America needs to do better than Donald Trump. Its as simple as that. A lot better.

I'm going to begin this blog with a passage from a TV show I used to watch about 15 years ago. That show, Human Target, wasn't on that long (2 years I believe), and while it started with a fantastic pilot, highlighted by this clip in a very good first episode, it tailed off and only had small amounts of quality as it progressed. I actually didn't even watch any of Season 2. By the end of the first season, it had petered out badly. Its my contention, and that of many, that the show ended up going the wrong way because of interference from the network. The creative people were overruled by the non creative people. More about that later. Nevertheless, this -in my opinion of course-is one of the all time great scenes in TV history. That is a big claim and I will attempt to back that up. Mostly because of Jackie Earle Haley and how he plays Guerrero in this scene and others. Also, the structure and the dialogue in this scene are perfection. Anyway, on to the clip.

I gotta warn you guys. If this gets violent, I'm gonna fight back.
You think you're gonna fight back?
Allright, maybe fight back's a little misleading. I'll take the beating. Because that's all you two amateurs are cleared to do.
Then one night soon, I'm gonna break into your houses and kill each of you in your sleep.

Why is this scene so important to this blog?
Two reasons.
First, this is how you deal with bullies. You stand up to them and let them know they are not bullying you at all. They thought they could, but you have explained to them that in every bullies life, there will come a time when they have met their match, and THIS IS THAT TIME.
But secondly, and more importantly, it shows the strategy behind how you handle foes AND allies. The elements of BOTH surprise and preparation in combination. Planning and anticipation are everything.

Its important to pick your spots and that is also evident here. There is a time to do it, to show resistance, and a time to just let it be. Sometimes you have to just use words and make them understand that they should back off. Other times, you need to be ready to use violence and force and beat them down. It depends on them. Not you. In all cases, its always better to avoid violence. Sometimes though, you have to fight when you're a man. 
I will return to my comments of this clip at the end of the blog.
In the Late Shift, which is the story of the battle to host The Tonight Show between Jay Leno and David Letterman when Johnny Carson retires, there is a pivotal scene where the NBC executives have to decide what to do about Helen Kushnick, who is Jay Leno's agent and now the Executive Producer of the show. She is wildly out of control,  so what do they do about that? Do they fire her, or do they let her self destruct to the point that they are better off with that option? Either way, they know she has to go soon. They choose the self destruct option and as expected, she does exactly that. They won the battle because they were several moves ahead of the current situation. In the movie all of this is well documented and laid out. There is also the article below, although it hints that a lot of that is because Kushnick is both a woman and not an establishment player. It's correct to characterize her as both of those, but that isn't why she was terminated. She was bad at her new job and destructive to the entity. That is what got her fired in the end. Any man also would have been fired, and anybody period who showed the level of disrespect she did to everybody would have as well. In fact, she actually lasted longer than any man would have. NBC didn't want to look like they were beating up on a woman, so they let her beat up on herself instead. A man wouldn't have gotten that latitude.
While Kushnick was a tough broad, she wasn't a smart cookie. She needed to be a smart cookie for this job.

Power can be a wicked narcotic and, to hear some of Hollywood`s principal power brokers tell it, Helen Kushnick was a junkie....If Kushnick erred, it was in believing that she could play by her own rules without resorting to the kowtowing or inner-sanctum shenanigans that often grease the wheels of show biz....”This is a tough town,” she said. ”But I`m a tough broad.”....Caught in a vicious drive-by public relations campaign by those to whom she would not curtsy, Kushnick`s just learned a hard lesson about that tough town.

-from the article below

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1992/09/23/producer-for-leno-gets-lesson/


It would have been easy to just fire Kushnick and think only about the small picture and/or only about the immediate results. But, NBC had a master plan. Keep their asset, Jay Leno, and remove his cancerous agent, Kushnick, who they made the mistake of giving too much power to so they could lock up her asset, Leno. They obviously didn't do their homework on her. They were not prepared for the next 3 chess moves after that. If they had been, they would have put clauses in the deal to protect themselves, if they knew what to expect out of Kushnick. They simply didn't do their due dillegence. But, they got prepared at that point with a plan. They righted the ship.
Kathy Bates was nominated for an Emmy award for her performance of Kushnick in this movie, and she was excellent at conveying how toxic someone like this can be. How they will self destruct when they are playing in the league where they dont belong. Kushnick got to the top doing exactly what she is doing now, but while that worked in the minor leagues, in the big leagues of network television and Hollywood more specifically,  the opposition is far superior and powerful relative to her. In the end, she is destroyed. She believed her own bullshit, and she paid a heavy price for that. They didn't. She didnt adapt to the new level. Possibly, she just wasnt capable of doing that. Her skillset was a different skillset which worked great in the element she dealt with on the way up. And then it didnt. Her own star client almost paid the heavy price for that. That point should not be forgotten.
Leno went on to host the Tonight show for many years, NBC made loads of money off all that content, all the executives at NBC got rich because they executed like top shelf execs have to. Helen Kushnick died a few years later. Broken and alone. It played out exactly how you would expect it to. It's the way the world works. If you want to play the game, you have to play the game that is there. Not the one you think is there. And you must play it well, or you will fail. 

