the thing about President Trump, if you go back and look at his history, that he become one of the most successful if not the most successful businessmen of the twentieth century, because he was able to squeeze everything out of every deal that he made.

I mean, he's probably not the most successful businessmen of the 20th century, and arguably not even one of them - but otherwise this is pretty accurate. Donald Trump indeed made a lot of money in large part because he was able to squeeze everything out of every deal that he made.

The reason why, of course, is because he was able to pick and choose his counterparties. He didn't get into deals where he couldn't dictate enormously favorable terms at the outset, or unless he had such an economic advantage over the other party that he could dictate favorable terms later in the deal. I don't want to undersell the importance of that - it's critical in many fields to be able to do that, and it's especially important in real estate development. The key skill is picking your deals and counterparties so that you only do the projects that are most favorable to you.

The problem, though, is that this skill isn't directly transferrable to certain aspects of governmental service. If you're the head of state, you don't get to pick your counterparties. Russia, China, the EU, Israel...whatever deals Trump is going to make as head of state, some of his counterparties are fixed. What Trump doesn't seem to have is any extraordinary skill in those types of negotiations - which is why we not only didn't get 90 deals in 90 days, we got almost no agreements in principle in 90 days.