Buckle up: a desperate Donald Trump is about to grab the wheel and wreck the whole thing
Why has Donald Trump finally gotten his crappy “Trump Force One” plane fixed up, after two years of letting it rot? He knows he’s about to be indicted, so he’s sinking even deeper into his delusional fantasy that he’s somehow magically going to become President again – and that requires going through the motions.
This comes after Trump leaked to the media days ago that he was deciding whether to “allow” the DOJ to search his home again. He’s trying to convince himself that he’s more powerful and relevant than ever, so he can keep up his self-delusion that’s he’ll somehow come out on top.
The most over the top cartoonish theory for Trump fixing up his broken jet – and thus the most popular theory on Twitter – is that he’s planning to flee the country. But that seems unlikely, for a few basic reasons.
First, Trump is the kind of delusional narcissist who surely thinks he can beat the charges at trial by just showing his amazing charisma to the jury. That’s not someone who preemptively flees.
Second, Trump is still delusionally fantasizing about running in the 2024 election. If he flees, he gives up on the only fantasy that’s still keeping him going.
Third, Trump has to know that if he flees to a rogue country, he’ll just be a puppet of that country’s dictator. He’d also be cut off from his financial scams, so he’d be living as a pauper in some other country. His narcissism wouldn’t allow it.
Even if Trump were tempted to flee, the Feds are *obviously* closely surveilling his every move, as they would with anyone under investigation for espionage with close ties to enemy nations. He can’t just magically slip out of the country.
But because this is the internet, where simplistic and absurd magic wand ideas always rule the day, everyone is obsessed with the notion that Trump is planning to flee the country. And because Twitter is obsessed with the fictional notion that the DOJ is a bunch of hapless naive rubes, of course Twitter fantasy land has decided that Trump will not only magically flee the country, but that the DOJ has somehow never considered that Trump might flee.
When Trump has occasionally surfaced these past two years, he’s come off as half senile and three quarters dead. Hence why his handlers have presumably worked so hard to keep him hidden. But now that his life is crashing down on him, he’s insisting on putting himself out there.
This means we’ll likely hear from Trump more, as he flies around the country in a crappy pieced-together plane and pretends he’s still President. Which means more people will see what kind of condition he’s really in. Which means the Trump 2024 narrative will burst pretty quickly.
There’s a reason the media doesn’t air Trump’s speeches anymore. The media doesn’t want anyone to see how senile and ghastly Trump has become, because then no one will sit there and stare in fear at the media’s scary Trump 2024 talk anymore.
So the media now has to cover Trump’s increasing public appearances without actually showing how far gone he is, even as every Twitter pundit idiotically yells “he’s fleeing the country” in the hope of getting outrage-retweets. In other words, as is so often the case, the media and social media will compete with each other to see who can get the story more wrong, each for their own self-interested purposes.
Meanwhile the real and obvious story – that Trump is suddenly flying around the country in his crappy plane because his impending indictment has made him desperate to pretend that he’s still President and everything is magically fine for him – will go unreported.
As this plays out, try to keep in mind that the two main narratives you’re hearing – the media’s claim that Trump is about to take over, and social media’s claim that Trump is about to flee – are both equally ludicrous conspiracy theories, incompatible with basic facts and logic.
Another obvious storyline that’ll be completely ignored because it doesn’t fit any of the preferred narratives: Trump let his beloved private jet sit broken for two years. No one does that unless they’re in extreme financial duress. But no one wants to hear that Trump is broke. Right wingers want to pretend he’s rich because they love him. And a lot of anti-Trump want to pretend Trump is wealthier than ever, so they can feel maximum outrage toward him. The entire political spectrum demands the same fictional take on this.
But back in the real world, what we’re really seeing is Donald Trump reaching the point of desperation where he’s finally insisting on getting off the couch and putting himself out there more, under the delusional belief that if he starts acting like a 2024 candidate, it’ll somehow magically stave off the reality that he’s about to be indicted and sent to prison. As usual, the ever-indecisive Trump is waiting far too long to finally take action. And given his increasing propensity for cognitively incompetent self-sabotage, he’s about to make a complete fool of himself.
