Will Donald Trump drop out?

| 9:00 pm EDT August 1, 2024
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Just how bad have the past few weeks been for Donald Trump? One could make the strong argument that getting wounded in a shooting wasn’t even among the worst things that’s happened to him during that stretch.

Trump’s gameplan against Joe Biden went out the window entirely. Trump has no idea how to stop Kamala Harris’ momentum. Trump’s running mate has imploded out of the gate. And Trump’s attempt at putting the focus back on himself yesterday bordered on self immolation.

Things have gotten so horrendously bad for Trump that some serious voices are now asking if he might end up dropping out of the race just to save himself the embarrassment of losing badly to a Black woman. It’s led me to chew on the idea, and I’m not sure the answer is entirely clear.

If there were no factors other than winning and losing, I think Trump might indeed be looking for an excuse to exit the race right about now. The complicating factor is that if he doesn’t win this election, he’s going to prison. He’s already been convicted in one trial and he’ll face three more criminal trials in 2025. So if Trump drops out, he’s basically conceding that the rest of his life will consist of going on trial and rotting in prison.

So that means he won’t drop out, right? But there’s yet another complicating factor involved. Trump’s dementia symptoms suggest he’s at a stage where he can be talked into anything by those around him. So if someone around Trump wants him out of the race (in the faint hope of somehow winning with JD Vance), that person could presumably convince Trump that he’s no longer in any legal danger, and that he should just drop out.

All that said, who’s going to push Trump out of the race at this point? The media won’t do it, because he’s going to be too good for ratings over these final hundred days. And it’s hard to imagine Trump’s family members or lackeys steering him toward dropping out. So who would it be? Donors? Are we talking about a right wing mega donor paying Trump to drop out?

Of course the catch in all of this is that whatever Trump’s dwindling odds of winning may be, the odds of JD Vance winning would presumably be even lower. And at this late stage it would be realistically impossible for the Republicans to replace Trump with anyone but Vance (which may ultimately have been why Trump’s babysitters steered him toward picking someone as weak as Vance).

In the end it’s difficult to imagine Trump dropping out, if only because if he drops out it’s pretty much the end of his life as he knows it. Why drop out and go to prison, when he can stay in the race and hope against hope that Kamala Harris has some horrifying scandal that’s about to surface? Then again, given how clinically senile and certifiably insane Trump is, nothing would be surprising at this point.