In the next scene after the clip, NBC explains to Leno that he must ditch Kushnick. They want him, they want to work with him, but not if he is working with her. He is very loyal and wants to resist but in the end he has no choice. They explained she is going down. If he wants to, he can go down with her ship. She is poisonous. She will die professionally. He has to cut ties. He does. Reluctantly, but he does the right thing. Loyalty only goes so far. Reality goes the distance.

What does this all mean and why should you care about a 30 year old movie about a battle to be the host of The Tonight Show? Because there is a lot more to the story. That is why will care when you see the other side of all of this. It sets the table for my main thesis or point in this piece.

On the other side of the Leno coin, David Letterman hires superagent Michael Ovitz. The story of how Letterman got to Ovitz is key to much of this blog.
After Letterman learns that NBC is replacing Carson with Leno-a job Letterman presumed was his after working for them already for 10 years, he comes to realize that he made his own bad luck. How did that happen?
Well, as Letterman states in the movie when he is discussing his predicament with his friend and mentor Peter Lassally, he relates to Lassally that he acted as his own agent and negotiated a horrible one sided contract for himself which gave NBC all the power.

Lassally: How about getting an agent? Dont reject the idea out of hand, I know how you feel about agents. But we need someone with power in the business.
Letterman: Jesus, an agent? An agent is what you pull off the bottom of your shoe at the end of a baseball game.
Lassally: Listen David, I have an idea.

Lassally then gets Letterman a meeting with Ovitz. Ovitz isn't a bottom feeder agent type like Kushnick, which is what Letterman was referring to above. What Letterman didn't understand was that on his way up, he could be his own agent and make deals with bar owners, clubs, and promoters to some extent. His talent was always enough to give him the leverage he needed because he was major league as a comic, but  as a business person he was amateur hour. What he didn't realize is that there is a huge difference between what a booking agent is and what a super agent who has a plan, knows all the power brokers, and is a master chess player is. Ovitz was that person and Letterman realizes that in his first meeting with Ovitz.
As soon as the meeting commences, Ovitz takes complete control. Lassally begins by telling Ovitz why they are here. Ovitz stops him on a dime.

Lassally: Michael, maybe we should tell you a little bit about David's circumstance.
Ovitz: Peter, I know Dave's circumstances. And so, I know why you are here....we pride ourselves here at CAA on developing a career plan for our clients that protects them as much as it enriches them....David is going disturbingly unrewarded. That just doesn't make sense. Its simply bad business practice....Frankly, we have worked out a career plan for David and it includes securing everything for Dave that he wants...of course, that means an 11:30 television show. Dave WILL be offered an 11:30 show and he will be offered it by every network...we shall frame a deal that will make you one of the giants.

I cant do justice to how Treat Williams plays Ovitz in this scene with just the text. He was also nominated for an Emmy for this performance, and likely, for this scene. You must watch his mannerisms to understand what he has conveyed. Much like Jackie Earle Haley did above.
Safe to say, that exactly what Ovitz promised is exactly what happened. Letterman describes meeting with Ovitz as being in the room with the Godfather. Ovitz is portrayed as mesmerizing in this clip. I'm sure there is a lot of artistic license in all of that, but in terms of how it is presented, it provides the example of the difference between one way of doing things, the right way, and the other way. The wrong way. 
The point being, when Letterman and Lassally show up, Ovitz already knows everything he needs to know and he has already made the entire plan. He knows the entire scope of the full chess game ahead and has all of his moves planned, knows all the countermoves coming from the opponents, and basically, he is playing a rigged game where he controls the entire outcome. That is how prepared he is before the entire thing starts. Ovitz has major power at this stage, he knows how to use it, knows it will work and simply executes.

