In addition, Trump does something all the time that a competent CEO never, ever does.

Let me explain.

When you see a big, complicated, successful company, you invariably see a CEO who’s surrounded by strong subordinates who aren’t afraid to disagree with the boss.

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The boss might not buy their arguments — but he or she gives the underlings a chance to voice their opinions candidly and takes their arguments seriously.

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Now, to what good CEOs never do.

They never run their mouths in public and fail to back up what they say. That’s because “big hat, no cattle” undermines your credibility and — more important — makes your adversaries lose their fear of you and your company.

In his previous existence as a failed real estate developer turned reality-TV star, Trump surrounded himself with flunkies who vied with one another to tell the Great Man what he wanted to hear. Trump was the star — no one else mattered.

That’s why I was surprised — and pleased — when at the start of Trump’s presidency, he gave significant jobs to people who’d had military careers. I may not have agreed with these people on specific policies, but they were grown-ups who had absorbed the military culture that requires officers to be honorable and to speak truth to power.

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When I saw that, I thought that despite Trump’s history, which I’d written about for years, things might turn out to be reasonably okay.

But then we started to see these people disappear, one by one. And we saw Trump attacking and mocking his subordinates in public and private, which no competent manager does. That’s not the way to attract strong, competent subordinates interested in helping our country rather than just enhancing their own careers.

If Trump had a few strong, competent subordinates around, don’t you think they’d have warned him against saying what he foolishly said to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky? And if Trump had had strong subordinates in the room, some of them would have tried to stop him when he started to run his mouth.

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But it takes a combination of self-confidence and self-knowledge to surround yourself with people who know more than you do about some important things and to pay attention to them if they try to dissuade you from doing something that you lust to do.

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Unfortunately for our country, that’s not Trump’s style.

Look. Behaving the way he behaved — making himself the center of attention every waking minute of every day, telling whatever lies came to mind, never apologizing for anything — allowed Trump to recover from his financial failures and be elected president.

So you can see why, having gotten to the Oval Office by being himself, Trump saw no reason to change after being sworn in.

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However, it’s one thing to run your mouth as a private citizen and not follow through, which is Trump’s style. But it’s a whole other thing to do so as president of the United States.

He’s threatened North Korea and Iran and who knows who else with military action and hasn’t followed through. Do you think they’ll back down the next time he threatens them? I doubt it.

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I don’t pretend to know whether Iran planned the attack on the Saudi oil facility or facilitated it or what role it played. But when Trump inflicts economic and social pain on Iran — but then threatens military action he doesn’t follow through on — what do you expect the Iranians to do? Back down?

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If we’d had a normal president who hadn’t alienated our traditional allies the way Trump has, we’d probably have been able to mount a coordinated, multinational response of some sort. But with Trump as president, that’s not an option.