Why Trump Is Suddenly Asking Americans to Look Away

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.For once in his life, Donald Trump wishes he was getting less attention.“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” the president posted this morning at 1:02. “But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever.”The first part of the post is wrong. Weeks of stalled negotiations indicate that the Iranian regime is in no rush to reach an agreement—and this morning, Tehran said it was pulling out of talks and would completely block the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iranian ally. The United States, Iran, and Israel all launched strikes today.Trump’s puffery and prevarication about the war are not new, but the second part of the post is more illuminating about his approach to governance. The president brings an odd combination of authoritarianism and hypersensitivity to the job. On the one hand, he wants to start, fight, and resolve wars without having to answer to Congress or the American people for it. On the other hand, he gets easily distracted and upset by their criticism.The president’s agitation about pushback from Republicans is perplexing. As I wrote last week, recent primaries show that Trump’s iron grip on the GOP appears to be strengthening, even as the American public further sours on him. (One caveat is that Trump’s conquests of congressional Republican incumbents create a clique of legislators not beholden to him and possibly eager for payback.) Yet he seems very reactive