David Graham: “In the card game Hearts, the goal is to get the lowest score. Most of the time, a player succeeds by winning the fewest tricks. But a daredevil can attempt a different strategy, called ‘shooting the moon.’ If, instead of losing each point-laden trick, he takes all of the hearts plus the queen of spades, then his opponents all get the points and he gets none. It’s a risky maneuver, because it’s all or nothing—losing even one hearts trick spells doom—but the reward is large.”
“Shooting the moon is also Donald Trump’s strategy for handling the legal cases against him. Ordinary practice would say that doing everything possible to antagonize the judges who oversee one’s trials is unwise. Even when a judge is not ruling from the bench herself, she has great leeway to decide what evidence is included, what arguments can be made, and what a jury hears. Yet Trump has repeatedly and personally criticized many of the judges hearing his cases.”
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