Contrast Kushnick with Ovitz. Ovitz is an executive with a strategy and a plan, a way to move the pieces around so when it gets time to execute he has all the power and ability to make the exact right move. The way he does it is with smart words, convincing language and top shelf information. With everyone involved. Kushnick simply bullies, threatens, disrespects and insults anyone to get her way. Which in the end, she doesn't. Ovitz never threatens. He persuades.
When Leno first gets The Tonight Show, and at this point Letterman has not even contacted Ovitz, Kushnick tells Leno, who is not mesmerized by Kushnick but completely trusting and compliant to anything Kushnick tells him to do that Leno got The Tonight Show over Letterman because..

"the real difference between you and Letterman. you had me."


And that was true at that point. Kushnick did get Leno that show. She did take him from performing at strip clubs to the host of The Tonight Show. You cant take that achievement away from her. But the difference in the three main players is this:
Letterman was the best talent but he thought he was also an agent. He is not.
Kushnick was a good lower level agent but she was not a mastermind and she also wanted to produce shows. Something she was not qualified to do. She also has a horrible temper and lacks class.
Ovitz is a master strategist and negotiator. He is not an agent per say. He is a representative who has no interest in gaining the spotlight or producing shows. He sticks to what he does best. He stays low key and in the background, but he is the key player in all matters.
David Letterman got fucked over by NBC. That happened because he acted as his own agent and made a horrible deal for himself. That happens. But he did the smart thing. He stopped being his own agent, when that wasn't his skillset. He is a master comic. That is why he ended up where he was and got the deal he did with CBS. He hired Ovitz, on the advice of his producer and confidant, Peter Lassally, and Ovitz wowed him with the reality of what mastermind negotiators do. He listened to smarter people than he was and let them do their jobs FOR him.
I don't know how true all this was, because it's a movie with artistic license and Kushnick in real life sued the producers of the film based on the portrayal by Bates, but, Kushnick is portrayed as someone with no respect for anyone. That includes the execs who gave her the job, her own client, Leno, Carson, the president of the United States Ronald Reagan and also anyone who works on the show or at the network. Even the President of NBC, Bob Wright, who could fire her on the spot and wants to at some point. Wright actually pleads with Kushnick to be respectful to Carson on the day he retires, but she defiantly says that isn't going to happen. Being disrespectful is what got her fired. Being forceful has its merits, being disrespectful never will. It creates a mob AGAINST you, not with you. No one person ever beats a mob. Not for long. The bigger the mob gets, the smaller you get in comparison.
Kushnick bullies everyone she wants to, and she gets away with it as NBC continues to wait for her to completely self destruct. Then, she bullies a very powerful agent, Ken Kragen and he tells her this:

"Helen, I think you need to know something about me. I don't respond well to threats. Maybe I can offer you something else......"

Kushnick then makes the fatal mistake.

She insults him with this:

"Excuse me, this ain't Merv Griffin, we don't do fucking theme shows you dumb, shit kickin hick. Let me break the news to you. Not only is Travis Tritt not going to do the Tonight Show ever again, but you and I are going to be in this town a long time, we're going to see each other, and we're never going to talk again. It's your fucking loss. And the record companies."

Kushnick's was to be the producer of the show but she was actually destroying it. She produced nothing but chaos that destroyed the viability of the show. Agents control clients. The talent. Shows like the Tonight Show and those that produce them need talented guests to get viewers to watch. No guests, no show. She needs them. They don't need her. They can go on any number of other shows to get attention and promote. At this point, she was basically done. She had stepped over the line.
Agents represent their clients. No clients, no agent. Helen Kushnick started representing herself. She forgot what got her to where she was in the first place. She started to believe she was the star, NOT the representative. She became drunk on power, and became a junkie. Sad, but it happens to people.
Ovitz and great agents never forget that. They understand how talented they are as well, but they know they aren't the talent or the show. Agents produce, they don't perform. At one point in that scene, Ovitz conveys to Letterman that if Letterman gives them the privilege of working with him that Letterman is the one that has to be served. Ovitz is well aware of where he was on the pecking order.
I will note that in this movie Ken Kragen was played by himself. I doubt he would have let them make him say anything that wasn't actually true. The rest of the movie takes many liberties but in this case, what was portrayed in that scene was extremely factual. It comes directly from one of the people involved. The person with the gold standard reputation and not the cancerous small time agent who believed her own bullshit.
By that point, Kragen had been a very powerful agent for more than 25 years and had clients like Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie--two of the biggest music stars on the planet at that point, and also all the top Country music stars of the day, when New Country music was the biggest thing out there. He also basically pulled together the We Are The World concert and song in 1985. He had massive power and clout. He also had a great reputation and was highly respected.
Kragen goes public about Kushnick and she is vilified in the press, and that gives NBC the power to get rid of her because others are complaining about her, not them. She did all the work for them and made NBC look good in the end. They played it right. They were 3 chess moves ahead of her at all times. They just kept letting her make all the bad moves.
Did they make a mistake in hiring her in the first place? Absolutely they did. But they didn't compound that problem with another knee jerk mistake. They played it right, and came out smelling like a rose. Just as Letterman did. He wasn't foolish enough to keep to his opinion that agents were worthless and useless. He wised up. Leno also had to wise up, but he was forced to. He didn't want to.
If you are inclined, watch the entire 30 minute clip above. The entire movie is also on You Tube if you wish to watch that.

