Donald Trump is self destructing in real time
Each time Donald Trump makes a new move these days, we go through this whole process where the political commentator industry tries to decipher what Trump is doing and why he’s doing it. Talking heads on both sides are quick to assign some kind of coherent strategy to Trump’s latest move, even when it’s sort of painfully obvious that the move is nothing more than sheer stupidity. Yet no matter how deep of a hole Trump digs himself, there are always people on TV and Twitter who try to “warn” that it means Trump finally has us right where he wants us.
We saw this phenomenon play out yet again with Donald Trump’s second E. Jean Carroll trial. Trump spent the entire time making awful posts about Carroll on social media. And talking heads kept lamenting about how awful it was that Trump was getting away with continuing to smear Carroll. It was his strategy, they told us. It meant he was still winning. Flaunting his invincibility, in fact. And since he was getting away with this, he was also going to get away with everything else.
Except he wasn’t getting away with it. Quite the opposite. There’s a reason the first Carroll verdict against Trump was $5 million and the second one was $83 million. That’s the outcome that we got from Trump continuing to run his mouth about Carroll. Some “strategy” eh?
That’s because what we’re seeing from Trump isn’t a strategy. It’s not an attempt at winning. It’s not even an attempt at surviving. Instead what we’re seeing from Trump is a man who keeps forfeiting. A lot of people think that forfeiting means sitting on your hands and doing nothing. But if Trump had simply done nothing during the second Carroll trial, he might have only lost another $5 million. Instead he actively forfeited the trial by running his mouth about Carroll the entire time, and as a result he lost it far worse than if he’d done nothing.
Donald Trump is simply forfeiting. On everything. There’s not one aspect of his life where he’s taking actions that could help him. He’s actively forfeiting on all fronts. If there were a field manual titled “How To Lose As Badly As Possible” it would be exactly what Trump is doing.
People around Trump surely told him to stop attacking Carroll after he lost to her the first time. But he’s either too far gone cognitively to understand how much harm he was doing to himself by continuing to attack her, or he’s too far gone psychologically to care how much harm he was doing to himself.
Either way, Trump actively forfeited this trial. He’s also actively forfeiting his criminal trials, with moves like hiring the worst attorneys possible, pushing forward with defense tactics that can’t possibly win, attacking the judges, and so on. Talking heads will continue to explain to us how these incoherently self destructive moves are part of some “strategy” that we’re just not clever enough to understand. But in reality, Trump is simply self destructing. His every move is more stupidly and spitefully self-harming than the last. There’s nothing more to it.
