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“From my experience negotiating with Donald Trump, never, ever do it from a weak position, because the result will be a total disaster.” This curious mini-tribute to the U.S. president came out of the Palace of Westminster Monday from none other than Alex Salmond MP, Scotland’s former First Minister. As the country’s boss, Salmond had to oversee a commercial invasion by Trump, who built a links golf course on Scotland’s stony northeastern coast and ended up in a legal and public-relations war with the SNP government over wind farm plans.

It was, for those who noticed, an instructive preview of the chaos Trump is now creating on a bigger stage. Salmond qualifies as a fully credentialed expert on Trump’s strategic approach — the bluster and hyperbole, the detachment from facts, the wild veering between execration and friendliness.

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It is typical of Salmond that he chose to assess Trump coldly, even half-admiringly, amidst others who were simply catcalling and denouncing. And he perhaps had a point. Salmond spoke during a Commons committee debate on Trump’s projected state visit to Britain, which was arranged and announced by Prime Minister Theresa May mere days after his inauguration. Only two U.S. presidents, Bush II and Obama, have been formally received by the Queen on British soil. May, eager to strengthen the “special relationship” as Britain wrestles free from the European Union, was mighty quick to play a card she cannot easily take back.