The Trump Scenarios: Trojan Horse? Wrecking Ball? Cahoots with Cruz? Wily as a Fox Or Just Plain Old Bigoted Racist? Thoughts on Trump in the Primaries and into General Election

We’re now little more than a month from the first votes in Iowa. Donald Trump had a meteoric rise to the top immediately after he announced, and differing dramatically from 2008 and 2012, Trump has held the top of the polling nationally for essentially his whole run. His lead now of about 20 points, is more than either of the Republican front-runners had in 2008 or 2012, when measured by the number of days up to the first votes, as Real Clear Politics conveniently shows us daily. Trump has been a gaffe-machine spewing out nasty comments that would have doomed any past capaign, yet he’s remained on the top, baffling all pundits (including me). So obviously the Trump 2016 (2015) campaign is something radically different and conventional wisdom and knowledge about US politics does not seem to apply. And we have to take very seriously the prospect that Trump can win the Republican nomination, he increasingly is seen as the front-runner. As Trump’s national polling support keeps rising, it would be unwise to suggest it cannot continue and that he cannot win. He’s clearly shown that conventional views to this year’s election have been vastly wrong.

So these are my thoughts trying to figure it all out. I will lay out in this blog a study of what could be motivating Trump. I will discuss the scenarios of his current run in the primaries, is he a Trojan Horse sent by the Clintons to wreck the Republican race. Is he motivated by something even more wild like being in cahoots with Ted Cruz, and intending maybe to break out the Tea Party from the Republicans. Alternately, is Trump maybe wily as the fox, running the most cold, calculated, deliberately deceitful Machiavellian campaign with two distinct and opposite phases, one for the primaries and one for the general election. Or is Trump just what he seems to be, a bigoted, racist, hateful, inconsiderate, narcissistic, xenophobic, egomaniac and a destructively delusional one at that.

This is a long blog of speculation. I have not met anyone, have not interviewed anyone and don’t know anyone or anything. Its just me, trying to make sense of the Trump phenomenon to better understand how he will factor into the 2016 Presidential election. I do not yet have any answer that I would be confident about, to say for sure. But I want to lay out my various scenarios, and see what evidence supports that theory, and then monitor in the coming months, if some evidence starts to rule out some of the scenarios and perhaps some other evidence supports that a give scenario is actually real.  Not much in this blog is unique thinking on my part, so much has been written about Trump that it is nearly impossible, but I don’t remember seeing a ‘full’ all options analysis of Trump the phenomenon yet written into the public domain. What I do look forward to, is for some of my readers to join me in the discussion after the blog, to consider what did I miss, what evidence might be out there on any one of the scenarios and to consider any errors in the analysis and reasoning. This blog is about 18,000 words, so it would be as long as about two full chapters in one of my hardcover books. Get yourself some coffee before you start, and enjoy. My 'comprehensive' treatment of Trump the phenomenon. What is this all about?

SO WE NOW KNOW THAT WE DON’T KNOW

I should also mention a few of the very recent articles that have given fresh light to the Year of the Trump. First off, Real Clear Politics (RCP) polling average has Trump currently at 33% as I write this article. The first two polls have come out since the last GOP (Grand Old Party = Republican party) debate and they have Trump up again, to about 36%. But Trump’s actual election-day support might not be what the polling says. There is good reasoning to suggest that there is a divergence in the polls. Depending on which methodology pollsters use, some polls group into a ‘high Trump’ finding, and the other methodology consistently finds a ‘low Trump’ result. This has now been consistent across all pollsters by that divide, across national and state-wide polls, and consistent over many months. If one method is correct, Trump’s real support today is at about 40%. If the other methodology is correct, Trump’s support is nearer to 30%. That is a huge difference in a field of competitors this wide. Separately, there is the issue of voters being ashamed to vote for Trump. Its possible that like many racists in the past, Trump might get higher actual votes than his polling suggests, because many racists would be ashamed to admit their racist position, and not truthfully state their actual intent to vote for Trump. Its possible Trump’s actual voting day support ends up higher than the recent polls had suggested. So yeah, like we weren’t confused enough about Trump.

Then two specific articles. Nate Silver (as usual) at the 538 blog has written a great analysis of media coverage vs polling support in the primaries. Trump has totally sucked all the oxygen out of the room, his media coverage has been something like 80% of all political coverage of all GOP candidates. So Trump is being seen four times more than the rest of the field, combined. And that coverage of course not only means Trump doesn’t have to spend on TV advertising, it also eliminates the impact that any TV ads could have, where almost all who advertise the most on the GOP side, are candidates who are at the bottom of the race. The biggest TV ad spender in the history of US primary politics on either side, at this point before any votes have even been cast - Jeb Bush - has only seen a collapse of his support while he has bombarded the airwaves. Nate’s article illustrates a very close correlation that is at least partially sustaining Trump and is a radical new phenomenon that could explain what is going on.

And then there is Dan McLaughlin’s excellent piece in the Federalist on election tactics. He is a fighter pilot and strategist. He used the modern combat theory of the Ooda Loop (Orient, Observe, Decide, Act) as developed by military strategist John Boyd (another US fighter pilot who flew in the Korean and Vietnam wars). McLaughlin used the excellent Ooda Loop theory of reaction ability in combat or any contest, to explain that it was a different aspect (and attempt at response) of Scott Walker’s campaign that was defeated by Trump, than those of Rick Perry or of Bobby Jindal. The Ooda Loop also shows why Jeb was struggling with Trump and the excellent long detailed article by McLaughlin also applies the Ooda Loop to past elections like (yet another fighter pilot) John McCain’s fight against Barack Obama in 2008 and lessons from that to how Trump might be vulnerable; and also he has thoughts about how Hillary Clinton might fare when faced with this new ‘jet fighter pilot’ type of deliberate tactical confusion in a campaign. A truly excellent read.

Key to all the above prologue is that Trump has done something new, indeed radical. It went against all conventional wisdom and by all reasoning and logic, Trump should have been expelled from the process like Michelle Bachmann by now (ok, she only quit after she came last in the voting in Iowa). But instead, inspite of the most vile vulgar nasty campaign of recent decades (I am too young to remember the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964) Trump has soared to the top of the GOP and his popularity is still rising. What is going on? So I will build a couple of scenarios but before we do that, lets make some observations about Trump’s personality and known history.

SOME THINGS WE KNOW THAT WE KNOW

So we know that Trump has said horrible things about Mexicans, about the war hero John McCain, about women, blacks, journalists, the handicapped, and Muslims. He has frequently been called out for clear lies like his claim that he saw Muslims celebrating on the rooftops in New Jersey when the World Trade Center towers were burning on September 11, 2001; and he just plainly restates his lies and repeats them. PolitiFact found that Trump’s campaign statements are 76% untrue and nearly a quarter are so blatantly obviously untrue that they get the ‘pants on fire’ rating. This is massively worse than any Democrat running, its worse than Carly Fiorina, who saw her support collapse after she was discussing a non-existent video about Planned Parenthood supposedly harvesting brains. Carly only gets 50% of her statements labeled as untrue. Even serial liar and war criminal Dick Cheney gets 59% of his statements labeled not true. But Trump? 76% untrue. How can a candidate like this survive in an election? Are the GOP voters now asking to be lied to, knowing the truth is bad and they just want someone to tell them sweet lies instead? But nearly a quarter are pants-on-fire lies, that Trump KNOWS are not true, when he says it.

