You may remember William of Occam, the 14th-century English philosopher who gave us the concept known as Occam’s razor. The razor helps us cut to the heart of seemingly complex questions by suggesting that the best explanation is often the simplest one.
Applying Occam’s razor to Donald Trump’s seemingly contradictory actions, we immediately hit the following jugular: Follow the money, especially money that benefits Trump personally.
Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s intrepid investigative reporting, we’ve learned that Trump’s bizarre embrace of a 28-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war was not only written by Vladimir Putin, but was orchestrated by Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. In exchange for selling out Ukraine, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and allied sources promise to invest something like $2 trillion in the U.S. This is a gross exaggeration, since that’s more money than the fund has. But some of this money will doubtless end up in the pockets of Trump or his family.
A more perplexing question is why Trump would pardon a former big-time cocaine dealer at the very moment that he is defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s orders for lethal attacks on small boats in international waters on the unproven grounds that they are smuggling drugs. The cocaine smuggler, now serving a 45-year prison term, is Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras.
Hernández took a personal million-dollar bribe from El Chapo to allow Honduras to become a staging area for cocaine shipments to the U.S. He once boasted to a colleague that “we are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it.” Under Hernández, Honduras literally became a narco-state.
So is Trump breaking international law to pursue notorious drug smugglers, or is he undermining the rule of law at home by pardoning one of the most notorious drug dealers? Is he attacking drug smugglers or excusing them? Well, both.
On Saturday, Trump said in a statement to The New York Times that “many friends” had asked him to pardon Hernández: “They gave him 45 years because he was the President of the Country—you could do this to any President.”
If we apply Occam’s razor—follow the money—to this contradiction, we would assume that there is a personal payoff for Trump or his family somewhere in the deal. Who are the “many friends” of Trump and Hernández, and what do they get that they can in turn pass along to Trump in the great favor bank, or as just plain cash? Stay tuned.
There is a separate motive that we have seen Trump put in motion throughout Latin America, including Argentina, where he boosted his ideological ally Javier Milei’s fortunes in upcoming elections with a bailout. There was an election in Honduras over the weekend, and Trump wanted the right-wing government to return to power over outgoing left-leaning Xiomara Castro. He endorsed the right-winger and threatened to end U.S. aid to Honduras if he lost.
The Hernández pardon fits with this ideological alignment—the pardon was announced in the same Truth Social post as the endorsement—and it seems to have had the same effect: The right wing is narrowly leading in the election. So ideology is Occam II.
But the Hernández story also suggests Occam III: Trump simply has an affinity for other crooks, especially crooks in high places brought to justice. Thus the telling statement: “You could do this to any President.” Thus Trump’s rage that Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro is in prison: It coulda been Trump.
And not just presidents. Why else would Trump commute the prison sentence of a clumsy grifter like former Congressman George Santos? It’s Trump’s version of honor among thieves.
Yet the contradictions between Trump’s pardon of a high-level drug smuggler like Hernández and his illegal war on alleged small drug smugglers on the open seas are so flagrant that we need to consider Occam IV. Trump is simply demented and incapable of fashioning consistent policies. That would explain his incoherent and contradictory policies on China, his on-again, off-again tariffs with no strategic purpose, and his shifting rationales for trying to destroy much of the government.
Trump can’t remember what he said or thought from one day to the next. Is Zohran Mamdani a communist or a great mayor-elect?
I suppose that having to resort to Occam I, II, III, and IV violates the premise that there is often just one good and simple explanation for seemingly complex phenomena. But then, William of Occam never anticipated Trump.
Let’s hope that one of these razors cuts short Trump’s reign.