Donald Trump just lost

| 9:09 am EDT August 3, 2020
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In addition to everything else that sucks about Donald Trump, he’s also one of the worst negotiators on the planet. He had to spend his entire real estate career defrauding investors and abusing the bankruptcy system because he couldn’t negotiate a solid deal to save his life. It turns out politics is harder than real estate, and Trump’s total lack of understanding of leverage has just caused him to suffer a humiliating loss.

Trump wanted to punish users of the TikTok app because they don’t like him very much to begin with, so he made up a national security excuse and announced he was banning the app from the United States. The thing about making a strongman move like that is you’ve got to be strong enough to be able to pull it off – and Trump couldn’t be much more toothless right now.

Trump was never going to be able to simply make TikTok go away. The app is too valuable. Too many American companies are interested in buying its user base. So by the time the weekend was over, Trump had backed down, and Microsoft had resumed its plan to buy TikTok.

Now Donald Trump has made a complete fool of himself by banishing an app from existence and then just as quickly backing down. Trump started with an untenable negotiating position, and had no leverage over anyone involved, so he predictably lost. Now he’s made TikTok users even angrier at him. Trump just keeps finding ways to lose.