Like his very first political speech as a candidate, when he said ‘Mexicans are murderers and rapists, and some, I guess are nice people’. He knows that is not true. SOME Mexicans, like some AMERICANS are rapists and some are murderers. This is not 'most' and not even 'many'. It is only some. At almost exactly the same proportion as the rest of the population, so there is nothing 'unusually criminal' about Mexicans. A tiny fraction of Mexicans are criminals, almost exactly same proportion as citizens of the United States. Some statistics actually say that Mexicans that come to the United States are LESS involved in crime than the average USA citizens. So this is a blatant lie, that Trump must know it is not true, yet he says it. And even if, by some bizarre condition, in Trump’s preparation in writing his speech to launch his campaign, if he found accidentally a totally false statistic about Mexicans (such research accidents to happen, especially early to new campaigns) then any normal person would immediately correct such an abhorrent error. But not Trump. He doubled down on that lie and continued it, again and again. ‘Somebody’s doing the raping’.

So we have seen and heard and read Trump saying nasty things all the time. We get to the first fact as one or another. Either Trump truly believes what he says (when he says it) or else he is saying things he knows are not true (or have not been checked to be true, and he says it regardless). Either Trump really meant it when he said, for example, that he does not mind being compared to Adolf Hitler. The most reviled person in history. Any ‘normal’ politician would recoil from such a comparison but when interviewed on TV and asked about it, Trump said he doesn’t mind the comparisons. He doesn’t mind being compared to Hitler. So he says Mexicans are rapists and American citizen Muslims living in New Jersey celebrated during the terrorist attack and that Trump doesn’t mind comparisons to Hitler. Maybe he really means it. Maybe he is, to his core, a racists, xenophobic, bigot. An Archie Bunker with eleven Billion dollars (Archie was the lead character in a 1970s TV sitcom called All In The Family, highly popular at the time. Archie Bunker was the archetypical neighborhood racist bigot grumpy old man).

But the other - far far more likely reality is, that Trump is faking it. He says these things either knowing they are not true, or not caring if he says untrue things. Similar perhaps to how Vladimir Putin is baffling the West by mostly saying patently false things ‘there are no Russian troops in Crimea’ and suddenly then out of the blue admitting the truth every once in a while ‘yes we had Russian troops go to invade Crimea’ (This all fits with the Ooda Loop thinking, on both men, it would be deliberate communication strategy of causing severe confusion in the enemy/opponent). So its almost certain that Trump knows some of the things he says are simply not true. And it seems Trump believes that it serves him well to keep holding onto a clear lie, even when overwhelming facts show it to be a lie. Note, even in this election cycle, the conventional wisdom which says that is idiotic, has ALSO been proven true. It does seem that 'only Trump' gets away with clear lies. When Carly Fiorina insisted on her delusions about harvesting babybrains, her momentary rise in the polls and brief stint as the second best-polling candidate ended, dramatically and she hasn't recovered since. Her hope of her ever winning the nomination died with that lie. She is now fighting for the VP slot only (and doing miserably at that too). But Trump seems immune even to this aspect. Some part of the Republican party wants a Dick Cheney to deliberately lie to their faces and they applaud it. They want to hear stories of Santa Claus even while they know it is bullshit. Weird, eh? But of Trump, he may very well be saying all the nonsense quite deliberately, knowing that every three out of every four statements he makes is not true; or else, a milder less wicked version of that, would be that he simply doesn’t mind, if many of the things he says, turn out not to be true.

How callous, calculating and indeed deviously manipulative is that? If Trump is deliberately lying to the GOP electorate. The historical pattern is there from the recent past. Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and gang on ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ etc. They wanted war with Iraq. They were plotting how to get that war started before September 11 attacks happened. Then they used the attacks as pretense to link Saddam to terrorism (when in reality Osama Bin Laden hated Saddam Hussein and wanted to overthrow him, and Hussein hated Bin Laden equally much and offered Al Qaeda no safe haven in Iraq at all). And up to today, when Cheney or Rumsfeld are confronted with their lies ‘we’ll be greeted as liberators, the war will pay for itself, we know where the weapons of mass destruction are’ they just look straight into the camera and say they did not lie and they did nothing wrong.

The Democrats may be many things but one thing they have not been recently is willing to be lied to. The GOP, however, has cultivated a professional class of liars. Donald Trump tapped into that with his insistence that President Obama was not born in the USA, that he was born in Kenya and was a secret Muslim. The ‘birtherism’ is what got Trump his frequent visits to the right-wing talk shows and Fox News from 2009 onward (as recently as 2004 Trump was registered as a Democrat). Trump claimed he ‘knew’ Obama was not born in the USA. Trump claims he sent a bunch of private detectives to go find the proof and Trump claimed he had the proof. But he’s never then returned to that theme, once Obama showed his ‘long form’ birth certificate from Hawaii (and the very next day told us that the USA had killed Osama Bin Laden). And while Trump claimed his detectives found the evidence, he has never since been willing to talk about it or show that evidence, suggesting obviously that even back then, years ago, he was lying. These are deliberate lies to get attention.

We know Trump is a reality TV star. So he knows the games played in reality TV blending reality and fiction, and manufacturing conflict. What I had forgotten was, that Trump actually had his roots in an earlier version of the TV fake reality, out of his close association with the WWF, World Wrestling Federation. That is not Olympic ‘real’ wrestling. Its the total theater fake ‘wrestling’ where cartoon-character actors play he-man style massive bodybuilder-wrestlers to use unfair tricks in the wrestling ring, to create a fake contest. With clear good guys and clear bad guys. Often staged at Trump’s casino hotels. Like real boxing but the totally fake artificial fights instead. Including its notorious taunting that the rivals would use about each other, like schoolyard boys. And when you see ‘Pro Wrestling’ stars talk about their opponents, its EXACTLY like how Trump talks about his political rivals. That is where he got that whole ‘schpiel’. And incidentally, that method connects with... Pro Wrestling audiences - predominantly less-educated (and older) men !!! 68% of the audience of whats apparently now called WWE wrestling (I really don't care why the rebranding) are men. Half are over the age of 49. They have a regular audience of 15 million Americans ie 5% of the population. Pro Wrestling is a TV version of cartoon superheros and villains in a simplistic good vs evil ‘cagematch’. Trump wants to be the Hulk Hogan of politics. And yes, Trump is in their Hall of Fame. For pro wrestling fake sports. Is this not a perfect metaphor for Trump's current run of ridiculous lies? He is in a 'hall of fame' for a fake sport, where Trump never even 'did' that fake sport himself. Yeah, must be the hair.

Ok its almost certain that Trump doesn’t mean everything he says. So why is he doing this. Lets consider his motivations.

THE TRUE TRUMP

We know for a fact, what motivates Trump is not to ‘Make America Great Again’. He says it all the time but he means it as much as Dick Cheney meant it when he said the war will be fast, easy and quick. Its pure propaganda. Like when Putin said there were no Russian soldiers in Crimea. Its pure propaganda. If Trump had ANY intention of making America great again, he would show us what America was, when it was great, and he would have strived to get that vision fulfilled, for decades in the past. Like Ronald Reagan, who really wanted to make the USA ‘strong’ again militarily, and whose lifelong mission was to defeat Communism. Or how like, whether you applaud him or not for trying it, Obama wanted to bring about a post-partisan political world. Ironically his Presidency made USA politics even more polarized but at least he had consistently worked at such a political nirvana for years before his Presidency and he attempted bipartisanship for much of his time in office, against a strategy of total obstruction by Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, and John Boehner. Only now after he is no longer a factor in any elections, are Republicans letting Obama get some bipartisan legislation passed, when its ‘too late’ for him to gain any political mileage from his ambitions. But at least he lived for that dream and attempted it wholeheartedly.

