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A question Trump always asks 'appears to play an outsize role in his decisions'

President Donald Trump's mercurial nature could be best explained by one question he constantly asks everyone in his orbit. And how he governs over the remainder of his second term may very well be up to how his favorite question gets answered at any given time.

The New York Times' Carlos Lozada wrote Friday on Trump's propensity to gauge feedback from those in his inner circle by asking: "How's it playing?" According to Lozada, that was the first question Trump asked deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino while being treated at a Pennsylvania hospital following an attempt on his life in July of 2024. And it was the top question after Israel carried out its first strikes on Iranian nuclear sites earlier this month.

"There is nothing wrong with a president gauging public reaction to or support for administration policies or actions. The people are his constituents, after all," Lozada wrote. "But in the case of Trump, 'How’s it playing?' appears to play an outsize role in his decisions. External approval is not just a means to pursue a policy he deems wise or worthy; the approval is what makes the policy wise or worthy."

In the op-ed, Lozada observed that Trump became enraged at media outlets' coverage of a recent Pentagon report that suggested the airstrikes he ordered on Iran last weekend were less effective than he initially proclaimed. That report assessed that the Iranian nuclear program may have only been set back by three to six months, whereas Trump said following the strikes that the three sites he targeted had been "obliterated." The president recently threatened to sue the New York Times unless it apologized and issued a retraction, though the paper's attorney refused and told Trump's attorney that "no apology will be forthcoming."

Lozada cited a passage from author Michael Wolff's book "All or Nothing," in which Trump frequently reminded advisors that "our legal strategy is our media strategy, our media strategy is our legal strategy." The Times columnist opined that Trump using lens of public opinion as the top metric to consider how to make foreign policy and military decisions posed a significant national security threat.

To underscore this point, Lozada recalled a moment from 2015, in which then-candidate Trump told NBC's Chuck Todd that he watched "the shows" as his primary means of getting military advice. Lozada also quoted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said in a 2015 Fox News interview as the head of the organization Concerned Veterans for America that Trump's interview with Todd concerned him, arguing that TV shows didn't suffice as a good source of information about how to conduct the military.

“You wouldn’t want a top-tier presidential candidate getting all of their military advice from watching ‘Meet the Press.’ There’s a lot more nuance, there’s a lot more detail,” Hegseth said at the time. “At the end of the day, foreign policy and national security is not about TV shows.”

Click here to read Lozada's full op-ed in the Times (subscription required).