Trump’s Art of the Not-Quite Deal Is Now Hard to Ignore: Essay

Jan. 23, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

Donald Trump became a celebrity, and then a two-time president, on the strength of his reputation as a dealmaker. “Deals are my art form,” he boasts in his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal. “Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals.”

By Trump’s reckoning, he’s blazed through the first year of his second term by pumping out deals at such a furious clip that the rest of us can only marvel in amazement. “I’ve made 200 deals,” he told
TIME in April, a mere three months into his ...

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