This is the greatest thing he’s said in a decade or more. I am totally in favor of it.
I mean, I can see the appeal of wanting to ascribe to Trump some kind of plan or scheme but the guy was the President of the United States and effectively “the leader of the free world” for four years, an opportunity that any practiced scamster could have used to really dig his claws into government and business to enrich himself immeasurably as, say, Bill Clinton did, and instead it is becoming clear that the Trump Organization lost money while he was in office and he has basically not set himself or children up to profit on his “experience”. I see approximately zero evidence that Trump is capable of thinking beyond his next Big Mac or outside the bucket, much less effect any plans that involve a theory of mind or awareness of people other than himself.
I think this is Trump figuratively—and given his dietary habits, maybe literally—shitting the bed to ensure that nobody else can sleep in it. The problem is that the majority of the GOP has come to enjoy the aroma and texture of shit and are probably convincing themselves that it tastes like chocolate ice cream, too.
Stranger
Trump is simply threatening Republicans that if they don’t get behind the Big Lie, then he’ll tank the entire party with a smirk on his face.
This is the most likely explanation because it checks all the Trump boxes:
- Petty
- Selfish
- Spiteful
- Vengeful
- Stupidly conceived
- Stupidly risky
He’s perpetually the dog that wants to catch the mailman. He’s got no good idea why he wants everyone behind the Big Lie, or what’s going to happen after that. He’ll give it everything he’s got, ignoring more reasonable courses of action.
He takes this approach because it’s never failed him in the most crucial moments. He has no reason to think it will fail.
I suppose neither one of us can get inside the man’s head [shudder], but I just don’t think he’s as much mindless id as you seem to. There’s method to what he does. He’s not a chess master, but he has a primal sense for human weakness and how to exploit it.
From OP:
The United States, at present, is not a healthy democracy, and it looks like it may be getting unhealthier before it gets healthier. If this ultimately works to totally destroy the Republican party as it currently exists, so much the better. But . . .
So suppose the Republican party goes extinct and the Dems split into progressive and conservative factions. What is to prevent the most far right-wing lunatics from taking over the new Conservative party just as they did the Republican party?
Well, I don’t have any special portal into his brain, either (nor would I want one) but from his behavior I just don’t see any indication that, in the words of Polonious, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” I see what is literally the behavior of an especially spoilt child, unable to restrain his base instincts, to which many want to attribute some canniness because how scary is it that nearly half of Americans would choose to give the nuclear codes to an infantile brat. I’d agree he understands about weakness insofar as he likes to see other people in outrage, but his means of doing so is basically just to fist-smash a bunch of buttons until he finds one that works and then just hits it repeatedly until if finally breaks.
If Donald Trump were even half as smart as caricatures of him are played, he’d at least engineer his way into profiting from being President, which is something even Richard Nixon managed to do after somehow rehabilitating his image. Trump’s entire focus while he occupied the White House, aside from “Twitter wars” with Cardi B and Rosie O’Donnell, was being a public figure for saying ridiculous things, which he really didn’t have to go to the trouble of running for president in order to do, and which has cost his organization hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. Trump is like the guy who wins the lottery, spends it all on a Lamborghini, and then immediately drives it into an embankment. That doesn’t take any smarts or thinking, just enough coordination to put the vehicle in gear and not steer away from the big concrete barrier in front of him.
Stranger
I assume this is Trump flexing his muscles. He’s willing to trash the Republicans in the midterm elections to demonstrate to them that they have to nominate him in 2024. If they don’t, he’ll trash whoever else they nominate.
Trump probably can’t win in 2024 (which is why the Republicans won’t want to nominate him). But Trump won’t care if he costs the Republicans an election they could have otherwise won. He’ll place his own self-interest above that of the Republican party’s or the country’s.
I’d say there’s plenty of room in there for both of you.
Reddit leans very much liberal, however. I would never consider the reaction on Reddit to generalize to the actual Trump base. They got kicked off that platform, after all.
The OP reads this incorrectly. Trump is not encouraging Republicans not to vote. Trump is threatening that he will tell Republican voters not to vote if Republican leaders don’t pursue his voter fraud conspiracy. He’s not actually saying that the GOP should sit out. He’s threatening the GOP politicians as part of a power struggle.
@flurb gets it exactly right. No one is saying this is some sort of plan. Trump is just doing what he often does, using threats to try and force people to do his bidding. It’s the whole reason the GOP is still bending over backwards for him.
