Assume for the purpose of this thread that President Trump does not act randomly, either he or his handlers (American or Russian/other) have a plan and are enacting it while using Trump’s apparent incompetence as a smokescreen for their actions.
What is their goal?
Simply enriching themselves?
Working to enhance a foreign power?
Undermine US democracy?
White Supremacy?
Actually saving the US from baddies?
Something else?
I think Trump wants to enrich himself, and go to rallies of his select people. I don’t really think he wanted the job.
Lose by a close margine, and start the anti-Hillary network that would make FOX look like a credible news organization.
The Republicans in congress are just trying to figure out what would be worse for them - Impeach him or not.
Do we have to believe these conspiracies?
Because if not, I’ll propose the notion that everything Trump is doing to screw over and disenfranchise immigrants is intended to be eventually wielded against his own wife, giving him the tools to throw her out of the country and cut her off from him and their son without him having to give her any money.
No real conspiracy. He wants to be adored. I don’t think any of his wives have ever loved him. He’s never been respected in the business world with all of his failures. His properties appeal more towards the middle class person who want to feel like they’re rich rather than the truly wealthy. He’s worried that he’ll be exposed for money laundering as his other sources of funding dried up with the endless bankruptcies.
Fake the first Mars manned missions
You don’t have to believe it I guess.
I just find the narrative that he’s a dummy that tripped and fell into a presidency he didn’t want isn’t credible. I assume there’s some agenda behind his actions but the only explanations I can think of require some people to be more evil than I’d like to think possible so more mundane explanations like greed or treason would be nice.
I’m going with enriching himself and his family. He doesn’t care about much else. I think he’s broke (relatively), and is probably involved in money laundering, offshore assets, and who knows what deal with what devil. Maybe there is a pee tape as a cherry on top.
But I think he’s broke mostly due to his incompetence.
I actually think the narrative that he’s a dummy who ended up in a presidency he didn’t want is quite credible - but I don’t think he fell into it. I think he was pushed, by his russian backers, who saw a lot more value in a Trump presidency than Trump himself did.
I think it’s pretty clear that Trump thought that being an unsuccessful presidential candidate would be excellent advertising for the trump brand. I mean, hadn’t he basically done the exact same thing once before? And it’s utterly incredible to claim that when he arrived in office he had plans for what to do upon arrival given how long it took him to get even the most basic administrative tasks going. Unless you’re up for the theory that he was acting like an incompetent idiot on purpose to aid, er, some goal, which I think is less likely than the idea that he’s going after mexico to backstab his wife.
Trump wants to enrich himself.
The Republican party wants tax cuts for rich people and Christian rule (depending on which half you ask).
The Conservative movement wants a return to essentially Feudalism with them at the top.
I don’t think Trump has any agenda except enriching himself and basking in the adulation of the deplorables. I see that George Will has jumped off the bandwagon.
My understanding of things (which may or may not be “conspiracy” stuff).
Regular banks are loath to loan him money due to his past rotten business deals. So he started working with the US mob, which lead him to dealing with Russian mobsters. (Who are basically indistinguishable from the Russian government.) A banker for ING in Europe funnels the money to him.
Trump’s whole empire would dissolve overnight if the Russians called in their loans, so he has to keep them happy. Very, very happy. Maybe there was the golden shower tape too.
So Putin and company call the shots, he does what he’s told.
But …
This really ignores Trump’s messed up mind set. He really adores brutal dictators. The amount of emulation of Mussolini he has done is frightening. Plus a large block of the GOP is pro-Fascism now. Match plus gasoline and the US is poof.
Could be that Putin is just another nasty jerk that Trump adores and so working with him rather than against him is just Trump being Trump.
On the other end Putin hates HRC with an undying passion. Trump is friendly and scarily malleable. So the Russians worked our election system over but good. Not just Facebook ads, fake news, etc. But actually rigged our trivially hackable electronic voting system.
A list of conspiracies is incomplete if it doesn’t mention secret societies, the world depopulation agenda and the Jews.
Oh, and don’t forget the Federal Reserve. 
Fame and fortune, which are not two independent things. But he seems to crave both intensely and I think they adequately explain 99.9% of what we see him doing.