What does Trump want to make great? The Trump fortune. The Trump respect. The Trump name. The Trump brand value. The Trump empire. He has never put anyone else’s interests ahead of his own. He has let his companies file for bankruptcy FOUR times and he’s traded his existing wife for a younger new trophy wife THREE times. When Trump says he wants to make America great again, its a crock of lies. Trump has been a vocal critic of deficit spending by the Bush administrations and now the Obama administration. What does the Trump budget look like? It was scored as THE MOST damaging budget of any of the Republican nominees. It would not make America great again. It would make America ruined again. Only faster than either of the Bushes or Obama. Trump has not crusaded his long life for some beautiful ideal or had any lasting mission, say like Hillary Clinton with healthcare, starting from Hillarycare all the way back during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and making it a major argument when she ran against Obama, that Obamacare did not cover all Americans but her plan would have. Trump has zero such credibility on ANY issue. Even his past political positions, whether that nonsense about Obama’s birth certificate (he is actively refusing to answer any questions about that matter) to his past preferences (Bill Clinton as best US President, or the Canadian healthcare system - a single-payer system like Hillarycare) Trump has not bothered to stay on those issues for long. Not only abandoning his positions, when asked about them - he refuses to talk about them. What Trump is, is a perfect opportunist of no political conviction whatsoever.

Donald Trump has no political compass. He is, as Sir Humphrey of BBC TV series Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister would say, a moral vacuum. Trump is ideologically devoid of direction and he has no political mission whatsoever. But he now repeats the propaganda that he wants to Make America Great Again. The virtue of propaganda is that it its simple enough and repeated enough, it will be believed by some. It looks like one in three Republicans, one in six Americans actually believes Trump means it, when he repeats the bullshit that he wants to make America Great Again. Look, he has it on his hat. He must mean it.

So on Trump’s statements before the summer of 2015, we cannot be sure if he ever meant any of that. Of the statements he’s made since he started his campaign, we know most of that is patently false (76% untrue) and at least a quarter is so clearly untrue, Trump must know its wrong ie ‘pants on fire’ lies. Thus we must simply discard all promises and claims and positions Trump has taken since he joined the race. They would be like Vladimir Putin’s proclamations, so unrelated to facts that if occasionally one happens to be true, it is a coincidence. Its as if Trump is indeed guided by the jet fighter pilot tactic of using the Ooda Loop to keep his opponents confused and ill prepared for his next moves. What we can do, however, is observe Trump’s behavior. We can observe what he did in the past and with some caution, what he said in the past. And we can look for patterns of cognitive dissonance, where his recent statements clearly deviate from his pattern. There might be a signal for us to consider, when we get to the scenarios. But to my readers, understand what I mean. Trump is playing us. He’s campaigning not on US Presidential race rules, he has decided to play with Pro Wrestling rules instead. And so far, those rules are more compelling (to the primary GOP voters) than classic political rules. And even in this environment, others are still bound by the old rules - witness Carly Fiorina’s crash trying to do what Trump is doing.

IS TRUMP SERIOUSLY RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OR FAKING IT

Donald Trump’s answer to Hugh Hewitt’s question on CNN’s November debate about the nuclear ‘Triad’ was revealing to a very deep, troubling degree. The single most awesome power that the US President has, that only two other people on the planet have, is the ability on his word alone, to destroy humankind. Only the USA, Russia and China have enough nuclear weapons to actually annihilate humankind from the planet (and most animals too except perhaps roaches and rats). Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel also have nuclear weapons but their arsenals are not powerful enough to obliterate humankind. Only the USA, Russia and China have that ability. The greatest power that any recent US President (since Nixon) has had, is that power. The ability to end human history. And at any one time in history, at most two other men have had that same power simultaneously to the US President. Now if a US Presidential candidate who was a total ‘dove’ or ‘peacenick’ like say George McGovern or now Bernie Sanders (or arguably, Rand Paul or his dad Ron Paul) was not perfectly in tune with the aspects of the US nuclear weapons arsenal and its power and organization, that would be understandable. But for the guy who claims to be the most militaristic guy in the race (haha) and who loves to parade on top of battleships and who claims to be for the veterans, and who talks so tough all the time - Trump’s answer to Hewitt was the truth. He has no clue what is the nuclear triad. Trump has no idea what to do with the nuclear weapons or what is the role of nuclear deterrence in global geopolitics. His spokeswoman made an even more cringe-worthy comment after the debate - saying what good are nuclear weapons if you can’t use them.

If you want to ‘make America great’ - ‘again’ and you talk about the need to have a strong military, and you’re running to be the Commander in Chief of US military forces, including its massive nuclear arsenal, then you should know what that nuclear weapon side of US defense really is. And at least such basic terminology of the ‘nuclear triad’ and the Ohio class submarines, the B-52, B-1 and B-2 nuclear bombers, and the Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles should be material you are familiar with. Even clueless, out-of-his-depth Dr Ben Carson knew all this, while he did have to glance at his notes. But Trump’s answer was a spaghetti of word-salad nonsense. Nuclear is powerful, nuclear is great, and he has nothing more to say. Idiot. That answer to the nuclear triad will turn any remaining ‘national security’ type Republican voters against ever voting for Trump. Already now, according to Morning Consult latest poll right after the debate, one in SIX Republican voters will vote for Hillary rather than Trump. One in six! Republicans! Vote for ‘hated’ Hillary rather than moron Trump. This is before the obvious damage of his nuclear nonsense filters through to voters.

So of all the damaging things Trump has said about Mexicans, war veterans, women, journalists, blacks, the disabled and Muslims, and how he loves being compared to Hitler or Putin, this Nuclear nonsense is a REVEALING comment. Trump really didn’t know how to answer the question. He didn’t even know what Hugh Hewitt was asking so Trump was trying to bullshit his way through the answer. The others knew very well what the issue was, Marco Rubio couldn’t wait to jump in and show that he masters this subject. So what do we KNOW. We KNOW that where master of bluster Trump wants to be greatest at ‘the military’ on the single most powerful aspect of military strength, he is clueless. Literally clueless. And therefore, is Trump for real? If you - think about this, seriously, if you were honestly running for that job, and current polling had you with a clear lead, would you not take the job SERIOUSLY? Ok, so maybe tax credit details is not ‘your thing’ but if you’ve been CAMPAIGNING as wanting to make America Great (again) and you’ve repeatedly blamed Obama for being weak on military matters, wouldn’t you read up - A LITTLE BIT - on the US military and its power?

What this tells us, as a warning sign, is that perhaps Trump is not ‘for real’. Come on, not to ‘care’ to study about the US military’s most powerful ability, one that only two other nations have. And to be so blissfully ignorant that you’re willing to say so on a TV debate, that no, Hugh, I have no idea what to do with it, I’ll just be ‘great at it’ when that time comes. I think there is a VERY honest clue here, that maybe Trump is not in his mind serious about becoming President himself.

Then we have his money. Trump claims he is worth 11 Billion dollars. Forbes ranked him worth 5 Billion dollars. Much of the difference is the ‘good will’ brand value of the Trump name, ie that Trump can licence things to be say a Trump golf course or a Trump building or put the Trump name on some cologne or some men’s ties. The valuation of such a brand is an imprecise thing. But his ‘possessions’ that could theoretically be liquidated are at most what Forbes calculated, worth 5 Billion and if forced to sell them quickly (in a matter of weeks or months rather than wait years for the best moment) he’d get far less than real market value for those properties, maybe say 3 Billion dollars. But Trump also could theoretically borrow against his holdings (and who knows, by his four bankruptcies, if he hasn’t already done some of that and his actual net worth could be less than he claims). But lets say, Trump can almost certainly convert all he owns, or borrow against it to their full value, and get something like 3 Billion dollars. Even if Trump had no money coming in from the Republican party donations, a 3 Billion dollar war-chest would be the greatest ever seen in modern politics. Hillary Clinton is expected to have somewhere between 1 and 2 Billion dollars for the general election of 2016, exceeding what Obama spent against Mitt Romney in 2012.

