The Quantum Trump

Trump is the first President to behave like a quantum particle.

Not in the “mysterious workings of the universe” way, more in the “you cannot possibly know where he is or what he believes until you look directly at him” way. Even then, you are not guaranteed to get the same answer twice.

In normal politics, leaders have policies. They may be dreadful policies, but at least you can write them down and argue about them like grown ups. With Trump, policy exists in a kind of superposition. He is simultaneously pro - NATO and anti - NATO, anti - China and weirdly impressed by China, pro - peace and pro - whatever looks like peace as long as it involves him getting credit for it. It's all floating around in a probability cloud of ego.

Then you get the collapse of the probability wave event. This is not triggered by facts, briefings, or anything as old fashioned as a spreadsheet. It is triggered by attention. A camera lens, a microphone, a rally crowd, a late night TV clip, a compliment from someone he thinks is important. The waveform collapses into a sentence. Sometimes it is even a policy - more often it is just a noise.

And the thing is, you cannot observe him without changing him. Every question is a quantum measurement. Every interview is an experiment. The very act of asking “What do you plan to do?” forces him to choose between several incompatible realities. If you ask him on Monday, he will sanction someone. If you ask him on Tuesday, he will praise them. If you ask him on Wednesday, he will insist he never said either and you are fake news for remembering.

His advisers must live like lab technicians. They spend their days trying to stop him being measured at all. Keep him away from microphones. Keep him away from Twitter. Keep him away from anyone who might say “Sir, you are a genius,” because that is basically a particle accelerator for his worst impulses. If he gets enough praise, he starts emitting executive orders at random angles through double slits.

People keep saying he is unpredictable, but that is not quite right. He is predictable in the way a roulette wheel is predictable. You cannot tell where the ball will land, but you can tell it will land somewhere expensive, loud, and slightly rigged. His outcomes are not driven by strategy, they are driven by whatever makes him feel powerful in the moment. That is not chaos, it is a system. A stupid system, but a system.

The most impressive part is how he can be in two places at once. He is always the victim and the victor. He is always persecuted and unstoppable. He is always under attack and also the only man strong enough to save the nation. It is like watching a man argue both sides of a court case while also demanding the jury applaud.

And then there is entanglement. Once Trump says something, millions of people become instantly linked to it. Their beliefs update in real time. Yesterday, tariffs were bad. Today, tariffs are brilliant. Yesterday, Russia was a threat. Today, Russia is “misunderstood”. The facts do not change. The narrative does. They move as one, like a flock of starlings, except with more shouting and less grace.

The rest of the world is left trying to apply classical logic to a quantum object. Diplomats turn up with briefing papers and red lines and mutual interests, and Trump turns up like a bloke in a pub who has just discovered he can rename the rules mid - game. You cannot negotiate with that. You can only watch it, measure it, and hope it does not quantum tunnel through the next set of constraints.

And the really unsettling bit is this. In quantum mechanics, the weirdness is small and the rest of the universe behaves sensibly. With Trump, the weirdness is the whole system. The probability cloud has access to the levers of state. The waveform is carrying the launch codes. The Schrödinger’s cat is the global economy, and someone keeps shaking the box for entertainment.

So yes, Trump is quantum.

Not because he is profound.

Because he is unstable, over - energised, and best handled with protective equipment and a very strict containment protocol.