美国总统在政治、商业和生活中向来是个孤家寡人。他与生俱来的对他人不信任、认为每场竞争都是零和博弈的信念、继承来的财富、与现实脱节以及根深蒂固的自我中心，共同造就了这一特质。他还长期对以迅速、大胆且单边的方式解决复杂挑战情有独钟——无论是发动一场针对伊朗的危险战争、挑起通胀性的贸易战，还是不顾一切地投身于本周这场惨烈的中期选举。
The US president has always been a loner, in politics, business and life. His inherent distrust of others, belief that every contest is a zero-sum game, inherited wealth, detachment from reality and abiding self-regard all play into this. He also harbors a long-standing fascination with swift, bold and unilateral solutions to complex challenges — whether that involves prosecuting a perilous war in Iran, launching inflationary trade battles or jumping headlong into this week’s bruising midterm election.
特朗普偏爱单打独斗，这也使他在失败时倾向于加倍押注，而很少顾及后果。总统和共和党在中期选举中遭遇惨败——民主党轻松夺得参众两院控制权——正式将特朗普推入其第二次白宫之旅的“跛脚鸭”篇章。这本应促使他妥协与合作，以便通过考量并回应选民需求，来应对这场史诗级的选举溃败。
Trump’s preference for piloting solo also encourages him to double down when he fails, with little regard for consequences. The shellacking the president and Republicans endured in the midterms — with Democrats handily winning control of both chambers of Congress — formally ushers Trump into the lame-duck chapter of his second White House tour. That might recommend compromise and collaboration, in the interest of responding to an epic electoral implosion by considering and meeting voters’ needs.
在败局已定之际，特朗普确实曾做出过妥协的姿态。“我认为我可以与所有事物合作，”周三凌晨，当福克斯新闻询问他是否打算与民主党合作时，他如此表示。他大方地向对手表示祝贺，并未质疑他们胜利的真实性。他本可以就此打住，但当然，他没有。
Trump certainly gestured in that direction once the magnitude of his defeat became apparent. “I think I can work with everything,” he told Fox News in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when asked if he planned to cooperate with Democrats. He generously congratulated his opponents and didn’t question the bona fides of their victory. He could have left it at that, but, of course, he didn’t.
“他们掌控了局面，但其实并没有真正掌控，”他承认道，提醒福克斯新闻团队及其观众，他仍拥有否决他不喜欢的民主党立法的权力。
“They’re in control, but they’re really not in control,” he allowed, reminding the Fox crew and its audience that he still has the power to veto Democratic legislation he doesn’t like.
这听起来更像是那个很少认输或合作的特朗普；同样的特朗普在成为总统之前，曾倔强地冲刺过房地产开发商、赌场经营者、连环破产艺术家和真人秀奇观的职业生涯。以往形态下被逼到角落的特朗普往往是会发泄的特朗普，而这很可能就是世界在未来两年里将要共处的总统。
That sounds much more like the Trump who rarely concedes or collaborates; the same Trump who defiantly plowed through careers as a real estate developer, casino operator, serial bankruptcy artist and reality TV curiosity before becoming president. A Trump cornered in his previous incarnations was usually a Trump who lashed out, and it’s likely that’s the president the world will live with for the next two years.
如果在选举失利的另一端出现一个更成熟的特朗普，那将是一个受欢迎的惊喜，但他的历史和戏剧性表现却说明并非如此。毕竟，反省从来不是他的强项。二十年前的一个周末早晨，我在开车前往他新泽西的高尔夫球场时询问他是否考虑看心理医生，他曾一口回绝。
It would be a welcome surprise if a more evolved Trump emerged on the other side of his electoral defeat, but his history and histrionics teach otherwise. After all, introspection hasn’t been his strong suit. He once dismissed the idea of seeing a therapist when I inquired as we drove to his New Jersey golf course on a weekend morning two decades ago.