If Trump is truly serious about winning the GENERAL election, not playing in this primary fight, then he will need a budget of at least 1 Billion dollars and probably 2 or more to be competitive in the COSTS of running a national campaign against Hillary. And now, the weird part that again does not ‘ring true’ about any megarich that I know. I’ve met a few really rich people including working for one for two years, who had recently been on the Forbes 400 richest people list (but not anymore when I worked for him, he was a total bastard by the way and I won’t name his name here). I’ve met several more people who currently are on the Forbes list but those I’ve only met briefly, not worked directly employed by them. And I went to an elitist school in Finland, a school for rich kids, I went to an elite ‘lukio’ Senior High School in Finland and then was at a private University in the USA for my MBA (and a cheaper State University for my bachelor’s degree). So I’ve met enough rich people quite close to know this - they are almost to a rule selfish and greedy and often penny-pinchers. Trump most certainly exhibits a lot of that tendency to be obsessed about his money. And now he is supposedly headed to the most expensive campaign in political history against the richest traditional candidate that ever was. So rich, the richest person ever nominated by either party, Mitt Romney from last cycle, would be bankrupted half way through this year’s cycle if he was running on his own budget this time (as he tried, running self-funded, for a while back in 2008 against John McCain).

So what does Trump say - I don’t want your money. Its a really strong slogan and good argument, especially with the increased power of SuperPACs after the Citizens United ruling. And it is a powerful weapon against most of his rivals who are funded often by lobbyists and special interest groups, not just now in the GOP race, but also later, against Hillary Clinton. Yes, clever slogan and strategy, Donald Trump. Bravo. And it is clearly working, he is getting a lot of supporters who love that aspect. But why then say no to ALL donations? He still sells his hats and t-shirts. Why say no to citizen donations? He could say he’s not taking any lobbyist money, but why say no to potentially half a Billion dollars that could fund say half of his campaign, out of just private donors - even if he only collected about half of what Obama did in 2012, from private citizens. This doesn’t make any sense. Yes, its a great sound-bite but Trump’s sound-bites have no correlation with reality anyway. Why is he fighting in public against any SuperPACs that try to support him? Why is he telling his donors, don’t send me money, I don’t want your money. He could easily ‘own’ the ‘I am not influenced by lobbyists’ argument and still accept private donations in small amounts.

This is even more baffling in how money-focused Trump is otherwise. Why is he doing this? Is he not serious about actually intending to run in the general election and thus doesn’t want the money to come in, or can it be, that he is willing to toss away his whole fortune in the somewhat futile attempt to run and lose against Hillary. Because Trump is no dummy. He clearly reads every poll with a magnifying glass, while he won’t discuss the polls that sound bad. He clearly reads them, and he knows he will lose by a landslide head-to-head against Hillary. And his campaign keeps digging that hole deeper. Why this cognitive dissonance with money? It doesn’t make sense to me. Rich people, especially filthy-rich people never do that. They watch ever penny and if they can get a free lunch somewhere, gosh they will do anything for that stupid free lunch. Again this sounds like Trump is not ‘serious’ about wanting - WANTING to win. As if he is motivated by something ‘else’. But what.

WHAT MOTIVATES TRUMP

Lets start off, by what we ‘know’ about Trump. He is a narcissist clearly and he has that school-boy desire to write his name everywhere in bold big letters like a kid pissing in the snow. Trump this and Trump that. And he wants to be rich. He gets incredibly offended if someone somehow diminishes his worth in dollars, Trump has sued publications several times for claiming Trump to be worth less than he is. How weird is that, most rich people are highly secretive of what they are worth. Trump is flaunting it. He basks in the glory of being one of the richest men on the planet. And he then has purchased almost anything he ever could dream of, and to obscene Trumpish degree. Most billionaires who have private jets fly in Gulfstreams or Learjets but Trump? His plane is nearly as big as Air Force One, a regular commercial jet airliner, a Boeing 757 with massive Trump lettering on its side. And like the US President, Trump’s private air force has also other aircraft he uses including helicopters with again his name in big letters. If you see most other billionaires, their private jets have no distinctive identifications and you have to go by the jet registration to figure out who owns it. Most billionaires shy away from publicity, not Trump. He wants it always. He is a pure narcissist.

Look at hs wives. You know the reality TV show ‘The Bachelor’? Trump not only has ‘trumped’ that show, Trump bought the Miss Universe pageant so he can personally inspect the most beautiful women on the planet, to have his private ‘bachelor’ show to see if he needs to upgrade to a new trophy wife. So if there is anything that money can buy, including a beautiful wife, then Trump has achieved all that. His name is on many of the biggest buildings around the world. He hangs around with many of the rich and famous people. Now what could he possibly want? To make America great (again). Bullshit. Trump wants something. He might like to be the King of the USA (no Muslims allowed today because I am angry) but he KNOWS from watching Obama (and Bush 2 before him) that the job of being President is a miserable one of constant feuding with political factions. In his administration, that would be infinitely worse because both Republicans and Democrats would be against his every political instinct. What do you mean, we can’t deport those 11 million. I’m the President (yeah, you’re not a king).

Trump would love to be voted President, to have his name as a President. He would hate to have to be President. And I think he knows this very well. I think Trump wants something else and has figured out a way to get what he wants. Only we don’t know what that is (yet). So lets speculate.

IF BILL CLINTON WAS SANTA CLAUS

Remember that talk with Trump and Bill Clinton before he decided to run. That has been running in the back of my mind a lot too. What was that all about. Both admit it happened. And both were friend/friendly for years before Trump decided to run. Bill and Hillary came to Trump’s third wedding as guests. So lets think first, of Trump’s ‘Trumpian-scale’ ambitions. If he flies a Boeing 757 as his ‘private jet’ - a plane too big to be able to land at many smaller private jet airports haha. If he actually bought the Miss Universe pageant so he can oogle pretty women up close. What can THIS guy want? And then, what could a US President ‘give’ to someone. There is nobody who knows better than the sleazy opportunistic politician that Bill Clinton is, who actually was President for 8 years and innovated in such wild ways to sell Presidential favors as selling nights in the White House Lincoln Bedroom to donors - who often slept in the White House while Bill and Hillary were not even there. How’s that for clever use of making cash out of being the President.

W Bush was an idiot and clueless about how to cash in on the fame. Obama is ‘No Drama Obama’ and totally not a friend to Trump to give any advice anyway. But Trump witannessed how Dick Cheney did it. He hoodwinked W Bush to give no-bid contracts to Halliburton worth Billions to line up their profits out of the Afghanist and Iraq wars and Hurricane Catrina etc. Anywhere the USA was involved, Dick Cheney made enormous fortunes - for his old company Halliburton. No doubt the Cheney family has ample rewards for that squirreled away out of reach of the US taxman on the Cayman Islands. If you wanted to PROFIT out of the Presidency, you really don’t need to do the hard work of BEING the President, you just need to have the right kind of ‘deals’ with whoever IS (or is going to be) the President. Like say, Hillary wife of Bill Clinton, or as an insurance policy if Hillary loses, then place your backup bets on .. Ted Cruz. That is of course the OTHER mysterious meeting we learned about that both Ted Cruz and Trump admit happened and neither has told us what happened at the meeting. But since then, neither has attacked each other, while both are quite happy to demolish OTHER candidates with wreckless abandon.

So yeah. It could be a money motive for Trump. Lets imagine Trump having this discussion with Bill Clinton and old friends talk about what their mutual enemy Dick Cheney has been doing, ‘far worse than what you did Bill when you were in the White House’ and then.. what theoretically would be within the ‘gift’ of the President. Some of the stuff is pretty obvious. The President could nominate you for the Supreme Court, like W Bush tried to nominate his secretary haha. For Trump no chance but maybe an Ambassadorship. And it could be a very cool country, like say France (Paris fashion shows for the wife) or the UK (hang around with the Queen and the Royals) or maybe Monaco (give Trump diplomatic immunity in one of the biggest casino countries of the world.. that could be useful) or the Vatican (just chilling with the Pope). Note, Trump is nearly 70, even his sexy latest wife and a ton of Viagra is not necessarily all that the little wife wants, it may be that Trump is motivated to do this for his wife (or his kids, gosh he is creepy in his infatuation with his daughter). Thats like the ‘starting gambit’ the obvious thing that anyone watching The West Wing would know haha.. But now lets listen to the master, what could Bill Clinton ‘sell’ to Trump. What does Trump want? Any bozo who supported W Bush could be appointed Ambassador to the Vatican, thats not what Trump would want. He’d want something nobody else even dreamed about.