Letterman wises up, because he has to. His way has not worked. He is the mega talent, but he is not going forward in his career. As an agent, he fucked himself.
As Ovitz's character in the clip states.

It just doesn't make sense. It's simply bad business practice.

Thinking is hard. People like easy. Playing high level chess is not just flipping coins in the moment and hoping it comes up the way you guessed it would. When one faction is playing one way and the other the other way, there can only be one logical result. The chess player is going to win in the long run. The coin flipper can guess right here and there, but they have a certainty to also guess wrong and then panic and make destructive losing moves, which the chess player is just waiting for. Flipping coins is easy. Playing high level chess requires a lot of thinking before hand and during the process. Its not easy, but it is rewarding.
Donald Trump is a coin flipper. He gets an idea, likely on the spot, it sounds like something that has worked for him before in the real estate world where he had massive leverage and power, and so, he thinks no more. He puts it out there and attempts to sell it. No matter how it turns out, he characterizes every result as a win, even though its obvious to all that he is losing. He has been raised to never admit that he ever loses at anything. Which is foolish. Everyone loses at some point. It only makes you look like a fool to say otherwise.
In fact, while The Late Shift is a movie and probably isn't entirely true, what Letterman says at the beginning of the clip where Lassally convinces him to take the meeting with Ovitz is exactly what someone like Donald Trump would say in most cases. He doesn't need help. He is pigheaded and believes he can handle situations himself when he is not qualified to do that.
What did Ovitz offer to Letterman that many could offer to Trump that he is clearly rejecting?
Ovitz explains to Letterman the situation in a way anyone can understand. Let us represent you, and we will win and you will win. There is no loser in that scenario. He is negotiating a deal where everyone shares in the win. Ovitz doesn't want more than his share, he wants his FAIR share and he wants his client to have his fair share. That is why Ovitz also went on to be very successful. He gets others to believe, correctly, that if he is around, they will win WITH him, not against him. He also uses this exact tactic to get all the suitors for Letterman's services to bid on him, and he uses it as well to give NBC what they need in the moment to get Letterman out from underneath the bad terms Letterman agreed to when he was acting as his own agent. He did all this without threats, but by giving something to get something and making the other side feel like they were winning, even in some cases when they weren't. Trump insists that he must not give anything unless forced to. He doesn't want the other side to win at anything. Its said that in any trade, you don't want the other side to lose or to get fleeced. You want others to come deal with you. If they feel that your intention is to take them, they will avoid you. You never want that. If you are a representative and have to negotiate, the worst thing you can do is convince others not to show up and deal with you. 
One very important thing that Ovitz never did is personally negotiate in public. That is suicide and tactically it is antagonistic and counter productive. It's amateur hour at its worst. He tells his client what he will do, he goes to the power brokers on the other side and tells them what they should do if they want something and then he gives them that when he knows it will help his client in the long run, because he has played the whole chess game out long ago in his mind and he knows what buttons to push on the other side to get them to move their pieces where HE wants them to move them. It's a master class in how you represent your side. And of course, it worked. He never flips a coin. He persuades them to deal with him and give him what he wants while still giving them what they want. He attempts for the win/win. 
Helen Kushnick was very good at recognizing talent that was undervalued and getting them where they should be. She took Jay Leno out of strip clubs, where he was performing comedy and got him on the big stage. But, she was an agent. Not a super agent like Ovitz. She was not a television producer, as she didn't have the savvy or temperament to do that job. Once she assumed that role, she self-destructed immediately, and her prize, the only real prize she had--her meal ticket, Leno, was forced to ditch her. Leno was extremely loyal--to a fault, but he had no choice. Leno would have lost everything Kushnick got for him if he stuck with her. She did that. She could have stayed on for a long and lucrative ride, but she wanted to be something she is not and she ended up with nothing to show for it. She lost the biggest coin flip in a bet on herself that she should have never made. She played the bad strategy/lose game.
It's a sad reality for those like her. They can't accept who they are and where they are on the pecking order. She kept flipping coins until she lost enough of those flips to be wiped out. She gambled. Ovitz calculated the probabilities. He will never get taken out by a coin flip. He doesn't ever gamble.
Back in the day, Donald Trump was perceived to be a brilliant real estate mogul. I never viewed him as great, but I fully admit he played that game well and got the success he did because of that. But that wasn't enough for him. He had to own golf courses, an airline,  start a University, which failed, a wine company, which failed horribly. He even appeared on Letterman when he was selling ties that he manufactured, and that failed.
It wasn't that he didn't try though. Trump made his ties in China. Of course he did, they make them super cheap. He wasn't so interested in Making America, or ties, great back then. He was interested in only one thing. Making money for himself and if that meant his country suffered, he was perfectly fine with that. Letterman exposed him right on the spot there.

