As of dawn Wednesday November 7 we entered the “Donald Trump is unequivocally a loser” phase of this tragi-comic farce. You and I have known this for a long time, going back to his multiple-bankruptcy days in Jersey casinos. But now it gets more interesting. A lot more interesting. Because now his world leader peers and heretofore gutless Republican leadership have hard evidence that the guy is not only the fool they always knew him to be, but a toxic fool teetering on the brink of what is likely an extremely fast and inevitably crushing downhill slide.
Even Trump knows this, I truly believe.
Look at it this way: he’s a character, a “brand”, built almost entirely on gross exaggeration, absurd misrepresentation and outright fraud. He’s never been what he claimed to be, only what some of the media and public wanted him to be. (The serious New York and national press have been fitful at best in assessing their responsibility in the co-creation of the Trump myth over all his years as a ubiquitous, gaudy socialite.)
Not being utterly stupid, Trump — as we know from his estranged biographer — has always been keenly aware of being stiff-armed by New York’s truly wealthy and (somewhat less flagrantly) corrupt. His thin-veneer aristocratic stylings far too gauche for the city’s truly wealthy and well-bred. Everything about him, his self-baked celebrity status, the licensing of his name, his TV career has been dependent on his “brand” of being “a winner.”
But “a winner” he is not anymore, and everyone can see that. The only crowd clinging to the myth is he himself, his family (maybe) and his base, i.e. MAGA Goober Nation. Deep within FoxNews and Rush Limbaugh world, I suspect even they know what’s gone down.
This is new. We haven’t been here before. Republicans, for example, had no choice but play along as long as he was demonstrating an ability to drive goobers to the polls and win elections. But politics, especially among the most craven and cynical, which describes Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to a “T”, is absolutely merciless when your mojo evaporates and you lose the scent of a winner. Friends can’t abandon you fast enough.
And in Trump’s case, combined with what may end up a 38-39 seat Democratic wave in the House and Senate losses in Arizona, Nevada and Montana, the scent of loser is settling on him like a wool coat downwind from a Nebraska feedlot.
International leaders — political animals all of them — are as familiar with a loser’s scent as anyone here in the States. Where until last week they had to play along and patronize Trump the Fool as America’s guy at the table, not knowing how long the clown show was going to last, they now know Robert Mueller and House Democrats are going to lay siege to the Trump Myth and expose it for the unsophisticated fraud it has always been. That reality makes Trump not only eminently ignorable as a peer, but a rich target for moral opposition, as France’s Emmanuel Macron did in his anti-nationalist speech — to Trump’s face — last weekend.
Most importantly, and worrisome, Trump himself now knows the jig is up. His behavior in the past week, at that press conference, outside the White House under the chopper blades, tweeting about California’s wildfires and blowing off WWI memorial events in France screams of a guy in the throes of a humiliation that he is defenseless to stop from consuming him … like a wildfire, you might say.
His Republican “friends”, having seen what playing cozy with Trump did for them in every precinct with a population density greater than 10 cows per square mile, have no reason at all to take any more bullets for him or block juggernaut investigations, even if they could.
Point being, until now we haven’t seen Trump-backed-into-a-corner recklessness. We soon will.
All Trump has today is the right-wing media and his base.
And both of them will drift away as they get sick of all the losing.
I agree that the smell of death changes everything for Trump, because now the DC opportunists know that he’s not the political genius they wanted to believe he was. They now understand that loss of college-educated white women in the suburbs is a real Trump-driven problem, and that they lose a lot of elections for years to come if that doesn’t change. Trump puppets have been driven by a desperate hunger to hold onto power and privilege, and they won’t stay loyal to Trump now that they have come to understand that he hurts that cause much more than helps it.
But do you really think Trump knows? We’re all guessing, but my guess is that he knows and then deludes himself, and then repeats this cycle on a loop. He seems too self-delusional to every conclusively understand that he is a loser and much of the world knows it.