WORLD’S FIRST TRILLIONAIRE

So how about being the richest man on the planet? Trump regularly feuds with - and yes has sued - Forbes Magazine for his ranking on their richest list. Trump has never been the richest guy and the gap to those on the top is nearly ten-fold. Trump worth 11 Billion dollars (by his own calculation) but Carlos Slim and Bill Gates at the top are now nearing 100 Billion dollars in value. Ten times richer. What if Trump did a truly ‘Trumpian’ leapfrog ahead of them all, to become the richest dude on the planet. Not just by a little bit, but by actually becoming yes, the planet’s first Trillionaire. We’ll probably see the first Trillionaire in maybe two decades. What if Trump conspired with Bill Clinton a truly Blackadderish cunning ploy to achieve that for the Donald. I mean, when Trump looks at Dick Cheney funneling cash to Halliburton, Trump must think that he’s such an amateur with such an obvious short-sighted and low-balled ‘heist’ only measured in some Billions of dollars of which Cheney only gets a cut. A lousy grifter at that. What could the most audacious business hustler who knows ‘The Art of the Deal’ do, if paired with the sleaziest President to ever have pimped out the White House, Bill Clinton? If the two really put their heads together. And understand. In his lifetime, Trump didn’t double the value of the real estate empire his dad built. Daddy Trump was worth about 100 million dollars. So Trump not doubled that, not multiplied the wealth by a factor of ten. No, Trump multiplied that by a factor of.. one hundred. So it can be done. If we take Trump’s current wealth, of say 11 Billion dollars, and multiply that by a bit less than 100, we’d hit one Trillion dollars. The planet’s only and first Trillionaire.

It cannot be done with high tech or any conventional ‘industry’. It can be done with real estate and enough time and very prudent or lucky purchases when nearly worthless land becomes incredibly valuable. And how might that be within the purview of the President, you might ask? Now, how Dick Cheney swindled US taxpayer funds directly to his company is so borderline obvious criminal activity, that its a big miracle he isn’t in prison (yet). But that was a heist conceived and executed WHILE the Cheney was in office (did you know W Bush didn’t even know when oil industry bosses were visiting Cheney’s office in the White House... he was truly the puppet-master, Dick I’ll-shoot-you-in-the-face Cheney). What if a truly Trumpian level wealth-maximizing scheme was plotted well in advance of the election and executed by others while Trump wasn’t anywhere near the White House. That would be a move by a Jedi master. So lets imagine. What is Trump’s home field? Real Estate. Why hasn’t Trump been yelling ‘bloody murder’ and threatening to sue everybody when his REAL ESTATE holdings have been losing value recently, many Trump named buildings now have petitions to get the Trump name removed, Trump’s golf course in Scotland was removed (permanently) from the English Open golf tournament schedule, etc. Why is he silent? Maybe he doesn’t want to draw attention to the ‘long con’. Maybe Trump can afford to lose a few ‘pawn’ in a truly enormous play for all the marbles. How could he become the first Trillionaire on the planet? Real estate.

So imagine. Lets say Hillary Clinton is elected President. And in her first term, she signs a long-awaited economic stimulus package (that the Republicans will cry is full of pork) which includes much-needed infrastructure repairs like bridges, airports, roads, and railroads. And as part of it a few new construction projects - no no no, don’t get ahead of me. None of those would be awarded to Trump enterprises, no no no. Hillary does the ‘usual’ Democrats pork for construction including funding a few long-expected infrastructure ‘investments’ like high speed rail projects in the East and West. The Eastern corridor high speed bullet train project connecting Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington DC. Its been in the works for decades. She now agrees to give it the federal government funds that most of those states - with Democratic Governors - would then also fund and the much-needed fast train would finally get built. And then the other one in California connecting say San Francisco and Silicon Valley to Los Angeles all the way to San Diego, and its suggested side spur to Las Vegas, so this is not just a California internal train project, its a ‘national’ high speed trail project across state lines. Which would qualify for federal funds.

There is nothing illegal or wrong about that and if Trump had no contracts coming out of that, how can that possibly be wrong in any way. Right? Except Trump is a real estate TYCOON who built his value on RISING PROPERTY VALUE. He entered New York City property market when NY was nearby bankrupt and bought it when it was dirt-cheap. So now. Imagine if Trump KNEW THIS PLAN. If Trump had HATCHED this plan with Bill Clinton. That he KNOWS there will be this rail construction coming in the Hillary administration, hidden among many other big construction projects. What would the real estate mogul do? He’d know where to invest. Or better yet. What if Trump has ALREADY bought the land, one or two decades ago. Not all of it, but enough, some critical piece of land, nearly swamp land now, where he has building permits to put sky scrapers and all the locals laughed that there will never be a ‘second Manhattan’ here in the swamps of Connecticut. Except if some day the lazy bureaucrats in Washington get off their asses and fund the high speed rail. Then this local town would be a vital stop and the land here would be very valuable. But that won’t happen in years, and the high speed rail would take a decade to construct.

Except in ten years, Trump would have his vast worthless property in that area, grow in value - by a factor of ... one hundred - not 100 percent. Not by 1,000 percent. By 10,000 percent. Grow 100x in value. The land and new Trump towers near that high speed rail stop with half an hour ride to New York in one direction, half an hour ride to Boston in the other direction, but no parking, no crime, and beautiful sea views and parking for your yachts and a private jet airport - Trump wonderland - would have Trump owning real estate worth easily a Trillion dollars. And this wealth would only materialize AFTER Hillary has left office several years before, and Trump can show by paperwork, he invested in (parts of this land) years, decades BEFORE Hillary ran for office, so what meeting with Bill Clinton. Thats just a silly conspiracy theory. Trump did what Trump does, he invested wisely...

If Trump used his true insights - knowing how real estate increases in value - and Bill Clinton used his insights into what a President can and cannot do, and what his wife Hillary would be willing to do to become President - and we toss in Trump’s book The Art of the Deal - then yes, Trump and Bill could come up with a way for Trump to become the planet’s first Trillionaire and Bill would land a deal that guarantees his wife becomes the first woman President (and Bill’s abilities to line his own pockets would again grow to move himself into the Billionaire class as well..)

It would be his name in the history books, not just as the richest man but the first Trillionaire. And if he played it right, that little hick-town he was investing in somewhere in Connecticut or Delaware or wherever, could be called Trump City of course and could grow to have a population of a million rich people before he was in the grave haha.. So thats one way. Note, it could be on the West Coast. It could of course also be done with shell corporations so that Trump was never exposed - except that Trump wants it known how rich he is, so he would not want to hide it. And he could be doing this with his family, kids, wife. But yeah. Money is one very highly likely motivation that could be in play. But lets think beyond mere money. What is it that no Billionaire or indeed even hypothetical Trillionaire could buy with his money. This is where Bill’s insights come in to the game. What would be within the realm of the gift of the ‘crown’. What could the sleaziest President do, if the greediest Billionaire really seeked something extraordinary and in the grand scheme of things, unprecedented.

