"I'm a victim. I will tell you. I'm a victim." pic.twitter.com/91HQfhOk9v
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 16, 2022
Some people will try and say that Donald Trump's main reason for running for the office of the presidency again is because he wants to avoid legal repercussions for (waves hands about) everything. But no--he enjoys the legal jeopardy from which he never suffered (yet) actual lasting harm. He is a martyr. A riveting icon. He's only being self-serving and opportunistic for you.
He gives. He gives. He keeps on giving and he gives some more. And all he wants is his spot.
It helps to see Trump as an avatar of a primordial attention-daemon that has to publicly jerk itself off to continue existing. I mean, maybe it doesn't, but it helps me, anyway. This guy gave a long-ass speech to pretend to justify what his ends were in running. He could have just said: "Where's my spotlight?"
Now, he could have said: "Show me the money." We know now that foreign governments did their best to influence Trump via spending at his properties. (You know how foreign governments always are trying it. Russia no exception, am I right?) But Trump also milked the federal government for all it was worth. I mean, worth to him. Every penny he charged the Secret Service, and all that.
You can try and sell me a story that Trump took those documents he had at Mar-A -Lago, and they were all about his ego, and I might say sure--but only because he was too daft to figure out how to capitalize on them in a timely fashion, and he would have gladly accepted cash. What with him being so generally cash-poor and over-extended credit-wise anyway.
So sure, Trump can paint a rosy picture of the four years where he spent decades not getting us into war, and never bat an eyelash. Surely, he means, he dodged personally getting himself into war fifty years ago by bearing the same affliction as Oedipus, for which I have a handy sobriquet for him that I will leave to your imagination. Although we certainly fought in Niger, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, with Iran--only, other people took the blows. And Trump never understood their sacrifice or what it cost. He was too busy congratulating himself over his love letters with the man who sent Otto Warmbier to us more dead than alive.
He can, in an obviously Stephen Miller-influenced speech, reinvoke American Carnage, but he is nonetheless the man who wanted to shoot border crossers in the knees, cleared peaceful protesters with tear gas, and raised up an insurrection on the Capitol complex itself.
As unfit as Trump was in 2015, when he came down his golden escalator and told a crowd paid off for $50 apiece that he wanted to fix America with "branding", he is so much more unfit now that it should be criminal to even contemplate how...how...how obviously broken the GOP must be that they will probably not stop it. Their donors, their electeds, even their propaganda wing. They might know he's a saggy old self-regarding fool who will be a disaster--and they are ready to court disaster again.
Even if he's under investigation for however many terrible things. They don't learn. They realize their bench is replete with boring assholes and nattering dipshits. And he already demonstrated he could win, once.
What have they got left to lose? Dignity? When they hold a seance for their dignity, the Ouija board catches fire.
The party either figures out how to eject Trump, or this is really all they will have. Nothing but Trump. And he never should have been it, all along.
2 comments:
What else has Trump got left? If he doesn't run for President, he has got nothing. His businesses are failures, he is a defendant in dozens of lawsuits and investigations. The only thing he has to draw crowds any more is running for President.
As much as I am sure he loves money and has a price for everything--the attention, and particularly the power of office, the power to persuade, I think, attract him. He seemed too excited to align himself with Putin, MbS, etc. He sees a kindred spirit with them.
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