# What is Trump's endgame? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [May 12, 2025, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296 "2025-05-12T17:12:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/21 "2025-05-12T20:01:17Z")
> [@Frazzled](#): > > I don’t think he knows what he’s doing is illegal. What the King does is legal. > > I think that’s his endgame - to be King. He wants unrestrained power to gain wealth for himself and his family and hurt those who defy him. I truly do not believe that he will leave office willingly (unless one of his children succeeds him) at the end of his term. Yeah; think his “long term” goal is to die in office, rich and unpunished. Anything after that he doesn’t care about, without Trump the universe will have lost the only meaning and importance it ever had. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/22 "2025-05-12T20:21:13Z")
Apparently, now his lies and paranoid fantasies will be taught as the truth- > **[Yes, Oklahoma's new academic standards say to teach students 2020 election...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/oklahoma-fraud-2020-election-school/)** > > Election fraud conspiracies promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump are now officially part of the state's learning targets for high schoolers. _Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for high school students, which take effect in the 2025-26 school year, do, in fact, require students to learn about so-called “discrepancies” in the 2020 election. The updated guidelines list examples for these discrepancies, all of which are theories not based in evidence — and [many](https://www.snopes.com/collections/no-systematic-voter-fraud-2020/) of which Snopes has independently debunked. Thus, we rate this claim true._ ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/23 "2025-05-13T11:53:02Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Have said it elsewhere: a good use of a time machine would be to go back to the late 30s to mid 50s and tell the Old Money New York elites to welcome Fred Trump’s family among themselves; then just to be sure go to the mid-70s to mid-80s and tell the NYC Hip-Crowd to do the same for Donald. He has been all along someone who feels he and his have been looked down upon from both sides. Just get NBC to not cancel the stupid vapid TV show The Apprentice, and we wouldn’t be in this mess. ---
**Author:** ![BlueOhio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/439d5e/32.png) [@BlueOhio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlueOhio)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/24 "2025-05-13T12:04:01Z")
This really is the new “if only Adolph were a better painter” isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/25 "2025-05-13T12:32:57Z")
Not just wealth and power, but Trump’s plan is dynastic wealth and power that cannot be touched or challenged by authorities for ever. To get there he has to: 1. accumulate as much wealth as possible 2. create favours and obligations that will extend to his heirs once he’s gone 3. make sure his [others would say useless] heirs are locked in to the big plan and won’t try to exercise initiative 4. rig the system to neuter all long-term legal threats he created along the way by buying or breaking every part of the judicial and governmental food chain And somewhere along the way, find time after golfing and texting to run the USA. ---
**Author:** ![ASanders](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asanders/32/3367_2.png) [@ASanders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASanders)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/26 "2025-05-13T13:28:05Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Exactly three things drive him: > > - He wants to be very very rich > - He wants revenge on everyone who’s wronged him (and that includes every single American who voted against him) > - He wants to be recognized as amazing and great (and powerful). > > That’s it. There is nothing else. No plan for an endgame. Just these things and the flattery of whichever fascist toady has spoken to him last I agree, with #3 as primary. I think he literally gets high on adulation and power which is why he needs rallies to prop him up. It’s like oxygen. His ability to move world markets with a tweet has done something to his brain (or what’s left of it). As for the endgame, I don’t think he sees beyond the next deal. That’s for his minions to worry about. Their job is to keep him untouchable so he can continue to amass power and influence on their behalf. I agree that he probably believes there is no “after” the Presidency for him, one way or another. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/27 "2025-05-13T13:30:58Z")
> [@BlueOhio](#): > > This really is the new “if only Adolph were a better painter” isn’t it? Yup. I’m tempted to ask AI what would Adolph would have painted if he was accepted into the art community. But, I can’t step off of that cliff. I’ve asked AI to do specific landscapes by Van Gogh, and it did pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/28 "2025-05-13T13:33:52Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > create favours and obligations that will extend to his heirs once he’s gone I think this at #2 us vastly overestimating how much he cares about his offspring. Also how much self-awareness of his own mortality he has. Personally I doubt it has even occured to him that, as almost 80 year old in not particularly good shape (not that he or any of the toadys he employs as doctors will admit that, even in private) he will be almost certainly be dead in a decade or so. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/29 "2025-05-13T13:37:33Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > I think this at #2 us vastly overestimating how much he cares about his offspring. See his recent, thinly veiled, long held grudge that one or more of his ten year old children wanted 30 dolls (probably a collector’s set) and 250 colored pencils for Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/30 "2025-05-13T15:08:28Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > I think this at #2 us vastly overestimating how much he cares about his offspring. Also how much self-awareness of his own mortality he has. I agree. Even Ivanka seems to no longer be the spawn which he obsesses about, probably because she and Jared have distanced themselves from him. I don’t think that he particularly cares about anything that might transpire after his death, nor does he really care about how people will talk about him after he’s gone – he won’t be there to hear it, and he’s entirely about himself. If he were intelligent enough to understand the idea of solipsism, he’d probably be a solipsist. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/31 "2025-05-13T20:18:25Z")
I had to look that up. Peter Sellars or football? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/32 "2025-05-13T20:22:52Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Peter Sellars or football? The former, I would imagine, as Sellers played the character of that name in _Being There,_ a movie about a strange, simple man, who becomes a Presidential advisor. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296/33 "2025-05-13T20:25:48Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > - He wants to be very very rich > - He wants revenge on everyone who’s wronged him (and that includes every single American who voted against him) > - He wants to be recognized as amazing and great (and powerful). > > That’s it. There is nothing else. No plan for an endgame. Just these things and the flattery of whichever fascist toady has spoken to him last Yep. He can barely plan the end of a spoken sentence; there’s no endgame in any meaningful sense other than ‘more of the same things I want’ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-trumps-endgame/1018296.md?page=1)