Did you notice President Obama renamed a mountain. Mt McKinley was the tallest mountain in the USA (its in Alaska, President McKinley never even saw the mountain). Obama took the long-begged for decision by local natives of Alaska to rename it by its original local name, Mount Denali. So yea, Presidents can name things. That could be pretty awesome. How about CVN 81? Cee Vee En What? Yeah. CVN. Cruiser HeaVier Than Air aicraft, Nuclear powered. So a cruiser that has the type of aircaft that are not balloons (lighter than air type aircraft). Yes, thats what the CV in CVN means. And N for nuclear powered. We common people call those flat-tops ‘aircraft carriers’. But the US Navy classifies the largest and most powerful (and by far most expensive) warships ever built by any navy, as the CVN type, and the latest model just out is the CVN 78, a brand new class even larger than the Nimitz class of before, this is the Gerald Ford class. CVN 78 Ford has just been launched. CVN 79 will be the second in that class, the John F Kennedy which just started construction and CVN 80 has been named already, as the illustrious aircraft carrier name (and Star Trek spaceship name and even Space Shuttle name) Enterprise. So the largest, most powerful warships ever built and sailed by any fleet. The next one in the series is CVN 81 and guess who gets to name her? Yes, the next US President, Hillary Clinton. And could someone like Donald Trump want his name on the most powerful warship ever made, that will cruise the world seas for 50 years? That is something money cannot buy. You can name your yacht but the US President gets to pick the names for the ships of the Navy (usually with a lot of lobbying by the Admirals and various other interested parties, and a lot of obvious naval naming history).

What about the B-3? The what? The next nuclear strategic bomber that the US Air Force is now in the process of deciding on. It could be named the Trump. Now that Mountain, McKinley ie Denali, it could have been a Trumpian dream - the biggest Mountain, on all the maps, named after Trump. But as its just been renamed - to a native local name no less, no, Hillary wouldn’t rename it now for Trump. But it could be something else geographic. Not renaming a state or city or such thing - those are decided by the state governments and their Governors, not the President. But any federal property could be named by the President (or renamed). I don’t know who owns the jurisdiction of Dulles airport in Washington DC, but it may be federal land. Why is it called by such a dull name as Dulles. John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State to John F Kennedy. Come on, if you can name an airport for a Secy of State, surely Hillary could rename one for the guy who delivered her election victory haha. If they make that deal with Bill and the Donald. So like JFK airport in New York City, the largest airport of Washington could be DJT Donald J Trump airport. And kind of ‘live forever’. Something he cannot buy. But again, this is peanuts, any ‘secretary of state’ like a John Kerry might have an airport named after him. Lets again think big. Think Trumpian. He wants his name on something huuuuge.

Pennsylvania is named not for an American. Its name comes from colonial times and is named after William Penn who lent the British King some money and he couldn’t pay Penn back, so the King named Pennsylvania after the guy. Nice deal eh? Three hundred years later and Penn’s name is still on all the maps. Lots of British people in early American names like say Pittsburgh. But not many American names, especially not in STATE names. Washington State is named for George Washington the father of the nation but no other state I think, is named for a past American. Many cities are like say Lincoln Nebraska after the President but no states. Now. What would a narcissist want? What would a Billionaire want that money can’t buy? What would a Trump want? Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a STATE named after your name. So that for hundreds of years, your name lasts forever. That would be ‘Trumpian’ scale.

So Puerto Rico. They want statehood. And the Republicans hate it because it would be a strongly Democratic state with more Senators and Members of the House coming in all Democratic and Hispanic to ruin even more the rich white old man’s club that is the Congress. So yeah, Democrats would like to give Puerto Rico its statehood. But no, Puerto Ricans will not agree to the disgrace that their island would be renamed Trumpia, haha. No way. Not after all that he’s now said. And that wouldn’t be the play. Its the OTHER state. DC. Washington DC stands for ‘District of Colombia’. It is not a state. They do get to vote for example for President but DC is not a State. Its a FEDERAL district. And its not mostly Hispanic, its mostly BLACK. And while yes, Trump has said some nasty things about the Black Lives Matter people - Trump has also been actively courting black MINISTER support. Black RELIGIOUS support. He does slightly better in the polling with blacks than Mitt Romney did (that being against Obama so its hardly a fair comparison haha).

What if the deal was, that Hillary will run both Puerto Rico AND District of Colombia statehood - and then, the deal is, if Trump does whatever it was they agree he’d do, Hillary will name DC as Trumpia. The land of Trump. His name not only would live forever on all world maps. He’d be only the second American citizen to have a state named after him - and get this - Trump would get a STAR on the new FLAG. Yes, the current ‘stars and stripes’ flag would need to be redesigned when two new states are added, ie two new stars, and one of those would be ‘Trump’s star’ haha. Something Warren Buffet and the bozo Koch Brothers and Bill Gates can’t do. Get a star on the flag named after them. This to me, sounds like the level of megalomania that would fuel Trump and get him to play the clown for a year, to ignore all the damage to his properties and to say the most ridiculous things imaginable on TV every day.

Now, would a Barack Obama have made this deal in 2007? Not in a million years, neither would have John McCain or W Bush or anyone else. Even Hillary would never have entertained this mad idea in the summer of 2007 when Hillary was on the way to her coronation and pesky little Obama was a nobody. But in 2015, after Hillary had prepared 7 years for her second run, and she is TRULY becoming so old, she won’t get another chance, and Bill Clinton promised her, he’ll deliver this to her - she’s the one who wanted the Presidency more than Bill to begin with, all the way back when she agreed to move to Arkansas where he ran for Governor - this was the plan all along. Hillary wanted to be the first woman President and to get there, they had to get Bill there first. And in the summer of 2015, there was ugly Benghazi hanging in the future. The emailgate was a mess. Jeb Bush had amassed an unprecedented 100 million dollars already with Citizens United bringing in a dozen GOP Billionaires to fund candidates. The Democratic field looked like Elizabeth Warren might run as might Joe Biden. Bill Clinton could very well have felt that a bit of ‘insurance’ was not a bad idea, meeting with Donald Trump and then doing some yes, Blackadderishly cunning ploy with him.

Then look at Trump. If you look at his behavior and consider this possibility: what if Trump knew in the summer that he will not run for the general election, he is only in it to clear out of the way Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and a few other ‘moderate’ candidates who might have a chance against Hillary, and leave the field for a severely conservative like Ted Cruz to become the final opponent for Hillary. If you picture that as the ‘plan’ then all of Trump’s behavior so far makes perfect sense. It fits that pattern. But it does NOT fit the pattern that Trump truly intends to run in the general election against Hillary on this ridiculous position and the way he is alienating all possible support. What if Trump is only clearing the way for someone else to then do the run (and fail) and Hillary to become the President. That would be consistent with his behavior.

Also, it could be a variation. It could also be that Trump has secured an ‘insurance plan’ just in case Hillary has a heart attack or something, so Trump has a deal also in place with Ted Cruz. Maybe not quite as great for Trump as what Hillary would deliver - but Cruz also knows its a very unlikely road to victory and if Trump were to eliminate the strong moderate rivals in the field, then Cruz could be very happy to reward Trump in some way, if Trump later stepped aside. And Trump the wily negotiator, might not let the other parties know, that he has side bets going as well haha. If Trump knows anything, he knows how to negotiate.

FIVE SCENARIOS

So lets go to what might be the play. I think there are five realistic scenarios. First off, the poet James W Riley famously said. “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” Trump has been talking like a jerk, acting like a jerk, quacking like a jerk. Its most likely he truly is a jerk. A bigoted, racist, xenophobic fascist dirtbag asshole dickface jerk. If this is the real Trump and we really are exposed to his raw thoughts in his stream-of-consciousness vile musings, then he will go down as the biggest loser and worst candidate to run since yes Barry Goldwater who only won six states and lost 44 in his landslide catastrophic loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964. We will know if Trump wins the nomination - and then continues spewing his hatred for the general election. A 20 point loss is an optimistic goal for the Republicans if this is the case. Hillary would not just flip the Senate, and the House, Hillary would also get a filibuster-proof Senate and many of the Statehouses and Governorships that would be up for election the same day, would also flip to the Democrats. Note, if Trump doesn’t get the nomination but runs well, he could despite all his promises to the contrary, still run as a third party nominee, which would be EVEN MORE disastrous for the GOP. And, again, if this is the real Trump and he thinks that the USA really wants Archie Bunker as its President, we will keep hearing the vile shit pouring out of his mouth till the day he dies. But he won’t be visiting the White House on anything other than the guided tour for tourists.

