Like the scene in “A Beautiful Mind” where the now fully-mad John Nash has diagrammed his Grand Unifing Theory of Everything with lengths of thread maniacally criss-crossing pins in calculations, photos and clippings, I have completed my life’s work. Or at least this past month’s work. I see where Trump is going with his full dive into reckless bigotry and corruption.
Follow this if you can.
While those who tell him such things fear his spittle-flecked wrath, Trump, since giving up on any kind of plan to fight COVID-19, has by now processed if not accepted that he is going to lose in November. He understands that he is so deeply and intensely despised by such a substantial majority of voters there’s no way short of outrageously criminal voter suppression and election manipulation he can reassemble the 77,000-votes-in-six-counties Electoral College freak act he did in 2016. Put bluntly, it’s over.
But in the mind of Donald Trump accepting that it’s over doesn’t mean he has to, you know, lose.
There’s money, big money, to be made in a grand, vain glorious defeat. But there are steps that need to be taken to prepare the final battlefield.
1: He must re-engergize the hardest core of his base. Suburban women? College educated whites? Traditional Republicans? Screw ’em. They’re not the target consumer bloc, not that they ever have been. But now, in preparation for What Comes Next/The Big Cash Out, they’re fully expendable. The people Trump has to re-commit himself to is the rock solid 35%, or roughly 40 million maskless, MAGA-loving, AR-15 brandishing, cop-cuddling, immigrant-hating, QAnon-inhaling base. They must not only be fed the same toxic offal as always, but more of it, and more ferociously with less and less “Presidential” mealy-mouthedness. And this — as we see — he has begun doing with raw abandon. (And wait until he delivers his “acceptance” speech in Jacksonvile.)
2: He must clear away as many money-sucking legal obstacles to his post-presidency while he still has Bill Barr to do it. Many of us have been startled by the brazen nature of the moves Barr has already made, flagrantly lying about SDNY Geoffrey Berman’s “resignation”, as well as his greasy paw prints all over the cases of Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen. There’s nothing remotely subtle about it. Plainly Barr has been instructed to “move on this now“. The long, long list of pardon-immune SDNY prosecutions in particular. This list represents potentially tremendous legal costs to post-presidency civilian Trump, assuming a Biden administration ignores tradition and allows SDNY to continue prosecuting rather than, um, “moving on for the good of the country.”
The “now” part of Barr’s act this last couple weeks continues to baffle legal experts. What’s so important that he’d do something this naked and clumsy …now? Suspicions are that Berman and SDNY had entered a new and more dangerous phase of investigation into — well, take your pick — cases involving Trump’s Russian-curated relationship with Deutsche Bank, his influence-peddling inauguration scam, his taxes, any or all of Trump Inc.’s real esatate deals, the squirrely $13 billion scandal with that Turkish bank or, maybe, his long, close bromance with Jeffrey Epstein and the case his former Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta signed off on prohibiting indictment of others “known and unknown.”
Point being, whatever can be done to snuff out or mitigate damage coming out of New York needs to be done …now … to protect the revenue stream produced by a righteous martyr’s defeat in November.
3: There is no money be made betting against Trump and Barr shrieking and howling about a “rigged” election. Hell, it’s already begun. Mail-in ballots! Too many polling stations in black neighborhoods! The “rigging” is already happening. But — I predict — nothing today compares with the indignant rage that will explode on election night over “serious discrepancies”, “irregularities”, “alarming misconduct”, “clear examples of voter faud” and on and on and on and on.
Such sore-loser pissiness might strike you as pathetic, futile whining, which it would be — even in the event of a Biden landslide — if it weren’t for the fact Mitch McConnell, Barr and The Federalist Society have now stocked the courts, in particular the Appelate Courts with so many Trump-sympathetic judges, there’s a better than 50-50 chance they can get one or more of them to uphold a challenge to the election results for weeks if not months. Certainly long enough for Trump to close the deal on his next chapter.
4: Money. It’s all that matters. Everyone who has known him or worked for him understands the foundation of his only ethos. A “rigged” election, even what is clearly a blow-out, has the advantage of acting like an accelerant over all the festering greivances and whack-doodle conspiracy theories of Trump’s non-college educated, self-pitying white base. And as Trump fully understands, there’s money be made in them thar rube-covered hills.
Out of the White House, (which he clearly won’t miss … too much work …not enough Donald time), Trump’s move is to tap that raging 35% base, or hell, even 10% of it with some new media platform. An ad-based rival to FoxNews (which will happily replace their affection for louche and stupid Trump in exchange for a more devious and competent version, like Tom Cotton) is a distinct possibility. A buy-out of the nitwit One America Network (OAN) would not be a bad investment. Or there’s always a subscription-driven streaming platform. That might reduce the 35% to 5%, as paying customers, but 8-9 million at $10 a month … you do the math.
Once you factor all this together, drawing 50 or 60 different colored threads back and forth across the wall, you see how Trump could actually embrace defeat, even will it.
How great would be to be a martyred hero to millions of fee-paying acolytes if you not only didn’t have to be burned at the stake but got to live in an even grander style than before?
And with that I’ll breakfast on another couple peyote buttons and await my next vision.
I’m wondering if he is contemplating cutting a deal with Pence–I’ll resign if you pardon me and all of my family members. Certainly would look better than Trump pardoning himself and his kids, an Pence would get to be President, if only for a little while.
I do think you are right, in that it is all about the $$$$ (and the adulation that he so clearly craves). On the up side, I expect that a development like that would help poison the GOP brand for even longer–and splinter the right for quite some time (the Trump rump would blame the GOP that would have to disavow Trump in some way to regain some electoral traction).
