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Among the small number of people who are paying attention and nevertheless support Trump, the standard argument steelmans as:
The main problem with this argument is that being offensive other than as a calculated tool of policy is an unforced error which simply makes people less willing to cooperate. So unless you start with a presumption that Trump is playing 11-dimensional chess such that every insult is a calculated maneuver in a power game you don't understand, you quickly come to the conclusion that he is being far more offensive than the optimum.
The other problem is that PMC communication norms exist for a reason. A core skill of PMC members who are elite enough to have other PMC members as inferiors is how to communicate inherently offensive information (such as blunt feedback or unreasonable demands) in a way does not force the inferior to take offense in order to avoid feeling like a cuck and/or looking like a cuck in front of their own inferiors. High-level diplomacy is a special case of communication between elites, so the PMC norms should apply - public chainsaw diplomacy is the opposite.
A separate but related problem is that Trump's domestic supporters either believe or excuse his lies, but to the rest of the world they just signal detachment from reality. The "madman strategy" involves communicating to the other party that you are irrationally committed to your goals, but otherwise oriented towards objective reality. Example: "I am happy to see global thermonuclear armageddon if I can't have Ukraine". Trump's approach is more like "I am happy to blow up the global trading system if you don't abolish these non-existent tariffs". This is the "fentanyl zombie strategy" and what you do if there are fentanyl zombies in your neighborhood is remove them, and if you can't do that you remove yourself.
Reagan was the Great Communicator because he was blunt ("Evil Empire", "Tear down this wall" etc.) precisely when correct, blunt statements served his goals, and polite the rest of the time. Trump is not that.
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