I had never seriously considered this question, but then I read the Washington Post’s article about Trump’s phone call to Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State. The Washington Post
These are not the rantings of a well man. I am genuinely alarmed, not at the general principle of at all, but that Trump is ailing badly. Normal people do not handle losses, even significant ones, like this. As a school teacher, I would always refer a student to the counselor or school psychologist if his/her reaction was out of proportion to the crisis at hand. This one pings my alarm pretty hard.
So, my reasoning is that Trump likely knows things that the rest of us do not. Trump knows the crimes he has committed – at least some of them. He may know of extremely unpleasant consequences coming toward him once he leaves office. We also know that, at heart, Trump is a sniveling coward. So, I now see suicide as perfectly in line with his response to approaching difficulty. It is the final way to avoid the consequences of his actions, go down in history as the first (and likely for a long while, only) president to die by his own hand, and it leaves his messes for others to clean up. January 20 would be the perfect day to do this because his sudden death would totally obscure Biden’s big day. He could also become a right-wing martyr – his death was brought about by Biden and the evil Democrats stealing the election. He was simply too good to live in this fallen world.
Please understand that I do not, in any way, hope for Trump’s untimely demise. Upon his passing, I will weep as I would for any fellow traveler of this mortal coil. What do y’all think?
He’s not capable of acknowledging that he’s really in trouble. Any crimes he committed are more like “opportunities for witch hunts.” He will never stop denying his flaws and crimes, tooting his own horn, and airing his pathetic grievances.
I have no research to support this, but I suspect it’s very rare for narcissists to kill themselves. They’re too important, they’re the star of this show, they explain away shame and blame everyone else. I can’t imagine Trump doing it because he’d have to acknowledge the reality of how shitty he is and how much he’s fucked, and the narcissism/delusion/pathological lying would negate it. I would bet something like 10:1 against Trump killing himself.
He like an New Jersey Santa Claus. If only Jeff Sessions were still around to be his elf helper.
I was actually quite worried about that but I’ve been heartened to see resistance to dangerous and illegal orders by the professional military leadership even if their political bosses do not have such scruples. Trump may attempt to declare martial law or start a war with Iran in the next couple of weeks, but I suspect the most he will really accomplish is agitating some ‘Proud Boys’ into threatening a few more public officials.
As for committing suicide, it is not in his nature. Trump’s modus operandi is to blame everyone else for his troubles and offing himself would hew too close to having to accept his own failings. I do want to see him refuse to leave the Oval Office and have to be carried out but I imagine Ivanka or another close confidant will talk him out of that indignity, and he’ll sit in his uber-tacky penthouse in Trump Tower pouting and tweeting out insults and barely veiled threats until Russian mobsters come around looking to collect on their loans to him.
Trump’s value to Russia is way bigger than the money laundering. He’s going to be a shit-stirrer that destabilizes the US as long as he wins, tweeting as a President-in-exile, trying to encourage terrorism among his cultists. I’ve seen a lot of people express the sentiment that Trump is fucked after he’s president because he serves no use to Russia anymore, but this is very very wrong - Trump is very much still useful to Russia for the rest of his life.
Trump is clearly a narcissist, possibly also a psychopath. The data indicate that narcissists may be slightly less likely to attempt suicide overall, although perhaps not so much as intuition suggests; but that if they do attempt suicide they are more likely to succeed.
The act of committing suicide requires mental instability and more than a little courage. He has plenty of the former but none of the latter. It would be the best thing he could do for humanity, so on those grounds alone I rule out his doing it.
As is often the case, I should have been a bit more careful with how I worded my comment. I should have started with the words, “If allowed to, he will kill us all before he kills himself.”
Like you, I have been cheered a bit by the response of military leadership. Still, much damage has been done and there are still more than 2 weeks to go. Interminable.