I’ll go with the top four.
Oh, it’s all a distraction so you don’t notice Goldman-Sachs changing the banking regulations back to allow them to screw the public more. It’s all a distraction. The concentration camps for the children of asylum seekers, the late-night ravings on Twitter, Mike Huckabee’s seemingly random evil comments, Sanders getting herself tossed out of a restaurant, the US snubbing allies and embracing the worst governments in the world, Mueller’s investigation, you name it. None of it is real, it’s all a distraction.
This is what I’m told by a friend who also thinks it’s blindingly obvious that the World Trade Center was subject to a controlled demolition, and that one can rig two skyscrapers to be demolished without anyone noticing or saying anything like “Hey, my demolition company was hired to rig the World Trade Center for controlled demolition; isn’t that kind of weird?” so make of it what you will.
None of this is new. GWBush was just a smiling idiot deflecting the military industrial complex designs of Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove, which Bush might have actually even been unaware of. Before that, it was Reagan, providing rehearsed wisecracks to sanitize the founding of the neo-Republicans and their Kennedy-esque foreign policy.
I agree that Trump did not expect to win, and I believe Putin has some degree of leverage over him, though less than 100% control. Putin is enough of a realist to understand the limitations of the presidency in terms of enacting or rescinding policy while retaining popular and political support; and I’m sure he is well acquainted by now with Trump’s general incompetence, unreliability and flailing (none of which I take to be a smokescreen or act).
Putin’s agenda is to weaken the U.S. Trade wars and alienation of allies are big steps towards that goal. I tend to doubt Trump’s divisive racist appeals or Republican tax and budget policies had any input from Putin, rather they existed independently and are coincidentally in line with his goals. Similarly, I do not think Trump’s corrupt enrichment or trampling of democratic principles is Putin-influenced (though they certainly serve his purpose as well); I believe they are natural extensions of a personality who degrades everything he touches and everything – and one - that touches him.
he’s just a distraction while the powers behind him (super rich American citizens) use him to cut regulations and lower taxes to further enrich themselves. he is tolerable so long as he can fulfil these goals - the disintegration of political and societal norms are an acceptable by-product
Destabilize the Two-Party System and create a more likely environment for a viable third party.
I blame Ross Perot. He’s been too quiet lately.
I’d say it’s all of:
Simply enriching themselves.
Working to enhance a foreign power.
Undermine US democracy.
White Supremacy.
The key is, there’s a lot of different groups that all see value in using Trump The Idiot to further their own agendas.
Simply enriching themselves.
This is Trump’s motivation, pure and simple. It’s been his driving force his entire life, and why would he change now? He was told he could line his pockets, and that’s all he wants, and will do or say anything so long as the money flows. If he succeeds while the US fails, he’ll consider that success.
Working to enhance a foreign power.
This is what Russia wants. They don’t care about Trump making money, most of them are already wealthier than him, they probably think he’s cute with his gold plated toilets and whatnot. They want the US taken down a few notches, so that they will gain influence. It really doesn’t matter to them how Trump ruins the US, so yeah, trade wars, border fences, kiddie concentration camps, whatever. If it makes the US look bad, they’re in favor of it.
Undermine US democracy.
This is the Russians on one hand (it is part of the whole “destroy the US plan”), but it’s being helped along by the Tea Party types who love gerrymandering, and fear that a fair vote will mean “white genocide” and “Sharia Law” and all that nonsense. None of them give a crap about things like international trade or diplomacy, so they’re content to let the Russians play their games, so long as they get to keep buggering with the fair elections.
White Supremacy.
These guys see Trump as their Great White Hope, to finally get that race war going. Like the guys who want to destroy democracy, they also don’t give a crap about things like international trade or diplomacy, all they care about is sticking it to the brown people, and they’ll let the other guys do whatever they want, so long as they get to lynch some people.
It’s a perfect storm of deplorables, who all see their chance to get what they want out of Trump, and none of them care that the others are getting things, because none of their desires are mutually exclusive. An isolationist, poor, white, Christian, conservative United States serves all their interests equally, and they don’t care about anyone else’s interests.