I have nothing against China, I just hate that their leaders are so much smarter than ours.

-Donald Trump

David Letterman was a very good comic. He is no brain surgeon though, as his stint as his own agent showed. However, he easily sandbagged Trump on the air on Live TV and Trump did not see that coming. Trump was so busy out there promoting he didn't anticipate he was being set up. Of course he knew the ties were made in China. Trump then does what he does best. Or worst depending on your perspective. He lied and said he has been honest about all that, when in fact, just seconds before he pretended he didn't even know where they were made at all. All you have to do is look at Trumps face to know that he knows he has been caught in this lie, by a lightweight like Letterman.


 

The fact is that Trump is stating that China is raping America and has been doing so for decades. What he doesn't say is that when he was on the other team, he was happy to go along and rape his own country. He isn't the only one that does or did that, but it should be noted where his morality is on all that in actuality.
When all those businesses failed and the real estate market was tanking, Trump lucked into the TV show The Apprentice, and that is where the real problem started.
Trump believed that he was now the star, the performer, and to some degree he was for a while. Like Kushnick, he got away from doing what he does well....buying real estate and making a huge up front profit before it collapses. That is his bread and butter.
But his mindset has now changed. Now he has to be the star. The show. The attention getter. Whatever that takes. That isn't the role of the President. The role of the President is to represent the interests of those who elected you. You aren't the star, you are the producer and the agent. Unfortunately, he is neither of those. He is the joke that others laugh at. Including the Ovitz's of the world, the world leaders who are waiting to pounce on him, as NBC execs and Ovitz did to Kushnick.

Trying to make sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all.

