CNN anchor Abby Phillip wondered aloud if President Donald Trump’s unpredictable “Madman Theory” style of leadership “might be working” in the Middle East.

On this week’s edition of CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five, Phillip played a clip of Trump’s joint press conference with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which Trump stunned the world with his plan to remove all 2 million Palestinians from Gaza and take “ownership” of it.

Phillip pointed out that Trump has had some success in the Middle East and asked if there’s something to his unpredictable style:

ABBY PHILLIP: Essentially doing all of this without any oversight. Besides himself, of course.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: The president was already asked to answer this question this week and he said if Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Iran will excuse himself from those contracts. And he has again abided by all applicable laws.

ABBY PHILLIP: Alyssa make it make sense! I don’t– I don’t get it. How is Elon Musk, who has, by the way, he is the largest recipient of government contracts. He has business before the government. He has competitors who have business before the government.

How is he supposed to police himself?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Listen, this just goes to the broader theory that Donald Trump has.

If he is going to stretch the interpretation of the power of the executive branch–, he’s been president before. He did not love some of the constraints that were in place in the first term.

Bringing in an outsider billionaire who can kind of be his doer and fixer so he doesn’t necessarily have to deal with some of the details. It’s kind of vintage Trump. He gets to work on the things and talk about the things he cares about, but then pass off some of these massive decisions to Elon.

There’s, of course, conflicts of interest. And one of the things I’m worried about, because I do care about some of these programs, seeing the letters taken off of USAID, that’s for those of us who have worked on projects there, it’s pretty jarring.

We need an accounting from the White House of what is actually being cut and why Americans broadly support shrinking the size of government. They are right that there is too much bureaucracy. There are federal workers we can get rid of.

But tell us why we are getting rid of things, why we don’t need it any more and what it’s being replaced with, if anything.

ABBY PHILLIP: The other part of this that’s striking to me and about the Elon of it all, it seems to me like we are already in a kind of post Trump era where Trump is almost incidental to this.

The wheels are turning. He’s there, but the wheels are turning kind of without him. He’s not really making these day to day decisions. He’s handed them off to someone else.

His project, 2025, is basically being implemented by the guy who wrote it. Trump just happens to be there, but he he’s not like required for any of these things to happen. And I think that’s actually what’s different about this compared to the first time around.

Watch above via CNN Saturday Morning Table for Five.

The post ‘I See You Chuckling’: CNN Anchor Asks If Chaotic Trump ‘Madman Theory’ Leadership ‘Might Be Working’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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