I’m in the camp that believes Trump will gradually lose his relevance as time goes on. Trump gave many jaw-dropping gifts to Putin, but he did it in such a ham-handed manner, Putin was unable to accomplish his main goal: To have sanctions lifted. But Trump is obviously insane, to normal-thinking people such as the OP. This also limits his usefulness to Putin.
Now that Putin’s widespread crimes against the US have been revealed, Putin and his Russia are going to pay a severe price for them. Had Trump been even a little more subtle, I’d allow he could remain much more useful to Putin.
Getting back to suicide, it’s the last thing I expect Trump to do. In Trump’s world, nothing is more important than the well being of Trump.
The crisis that Trump is facing is the collapse of his image of himself, his financial empire, and his personal freedom. Any would-be dictator would be working just as hard to maintain power and security. The difference is that Trump is bad at it because he’s stupid, not that his motivations are intrinsically irrational.
While that is true, Russia has plenty of avenues to stir shit in American politics and polarize society. A big section of the Republican party has essentially fallen for the virtual honeytrap of conspiranoia and radical Christian evangelism, most of which is driven by disinformation and propaganda campaigns run by Russian intelligence. Trump became a lightning rod for a particular type of malcontent, but I don’t think he was ever expected to actually win the 2016 election, and it probably would have been more advantageous to the Russians if Hillary Clinton had won, resulting in four years of total legislative gridlock and a more aggressive foreign policy that may have embroiled the US in another foreign war to further detriment of military readiness and morale.
Suicide isn’t in his toolbox, because that is admitting defeat. If he’s in really, really serious legal trouble, fleeing the country to a place like Russia or Saudi Arabia is a possibility.
I think this is a narrow view of Putin’s agenda. Putin a KGB agent from the cold war. He’s enacting the strategy of The Foundations of Geopolitics. He wanted to destabilize and weaken America, both as his current geopolitical enemy, but also as his past one. He wanted to stick it to us, it’s what he has tried to do his entire life.
I’d have to do some reading, but I’m pretty sure the sanctions on Russia have been loosened/less enforced through Trump’s tenure even if they didn’t get entirely repealed. But that was a secondary goal to Putin - his primary goal is to weaken the United States, and he has succeeded incredibly well at it. This could be argued as the greatest intelligence/espionage feat of all time.
It’s true they didn’t expect Trump to win. Putin probably wanted what Trump wanted - for Trump to lose and then start the Trump News Network and talk about how the election was a sham and he’s the real president and basically try to attack the fabric of American society. I strongly, strongly disagree that this would’ve been preferable. Trump winning was an incredible gift. He was able to destroy the fabric of American society, to make us more polarized than we’ve ever been (and I truly believe that we’re more polarized today than we were in the civil war, even if it doesn’t line up as nicely), we don’t know yet the extent to which Trump compromised our intelligence. He set up backchannels and secret, unrecorded meetings to Putin. He allowed Russia’s foreign policy to run wild. He did nothing about one of the biggest and most consequential hacks of all time. He almost certainly fed Russia classified information.
What Putin accomplished is, like, Bond villain level espionage, and the US will stay divided with itself for decades to come, greatly hastening our decline. It’s hard to judge history this early, but I suspect Putin may go down as one of the greatest men - in the sense of Alexander the Great or Ghenghis Khan - of all time, almost single handedly taking down the greatest empire in the history of the world.
I’m aware of Putin’s history. I’m also aware that he is under incredible pressure by his oligarchs to get those sanctions lifted. Controlling the oligarchs is the source of much of his power. Putin is in a rather weak position politically within his own country – which is what drove him to take such desperate measures in the first place. They did pay off beyond his wildest dreams.
I’m in agreement with what you’ve written, but the sanctions really were at the heart of Putin’s subversion of the 2016 election initially. That said, he’s adroit enough to have shifted his priorities under changing conditions (e.g., Trump winning the election).
I won’t engage further in a hijack on this topic in this thread. Happy to continue the discussion elsewhere, if you wish.