I don’t think it’d be hard to get Pence to do the Gerry Ford thing. With the results in on election night — or days later, given mail-in ballots — I would expect Trump to get out the pardon book and start auto-signing lifetime passes for everyone in his orbit, including Barr. Which is why I’d like to hear some legal pundit explain to me how Barr can be dealt with post-election.
I don’t know that he’s convinced he’s lost. In fact, I doubt it. I hope he doesn’t.
There’s a sad tradition of lame duck politicians making mischief on their way out the door. And that done by people with a modicum of self control. Lame duck Trump — especially if there’s also a lame duck Mitch McConnell — could make the gap between Election Day and Inauguration Day a nightmare. Can you imagine what evil those two could do if they were unfettered from consequences?
If he knows he’s lost, he could start the mischief early. God help us, he could start early.
I think the “transition period” is going to be an epic mess. Mail-in ballots could create days of uncertinty (along with claims of “fraud”) and if it’s a wave blow-out, Republicans will be scrambling to confirm every judge they can recruit from the corner saloon and compensate every crony who put them in D.C.
Very believable scenario. I’m with you on all of it, but I think you underplay two things, both malignant growths metastasizing from his runaway ego.
He wants his place in history untarnished by the revelations that surely lurk in his taxes, his developments funded by Russia, and his pulsing id. So he’s killing off investigations of himself and his henchmen not just for the dough but for his reputation. His core base already think he’s a gift from god, but he wants more people to think he’s what he thinks himself to be. The majority of Americans know what he is — he wants a bigger minority thinking he’s something else.
And he’s throwing meat to his base because he loves their adulation in person. His rallies. Never in his life has he had more than a few sycophants at a time praising his every belch and excretion. At his rallies he has thousands of people hollering and cheering because they seem to think he is what he thinks he is — funny, clever, smart, the best stand-up comedian and truth-telling speaker that ever there was. Nobody without a stake in his opinion of them actually thinks he’s funny. But here are arenas full of people laughing at his every third-grade line. He’s a city editor with a tornado bearing down on the city — every cell erect — when he’s in front of his adoring fans.
He’s had plenty of money, plenty of women, plenty of individuals like Mike Pence shamelessly sucking up to him. He’s not had thousands wetting their pants for him until the last four years. And he’s addicted.
My biggest fear, if indeed he’s done for, is what he’ll do between the election and his exit from the White House. To pump up what you’re writing about and what I’m suggesting — he’ll do anything. To anyone. To all of us. Thank god the inauguration was moved up from March to January. I agree with your two readers above.
But tell me again that he’s toast, Brian. Tell me the part about the rabbits, George.
I don’t see how there’s any substantial improvement in the pandemic or any economic recovery between now and election day. Trump will lie and bellow that everything’s terrific and the 35% will accept it because … he’s still against everyone they’re against … but his astonishing failure, and the fervor with which he is despised by so many points in only one direction. Defeat. Left unexplored is all-hands-on-deck meddling from Putin and other bad actors who far prefer a Trump-guided USA than something remotely competent and one they can’t “play like a fiddle.” But you’re right about the adulation. I can’t imagine him simply fading away and doing the “paintin’ on the ranch” shtick of George W. Which is why his own TV network constantly featuring … him … making endless rabble rousing appearances in every holler and village with an empty barn in “Real America” will keep him beeping on the radar for years. Even if it dies out after two or three years, he’ll have banked a fortune to fight off legal action.
OK, all this makes sense to me, but I still don’t think we can be complacent. Things can still happen between now and the election, and I do think we should be prepared to make an effort and not just think we can coast to an easy victory.
It’s going to be a long time before I regain my trust in my fellow voting Americans, if ever. I don’t believe that even the horrible things he’s done lately are necessarily enough to turn them away. After all, they voted for him the first time, which to me seemed unimaginable.
Oh, I’ll do whatever I can and “make an effort.” Most of us remember 2016 much too well. And even if polling looks gaudy in Biden’s favor in mid-October the importance of a wave that takes back the Senate — and blows fools like Paul Gazelka out of state legislatures — is not lost on the millions horrified by Trumpism.
Ruth, the most insightful thing I ever read about why people would vote for this con man the first time came from Van Jones, who served in the Obama administration. He said when he hears Trump voters talk, he hears Black Lives Matter (Jones is black). Both not seen not heard by the establishment by the elite — by people like me. I understand Trump supporters’ view that what Washington has been doing leaves them out. They’re right. Both parties have screwed the middle class and the poor – Repubs way more than Dems but all are complicit. Trumpers’ anger at both parties seems reasonable. But they fell for a monster who cares not one whit for them and is making everything worse for them. But he gives them a place where they feel strong.
Brian…I like your Grand Unifying Theory (GUT). It is Occam’s Razor as applied to understanding the primal motiations of Trmp, flavored with sprinklings of David Carr, and Hunter S. Thompson. Where do his kids fit into all this?
I agree. My much beloved son and his husband voted for Trump. They said that the democrats don’t care about the working people who cannot afford things like dental care, and I have to say that I can see why they believe that. It just seemed to me (in 2016) that Trump was a) obviously only paying lip service to unrepresented working-class and working-poor people and b) was mentally unfit to promote and pass policies that would help such people, even if he wanted to do so. I didn’t understand why they believed in him.
I remember Van Jones; I have his book “The Green Collar Economy.” It’s too bad he couldn’t have stayed in the Obama administration longer.