This is how Donald Trump is saying goodbye to us.
He is doing everything he can due to make sure he doesn’t win the November election.
Think of ever insensitive and erratic thing he does as another little wave goodby from the limousine window.
It is the very thing journalists and fellow politicians would never dream of him doing.
Day by day, the evidence mounts in my mind – I’m usually out of step with mainstream thinking – that President Trump doesn’t want to win the election.
He wants to wreak havoc and cement his ties to his ardent loyalists and leave Washington, which he hates, and retire to Mar-A-Largo, which he loves, to wreak havoc in comfort.
There, he will after a decent interval replace the gravely ill Rush Limbaugh and spend the rest of his life playing golf, broadcasting his many conspiracy theories, and trying to prove Barack Obama was born in Africa and that James Come and Hilary Clinton should be locked up.
He can stage rallies wherever he likes, for the rest of his life, and sell a million Mega hats.
He will still be a big story every day.
The media will go where he goes; they will never abandon a cash cow like him.
An ex-President Trump will do precisely what he does now: ignore the details of governing people and the responsibilities of leadership and promote himself full-time.
It’s the same job, just in a different and warmer place.
Think of the fun he will have lobbying for the building of a statue to William (“Bloody Bill”) Anderson, the Confederate guerrilla leader and butcher who slaughtered innocent civilians all over Missouri before he was shot dead by the 33rd Infantry, Enrolled Missouri Militia, in Albany, N.Y.
A statue to Anderson, he might claim on his radio show, will honor American history, as opposed to the left-wing radical crazies whose name, like the Hebrew God of Israel, can never be mentioned. (Hint, the initials are BLM).
Think of how free he would be to say crazy shit all day long and not have to answer to all those obnoxious reporters (a/k/a) “scumbags, and enemies of the people.”
Careful, Joe. Could Trump out of office be even worse than Trump in office?
Friday’s shocker.
Has there ever been a worse time than now to take people’s health care away from them, amid a rampaging virus and five months before an election?
And with no replacement in sight?
Didn’t we just do this in 2018 and witness a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives? Is Trump a double-agent setting up a takeover of the Senate as well?
I’ve said it before and am not afraid to repeat it; this is not the behavior of someone who wants to win an election.
Neither was Tulsa, the ultimate pointless wound, for that matter, or the next looming disaster (right behind the resurgent pandemic), the Republican Convention in Jacksonville.
The virus is heading right up the Florida coast, almost as if it were setting yet another trap for the man who doesn’t believe in it. Does a virus have a sense of humor?
After Jacksonville, half of the Secret Service will be quarantined, and most, if not all, of Trump’s campaign staff.
In the wake of the disastrous Tulsa rally, soaring coronavirus infections in his most Trumpian states, and a hemorrhaging economy that will take a few years to fix, the President has made yet another suicide move.
He just can’t stop himself.
Trump is now formally asking the Supreme Court to Strike Down the Affordable Care Act and knock tens of millions of Americans off of their only health care amid a brutal pandemic and just before a presidential election.
The Democrats could hardly believe their good fortune.
When this was announced Friday, every single leading Democratic figure rushed to a TV studio or Twitter to reignite the bitter political debate over health care that cost the Republicans the House of Representatives.
This momentarily detracted from the race war he is hoping to provoke by sending federal agents out all over the country to keep statues of Confederate Generals from being removed and battle with the people protesting police brutality.
This, as the country, is reeling from police shootings, rallies, and the surging popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement. Everyone wants to have a conversation about race, this isn’t it.
Do U.S. Marshal’s have nothing better to do? Wyatt Earp is spinning in his grave. I can’t imagine him sneaking around at night to save a statue of anyone.
Really, why would anyone think that Donald Trump would want to spend four more years in a city he hates, and a home he despises trying to patch a bleeding economy back together in a country with a higher deficit than anyone imagined possible?
Or deal with a Congress that will either be stalemated by Nancy Polisi and her Democratic Majority or even worse, by a Democratic Senate?
Trump is making this more and more likely every day with his increasingly erratic and foolish behavior.
We know the President is a narcissist, but he would have to be stark raving mad to think this his response to these momentous issues will get him re-elected.
I’ve always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and I love his idea that what is the most probable is what is the most likely thing to happen or have happened.
I didn’t even mention the pandemic, which is now the most lethal opponent in his re-election plan. I thought it deserved its own paragraph. This is a more powerful and deadly opponent that Joe Biden.
Dr. Fauci and his researchers are convinced -and increasingly vocal about it – that the virus is not over yet and will return with a vengeance once the weather gets colder, which will be right around election time.
That is perhaps the worst news for President Trump. But there is a lot more.
There is his great friend, the PresidentPresident of China, who is about to stomp all over the freedom cherished by Hong Kong and is sending troops and ships to threaten every American ally in the South China sea.
