Heather du Plessis-Allan: Beware, Trump is not a fool

There's an amusing photo of Donald Trump sitting at a desk, preparing to sign the order to build the Mexican wall.
He's trying to work out how to pull the cap off his pen.
His face is absolute concentration. He looks like a confused toddler.

That image captures exactly what so many think of the new US President: naive, out of his depth, possibly stupid.

Maybe we're right. Maybe he's making one unintended mistake after the other. Maybe he is a spoilt brat who surprised himself by winning the election and took a phone call from the leader of Taiwan without realising how angry it would make world superpower China.

Or, maybe we're wrong. Maybe we're underestimating a man who turned himself into a globally recognised celebrity, built a massive property empire and whupped a Clinton. Maybe he knows exactly what he's doing, planned how to win the election, and is doing what he thinks will win him the 2020 election, too.

This could be like in The Matrix where you take the blue pill and go back to the false but happy reality you were living in, or take the red pill and accept the horrible truth of what the world really is.

What if it wasn't a naive decision to temporarily halt immigrants from Muslim-majority countries? What if he did it because he knew as many as 49 per cent of Americans would support the move?

What if petulance wasn't the reason Trump apparently hung up on one of his best allies, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. What if it was a power play to let every national leader know who's boss?

And perhaps the Don wasn't having a tantrum when he sacked the acting Attorney-General. What's the bet no other career bureaucrats put their heads above the parapet now they've seen what happens?

If the Red Pill Trump is the reality - God help us - he's is probably acting on instinct rather than political advice. Still, he's running us through Machiavelli's seminal guidebook on how to be a political leader, aka Evil Prince.

According to the 16th-century Italian philosopher, if you have to do unpleasant things, do them all in one day so people can get a fright and then get over it.

Given there aren't enough hours in a day for Trump to dump all his unpleasant plans, he has stretched it out to a couple of weeks. Or a month. Or the first 100 days. Who knows how many more he has?

Also, in just the first fortnight, Trump has conditioned us for chaos. It's a tactic he used during the election. He constantly kept his opponents and the media off balance. Before they even had a chance to scrutinise or debunk one shocking statement, he'd hit them with another equally crazy utterance.

Now, he's hitting us with one crazy order after another until we become desensitised and used to chaotic politics. In a few months perhaps no one will bother to read about outlandish executive order 287.
The deliberate, considered Trump is way more scary than the naive, bumbling Trump, in the way an arsonist is way more scary than a child who accidentally sets the curtains on fire.

So far, the craziest things Trump has ordered he promised during the campaign. There are more, like targeting and killing the possibly innocent families of terrorists.

Take the red pill. Stop writing him off as a fool.