“我发现我并不是不相信它，”他对我说。“但我看到的报告显示，精神科医生的自杀率远高于其他人——这说明他们相当**糟糕，我也没有时间去做。”同一次车程中，我问他敬佩的公众人物，他提到了传奇电影导演奥森·威尔斯。
“I have found I am not a disbeliever in it,” he told me . “But I look at reports that psychiatrists have by far the highest rate of suicide than anybody — that means they’re pretty f**ked up, and I don’t have the time for it.”When I asked him during the same drive about public figures he admired, he cited Orson Welles, the legendary film director.
“他就像一个伟大的天才，二十六岁后再也没有成功过。他变得完全不可能。他认为所有人都是傻瓜，所有人都是这样，所有人都是那样；如果他有预算，他会超支二十倍，毁掉一切。他变得不可能。我喜欢那点。”这算是一个自认为被傻瓜包围、对自己不可能或成为人类破坏球毫不在意的人的自我觉察——尤其当他身处像白宫这样赋权的场所时。
“He was like this great genius that after twenty-six, never ever did it. He became totally impossible. He thought everybody was a moron, everybody was this, everybody was that; if he had a budget, he’d exceed it by 20 times and destroy everything. He became impossible. I loved that.”This passes for self-awareness from a man who also thinks he’s surrounded by morons and doesn’t blink at being impossible or a human wrecking ball — especially when he inhabits an empowering venue like the White House.
民主党人詹姆斯·塔拉里科（James Talarico）刚在德克萨斯州以压倒性优势赢得参议院席位，他对支持者表示期待在工作中注入两党礼貌和“爱之政治”。可惜，这并非特朗普的常用旋律。报复政治、金融敲诈、纪念碑建设和威权炫耀才是他的舒适区。
James Talarico, the Democrat who just secured a lopsided Senate victory in Texas, told his supporters he looked forward to instilling bipartisan civility and a “politics of love” in his work. , alas, isn’t Trump’s go-to melody. The politics of retribution, financial grifting, monument-building and authoritarian flexes are his comfort zones. So what should the US and its observers around the globe expect from Trump between now and 2028?
那么，从现在到2028年，美国及其全球观察者应该对特朗普有何期待？
The president has grown accustomed to an acquiescent Congress, courtesy of Republicans who ceded their institutional powers and prerogatives because of shared ambitions, realpolitik and raw fear.
总统已经习惯了国会的顺从，这要归功于共和党人——由于共同的目标、现实政治和赤裸裸的恐惧，他们放弃了自己的制度权力和特权。特朗普随后对联邦政府征税、支出、管理乃至管理不善，把武装且蒙面的移民执法人员派上美国街头，频频发出关税炮火，肆意践踏法律，并按照自己的意愿在中东发动战争。对于由此引发的社会、地缘政治和经济弊病，他斥之为不过是骗局。
Trump went on to tax, spend, manage and mismanage the federal government, send armed and masked immigration agents onto US streets, fire off tariff salvos, run roughshod over the law and go to war in the Middle East as he saw fit. He dismissed the social, geopolitical and economic malaise that sprang from this as little more than hoaxes. Congressional Democrats certainly will be more assertive than their Republican counterparts in monitoring the executive branch, and Trump’s tolerance of that independence may be, at best, short-lived.
国会民主党人无疑会比共和党同僚更积极地监督行政部门，而特朗普对这种独立性的容忍充其量可能是短暂的。他肯定会行使否决权。民主党人将试图利用立法多数来推翻他的否决——或者退而求其次，争取政治得分。科技与人工智能监管、医疗保健、可负担性举措和移民很可能成为主要的政策战场。僵局可能成为常态。
He will certainly exercise his veto powers. Democrats will try to leverage legislative majorities to override his vetoes — or settle for scoring political points. Tech and AI regulation, healthcare, affordability initiatives and immigration will likely be among the primary policy battlegrounds. Gridlock may prevail. Democratic investigations, including exploring the contours of White House corruption and the conduct of the Iran war, are being teed up.
