Randy Fertel, Scholar of Improvisation, Culture and Discourse, Available for Insight and Interviews This Election Season

Fertel Says Trump’s Improvisational Prowess Will Be Tested by the 2026 Midterms, As Never Before

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, September 10, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Author, observer, commentator and former Harvard University instructor Randy Fertel is looking anew at President Donald Trump’s seemingly unstoppable ability to create political advantage from situations that might look dire for his aims and for those of his party. And he’s seeing even less improvisational strategy from the President now than in previous election cycles.

Fertel is now available to worldwide media outlets as a unique subject matter expert for commentary, expert insight and thorough explanation of Trump’s still formidable pull on our cultural conversation through the last weeks of the Midterm election cycle.

Trump’s innate sense for off-the-cuff, but well-coordinated messaging strategy, Fertel believes, is being rapidly replaced by more unformed, jagged instinct and rash whim.

Trump, Fertel posits – and can explain in depth – may be losing grasp of his strategic abilities, but not his instinctual proclivity for raw improvisation.

That sort of raw improvisation, absent a considered through-line from cause to effect, might make for even more unpredictably dangerous times ahead, he thinks. And who takes control of the next Congress may not be as important as once thought.

“He’s still winging it,” Fertel says. “He’s always been winging it, but I’m seeing less thinking, and even more vicious lashing out in all directions.

“Trump consistently and at-random throws as many shiny objects into the air as possible to distract Congress, the media and the American people from the real matters at-hand and what he truly wishes to accomplish. And it works,” he says. “The problem for him now is that the objects he tosses up have lost their shine. Can the ‘Lake America’ gambit successfully distract from gas and grocery prices, or the unknowable, long-lasting effects of another Middle East war?”

In his latest Substack offering, published just last week, Fertel trains focus on the saga of one of the President’s most-prized shiny objects, the new “Air Force One.” Or – as it is alternately named, the “Qatari 747,” which coincidentally suffered an odd mechanical mishap earlier today, just prior to a scheduled takeoff from Joint Base Andrews. The plane, Fertel says, is our modern age’s “Trojan Horse.”

As Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” continues to enjoy a lengthy first run in cinemas worldwide, the ancient Greek legend of the Trojan Horse finds new life in Trump, who Fertel has argued from a literary and historical perspective, can be characterized as our age’s most prominent Trickster, much like Homer’s Odysseus.

“When you’re an improviser — as Trump is — there are no mistakes,” Fertel wrote via Substack. “Unable to fly home in his Qatari Trojan Horse turns out just another handy glittery object… Just more glittery objects. Where to focus our attention?”

“So, what then, can and will Donald Trump do next?” Fertel asks today.

“President Trump time and again manages to maintain an upper hand against politicians who stick to traditional approaches of political discourse,” Fertel says. “The methods used by President Trump will continue to overshadow more traditional approaches until other politicians take note and study how these methods can be used for good.”

Randy Fertel is a scholar of improvisational intent and technique. He has studied the Trump phenomenon, the MAGA movement, the improbable success of Trump’s political career, and his two presidencies. In recent years, Fertel’s research has focused on exploring the unique methods President Trump uses to accomplish so much as president in, he says, a uniquely uninhibited and unregulated fashion.

These methods, even if they deteriorate through the last weeks of the 2026 campaign season, Fertel will explain via commentary and interviews in the leadup to November 3rd, will absolutely affect the political, social and economic landscape of the US well beyond 2028.

In Fertel’s most recent book “Winging It: Improv’s Power and Peril in the Age of Trump,” he reveals his theories about improv as a rarified superpower with a shadowy, dangerous side. With historical references, Fertel shows how this tactic has worked for centuries dating all the way back to Ancient Greece, right to the modern era’s art, music, discourse and politics alike.

About

Randy Fertel is a Harvard-educated academic, thought leader, philanthropist and author. He has written six books, with the most recent being “Winging It: Improv’s Power and Peril in the Time of Trump.” He is also president of the Fertel Foundation, Co-Founder of the annual Ron Ridenhour Awards program for investigative journalism and truth-telling, and he administers the Ruth U. Fertel Foundation, named for his mother Ruth Fertel, founder of Ruth’s Chris Steak House. He lives in New Orleans and New York.

Randy can be contacted via Blue Highway Advisory for interviews and immediate comment regarding his timely research and theories on how President Trump has been continually able to flex his singular instincts for improvisation, and how he has the motivation and ability to do so yet again.

Andy Och
Blue Highway Advisory
andy.och@bluehighwayadvisory.com