Donald Trump no longer wants to survive this

| 7:10 pm EST December 12, 2017
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Some corrupt criminal leaders manage to remain in power for decades, and for one simple reason: they know when to pull their punches so they can survive. Other corrupt criminal leaders can’t bring themselves to occasionally pull back when circumstances dictate that they must, and those are the ones who never last long. During the campaign, we saw that Trump was the former. Now we’re seeing that he’s definitely the latter.

For all his unhinged madness and cartoonish villainy during the election, Trump faced one decisive moment that defined his candidacy. When the Access Hollywood tape surfaced, he had a choice of apologizing – something that he virtually never does – or being ousted as his party’s nominee. Trump chose to apologize, because the pain of doing so was less than the pain of being thrown out of the race altogether. It’s why he survived. It’s why he’s where he is now. Today, however, Trump did precisely the opposite.

Even as his Russia scandal continues to drain the lifeblood out of his dying presidency by the day, Trump began facing a new yet familiar problem this week: the focus circled back on his self-admitted history of serial sexual assault. He had a few options for how to respond. He could try ignoring it, in the hope that it might somehow get drowned out by his numerous other scandals and controversies. He could try reminding Americans that he’s apologized for this kind of behavior. Or he could just try to distract from the accusations. But he chose none of the above.

Donald Trump did the one thing he knew he couldn’t get away with today. He responded in a disgustingly spiteful manner which surely made him feel a rush of satisfaction, but served to seal his fate. He randomly and falsely accused Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of having offered him sexual favors, after she called on him to resign. In that moment, Trump decided he was willing to murder his own dying presidency, just so he could feel the glee of getting to take such a cheap shot.

This wasn’t calculated. It wasn’t thought out. There was backwards upside down strategy here. Donald Trump didn’t somehow masterfully make his sexual assault scandal manageable by posting yet another strategically awful tweet. Instead, Trump simply decided that he no longer wants to survive this. He knows he’s going down for Russia anyway, and so he decided to just go ahead and end it, simply so he could have one perversely fun moment. His fate is sealed now, and even he knows it.