Who Knows What Trump Is Up To?
October 22, 2016 at 4:59 a.m.
By Gary [email protected]
“As I recall, at the beginning of Trump’s campaign, you opined in News Views that he was entering the race just to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Please let us know if that is still your opinion,” the reader suggested.
Fair enough. Here we go.
Indeed I did posit the proposition that Trump really wasn’t all that interested in becoming president.
I said he was more interested in promoting his brand with a rogue presidential campaign, and that in the event he lost the primary, he would run as an independent, all but handing Hillary the nomination.
That column was written on Aug. 15, 2015, under the headline “Here’s What I Think Trump Is Up To.”
Here’s an excerpt:
My prediction:
If Trump is not the GOP nominee – which he most assuredly will not be – he will run as an independent.
He will siphon away from the GOP nominee the 20-something percent of people who would vote him even if he was the guy who shot Cecil the lion.
Hillary will become president and will be dutifully beholden her major benefactor – Donald Trump.
If you can’t be president, you might as well own one, right?
You know the Clintons are just loving every minute of this, don’t you?
I truly hope I am wrong about this and there’s a fair chance I am.
But if I’m not, I can tell you this: If Hillary is elected and Trump calls, she’ll answer.
Earlier in the column – quoting from the Washington Post – I pointed out the reasons for my bold prediction.
Seems Bill Clinton and Trump had a telephone conversation in late spring of 2015 right about the time Trump was deciding on a run for president.
According to the Post, four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump to play a larger role in the Republican Party. Clinton also offered his own views of the political landscape.
Add to this the fact that Trump gave money to Hillary during her Senate campaign and the Clinton Foundation.
Add to these facts that Bill and Hillary were admired guests at Trump’s wedding and Trump always spoke glowingly of Bill and Hillary right up until he won the nomination.
And let’s also add that Trump, for the most part, was never really a conservative.
So back to my prediction.
The part that tripped me up was that he won the nomination. Nobody – and I mean nobody – saw that coming.
I am willing to bet that Trump was as surprised as anyone else at the outcome.
I honestly don’t believe he thought he would win. And I’m not convinced he really wanted to win.
Remember the primary election?
It’s like he was trying to lose. At every campaign stop, at every debate, he went out of his way to offend large blocks of voters.
He was saying all the wrong things all the time. But the more of those things he said, the more people cheered him on for being an “outsider” or not being part of the “establishment.”
And he became the nominee.
After that I thought perhaps things would change.
And things did change. Things got worse.
He ramped it up.
He offended even more voting blocks. He gave the media more than enough story lines to keep them from covering Clinton stories like the foundation or the state department emails or the WikiLeaks stuff about the misdeeds of Democratic party insiders.
No time for those stories. Gotta run hour after hour of Trump’s groping or Trump’s attacks on Gold Star families or any other in an endless stream of Trump screwups.
And I can’t help but think this is what the Trump campaign wants.
I can’t believe that he is shunning the advice of sage campaign operatives so he can go it alone and make campaign blunder after campaign blunder.
It’s like his reality show. You know, it’s all scripted.
Say what you want about him, he – and all the people around him – are not idiots. I’m pretty sure that if they really wanted to, they could have mounted a formidable campaign.
It’s not like they didn’t have any ammunition. But did Trump come out with any crafty attacks based on Hillary’s numerous faults? Nah, better to denigrate people who criticized him.
It simply makes no sense – unless that was the plan, unless that was exactly what they were trying to do.
And despite his best efforts to derail himself, he’s still not completely out of the race, which is a perfect testament to just how awful a candidate Hillary is.
I simply can’t believe Trump is so unhinged that he can’t control himself.
I believe it’s all by design.
It’s either that, or I finally have lost my mind from years of thinking too much about politics.
If I’m not delusional, what’s the end game?
Are Republicans being duped into a plot to relegate their party to a political scrapheap for a generation?
Who knows?