@Stranger_On_A_Train just seems to be doing the exact underestimating of Trump that happened before. The guy does have skills in this arena. It’s why he has followers and toadies in the first place. The latter are scared of him. Why would they be if he didn’t threaten them?
To be clear, I’m not underestimating Trump’s capacity for destructiveness or to attract people who covet the obtusely self-possessed confidence he has while babbling stream-of-consciousness nonsense, and I agree with @flurb that he has “a primal sense for human weakness and how to exploit it.” I just don’t think Trump acts to any particular end except to satiate his own appetite for self-gratification and to denigrate others who don’t admire him or who he thinks might challenge him. Trump is very much jerking the chain of the GOP but not because he wants to take it in any particular direction; he just wants to make sure that if they don’t support and glorify him that they’ll all pay for it.
Despite his career in real estate development (which you would think would take an understanding of careful planning and weighing of competing alternatives), Trump’s greatest talent is in tearing things down. He’ll take his base and pit them against the Republican Party if he doesn’t get what he wants, but fortunately for him (and unfortunately for the rest of us) the GOP leadership is just fine with his brand of demagoguery even if they don’t care for him as a person.
Stranger
I think that’s very close. I’ve pictured this as the visual metaphor for the inside of his head {especially the right side:
I think even this is giving Trump too much credit. You’re assuming Trump makes plans to get other people to do what he wants.
Trump grew up in a rich family. All of his life, he was just given whatever he asked for. This is what he sees as normal. He doesn’t think he should have to make people do things for him. He expects that he can just ask for something and other people will give it to him. He doesn’t have any more manipulative skills than a toddler has. All he does is say what he wants.
The Republicans handed him the Presidency in 2016. He’s still complaining about how he wasn’t given a second term in 2020 even when he told everyone he wanted one. So now he’s whining for another term in 2024.
If only this were true. A guy who just went around telling people what he wanted would not be a threat. But the reality is that Trump clearly has tactics he uses.
Sure, I don’t think he has any long range planning ability. Most of his tactics seem to run primarily on instinct. But that’s not the same thing as telling people what he wants and expecting it to happen.
For example, Trump knew exactly who to dump blame on to get Republicans on his side. He clearly can see when people show weakness and will jump on it. He knew the value of constantly staying in the news, both for the free publicity and to be able to distract from anything that became a problem. He knew to attack the press. He knew exactly what to say on January 6 to rile up the crowd. He knows the value of mindless chants. He knows the value of appearance. He knew how to order people to do things without directly saying it, so he could avoid legal liability. He even figured out how he could be blatantly immoral and yet get the so-called “Moral majority” (the religious right) on his side.
Could any of this have been luck? Sure. But there is very little risk in overestimating your enemy, but a huge risk in underestimating him.
I note that everyone loves to talk about Trump as conman. And one beloved tactic of the conman is to get people to underestimate him. And, given that Trump conned nearly half the country, the guy is pretty good at it.
No, this is Trump threatening the GOP. He feels like he’s being ignored, He knows they are vulnerable because of his base.
It’s the tactic he’s repeatedly used to get them to lick his boots and kiss his ass.
Nothing in some sense, but one would hope that the new Repulocrats would have the good sense not to let them. The Republicans have embraced the far-right lunatics and invited them in with open arms. Democracy works best when a person (or party) is willing to lose gracefully and not do anything for the win. I’ve always said that I would rather my preferred candidate to lose with 100% of voters voting, than win with 50% of the voters voting. Democracy and democratic principles are in and of themselves important regardless of who is in power.
I’m just baffled by the people in this thread who insist that Trump is a “toddler” who acts purely out of impulse and has no ability to plan. Obviously I agree that he’s a dumb, impulsive, petulant, self-gratifying egomaniac. But he also clearly makes plans and executes on them (often poorly). The Mueller investigation showed this clearly – with malice aforethought, he leaned on a foreign head of state to get him to take actions that would benefit Trump politically. I think the term here is “low cunning.”
The only thing that prevented in the past. By which I mean to somehow trick the loonies into splitting up so that roughly half of them support one side and the other half the other side.
I still feel what I’ve said is generally true. Trump virtually never makes a plan. He just reacts to events that are happening. He doesn’t think “I need to cause these conditions to occur in order to create the situation I want to exist.” He just waits until a situation exists and then tries to figure out how he can get the most personal advantage out of it.
His political career is a reflection of this. Trump didn’t create the machine that got him elected. He just saw the machine the Republicans had already created for getting a Republican elected and hijacked it.
I think the term is “chaotic evil.”
“chaotic evil”. That works too. Sounds like a great name for a death metal band too.