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Tricky Don

Even in remote Wyoming, at a private gathering of august business leaders, academics, and political wisemen, Trump was inescapable. Yet as Niall Ferguson argued, the president’s shocks to the rules-based global order are merely… Nixonian.

Niall Ferguson
For the past decade, Niall said, he’d “engaged in a debate about the significance of Donald Trump’s explosive entry into our politics.” But comparisons of Trump to Hitler or Mussolini, condemning his politics as fascism, were wrong, he argued. Photo: Henning Kaiser/picture alliance/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
September 3, 2025

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Last week, as the markets took a bit of a Labor Day breather, I flew out to southeastern Wyoming for the first annual convocation of The Summit at Brush Creek Ranch, nestled between the Sierra Madre and Medicine Bow Mountains. Like a cross between the Allen & Co. mediafest in Sun Valley and the hyperexclusive Google Camp, The Summit was conceived as a forum for various business leaders, political wisemen, academics, and public intellectuals to discuss the issues of the day—artificial intelligence, debt and deficits, national defense, etcetera. Among the 80 distinguished attendees were former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, former Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis president Jim Bullard (a candidate to replace Jay Powell as Fed chair), and Mung Chiang, the preternaturally young president of Purdue University.