurds, and call it a day," said Weiss. "I just don't give him that much credit."
"This is not a guy to me that says, 'Grand Design' or 'Big strategic thinker, here," he added.
That's when Weiss asked Polymeropoulos to write up the profile for Trump.
"That's a great question. I love this question. I can only imagine what the psychological profile of foreign intelligence services are," said Polymeropoulos. "They're probably short. It's probably a one — you know, our policymakers love a one-pager. This is an easy one-pager. He has no ideology. He believes in nothing. He is transactional in everything. And the final piece is that everything is right now. It's here and now, what he's feeling. Everything's based on a whim. And that's how you that's how you describe the crazy whiplashes."
He added that folks shouldn't spend too much time trying to figure it out.
"He is a transactional, I guess you could call it, maybe apolitical is the wrong word but he — there is no ideology. There's no Trump doctrine. There's nothing other than, of course, personally enriching him and his family. To me, it's pretty easy. And that sounds a lot like Middle Eastern dictators I deal with all the time," closed Polymeropoulos.
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