Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

by Maggie Haberman

There is the counterattack, there is the quick lie, there is the shift of blame, there is the distraction or misdirection, there is the outburst of rage, there is the performative anger, there is the designed-just-for-headlines action or claim, there is the indecisiveness masked by a compensatory lunge, there is the backbiting about one adviser with another adviser, creating a wedge between them.

It began with provocative but deliberately imprecise language that drew people in, then the refusal to claim ownership of his own words while never quite clarifying his views, and then the taking advantage of a relatively small media error—in this case, my imprecise choice of words—to portray himself as the victim of the feeding frenzy he had unleashed.

he gave a weak answer, waited until he was described as taking a position he appeared to be taking without actually definitely doing so, and then claimed outrage that the media was taking him out of context.