-Steelers Wheel

Trying to make sense of what Donald Trump does, is doing, and will do is almost impossible. It just seems to make no sense at all. Unless you truly understand.
Who is Donald Trump and how did he get to where he is now? It helps you understand Letterman, Kushnick and Trump. The path, the journey, the upbringing, the genetics of personality all play a factor in what we see as the end or current product in front of us.
I really don't think most people understand what Trump is and what he is doing here. Most want to work together and think of a relationship as friendly. That isn't Trumps way. He has to win, and only views a win if he takes a piece of your pie. If you keep any part of the pie he wants, he isn't winning. World politics is not business. It's way more complicated than that.
We are creatures of how our parents raise us. I don't know if many are aware of this, but Trump's father was very clear to him that business, and life, is kill or be killed. You have to win, they have to lose. I don't think he can be any other way. You have to be who you are at your core.
Donald Trump at his core is a coin flipper. He has no real plan or strategy. Today he is putting on tariffs. Then he isn't. Then he is. Then he backs off. But he might put them back on. I suppose it depends on his mood in the morning. Or, possibly how his golf game went the day before. Or what someone said that influenced him. He is not playing chess. He is playing roulette or craps, with the lives of Americans and anyone who deals with America, which is basically the entire planet Earth. Just putting out tariffs is easy. Trump is on record that he loves tariffs. He loves it because its easy to do that, not because its a smart thing to do. The entire history of the world shows that any time tariffs are used, they dont work. In fact, America came into existence because the British were hell bent on taking a cut they were not earning. People should remember that.
If he loses one spin of roulette, Trump just shrugs it off and tries to roll the dice at craps again. He has to win, so he just keeps throwing darts. Meanwhile, the smart opposition is maintaining their chess moves and continues to wait for openings to crush him. They know he has to win, so he will get desperate when it looks like he isn't. Then, he makes another bad move, until they have him cornered and he makes one final horrid chess move. Like saying this week he is going to annex Gaza and turn it into a Riviera style resort. Who knows what tomorrows coin flip or craps roll of the dice he will play? I doubt he even has a clue.
Eventually, he wins a few of those coin flips, and when that happens, he is keen to repeat those repeatedly. In chess, you don't gloat over a small win. Winning a small battle but continuing to lose the war ends in checkmate at some point. Checkmate means you lose. But he doesn't like to talk about those, and even when he does, he finds some way to claim them as wins.
What Trump is certain to win at is creating bad will, destroying the reputation America had as stable and reliable and all the credibility and trust that flows from that. In the long game, the world leaders and chess players are just letting him win that game daily, until he has organized a massive mob against America.
By my count, in 18 days now, he has gathered up Columbia, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Denmark, Panama, the Middle East, Iran and many business leaders with all that he has said in that short time. Some of those, like Mexican Cartels, Palestinian terrorists, and Iranian suicide bombers don't need much reason to start attacking and have no conscience about doing it. What happens when he has made it easy for some of those to align with China and Russia and against America? When he goes after the European Union next, which he has promised to do, do we want some of those to make deals with the devils that are China and Russia?
China and Russia do and are just patiently waiting for him to get started. Putin has even egged Trump on in that endeavor.
Trump wants to make America great again. He intends on doing that by getting large companies to start making stuff again in America. If you were a large Auto maker, would you make cars again in the United States? What if he just decides one day to sign an Executive order and slap a 25 percent tax on what they make? I think you would think twice about Kushnick like behavior like that. You would find the Ovitz and align with them, whatever country they represent.
If you are another country, say like Canada, or Mexico, or any of the European ones, would you continue to do business with America, or would you just find other places to buy and sell? I know what I would do and most countries would do. They would find the stable, reliable countries they could count on to honor their word and treat them fairly. They would be looking for the win/win scenario, not the fight me on all fronts scenario. Honor and respect matter. A lot.
All the while, they will be sandbagging Trump like Letterman did. Making him think he is winning, appearing to not fight back and not see him coming, when in fact, they know exactly what he is doing and what he is going to do next. They, like Ovitz, have mapped this entire game out well ahead of time. Trump is who he is. He is very predictable that way. They have made sense of his apparent madness of approach.


Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”

— Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.


Put in the context of this blog, Trump is Kushnick and the other world leaders are Ovitz, while Letterman was Trump but he wised up and engaged the expertise of Ovitz to win the game.
Trumps father didn't prepare him to be a world leader. He prepared him to survive and thrive in the world of New York City real estate. Which he did, and did very well. Kill or be killed and win at all costs worked very well there. He didn't need to be Ovitz there, he needed to be Kushnick. Like Kushnick, he has moved up the food chain now, and while before he was the predator, now he is the prey. We all know how that movie ends.

In the next scenario, Mike Ermantrout is a former police officer who now does side jobs as a protection specialist, among other things. He is both a tactical expert and a fixer, but he doesn't do much fixing until later on in the series, BETTER CALL SAUL.
In this scene, Mike is one of 3 protection people hired to go with a unique character named Pryce, who is stealing pills from his workplace and selling them on the black market to a drug dealing gang member, Nacho, who is doing those deals behind the back of the gang. He is a very dangerous character, but Mike has done his homework in advance, and knows this particular transaction will go well, because the gang member, Nacho, doesn't want anything to go wrong and word to get back to the gang about his side gig.
The other two protection guys, one a tall, scruff, first sideman gun carrying type and the other a huge, simple muscle guy who doesn't speak are very similar to the two that Guerrero meets in the restaurant in the first clip I posted at the start. Mike is essentially the Guerrero character. He looks like he is the least dangerous, but yet, he is the most. He has the skillset you actually need and he does his homework in advance.
The gun toting bully mocks Mike and challenges him to take his gun when Mike says he doesn't need one for the job but will take his if he has to.
In this scene, Mike has to do what Guerrero didn't. He has to actually hurt the bully. That became necessary because that bully wasn't convinced yet that he had met his match. So, he challenged him, then underestimated a foe he had no clue was miles his superior. He ends up on the ground, has lost all his guns and also lost a day's work. Mike had not intended on challenging and taking down a bully in this case, but he was forced to. Anyway, it is just another example of when a foolish and overblown bully met his match and didn't see that coming.