(Oh, I hate to break this to my farmer friends, but there sure as Hell will be no trade agreements with China any time soon. These friends aren’t speaking to one another now.)
And there is his other friend, Kim El Jong, who is said to have built five times as many new nuclear missiles in his country as existed before they became pals. He just blew up the building on the North-South Korea border where peace talks had been held for decades.
Not a good sign.
Yet another friend, Alexandr Putin, is said by U.S. Intelligence agencies to have ordered the Russian military to offer cash bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops and other Nato coalition forces. The New York Times reported on Friday.
Is Putin a part of the Deep State too?
British newspapers are reporting that the European Union is about to ban Americans from traveling to Europe because they have no confidence in the Trump administration’s ability to manage the coronavirus.
The Europeans believe it is now out of control here.
That is a humiliating blow to the United States, once considered the scientific leader and role model in the world.
And the pandemic is so bad that Florida residents are now beginning to flee Florida for New York, reports the Miami Herald. This is where Trump wants to be nominated.
I’m wondering what life in a second term would be like for Trump, who hates criticism and defeat, is disinterested in and bored by policy issues, hates being hold up in the White House, loathes quarrelsome and independent journalists, and has few friends outside of golf buddies in Florida.
He will have no money to build walls, and all those many forthcoming victims of the coronavirus will be hating him, suing him, giving interviews about him, and voting against him.
If I’m worrying about what another round in the White House will be like for him, I am sure he and Melania are worried about it too.
He is 74, he looks like Hell, and there is that beautiful place by the sea waiting for papa.
He could have everything he wants by leaving the office in November.
He could be a martyr, claiming Democrats rigged the election, he could flirt with White Nationalists all he wants, and still be on the front page and all cable news channels every morning, noon and night.
He can call neo-Nazi’s “good people” and immigrants “rapists” all he wants on his radio show, which will be devoured hungrily by many millions of angry old white men, they can rage together about those dread socialist congressional women in funny clothes all day.
And they will be sorely missing the ailing Rush Limbaugh, who, we are told, is Trump’s true media hero, even more than the people on Fox News. Limbaugh also flirts with White and other nationalists and also loves conspiracy theories.
Trump is Limbaugh on steroids; it could work.
Even that wall is getting problematic.
Immigrants are said to be tunneling under his cherished project, cutting holes in it with metal saws, flying over it in wooden gliders, and getting around it in small undetectable submarines used by drug dealers.
Some enterprising people from Mexico have simply climbed over the wall, using the same technology rock climbers due in the Western United States.
Last week, Trump flew down to the border to trumpet the success of is wall. This is an almost sure sign it isn’t working.
I should say there are also continuing reports that he is ill, even before his strange walk down that airplane ramp and the trouble he had lifting a glass of water to his mouth during his speech at West Point.
Two different political websites have suggested a chronic and debilitating illness I am not comfortable naming.
But the most respected and ethical journalists in Washington all believe he is sick, and that is why he was rushed to a military hospital in Washington last November without ever explaining the trip.
Other issues are dogging Trump, from his much sought after-tax returns to a dozen lawsuits and investigations into his business practices around the country that he is trying to get his legal lackey, Attorney General Barr, to block or squash.
That might be the only reason he could want to stay in power, but he’s been successfully fending off lawsuits and investigations all of his life.
I don’t believe he wants to spend many of the remaining years of his life like this. Nothing about his life or behavior suggests in any way that he is happy. And poll after poll suggests he is edging into the hopeless zone.
Trump’s behavior is inexplicable in recent months if you take him seriously as a candidate. His behavior makes perfect sense if you don’t think he wants to win.
Trump doesn’t seem to care anymore.
He is working hard to solidify what the media calls his “base,” so that they will support and follow him into the next chapter, whatever it is.
You can rest assured it will be divisive.
I’m sorry, but nobody has a better explanation for his behavior. And he is only getting worse.
He hadn’t recovered from his Bible Fiasco when he insisted on a new one, the Tulsa Fiasco. Now he has the Coronavirus Fiasco, and his deranged deployment of U.S. Marshal’s to save the generals who fought so gallantly for slavery.
Maybe he is only watching Fox News these days. I believe he is saying goodbye to us with each Fiasco, and the many more to come.
I’m having a hard time grasping why so many people are so afraid of this man. He seems to have no idea what he is doing and sounds like an old scratchy gramophone recording of a robber baron railing against the commies.
It’s the moderates and independents who will decide the November election, not me or you.
It is as if he had a list of every single thing they dislike about him and is turning dislike into hate, every day.
I’ll be happy to stick my neck out; I’m doing great so far this election.
Trump is saying goodbye to us. As we now know, he never expected to or expected to win in the first place. He feels stung and rejected, a figure full of self-pity and grievance.
