According to this Trump ran for president solely for the fame and hopes that he might be envied by all his rich friends.
I dunno. I mean that’s no doubt part of it. Power hunger, sure. But I thought a big part of it was to avoid prison, because there’s a tradition that presidents cannot be arrested.
Am I wrong?
He’d always mananged to avoid prison before, probably because his various scams didn’t stand out against the background of the New York City commercial real estate market. Running for President was actually counterproductive in that regard.
Changing the playing field to his advantage is a huge reason which includes the possibility of no prison, but I think it is to gain power and influence over even the super rich as well as be in a position to better punish who he thinks has wronged him. But I don’t think Trump ever considered he personally would ever go to prison, It’s a side benefit of the plan that he didn’t expect to need to use, like Amazon Prime giving a Whole Foods discount where you don’t live by any, it’s his as part of the package, but not the reason.
Trump wanted to power and ability to put people in prison and be able to pull them out at his whim, and that would be more than self interest in this respect. Trump actually tried this before he was president, using his influence in going after another that did serve time (3 years) on Trump’ed up charges, and also tried to go after Hillary till he was informed that would be impeachable. Trump wants to be king and I’m sure he would have changed his title if he could, and his lawyers tried the term offering him as a ‘elected king’ early in his term.
100% ego. Running for president was like painting a target on his back, but the fanatical warm fuzzies from half of the country was worth the risk.
Everything about why trump does anything can ultimately be explained thusly:
… a narcissist is like an addict with two desires that inform all their actions. The first one is the need for attention, admiration and confirmation that they are the best, the second one is the urge to hide their fragile egos, to keep themselves safe from being exposed as insecure or less good as they portray.*
* IOW to keep from being exposed as the LOSERS they know/fear they really are.
My guess is — well, he likes getting money, and he hates losing, and he sure seems big on not actually telling folks to break the law while making it clear that he’d be glad if you broke the law on his behalf.
So what if he runs to, yes, get some publicity; but with the idea that someone who wants to be president will offer him a straight cash bribe or whatever to drop out and give his endorsement — and then he’ll either crow that he made all the difference as kingmaker if the guy wins, or say I Would’ve Won if the guy loses; but the point is, he didn’t lose, and he got the money, and he asked no one to break a law…
…and then, week after week, he keeps winning, while thinking, fuck, how stupid are you people? I’m not going to spell this out for you; I’d never do that; but why the hell is nobody offering me a bribe yet? Isn’t that the obvious move at this point?
I don’t think anyone was really after him for his questionable behavior in the 2015-2016 time frame. Certainly no worse than previous years and decades. I think he ran because Obama humiliated him and it was a huge ego boost. He looked like the dog who caught the car when he first won, but I’m sure the scheming began right away.
You get access to the big corruption money as well as grey-area money by assuming high office. Why would anyone bribe the not-President?
Presidential immunity from prosecution worked well for Chirac, who was only found guilty and sentenced after leaving office.
I thought his plan was to run and lose, then start a media empire to rival Fox and use it to go after his enemies, like President Hillary.
Seems I also remember hearing somewhere that one reason he decided to run was because he wanted NBC to pay him more for “The Apprentice” than they were paying Christina Aguilera on “The Voice”, and they wouldn’t. (In which case, if NBC could have coughed up a few million extra, they might have saved this country a whole lot of heartache.)
I think he did it for the grift (campaign money) and didn’t really expect to win.
But what if you don’t wind up assuming high office? What if you lose the election, or fail to even clinch the party’s nomination, instead of going out on a high note when endorsing a guy who publicly makes a big show of agreeing with everything you say and privately arranges for you to get a lot of money?
For his endorsement.
I doubt the plan was to become president to avoid getting prosecuted for all the corruption/tax evasion etc. I don’t think even he realized how easy it would be to use the presidency to shield himself from consequences and even as is its not clear that was more effective than just not doing something like eun for president that would draw more scrutiny to his finances.
I don’t know exactly what the particular reason was but it seems like it was a vanity project. I don’t think Trump has ever thought he would face consequences for anything he does.
Then you scream about the fake election.
My hunch as well. I’ll add, that illogical as it sounds or seems, that what he wanted to win the election, but he really didn’t want to actually be a president. His laziness, shallowness and incurious nature is an anathema to holding such a position.
Eventually he figured out he didn’t actually have to do the work.
I’ve always assumed it was all ego and/or part of promoting whatever new cable news channel he was promoting at the time (I’ve forgotten–that’s how much I cared about it.) And I don’t really think he expected to win. (He was peddling “election fraud” back then, in my read assuming he would lose, and also I remember Trumpites all of a sudden being interested in the electoral college, thinking he might lose THAT but win the popular vote.)
I am 100% convinced he was not planning on winning. He was hoping to get a bunch of free publicity (and in the process convince more suckers to loan him money). Moan about the liberal establishment cheating him out of his rightful presidency (and gouge more money in the process) then go back to running Trump org and reap the profits.
He wanted the title not the job. Unlike most presidential candidates he had no particular policy that he wanted enacted and no vision for America, he just knew that the president was the arguably most prestigious and powerful position on the planet and so he wanted it.
I don’t think his thoughts and brain are organized or neat enough to be conscious of a rational reason to run for president. It changed with his mood (like the valuation of his fortune, he does that a lot) and depended on the person he had just spoken to. When he felt aggrieved, he tought the presidency would allow him to teach those bad hombres a lesson, and he liked it. When he sensed him being president was outrageous to some people he disliked or held a grudge against, he liked that. When somebody hinted that he could make money out of it, he day dreamed about it, and it felt good. When he was told the presidency is power, he loved it (though he misunderstood power and did not get Hillary in jail, but he got the RSI to investigate some rivals and enemies, among many other things). When he realized he would be worshiped, he had an orgasm. When people bent over backwards to do what they thought he wanted (and yes, they were often right, as subtle concerning his wishes he was not) his lazy streak was tickled pink. And so on.
I don’t believe he ever understood the presidency, but the feeling was often good. Yeah, he would take that. He has been flirting with this idea since last century and often enough people were appalled. Good!
This is what I had heard and came in to post as well. Running for President was just supposed to be publicity to pose himself as an anti-liberal iconoclast for a proposed trump network-- nobody, including trump himself, thought he had a snowball’s chance of winning. I remember hearing that, when trump first realized he’d actually won, his initial reaction was more shocked surprise and dismay than joyous victory.
Of course, he soon warmed up to the role when he realized it got him even more attention than he got on The Apprentice, and he didn’t really have to do much normal Presidentin’ stuff that he didn’t want to do-- nobody called him out on watching several hours of TV a day and blowing off the more boring meetings.