Once the bully is taken care of, and the big muscle guy is so scared he runs off, they head off to consummate the deal. Pryce is scared that one protection guy is not enough, and he states that again when Nacho and his two guys show up. But Mike knows better and it goes smoothly. Back in the car, Pryce asks Mike this and gets this response:

Pryce-How did you know? How did you know not to bring a gun?
Mike-I put in a lot of legwork before coming here, that fella you met is Ignacio Varga. He runs with the connected crew of drug dealers, now the deal he's doing with you he's doing outside his crew. He doesn't want his bosses to know. So it was in his best interest that things go very smoothly.

One thing you can be sure of. The big gun toting bully didn't know any of that and thought just bringing the guns was all the preparation he needed. Eventually, operating like that, he will get shot. You have to know what you are walking into before you show up if you intend both to survive and win. And its also good to know who you are working with. If he was smart, and did his homework he would have known not to mess with Mike.

For China, and Russia, and others they want to make Trump think he is winning all along, until they don't. The important part of doing that is pretending to be surprised and scared of him. It bravens Trump up even further. As it did Kushnick. Putin wants Trump to think he is afraid of him enough to not fight back, when in fact he is just waiting for the right time to spring it on him. He is going to ally with China and together they will do what they want. Because together, they are by far the bigger and more dangerous bully. They are the growing mob.
China is just going to wait this all out and let Trump piss off the world, and even better if he gets into fights and wars with others. Less work for China to do the work there. Trump is doing it for them. Xi has hired the best people, like Ovitz, to calculate all that way ahead of time. Putin is former KGB. He is fully trained in how to play this game. Trump is a real estate developer. Trump believes that he is the one that is smarter than the really smart Chinese. He is just flat out wrong about that.

There is some talk, and I have even said this, that Trump went after Canada first because he appears to have maximum leverage over Canada. And he does. Also, we have a weak leadership issue and he sensed that. So, he attempted to slay the old, weak gazelle in the pack before he takes on the Alpha leaders of the world and the pack. The theory is that it sends a message to the other countries that if he will shoot his best pal dog, what will he do to us?
Of course, that ignores how chess players play. Choosing to beat C level chess players when you have to be an A level chess player to compete in the grand master game at some point sends a clear message to the Grand Master competitors. That message is this:

I don't think I'm good enough to compete at the highest level, so I will stick with the weak links. When you are that strong competitor, you have no fear whatsoever of that opponent. They have shown they are scared to compete with you. So, while Trump threatens Xi in China with this or that, he is just basically ignoring him, because all he needs to do now is let Trump self destruct and make enemies. Trump's not worth bothering with while he is already hurting himself with what he is doing.
Trump has shown that he is afraid of battling with China. Why would China be afraid of him? We already know Putin is not. Putin is so crazy, he would take on a 100 person army by himself. To scare either of these two, you would first have to prove you could beat a very tough foe, which is not going to happen.
In the meantime, China and Russia want to make Trump think they are worried or scared. It will make it easier to beat him when he gets brave enough to make a real move on them. Since he seemed to get away with the 10 percent tariff on China, he will likely attempt a larger one in the near future. That is when the shit hits the fan. When China plays the next move on the chess board. They want Trump to make the first bad move, much as NBC wanted Kushnick to do that. It makes it easier to sell to the world and your own people. Play the victim. The good guy.

I will conclude this long blog with another look at the Guerrero clip. I put it above here because now I will analyze a different portion of the dynamic.

This time, I will focus on the part just before and just after the dialogue I mentioned at the start of the blog. Here is what the head bully said to Guerrero before he explained the reality of the situation back to him.          

You know, we came here to explain to you, but you don't seem to be getting it. Maybe the three of us can take a little walk out back to the alley and we can explain it to you a little better. So, there's no impasse.

What is important to note is the deception and how the bullies become the bullied, and how Guerrero knows everything that is going to happen and how it is going to play out. They think they are ambushing him. He is actually waiting for them.                               So, he just explains to him/them what is actually going on and then, like Mike, he dares them to try him. Note that at the start of the clip, Guerrero acts like he is scared, that the bullies are very confident, that Guerrero acts as if he doesn't even know who they are, although he knows everything about them and what they are there to do. Gradually, he moves from scared, to curious, then to explaining why he is meddling,  to defiant, to ruthless, and then deadly. He dares them to take him on. For their part, the bullies walk in thinking they have an easy task, a small guy who they are ambushing and who looks overmatched.

Also note that at the beginning, Guerrero has his heart in his throat, but by the end, the bullies do. That is a subtle way this is portrayed. How the situation has flipped 180.