But what if the electorate calls the bluff and elects Trump?
“As I recall, at the beginning of Trump’s campaign, you opined in News Views that he was entering the race just to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Please let us know if that is still your opinion,” the reader suggested.
Fair enough. Here we go.
Indeed I did posit the proposition that Trump really wasn’t all that interested in becoming president.
I said he was more interested in promoting his brand with a rogue presidential campaign, and that in the event he lost the primary, he would run as an independent, all but handing Hillary the nomination.
That column was written on Aug. 15, 2015, under the headline “Here’s What I Think Trump Is Up To.”
Here’s an excerpt:
My prediction:
If Trump is not the GOP nominee – which he most assuredly will not be – he will run as an independent.
He will siphon away from the GOP nominee the 20-something percent of people who would vote him even if he was the guy who shot Cecil the lion.
Hillary will become president and will be dutifully beholden her major benefactor – Donald Trump.
If you can’t be president, you might as well own one, right?
You know the Clintons are just loving every minute of this, don’t you?
I truly hope I am wrong about this and there’s a fair chance I am.
But if I’m not, I can tell you this: If Hillary is elected and Trump calls, she’ll answer.
Earlier in the column – quoting from the Washington Post – I pointed out the reasons for my bold prediction.
Seems Bill Clinton and Trump had a telephone conversation in late spring of 2015 right about the time Trump was deciding on a run for president.
According to the Post, four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump to play a larger role in the Republican Party. Clinton also offered his own views of the political landscape.
Add to this the fact that Trump gave money to Hillary during her Senate campaign and the Clinton Foundation.
Add to these facts that Bill and Hillary were admired guests at Trump’s wedding and Trump always spoke glowingly of Bill and Hillary right up until he won the nomination.
And let’s also add that Trump, for the most part, was never really a conservative.
So back to my prediction.
The part that tripped me up was that he won the nomination. Nobody – and I mean nobody – saw that coming.
I am willing to bet that Trump was as surprised as anyone else at the outcome.
I honestly don’t believe he thought he would win. And I’m not convinced he really wanted to win.
Remember the primary election?
It’s like he was trying to lose. At every campaign stop, at every debate, he went out of his way to offend large blocks of voters.
He was saying all the wrong things all the time. But the more of those things he said, the more people cheered him on for being an “outsider” or not being part of the “establishment.”
And he became the nominee.
After that I thought perhaps things would change.
And things did change. Things got worse.
He ramped it up.
He offended even more voting blocks. He gave the media more than enough story lines to keep them from covering Clinton stories like the foundation or the state department emails or the WikiLeaks stuff about the misdeeds of Democratic party insiders.
No time for those stories. Gotta run hour after hour of Trump’s groping or Trump’s attacks on Gold Star families or any other in an endless stream of Trump screwups.
And I can’t help but think this is what the Trump campaign wants.
I can’t believe that he is shunning the advice of sage campaign operatives so he can go it alone and make campaign blunder after campaign blunder.
It’s like his reality show. You know, it’s all scripted.
Say what you want about him, he – and all the people around him – are not idiots. I’m pretty sure that if they really wanted to, they could have mounted a formidable campaign.
It’s not like they didn’t have any ammunition. But did Trump come out with any crafty attacks based on Hillary’s numerous faults? Nah, better to denigrate people who criticized him.
It simply makes no sense – unless that was the plan, unless that was exactly what they were trying to do.
And despite his best efforts to derail himself, he’s still not completely out of the race, which is a perfect testament to just how awful a candidate Hillary is.
I simply can’t believe Trump is so unhinged that he can’t control himself.
I believe it’s all by design.
It’s either that, or I finally have lost my mind from years of thinking too much about politics.
If I’m not delusional, what’s the end game?
Are Republicans being duped into a plot to relegate their party to a political scrapheap for a generation?
Who knows?
But what if the electorate calls the bluff and elects Trump?
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