He’ll show all of us. He’ll just leave.
His disasters are not just disasters; they are a way out with some dignity, farewell to the White House and his miserable and joyless life, and to the dull and obstinate blocks and obstacles of government bureaucracy a force much greater than him.
Think of each one of these angry and desperate zigs and zags as a little “goodbye.”
Think of him smiling out the window and cackling to himself as he gets on the green chopper and heads for his castle by the sea.
Exactly what I said. You could tell by the look on his face when he won!
You stole my thunder. I was going to comment on that look, too. He never wanted the office, he just wanted to win. And now he’s sabotaging, his chance as much as he can, mainly to avoid spending the rest of his life in court, if not in prison.
Oh, Jon, I believe you have hit the bullseye on this, my friend.
Trump does not want to do any ‘heavy lifting’. That’s something he never did throughout his entire life and never will do
All he wants is the adoration. The followers. The chaos.
And I believe his noise will roar on in our ears for quite some time after he has ‘left the building’
But Jon, he won’t be allowed to retire serenely at Mar-a-Lago. There are all those charges against him in New York that could–and should–put him in jail. He’s only running for re-election to avoid being arrested. I could almost feel sorry for him after seeing the picture of him returning, defeated, from Tulsa until I remember all the cruel, heartless things he has done to innocent people. But as my mother used to say, “It doesn’t make the medicine taste any better to know you brewed it yourself.”
I do believe you may be right…I hope and pray he does not do too much damage before he has to leave the White House. I saw an interview with James Carville (the “Ragin Cajun” he said the same thing. My nerves could not take another 4 years of this mess!
Good article Jon…
Hi Jon,
You said, “He wants to … leave Washington, which he hates, and retire to Mar-A-Largo, which he loves ….” Dear God, would that were so. I have a comforting image, at least to me, of him sailing off to the edge of the world and toppling over.
But I have this question: what about the possibility that, as no longer the sitting President, he would be legally open to an indictment regarding his misdoings enumerated in the Mueller Russia probe? That fear might well make him want to seek re-election, if for no other reason than to stave off that possibility.
Furthermore, what if his “big story every day” involves an indictment, a trial and perhaps ultimately prison? Boy, would the media love to follow that gold mine!
Nancy F
What do you imagine The Trump Presidential Library will be like, and where will it be?
I know this has nothing to do with what you wrote about – it just got me wondering…
A Reader’s Digest from the 1950s in the [white] men’s lavatory at Mar-a-Lago.
I like your article, but the typos and grammatical errors are hard to overlook. Please use the Chicago Manual of Style for reference. P.S. It’s Pelosi.
Nancy, please go read someone else if you don’t like the errors, thanks, we’ll get a refund right out to you… and if you do hang around, don’t tell me what to read or buy,it’s rude and obnoxious..lots of things are worse than typos…
Bravo, Jon!
Man, I love reading your razor sharp perspective on that idiot!! SO insightful and meaty.
Thanks Heather..
I hope and pray you are correct. It doesn’t seem there is any joy in his life. The only thing he seems to want to do is to inflict the most pain and cruelty onto as many people as possible. I enjoy your posts and also the videos produced by the Lincoln Project. This is a group of Republicans who are doing everything possible to ensure Trump doesn’t get re-elected. The one I saw this morning was Trump talking about too much testing. Maybe the cure for cancer is to just eliminate screenings. Then no one would have it. Who knew it would be so simple! Anyway, the video concluded with the phrase, Trump or America. In my opinion we can’t have both. Keep up the insightful thoughts Jon.
Pam, I’ve always thought of him as a sad, lonely and unhappy man..he draws angry people like bees to honey
this writing really made me think…… what I hope for – is he loses & the media doesn’t pay attention to him. Yes, I believe you are right that Trump TV type empire is most probable – although I didn’t think about him replacing Limbaugh which was an interesting observation.
I also believe he is a weak, scared incompetent man – but he holds the most powerful job in the country. I am just hoping when he no longer has that power, that we all just ignore him. Trump needs attention like an alcoholic needs a drink. Yelling at him, raging at what outrageous thing he says only feeds him. Ignore him & focus on those in power who are working for the people is the best revenge.
I am so looking forward to Joe Biden being President & just not having to think about politics 24/7. I heard a testimony on RVAT.org of a Republican voting for Biden. He said “Biden is boring…… & after the last 4 years, boring sounds wonderful.” I think this is true for many of us.
Thanks Kim, I think the media will always pay attention to him because it boosts their ratings and makes a lot of money, even when they pretend to hate him..
So the solution is for us to stop paying attention to any media that keeps paying attention to Trump when he’s gone. When viewership and ad revenue decline, they’ll move on to next outrage du jour. And, alas, there will always be another one. May be they’ll revisit Hillary’s emails! Or Benghazi!
