At the risk of invoking certain laws, there have been people in history who got elected when people didn’t believe their campaign promises. Sometimes it didn’t work out too well.
Yeah I can’t see him disclosing financials ever. For one thing he’s almost certainly worth a lot less than he says, he counts the intangible value of “his brand” as worth something like $4 billion, which most other financial experts regard as “bullshit”. Wouldn’t be surprised to know he’s worth less than a billion in total. His ego wouldn’t let the truth come out.
Thing is in this election cycle it probably won’t hurt him. Clinton has her own shady financial dealings with the Clinton Foundation. And Trump can just throw it back in her face saying that he’ll disclose his financials when she releases the transcripts of her wall street speeches. She’ll never do that so he will never have to disclose.
There is no serious reason to believe that Trump was doing this as a publicity stunt.
Looking at what Trump has done since he started running for office, what behavior allows you to discriminate between Trump “the serious candidate” and Trump “the publicity hound”? Nothing. So why go through the mental hurdles to believe something more complex when it really is simple? It’s pretty obvious he’s trying to win.
This type of speculation has about as much credibility to it as the Paul Ryan parachute theory, the contested convention chaos theory, and all the statements made about Trump’s chances to win the Republican nomination. All of these things are pure news fiction. There was never a decent reason to believe any of them. I gave in to about half of them, but looking back on it, I mostly agreed with one theory or another purely out of my own biases and prejudices.
I’ve seen this " publicity stunt" theory advanced on these boards, but I’ve not seen any in-depth news articles that make that case. Where is it "generally accepted?
Trump is (as he tells us) the richest, smartest, handsomest, classiest, most trusted and beloved guy in the country, and he sells the best taco bowls. Therefore, it’s only natural that he should be president. Frankly, even running is below him - the country should have just handed him the keys to the Oval Office by now.
In my mind, it stopped being a publicity stunt when he hired insiders to save his campaign in late March, when it was beginning to look like he might collapse. If it’s a publicity stunt, you accept that the gig has gone as far as it can and accept that Cruz or someone else eventually gets the nomination, and you take your free publicity and run with it.
He didn’t do that. He continued to run a hard campaign. Maybe the whole thing started out as a gag and his ego compelled him to finish the race. Even if you buy into that narrative, then the natural extension is that his ego will compel him to finish with a win over Hillary.
It’s as ‘real’ as any campaign that’s ever been run. Maybe winning the White House wasn’t something he felt he was born to do, as Al Gore felt in 2000 or Bob Dole in 1996. But he still feels that he’s a man who’s met his moment. His candidacy has to be taken seriously.
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But he still feels that he’s a man who’s met his moment.
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No matter how it all plays out, this could be the tag for a marvellous Hollywood biopic lauding him after ( or possibly during, there was a tasteless respectful film on the wholly uninteresting subject of the Obamas’ wooing made by suck-ups recently ) as one of the greatest of American presidents.
A poster of his massive profile gazing upward in awe at the moon and the velvet blue night sky
A Man, A Nation, A Moment. Destiny Called Him: And He Stepped Up To Free His People.
‘When The Stars Are Right’*
I did put a question mark in the title. I’ll quote this in entirety because it seems an excellent summary.
Yes, Trump might happily accept a 49-51 defeat but still be happy to look for a 51-49 win. (Unlike Hillary and the anti-Trump factions for whom Trump victory will seem like disaster.)
Hillary has never been subjected to the force of a national general campaign. Many low-information voters will learn details of her sins for the first time; and more crimes and sins will be found. Trump will set the ground rules for all debates. Romney and the Bushes will come around, probably during or before the convention, in the interest of party unity. Predictwise shows 29% — Has Nate Silver expressed an opinion yet on the odds for the next Potus?
What gives you that idea? They’ll have to agree on ground rules, and no way will Hillary or her campaign give him the advantage.
You may have put a question mark in your thread title, but not in the first sentence. So can you cite that it’s generally accepted that Trump ran as a publicity stunt and never expected to get this far?
It’s easier when you don’t have much money to begin with.
“generally accepted” was an over-statement. But at least one key Trump advisor did reveal that, initially, Trump didn’t expect to win. And as I just wrote, though Trump is trying to win now, a loss (by a non-humiliating margin) will seem to him like a fine outcome — he may well breathe a sigh of relief. This is in contrast to Hillary and her supporters, for whom defeat would seem catastrophic.
Trump is a businessman, whose businesses and business models are heavily dependent on publicity; that the campaign was intended to further them is an obvious (if not obviously true) extrapolation.
Carson and Huckabee were also running for personal publicity with little hope for the nomination. Some of the candidates were improving visibility — a form of “publicity stunt” — for appointments like V.P. I don’t think Rand Paul thought he had a chance, but (unlike Trump, Carson, Huckabee) he may have been more interested in advancing his ideas rather than personal interests.
Defeat for Hillary = President Trump. Damn right it’d be catastrophic. For me, you, the country, and the world.