Second scenario, many have suggested this, is the Trojan Horse as I outlined in the above. What if Trump is in it only to destroy the Republican field (but not Cruz) so that Hillary can win easily. I think this is plausible but unlikely. We would need to see some probably very surprising exit by Trump. But what is his motivation, we might never know, but we might see the quid pro quo return from whoever wins the election (ie Hillary) in whatever was the gift she’d then give to Trump. Could be Ambassadorship for him or his wife or could be truly something bizarre like say naming the Mars manned project the Trump Rocket project or something equally Trumpish. If that happens, then we’ll know there was that deal with Trump and Bill Clinton’s famous talk. Or similarly if by some miracle Ted Cruz gets to the White House and Trump receives some surprising honor in some way. But if this is a financial gain for Trump we might not know for a decade to come. But - Trump is more a narcissist than anything else - there will some day have to be a public record of what his gain was out of this. Remember, he will be reviled by the Republicans for causing the total party collapse of 2016. So to get back at those, Trump will need to be able to show off something incredible where Trump’s name would shine ‘forever’ or at least the 50 years well past his death. But if District of Colombia becomes the State of Trump with its own new star on the new flag, and giant Trump statues get erected in Washington DC, then yes, I will take my hat off in respect. Well played, sir. (And Hillary’s aim is the only thing even better than your name on a state? Your face on Mount Rushmore. Obama might have taken that last 5th spot on the mountain but now there is no danger of that. But if Hillary has both Houses, she can run in so many populist laws, and gets to appoint Supreme Court justices to protect her legacy, she MIGHT actually join the four men on that mountain as the ‘Mother of the Modern Nation’ haha)

What if its something quite different. What if rather than wanting to become President and have some land named after him, Trump wants an idea named after him? If Trump wants to wreck a Republican party that he sees has gone wrong, and rename it the Trump party. To split the Tea Party away from the GOP and create the new Third Party and be its leader (while not necessarily being stuck with being the President. Ted Cruz could do that). I think Trump learned a lot from watching Dick Cheney and that there is real power and then there can be a puppet. And on most real political issues, Trump couldn’t give a rat’s ass about which way a given political issue is resolved. Look at his incredible indifference to the nuclear triad. He doesn’t care. But Ted Cruz cares. So Trump could want to just for whatever reason, slight or grudge, want to wreck the Republican party but so much so, to actually split the Tea Party away into its own party. This would square with Trump’s bromance with Ted Cruz and Dr Ben Carson. And be consistent with how much Trump likes to bitch about all leaders of the Republicans from the Bush dynasty to Dick Cheney to Mitt Romney to the current leadership including Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. Now can there be real power just being the guy who is the ‘chairman’ of a political party, gosh look at the sad life of Michael Steele (and he was trying to use the Republican party as his personal credit card haha, for some booty action). Is it conceivable that Trump would let Ted Cruz be the President and then Trump be the VP and kind of do nothing except plot for ways to cash in on the gig, who knows. I can’t see Trump as VP to anything and anyone. But .. to have the ‘next’ Republican party named the Trump Party or the Trumpian Party, that could be a kind of legacy he might like.

Now here is then the Ted Cruz angle. Ted obviously is in some kind of secret alliance with Trump. Is it so that they remain inside the party for Cruz to win, or is it that they really plan to wreck the place and split the party. And can they be so delusional to think that Trump Party or Freedom Party (or Tea Party) to be able to win anything this cycle? Cruz obviously hates how the GOP is today, but would he think that going pure conservative as the nationalist right wing party, like France’s Le Pen family, then have any real chance of governing? Or would Ted even care, if he had the power of Trump now to destroy all that is the traditional structure of the GOP. I think their behavior and the logic of what they’re doing is more consistent and more ‘reasonable’ to be a plot to take over the conservative movement than to support Hillary. Trump alone, yeah, that could fit a 'Trojan Horse' gambit but why is Ted Cruz so willing to let Trump come along and destroy everything? It to me seems more likely that the two are in cahoots and plotting the end of Republican leadership and their power. And in this, Ted Cruz could be playing a long game, giving this cycle to Trump, happily serving as his VP choice while Trump crashes and burns running for President against Hillary (or even worse in a three-way race) but then for Cruz to pick up the pieces for 2020 and own the new Tea Party-Republican-Conservative party as its clear leader and front-runner. All of this is otherwise good, except why would Trump let his fortune and his name be destroyed in this way, for no gain. Trump cannot believe that he can win this against Hillary and he sure as hell has to know Ted Cruz will be creamed in the general election. There are parts to these scenarios that simply don't make sense.

WILY AS A FOX WITH A DEGREE IN CUNNING FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Now what if. What if. What if Trump is playing the classic, standard sleazy salesdude’s bait-and-switch gambit but at a gargantuan scale? The salesman who promises one thing and then switches to a lesser/cheaper product for you, under some pretense. Classic sleazy salesguy's trick. Classic. And in some ways, 'pandering' to the base is exactly that, bait-and-switch. We learned in 2012 very much the details of how this is done and how much the current US electorate is willing to tolerate being lied to. Remember Mitt Romney. Who flipflopped so much President Obama ridiculed him of having contacted the rare memory disease of ‘Romnesia’. Romney’s campaign manager told us in public, during the primary race, that the campaign promises made to the GOP base were worthless, that Romney would just shake them off, like in the children’s toy ‘Etch-a-Sketch’ and then Romney would have a totally new different centrist campaign for the main election against Obama. So this is nothing new. Except Romney was the most lying general election candidate we’d yet seen in US politics at that level. And American voters still voted for him nearly 50/50, he got 47% of the votes. The most abusive serial liar! And yet he was not punished for lying. And now what do we see from Trump? Trump took Romney of 2012 and supersized it. Trump lies 76% of the time. Unprecedented lying. Trump is more of a liar than Dick Cheney and that is saying something. What if Trump is actually wily as a fox. He has figured out that American voters, especially Republican ones, aren’t going to punish their candidate for lies. The more Trump can lie (in the primaries) the more he can get outrageous things said, and get support and kick out others, but then Trump would have to change his tune for the ... general election.

And then look at Trump’s modus operandi. He NEVER admits to having lied in the past or that anything he said had not been untrue. He never admits that and never apologizes. And he’s now gotten the Republicans to think this is somehow honorable and a sign of strength haha. So. What if we had a person who is a total moral vacuum. Who has zero political strongly-held believes on anything. Who has been registered as a Democrats as recently as 11 years ago. Who has regularly contradictory positions on almost any issue of the day. And who makes utterly impractical, illegal, unconstitutional promises daily. Who is playing Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy to the base Republican voters. And who is deliberately playing them for a con game, intending to totally reverse positions and abandon all those promises for the general election. It didn’t kill Romney’s chances! Romney lost because of the 47% comment, not because Romney was a serial liar and a total weather-vane in his political views. And Romney was a block of granite in his political convictions compared to Trump haha.