民主党的调查正在筹备之中，包括探究白宫腐败的轮廓以及伊朗战争的进行方式。如果民主党人能够迫使战争逐步降级并终结特朗普的关税闹剧，他们或许能取得相对快速的经济和地缘政治胜利。但话说回来，特朗普必将奋起反击——他会不可避免地、毫不留情地将这些调查斥为政治迫害，并将政策逆转个人化，绝不忍受。
If the Democrats can force a winding down of the war and an end to Trump’s tariff follies, they could snare relatively quick economic and geopolitical victories. But again, Trump will come out fighting against probes he will inevitably, relentlessly brand as witch hunts and policy reversals he will personalize and won’t stomach. Presidents of both parties, especially second-term ones, have historically tended to venture overseas when they’ve found themselves stymied domestically.
历史上，两党的总统——尤其是第二任期的总统——往往在国内受挫时转向海外。宪法和一个不确定的世界提供了许多总统所珍视的回旋余地和摆脱国会控制的自由。对于一个独来独往者而言，这种吸引力更加强大。
The Constitution and an uncertain world offer latitude and freedom from congressional control many presidents have prized. For a loner, the magnetism is even more potent. Trump’s peregrinations, fundamentally bellicose and strategically haywire, have already mired him in Iran and found him essentially abandoning Ukraine in its war with Russia.
特朗普的四处出击——本质上好战且在战略上混乱不堪——已经让他深陷伊朗，并使他实质上放弃了乌克兰与俄罗斯的战争。他与中国的较量迂回曲折却并不激烈。他直到事后才费心去了解，一个被围困的伊朗可能会阻断经由霍尔木兹海峡的石油流动，而一个面临可能令人窒息的关税威胁的中国可能会扣留全球供应链中的稀土金属。
He’s engaged in meandering but muted fisticuffs with China. He didn’t bother learning until after the fact that an Iran under siege could tie up oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and a China threatened with potentially suffocating tariffs could withhold rare-earth metals from global supply chains. Even so, expect Trump to choose overseas theaters when he wants to fly solo.
即便如此，可以预料，当特朗普想要单打独斗时，他会选择海外战场。他是会把台湾当作献给中国的牺牲品，还是为了让世界失去平衡、让所有人猜不透，而与中国展开更尖锐的经济或军事打击？他会再试着对欧洲挥拳相向，并继续让乌克兰悬而不决吗？他会在伊朗升级局势，而不是寻求外交解决吗？我不知道。而且我怀疑总统本人现在也还不确定。
Will he either offer Taiwan as a sacrificial lamb to China or, to keep the world off balance and everyone guessing, engage in a more pointed economic or military smackdown with China? Will he try batting Europe around some more and continue leaving Ukraine to dangle? Will he escalate in Iran rather than embrace a diplomatic resolution? I don’t know. And I suspect the president isn’t sure himself just yet. Trump thinks about the world and himself cinematically, not strategically, and how he dominates center stage drives his decisions as much as anything else.
特朗普是以电影化的方式、而非战略性的方式思考世界和他自己，他如何主导舞台中心，与其他任何因素一样驱动着他的决策。他热爱并需要观众，即使是在蒙骗他们的时候。
He loves and needs an audience, even when he’s hoodwinking them. “I could say the stupidest things, and you’d clap,” Trump told a gathering of his political supporters last month.
“我可以说最愚蠢的话，而你们会鼓掌，”特朗普上个月对聚集的政治支持者说。“这是真的。”他们笑了，并鼓掌。
“It’s true.”They laughed and clapped.
然而，本周的中期选举带来了一次报应和清算，使特朗普暂时陷入孤立和受制。接下来的两年可能会非常漫长且尖刻。
A comeuppance and reckoning arrived with this week’s midterms, however, leaving Trump, for the time being, isolated and constrained. It could be a very long and caustic two years.