After the shooting and recent drop in the polls I see a little tiredness in Trump. Is he planning an exit? As an option of course.
I don’t think he plans anything but for what it’s worth I do think he’s got the auto-destruct engaged and on a silent countdown right now. He thinks America owes him the Presidency and he’s campaigning like it will just be handed to him after he exceeds a certain threshold of bitching and complaining about how hard his life is. I know his ego does not allow for self-reflection but I really hope there is a small voice in that empty head of his reminding him that he chose this.
Well, he’s not as old as Biden, but he’s no spring chicken and campaigning can be a brutal slog for anyone. Getting grazed by a bullet isn’t going to help. But realistically he can’t quit - his legal woes compel him. If he doesn’t get the presidency they’re going to be much harder to dodge and he is not the one to trust a proxy to give him blanket pardons.
I’m pretty sure barring absolute physical collapse he’s going to grimly plow ahead come hell or high water.
One can hope he encounters both. But no, he won’t drop out unless he’s physically unable to go on.
Absolutely not. They’ll be dragging him into the old folks’ home and/or federal prison while he shouts “I’M WINNING BY A LOT! HANNIBAL LECTER SAID SO!”
No way he exits the race. As @Tamerlane said above, he can’t quit because he will be in too much legal jeopardy if he does. He knows he will likely go to jail or have to spend much more time in court if he doesn’t become POTUS again.
I see he filed suit for the raid on Mara Lago. He needs money. He’s gonna be filing lots of lawsuits, I predict.
He’ll implode when he loses.
I just hope he doesn’t take America down with him and these nutso MAGAs go back to their former lives and stfu.
I’m really sick (really, distressed) about hearing people losing complete contact with loved ones over it. So wrong.
There are his legal woes, of course; but I think there’s another thing to consider: that Biden leaving the race threw Trump for a loop.
He knew what to do about Biden. Trump would call him “Sleepy Joe,” rag on Hunter’s foibles, talk about the “Biden Crime Family” being on the take, and generally make fun of Biden’s decline mentally and physically. He’s used these remarks a lot in the past, and he could confidently carry them forward, with little effort.
But he has no idea—yet—regarding what to do about Harris (the best he’s been able to do so far is, “Is she Indian? Is she Black?” which was pretty weak); and now that Walz is in the picture, Trump is doubly-lost. I do see that in the last couple of days, Trump has been using “Lyin’ Kamala” and “Laffin’ Kamala,” so I guess we’ll see how those work for him.
But if Trump seems a little lost now, I’d suggest that it’s not because he’s considering giving up. It’s because he’s trying to quickly figure out what is going to work against Harris/Walz in the little time he has before the election. He will stay in the race.
I think he has convinced himself that the bullshit his underlings are telling him — that the dirty-tricks people they are installing will be able to steal the election regardless of the result at the polls — is true and therefore it doesn’t really matter whether he campaigns that hard.
He’s a god-level narcissist with an unshakeable belief in his ability to Oprah’s Secret his way through life and come out victorious in any situation. He doesn’t live in the same reality we do, and it’s a mistake to analyze his behavior in comparison to any other normal rational human.
Whatever else he might be saying and doing, “giving up” is simply not part of his psychological equation, on any level.
He seems to be out of energy as far as I can tell. He has become the old man raging at the cloud. His running mate is an idiot. His competition meanwhile is totally rejuvenated. Trump is going through the motions, with his only motivation being not to be a LOSER.
Only on a gurney. 
He sounds worse than Biden did at that debate- I await the dozens of NYT articles on the front page saying he has to step down…
I suggest you don’t hold your breath waiting for Arthur to allow that.
Unless you have a tank of oxygen and mask ready.
ETA: But seriously, now that Biden is gone it seems the decline of DJT is ramping up on a daily basis. The guy appears to be experiencing serious cognitive decline by the hour.
Well, at least nobody’s talking about Hunter Biden and the Biden crime family anymore.
I say he should stick with “nobody knows what her last name is”.
Link is paywalled. I didn’t know the answer to the obvious question, so for the benefit of any others in the same position…
According to wikipedia, Kamala Harris’s father is Donald Harris. So, while I knew the other Donald’s claim must be stupid, I did not know that it was as completely stupid as it possibly could be.
You’re thinking as if the truth mattered. If doesn’t.
Was there ever any truth behind “Biden Crime Family”? Nope. All he wants is a schoolboy taunt that clicks with his schoolboy/girl audience. Which taunt he’ll then repeat every few minutes for the rest of the campaign.
What he’s saying is
With a first name like Kamala, she’s gotta be a furriner with furrin parents with weird furrin names, amiright? Harris must be a 'Murrican name they picked out as camouflage. So of course she’s not gonna be a good President; she’s a furriner."
IOW, it’s a direct dog-whistle calling out to racism and xenophobia. Delivered by a guy whose real last name is Drumpf who’s married to a real furriner who speaks English all funny despite having lived in America for decades.
Right now he’s just a poo-flinging monkey flinging wildly to discover what sticks.
You’re right, but it goes a little further than Biden being a familiar enemy. I think @aurora_maire nailed it in the 'Is trump confused?" thread-- it’s all about revenge. trump has long been vengeful toward anybody he sees as his enemy, and in his mind he was hoping to crush Biden, who he sees as having stolen the 2020 election from him. The desire to not just beat but humiliate Biden gave trump energy and focus (as much focus as he’s able to have, anyway). Now he feels robbed of his chance get back at Biden, and it’s left him listless and off-message. One of the main driving principles that keeps trump going is revenge. Richard Branson tried to warn us before the 2016 election.
The notion of Trump quitting is patently absurd. Nothing matters more to him than being seen as a winner. Not to mention it’s the only thing keeping him out of jail. It’s possible he may not be capable of maintaining the pace of previous campaigns owing to his age, or perhaps he’s attempting a different campaign strategy that relies less on big rallies, but rest assured, quitting is not option for him. He’s on a suicide run; either he will be the next President or he crashes and burns spectacularly. And I wouldn’t count on him going quietly into the night following a loss at the ballot box either. Too many others helping him have too much exposure and too much invested at this point not to move forward with their evil plans even if it means they have to destroy our democracy in the process.
In his mind Trump is fighting for his freedom first and his fortune second, he is not giving up no matter what.
It’s really hard to judge his mental state. He lives in an information bubble of his own creation- he has an aide follow him constantly with a portable printer, searching the internet for positive stories about him and printing them off so his insatiable ego can be fed. What does he actually know about the state of the race? I suspect his current rage is about the crowd size at Harris rallies but is relatively unaware of the polling data. He’s also suffering from depression, having been denied the rematch against Biden that he has spent the last 3 1/2 years waiting for. He feels cheated and of course stamps his feet and shouts “UNFAIR!” like the toddler that he is.
He is constitutionally incapable of giving up any more than he can admit a mistake. Since he has thus far been unable to find a line of attack that works, he’ll try slinging insults and fear-mongering from here to election. Even if Harris wins PA, MI, WI, FL, GA, AZ, and NC he will still claim fraud and will try to overturn the election. Deep down he knows that failure to win means prison.