Trump the day after election: “This vigorous campaigning stopped the blue wave they talked about…This election marks the largest Senate gains for a president’s party in a first midterm election since at least President Kennedy’s in 1962…By expanding our Senate majority, the voters have also clearly rebuked the Senate Democrats for their handling of the Kavanaugh hearings — that was a factor, I think maybe a very big factor, the way that was handled…We won a lot of elections last night, we did very well last night, and I think it’s going to have a very positive impact…Well, I think the results that I’ve learned — and maybe confirm — I think people like me…I think people like the job I’m doing, frankly…Just going to push. I’ve been pushing. I’ve done a very good job, too. They’re very happy with me…To be honest — I’ll be honest, I thought it was a — I thought it was a very close to complete victory.”
Every time Trump bails on what used to be a perfectly normal, often flattering opportunity to be “President”, like throwing out the first pitch for baseball season, attending the Super Bowl, or even a regular season basketball game like Obama did, or attending the Kennedy Center Honors I’m assuming it’s because he knows how he’ll be received. It’ll be more ugly than flattering. He knows who despises him and avoids them whenever possible. He’s the ultimate bubble creature. He may be delusional in many ways, but he knows who his enemies are, and now he’s more vulnerable to them — in terms of complete ruin — than ever before. Desperation is setting in. It’s going to get wilder before it calms down.
Plenty of delusional thinking to go around. There’s no evidence that Republicans in office have any interest in or inclination to distance themselves from the bully, since even if the general election knocked a few of them out, they’re far more aware of how the Trump zombies predominated in nearly every Repub primary contest. And how do we know if this election matters? The fascists are surging everywhere, from Brazil to the Baltic. USA Democrats really haven’t got a theme or a message with the visceral appeal of the Twitler’s xenophobia, racism, and anti-intellectualism. Notice that the polls continue to show unshakeable support for this liar, running in the low- to mid-40 percentages. It’s as much or more than Hitler had, and it’s all that is needed for Trump’s purposes, since he has the courts completely in his pocket, and the military’s majority plus most of law enforcement ready to take whatever orders he decides to dictate. You scoff at Fox News and the right wing echo chamber, but that’s where almost all Americans get their political cues, because 90%+ of the populace hears no broadcast alternative. And the internet provides the means for promoting white-power propaganda on a scale never known before. The latest report from the Southern Poverty Law Center makes for damned sober reading. There were those who said Trump wasn’t really dangerous because he didn’t have Blackshirts or Brownshirts terrorizing his political foes in the streets. Well, now he’s got them, and they’re armed to the teeth. College-educated white suburban women hardly stand a chance. Mr. Lambert should ponder why, despite his career of fraud, corruption, and con-games, Trump has in fact succeeded in attaining more actual power than any previous resident of the White House, at least since FDR—and perhaps more than him, because the Supreme Court hampered FDR in his first term, and the combination of reactionary southern Democrats and Republicans in Congress could stalemate him for the rest of his Presidency. Remember, Trump doesn’t give a shit for the Constitution. He’s more dangerous than ever. He won’t quit, you know. He’ll double-down. It’s always worked before, and he will figure it will work now. People BELIEVE his lies, to an extent unprecedented in our history. Go back and see how many times you’ve hopefully pronounced Trump “on the ropes.” I’d like to think that winning the House would be a first step to national redemption. It’s hard to shake the notion that it’s really the last gasp of a garroted democracy.
It’s not like I’m disagreeing with you, Oliver. I’m merely saying that politics being politics Trump’s usefulness to what’s left of the Republican machinery has now tipped to full-on liability. Losers don’t have a lot of friends in the political game, especially when it looks like they’re the carrier of an infectious disease. The GOP problem has always been figuring out how to appease the Goobers without alienating every other Republican with both a brain and a conscience. With Trump now an Unequivocal Loser, (and behaving like one), they are somewhat freer to allow him to drift away — because what goes down from here on out is the fault of those bastard Democrats “overreaching” their authority — and prepare ground for either a Mike Pence interim presidency, (“a true conservative!”), or a 2020 primary battle with a new cast of grifters.