Trump can’t give up due to a combination of his own ego but more importantly his mountains of legal trouble. Between the civil and criminal cases, he’s drowning and the only lifeline available is the presidency. Trump has been in cognitive decline for a while. We all remember him referring to Obama when he meant Biden or how about the time he said Nikki Haley was to blame for the lack of security at the National Mall on January 6? During his rallies, he frequently becomes stuck on a word and the get out of it he completely switches gears to talk about another subject entirely. And now he’s slurring his words.
Trump isn’t giving up. Either he’s going to be president or he’s going to crash spectacularly. He’s just suffering from the ravages of age combined with the stress that comes from having your world fall apart.
In addition to the staff member who fluffs his ego every day, it’s clear that he’s actively seeking out bad information sources. He recently re-posted a BS story about Harris’ crowds being AI fakes, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t come up with that meme on his own. And this isn’t the first time he’s reposted such claptrap.
A man aspiring to the presidency is apparently spending a lot of time scouring the internet for BS right-wing memes to copy. That is not a healthy or desirable activity.
It would be a completely rational decision if he could get some more widely popular GOP politician to pledge to pardon him. Stepping down and getting his maga base to back whoever was on the ticket would be his best chance of staying out of prison.
But it would require a degree of ego-free self assessment of his abilities and popularity that Trump is very unlikely to achieve.
Also why it would still be terrible for the country, and likely be the end of democracy just as much as if trump was reelected, it would be the funniest thing ever if that happened and whoever ran was refused to pardon him when elected.
Also, I’m not sure there would be any way of getting anyone except Vance on the top of the ticket at this point? And he is definitely not more electable than Trump
Biden is an honorable man, and it was at least vaguely plausible that he might step down. Neither of those is true about Trump. No one will write articles about that.
I do hope to see articles about his increasing confusion and lack of energy.
There is no guarantee he will lose. Kamala may win the popular vote, but it’s the electoral vote that decides the election. Trump is well on the way to challenge all aspects of the election from challenging voters, changing voter counts, challenging vote certification, challenging electoral votes, challenging the counting of electoral votes, etc.
He just needs to seed enough doubt with his supporters and create enough challenges that his SCOTUS court will anoint him the presidency.
Short of him collapsing in public with a grave prognosis, his MAGA supporters will do his bidding.
Though if he could get some more popular (outside the maga base) GOP politician to pledge to pardon him that would actually improve his chances of staying out of prison.
As well as an increased chance of Harris losing, it would be constitutionally uncontroversial for someone else to pardon him rather than for him to pardon himself. Not that anyone is in any doubt how the current SCOTUS will respond when its a choice between the rule of law and letting the guy who appointed them get away with crimes.
Again I don’t think Trump is capable of that kind of ego-free honest assessment of his abilities and chances. But on the other hand he REALLY does not want to go to prison.
It is being reported that trump’s team is actively trying to minimize his rallies partially because he cannot stick to the script and causes them problems every time he speaks. There’s also the fact that he’s old and can’t keep up the pace, and the campaign is pinching pennies.
Under the penny-pinching leadership of co-managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Trump had reduced the number of rallies he held relative to his past campaigns. Wiles and LaCivita previously described it as a good way to save money. What they didn’t say was the smaller number of rallies also reduced the frequency and blast radius of his off-script remarks, and it helped pace the 78-year-old candidate to ensure he finishes strong through Election Day.
In recent weeks, aides to the ex-president have found themselves in a place familiar to many veterans of Trump World: hoping to more finely curate the public appearances of a man incapable and unwilling of staying tightly on message.
“This is his campaign. We work for him. He sets the message.”
The problem for the campaign is that the message is often strange, nonlinear and, at times, incoherent.
“I said what they wanted me to say. Then I said what I wanted to say,” Trump told one insider when asked why he didn’t stick to the script.
That first USA Today article link mentions DeSantis’ Twitter interview during his campaign to get the Repub nom in 2023, which was also plagued with glitches, allowing trump to pounce and declare DeSantis’ campaign to be as much of a disaster as the Twitter interview.
I’m starting to wonder whether Musk is a ‘Deep State’ operative working deeply undercover in a guise of fawning admiration, in order to discredit far Right-wing Repubs
The issue with this is that he cannot be pardoned for State crimes, of which he has many and most likely many more coming up once he loses. Only by being POTUS can he hide away from trials for 4 years (or gasp, more!).
First off, why would Trump drop out if he’s still alive? and why would he drop out when his odds of winning are “withing the margin of error” below 50%? why would he drop out if he could potentially bribe RFK jr to throw his support behind Trump?
I see him in this to the end, whatever that might be.
One does wonder, may he be not so much “giving up” but more like “I shoud NOT have to WORK for this in any way I don’t want to or any harder than I feel like.” (And his team ARE counting on election shenanigans to throw the vote to the House.)
If at some point someone would have pulled him aside and said “shut up and f— off into the sunset, and we guarantee all cases will go away” …he would still have refused because he wanted to be seen as not just winning but to make anyone who went after him sorry they did.
Hell, he’s still trotting out “Barrack HUSSEIN Obama” every so often. (Aside: Though I have wondered, if the absolutely exact same person had been named Bernard Henry Oliver, how much would the reactions have diminished.)
He’s not within the margin of error, the polls (or some of them) are within the margin of error. The actual estimates put his chances of winning put him at 45% or so, not massively behind, but definitely behind.
And the parties themselves tend to have private pollsters that they put a lot of faith in (these are what led Biden to step down I believe). A dispassionate neutral observer would probably say that a more GOP popular candidate (more popular in the electorate as a whole, while still bringing the Maga base along) would stand a better chance.
So if he is being completely honest with himself Trump would see that the best chance of avoiding prison is to offer his support to a more popular GOP candidate in exchange for a promise of a pardon. Fortunately for all of us Trump has never been completely honest with himself or anyone else.
Also, Trump never keeps promises. Therefore, he expects that all other people don’t keep their promises. The only way he’d accept a promise is if he could utterly destroy the person who doesn’t keep the promise.
I’ve always regarded the narrative that Trump will go to jail if he loses to be a dumb (sorry) liberal fantasy. That guy is never going to jail.
The election is basically in a holding pattern until the DNC. Our honeymoon phase with Harris will end (not that we won’t like her anymore, just that some of the shine is bound to come off), the news cycle will move, and Trump will get new material for attacks. His defeat is far from certain, so I’m sure he’ll keep going.
And while I agree that Trump is ultimately out for himself, I think it’s silly to believe that he would just up and walk away from the political machine he has been heading for ten years. I’m sure he feels pressure to deliver, and somewhere in his mess of shitty notions of the world, he probably feels responsible for “saving the country” for his followers.
He might die along the way, but I don’t think he’ll quit.
I don’t think Trump will just quit. As a narcissist he will need an excuse. It seems like he is loosing his fire and will to win right now. It might be a temporary lull.
But how temporary? He’s been dragging his butt for over a week now. He used the DNC as the excuse at one point, but that’s not until next week. Is he going to go two full weeks with almost no campaigning? Has anyone else ever done that?
He was never going to be tried either. I would not be shocked if Trump were sentenced to prison in September for his guilty verdict in the hush money case.