Well Antoinette it probably won’t look half as bad as Obamas America which we’re living now. Kaboom. Think of this Joe Biden and Bob Mueller. Whew. God rest my father’s soul who suffered dementia….. I see some similarities.
I think this is wishful thinking. There are a handful of power hungry people around him (Pompeo, Bar, Ivana) that do want four more years. There are also at least 2 deceitful world superpowers that would love to influence/rig our elections to keep the USA in chaos. Not to mention SO many people don’t see a great choice between either 2 old white men, so they may stay home and not vote which benefits Trump. I think it’s too soon to count him out though I totally agree he doesn’t want this job anymore. His ego may not allow him to walk away even if he can blame someone else. It’s a great tooic to discuss and debate. Thanks for presenting it.
I might be right or wrong, Mary, but I don’t do wishful thinking. He’s in a lot of deep trouble, I’m not quite sure how anyone paying attention to the election can fail to see it, and most people do see it. But we’ll see soon enough, I’m not going to argue with people about it.
Are disagreeing and arguing the same thing?
Not necessarily Mary, I think it depends on the tone. What I object to is when people are rude or offensive to me because we disagree..I don’t generally argue my ideas on social media with strangers, but disagreement is welcome, and as you can see, pretty constant. Doesn’t bother me a bit. When we don’t respect each other, I have a big problem and don’t put up with it. Disagree with me all you want, argue if you choose, but don’t call me names on my own blog..
And what are we supposed to make of “hidin” Joe Biden who can’t remember what state he’s in, hasn’t commented on anything of significance in three months or can’t even remember where he pottyied last.
Robert, he sounds perfectly well qualified to be President. Why should this bother you?
I want to believe these are the last few months of Trump as president. But then i remember being in London in Oct 2016. My 3 sisters and I were eating lunch near after a tour of Westminster Abbey and started chatting with a 30-ish yr old guy who worked in some capacity in the Prime Minister’s office. He asked who we thought would win the election and we 3 confidently said Hilary. Look at the polls, we said. Nobody would be crazy enough to vote for Trump, we said. Then he sheepishly said that he thought Trump would win. That was the first time I had heard someone “reasonable” say that and it shocked me. And I didn’t believe it. But alas… That’s what makes me mentally prepare for the worst in November. As much as I want to believe this is the end and as tightly as my fingers are crossed, I just can’t NOT think we’ll get another 4 years.
Joanne, I sympathize, but it’s time to move forward and get our heads out of the muck..It does no good to fret about the past, anything can happen. I believe Trump has quit on the whole business and is self-destructing, consciously or not. That’s where I am,if you want to tremble over the past, your choice..I’m moving forward…
I think the Republicans missed a great opportunity when they refused to entertain the chance to impeach him. Hopefully, not only is trump toast, but also the Republicans seem to have a pretty deep hole to climb out of.
Thank you for your brilliant and incisive writings. I post them on my Facebook page usually daily. You are almost too kind to #notmypresident. Bless you and yours.
Thanks for a fresh take on the always incomprehensible, reprehensible Toddler in Chief. Makes perfect sense.
Even if you are right, and I’m not convinced you are, Trump has created a monster he cannot control. Yes, in a sane world it looks like he’s sabotaging his re-election, but are we in a sane world? A man who lives for nonstop adulation and attention trying to lose? Really? Even if he “takes over for Limbaugh” (who is this close to being a YouTube star rather than a major media personality), he won’t have the audience he has now. I’m not convinced that the media won’t continue to cover him 24 x 7, but if he is seriously ill, he’ll only be entertaining for a short time.
The bigger worry is his well-armed minions, who he has already convinced that any election which doesn’t result in his winning is a usurping of American democracy. There is going to be a very high death toll if they, for example, storm the White House to prevent him from leaving and the Bidens from entering. Do you really think the media will cover him forever if there is a body count associated with bodily throwing him out? The generals have had quite enough of him, so I am no longer concerned about them coming to his aid (unless the rank-and-file are full of neo-Nazis, which is of course possible). Donald Trump has always operated according to his own short-term self-interest. He’s not even thinking that far ahead. And by the way, the case before the Supreme Court was brought by Republican attorneys general, not by the Trump administration. Yes, they have signed on, but truthfully I don’t think Trump himself is thinking beyond destroying anything with Obama’s name on it.
Jill, I’m not a prophet nor writing out of hatred or fear. Trump is, for whatever reason, destroying his prospects for re-election, and I doubt the pandemic will give him a way out. He has staked out the most insane position for himself that I can imagine. If you can’t or don’t want to see it, that is your right.
Personally, I don’t think there are many questions about it, and I have no interest in moaning about the future because the present is so uncomfortable. We will get the future we deserve and work for, and we won’t get it by feeling sorry for ourselves. Of course it will be difficult..what did you expect?
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” ~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle