“请假装我在选票上，”特朗普总统上个月建议道。显然，许多选民真的这么做了。回顾起来，这句话很好地概括了特朗普先生近乎一贯地以损害自身利益的方式行事的能力。自2015年他沿着特朗普大厦的自动扶梯走下的那一刻起，这便是他的习性。听听他当时即兴发表的讲话，细想那一连串松散相关的嘲讽和极度夸张的宣称。
“Pretend I’m on the ballot,” President Trump advised last month. Evidently a lot of voters did. In retrospect, the line nicely captures Mr. Trump’s almost unfailing ability to act against his own interests. That has been his propensity since the moment he descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015. Listen to the impromptu talk he gave on that occasion and ponder the series of loosely connected gibes and wildly overstated claims.
从某种意义上说，那场活动是一场灾难。几乎所有人都对它嗤之以鼻——所有人，除了特朗普先生随后在初选中所需的那部分相当可观的共和党选民。他的支持者听到了一位候选人，无论关于他的其他什么可能是真的，他都不按常规政治算计出牌。第二年，他赢了。他在2024年再次获胜。但正如周二的选举提醒其政党的那样，无视常规政治算计所能获得的优势是有限的。
In a way, the event was a disaster. Nearly everyone scorned it—everyone, that is, except the sizable plurality of Republican voters Mr. Trump needed to blaze through the subsequent primaries. His supporters heard a candidate who, whatever else might have been true about him, didn’t operate according to ordinary political calculations. The following year, he won. He won again in 2024. But as Tuesday’s election has reminded his party, there’s only so much advantage to be had from ignoring ordinary political calculations.
这就是为什么共和党在特朗普掌舵时往往会失利。共和党在2017年弗吉尼亚州和新泽西州的选举中失利，在2018年失去了众议院控制权。2025年，共和党在弗吉尼亚州和新泽西州再次失利，周二晚上又遭遇了一代人以来最惨重的失败。从未有过如此成功的政治家如此一贯地葬送自己的和本党的优势。特朗普的粉丝知道这一点。
Which is why the GOP tends to lose when Mr. Trump is in charge. The GOP lost in Virginia and New Jersey in 2017 and lost the House in 2018. In 2025 Republicans lost in Virginia and New Jersey again and on Tuesday night suffered the worst defeat in a generation. Never has so successful a politician so consistently spoiled his own and his party’s advantages. Mr. Trump’s fans know this.
在集会上与他们交谈，他们会提到他最近的“乌龙球”，翻个白眼，说他们希望他没说或没做那些事，但他们依然爱他。再追问下去，你会发现这些“乌龙球”以某种神秘的方式成了他吸引力的一部分。特朗普先生看待政治现实，乃至现实本身的方式，与其他政治家不同。他的傲慢举止和荒诞言辞十多年来吸引了这么多人，这衡量了选民对传统政治行为的厌倦程度。
Speak to them at rallies and they will refer to his latest own-goal and roll their eyes and say they wished he hadn’t said or done it but they love him all the same. Press further and you’ll find the own-goals are in some mysterious way part of the appeal. Mr. Trump doesn’t view political reality, or reality, in the way other politicians do. That his bumptious comportment and cockamamie rhetoric have appealed to so many people for more than a decade is a measure of the electorate’s weariness with conventional political behavior.A century from now historians will read the catalog of Mr. Trump’s self-defeating conduct and puzzle over how such a man won the presidency twice.
一个世纪后，历史学家将阅读特朗普先生的目录……特朗普的自毁行为，以及他为何能两度赢得总统宝座的谜题。粗鄙的社交媒体抨击无法赢得新支持者；只会排斥潜在支持者。特朗普先生坚持将盟友赶出公职——约翰·科宁、汤姆·蒂利斯、比尔·卡西迪——让自己的日子更难过。没人强迫他提拔几乎注定会失败的肯·帕克斯顿和达林·格雷厄姆，但他照做了。
The crude social-media tirades don’t earn new supporters; they repel potential ones. Mr. Trump’s insistence on driving allies from public office—John Cornyn, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy—has made his life harder. No one forced him to elevate the all-but-certain losers Ken Paxton and Darline Graham, but he did. The habit extends to international affairs.
这一习惯延伸至国际事务。特朗普先生威胁要武力夺取格陵兰岛，一度似乎动真格。随后他却向曾受他侮辱的欧洲盟友请求在伊朗问题上提供军事援助。他没得到。同理，特朗普先生若想让一位保守派盟友出任加拿大总理，原本只需什么都不做。相反，他却拿加拿大成为第51个州开玩笑，把胜利拱手让给了马克·卡尼，后者的政府随即与中国关系亲密，并在国际上总体站在美国批评者一边。
Mr. Trump threatened to take Greenland by force and for a moment seemed serious. Later he asked for military assistance in Iran from the European allies he’d insulted. He didn’t get it. In a similar vein, all Mr. Trump had to do to install a conservative ally as Canada’s prime minister was nothing. Instead he joked about making Canada the 51st state and gave the victory to Mark Carney, whose government promptly cozied up to China and generally sides with America’s critics abroad. Nobody forced Mr. Trump ahead of the 2024 election to promise the full release of Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list” and so elevate the myth that the financier led a sex-trafficking ring.
在2024年大选前，没人强迫特朗普先生承诺全面公布杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的“客户名单”，从而助长了该金融家主导性贩运集团的传说。稍加思考本会告诉他：若根本不存在这份名单——确实不存在——那么在他兑现承诺的支持者心中，他将显得参与了掩盖真相的阴谋。事态果真如此发展。
A moment’s reflection would have told him that if no such list existed, as indeed none did, he would appear, in the minds of people who thrilled to his promise, to be part of the conspiracy to hide the truth. So it came to pass. Mr. Trump has sometimes advanced policies that afforded him no political benefit but that furthered noble aims even so.
特朗普先生有时推行虽无政治获益、却推进崇高目标的政策。拆解伊朗核计划和军力属于此类，他对容许认可的偏见滋长的精英大学的粗暴对待也是如此。
The demolition of Iran’s nuclear program and military belongs in that category, as does his rough treatment of elite universities that allow approved bigotries to flourish. But you can puzzle all day over some choices and never find the upside.
但你可以就某些选择困惑一整天，也找不到任何好处。派遣司法部追查丽莎·库克、詹姆斯·科米和杰罗姆·鲍威尔，获益为零。假装禁止特定媒体进入白宫或许能解解气，但请别堕落到认为这类或相关对新闻界的攻击能推进特朗普先生……特朗普的目标既非助其政党，亦非扩大其支持基础。某些形式的政治自残令人发笑，另一些则不然。
The advantage to be gained by sending the Justice Department after Lisa Cook, James Comey and Jerome Powell is zero. Pretending to ban selected media from the White House may scratch some itch, but please don’t stoop to the belief that this or related attacks on the press advance Mr. Trump’s aims or help his party or expand his base of support. Some forms of political self-harm you can laugh at. Others you can’t.
总统拒绝执行一项由国会以压倒性多数通过的法律，该法律要求剥离或禁用社交媒体平台TikTok，而该平台正在传播对美国和特朗普先生的仇恨。任意对不断变化的全球商品组合加征关税，导致经济增长受阻，并疏远了被迫为受影响进口商品支付更高价格的商家和消费者。特朗普先生对自己利益的倒行逆施般的认知，赋予了他一种奇特的真实感，他的支持者热爱这种特质，而他的批评者有时也不得不羡慕。
The president refuses to enforce a law, passed by large majorities in Congress, requiring the divestiture or ban of the social-media platform TikTok, even as it spreads hatred of both America and Mr. Trump. Wantonly slapping tariffs on a constantly changing assortment of the world’s goods had the effect of debilitating growth and alienating merchants and consumers forced to pay more for affected imports. Mr. Trump’s backward sense of his own interests has given him a strange quality of authenticity that his supporters love and his critics must sometimes envy.
但一旦跛脚鸭时期开始，真实感的政治红利便会急剧递减。他的拥趸关心未来，并将目光投向那些希望继任他的竞选者。这让人联想到特朗普第二任期内最具自我毁灭性的单一决策：他选择了一位竞选搭档，正如任何人都能预见的那样，此人绝不会顾忌破坏他。
But the political benefits of authenticity diminish sharply once lame-duckery begins. His fans care about the future and will look forward to the applicants hoping to follow him. Which brings to mind the single most self-defeating decision of Mr. Trump’s second term: his choice of a running-mate who, as anybody might have foreseen, would not scruple to sabotage him.