Finally, Guerrero explains all his prep for this meeting, letting them know he was waiting for them, they didn't ambush him. In another example of Ovitz playing chess with a Kushnick type, or other world leaders playing chess with Trump.
I pick up the dialogue from where I ended it above at the start of the blog.

Probably start with you Alfredo. That way Steven here can have a few extra days with Marla and the girls. Only seems fair.

How do you know my name?

Your employer keeps sensitive information on a drive he thinks is secure. It isn't.

Since the bullies had previously said they would all go out back to the alley and they would explain the whole thing to him, Guerrero ends their pipedream by saying.

Shall We?

And then the bullies get up and leave. Without making eye contact with him. When they walked in, he pretended not to make eye contact with them. Its a very key way to show who is in control, and who has realized they don't have control anymore.
What is chess? Its playing two moves ahead of your opponent at all times. While they are living in the moment and reacting on the fly, you already have a plan and you know how they are going to react when you do things. In essence, you have their playbook while they don't even know what play they are going to make until that very moment. They are incredibly easy to beat if you are competent at chess. You are completely instinctive and reactive. They are prepared, cold and calculating.
Furthermore, on the world stage, you aren't dealing with inferior, simple people. You are dealing with the best of the best. The smartest people, the most successful, the mentally toughest of the tough. They can't be bullied, they can't be outsmarted, they wont be out gamed. The best you can do, and the only good thing you can do is work with them so they are on your side, not your opponent. You don't want them as opponents, you want them as allies and partners. That is how you get things done in the real, big bad world.
Yes, on the micro, local, small world that you probably came from on the way up, you can easily pick low hanging fruit and not pay full price for that. You likely have maximum leverage on those people and they are easy to bully and beat.
Beating apprentices is easy. By definition, they have not gotten anywhere close to your level, so its easy. When you are playing in the big leagues, against the best of the best, if you are not the best, you are going to get eaten alive. And if you have a massive ego, which Trump has, you cant accept that and admit it. Because you have been raised to not accept that there is always someone smarter, tougher, more tactical than you are.
I am smart. Extremely tactical, tough to the extreme. I am for sure not the smartest person I know, and as tough as I am, my father was 100 times tougher than me and I would never mess with him or anyone like him. I know my level, my skills and my place in the pecking order and I work within that. If you don't do that, you will get crushed. Its just how the world works.

Joe Biden is and always was a sideman. Like a VP of something at a company. He can and does good work, he seems to be somewhat moral and smart, means well. But he is no leader, he is not top shelf material, and tactically, he is very poor. The bar he sets is easy to surpass, but that doesn't mean doing better than him is good enough. Not as the highest level. That bar is extremely high and not meeting it has grave consequences for any entity that attempts to win a gun fight with a dull butter knife. Yes, in a fight where you have the dull butter knife and the other person has no weapons and a broken leg, you can win those fights. Those fights are rare. You have to be able to win the battles where you don't have your usual advantage. That means getting others to cooperate with you, not fight with you.
Unlike others, I can see some very positive things in Donald Trump. He is and can be very charming when he wants to be. He is personable, and a lot of people do actually like him. But, when he is over his head, when he himself, deep down, knows he cant win, he gets very nervous. He cant live up to the way his father raised him and drilled into him how he has to be. He starts lying, making stuff up, making claims he cant back up. He starts threatening, bullying, and anything that makes him feel like he might find a way. Then like most that do that, he gets in deeper and deeper and then he has to back up the lies with more lies. Its an avalanche and its why his type is so destructive.
I have firsthand experience with all that. My father was exactly that way. He was that and did all those things. And if you met my father, in person, you would love him. On the surface, he was great. But when things weren't working out, he became what Trump becomes. That is fine when the stakes are not as high as they are in the world he now plays in. My father was a nobody in the world. Donald Trump is the President of the most powerful single nation on the planet. He can do great things, but he can also completely destroy a once great nation on the current brink of disaster with multiple, very serious, structural problems. As many Americans know, this is their last shot to turn that around before the hole is too deep to recover. There are other suitors to the crown out there, and they are just biding their time waiting for America to self destruct. In the game of chess, they are already plotting how they are going to take over the empire while they just let him destroy himself. Currently, China and Russia are keeping quiet because all the have to do to win the chess game is let the other player make bad moves.
Is Donald Trump better than Joe Biden? Yes. Is Donald Trump good enough to lead America against the best in the world? Not even close.
America needs to do better than Donald Trump. Its as simple as that. A lot better.