Now, most 'serious' politicians can't do this. If you are KNOWN in the party for being the religious fanatic with a core support among the Evangelicals, like say Mike Huckabee. Then you’d have no chance to suddenly flip into a gay-loving, abortion-demanding, Muslim-hugging ‘secularist’. Right? If you are KNOWN for strong political convictions. Bernie Sanders can’t suddenly come for giving tax breaks for millionaires and loosening banking regulations. They have a legacy and reputation that fuels them. What is Trump’s political legacy so far? That he questioned Obama’s birth certificate. Other than that, he’s a businessman, so I guess, that makes him a Republican. He has ZERO history for conservative causes. He has SUPPORTED past Republican candidates yes especially very recently but he’s donated to plenty of Democrats in the past and been a Democrat himself quite recently. But of his political views? Trump was for socialized national healthcare (a Democratic position). He was for higher taxes for millionaires (a Democratic position). He was for higher infrastructure spending (a Democratic position) and against the Iraq war (a Democratic position). He is a typical ‘calculating’ or ‘opportunistic’ businessman, who divorces politics totally from business (and divorces religion totally from both - to the degree he even might care about religion at all).

ASK A GUY WHO WROTE A BOOK ABOUT SEGMENTATION

If you wanted a politician who is most prone to abandon recently expressed political statements, come on. Trump. Third wife, four bankruptcies, in politics he’s been a Republican, a Democrat and an Independent. What on earth suggests he will hold these absurd election-catastrophy positions when the general election comes. What if Trump is wily as the fox. What if this is a deliberate fraud he is playing on the Republican primary voters now? What if he really wants to become President but has figured a sneaky way to do it - that will only work once, but thats all he really needs. (And what I am now outlining, will outrage BOTH parties and will freak out the American electorate, the media and both parties, who will create new rules to never be played this con game again. But that would be too late to stop Trump. That is what I mean, this gambit would only work once.) And besides, he’s so old, this is his last rodeo. He won’t get another chance. But how could a Trump become President. Lets ignore political positions and approach this from a successful businessman’s viewpoint. What would a marketing man do? What would someone in segmentation do?

Remember we are in the summer of 2015 so don’t think now December. Think June or July. What was the situation like, back then. Its clear Hillary will run away with the Democratic nomination. While many of Trump’s personal views are more aligned with Democrats than Republicans (against the Iraq war, for more taxes, for nationalized healthcare, etc etc etc) he is pretty well in the middle, an Independent. So if not Democrats, what about the Republican field? An interesting conundrum. In 2007 it seemed like Rudy Giuliani had it locked. In 2011 Romney was the clear front runner. But in the summer of 2015 for 2016, the field was wide open. And the front-runner was Jeb Bush who had a lot of money but was a total dog as a candidate. Anyone could see that. Jeb really needed the big cash to help overcome his otherwise meek (wimpish, family tradition from his dad) political posture in anything from speaking to thinking. And one thing Trump had more than even the Bush dynasty could hope for, was money. The only strength Jeb had was money, and Trump truly did trump that. So he could take out the front-runner. Then a quick analysis of the rest of the field - plenty of good candidates but almost nobody was really strong. Many stumbled recently from Chris Christie’s bridgegate to now Rick Perry hoping he remembers how to count to three. And other ‘front-runners’ were the total Nazi Scott Walker from Wisconsin, or the Tea Party loon Ted Cruz or then that mumbling moron Dr Ben Carson in his own la-la-land of pyramids as grain silos. The Democratic field was hopeless for Trump to enter. The Republican field did look attractive where Jeb was its nominal front-runner but a really flawed one. That is the right race to get into, for the primaries.

Then the segmentation. Where was the ‘opening’ for Trump? Again, remember this is the summer, not all candidates had announced, some were teasing runs, and there were a lot who already were in it. Do you want the Tea Party? No. Ted Cruz is there as is Dr Carson. What about the businessman wing? Carly Fiorina was there and Mitt Romney was threatening to run again. What about the military wing? Lindsay Graham was there and Marco Rubio was claiming that too. What about the conservative religious end? Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum owned that corner. What about the moderate wing? Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, George Pataki, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, Rick Perry. No room there. But what about the RACIST wing? The Pat Buchanan and Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott wing; the Ku Klux Klan edge of the party. Nobody was positioned there. Now, regardless of how you think that Trump might feel PERSONALLY about such issues, if we assume he is going to say batshit crazy stuff deliberately just to get the nomination, then just like Romney, leave those extreme comments aside and run a general election campaign as if those never existed, then who cares how inflammatory they are now. Is there a constituency that is racist in the Republican party? Of course there is. We’ve even seen it measured in the exit polls against Obama. There is a strong racists undercurrent already in the Tea Party wing of the GOP and it gets hostile towards the fringe.

If you want to jump in the middle of a truly crowded field (Trump’s political views are definitely quite centrist) then try to fight for the moderate support this time. Against Christie and Kasich and Jeb and tons more, even in parts, Marco Rubio. But clever segmentation would say - there is one big opening in the GOP in the summer of 2015. A constituency which has not been catered to for a decade. The racist wing. And how do you energize those. Call Mexicans rapists and murderers and promise you will deport all 11 million of the illegal immigrants. And then yes, if anyone accuses you of being like Hitler, say its ok. When Putin says he likes you, say thats nice. And those Muslims. All Muslims should be forbidden from entering the USA. Who will hate this? All Democrats. Most moderate Republicans. And it will damage the party. But does Trump care about anyone else except himself, no. So as long as it serves Trump, why the hell not. And if this is a silly ‘throw-away line’ like Romney’s ‘self deportation’ then so what. If Trump came in, intending to defraud the Republican base voters by the most audacious pandering ever, to utterly bullshit them until he has the nomination - and then abandon all that, and run as a moderate in the general election - that would be - learning from Romney but do the Romney campaign in a more Trumpian way.  So on the initial campaign as introduced by Trump, he’s been hostile and abusive from the start. This was deliberate. I think on pure businessman calculation, if the political views are irrelevant to him and he only wants to win, in a very crowded field - that was smart. There was an opening worth 10% to 15% for him to quickly grab, that nobody dared try to appeal to for more than a decade now. But a lingering festering edge of the GOP that seeks a voice and a champion. Stand up for the WHITE guys for a change! For the older, not the young. For once, for the men, not the women. For the less educated, not those elitists ‘lazying off’ in college. Stand up for the healthy majority, not always for the handicapped. And stop with all the 'political correctness' by which its no longer ok to say ugly things about others - and yes Mr Trump, do accuse the press about that.

And hence, what do we hear, in short succession. Mexicans are rapists and murderers. Megyn Kelly was so angry because she was on her period. Rosie O'Donnell is an ugly fat pig. Deport all the illegals. Yes, and their families and kids. Beat up on the black guy protester. Look how ridiculous the crippled are. And hey, lets ban all Muslims from even entering the country. What, that makes me look like Hitler, oh, I don’t mind. Putin, he’s a strong guy, I like Putin.

If you wanted to get the Ku Klux Klan supporters and the American Nazi Party supporters and other real racists to vote for you? That is the exact correct message. Trump has received three separate American Nazi publication endorsements already one which wrote that for once there is a candidate who makes sense. And obviously its never happened (at least not since Goldwater, I don’t remember back to 1964) that fellow Republicans have ever called their Presidential candidate a fascist. And that BEFORE even Iowa has voted several Republicans and conservatives are now saying they won’t vote for Trump or ‘they will sleep late’ on election day. Any sane Republican can see that Trump is causing irreprable damage to the party. Several Senators who have re-elections in 2016 are already moving away from Trump’s positions. But as a SEGMENTATION of the voters. Trump’s initial gambit was smart SEGMENTATION. He found a gap, where nobody is serving those voters. They are vocal, they are boisterous, they have been ignored for decades and they feel they now have a voice. And they show up at Trump rallies, with some violence thrown in, as a bonus.

If the object is to be normal rational human being and have a political mission and achieve something meaningful, then this is a charade. This is the most coldblooded, callous, heartless gambit, to really screw the GOP base voters. To pander to that angry mob on the fringe with the intention to desert them in a few months. Most normal humans don’t have that level of disconnect from reality to be able to pull that off. But look at Trump. I point back to three marriages, four bankruptcies. Read the Art of the Deal, he talks very openly about gambits that are deliberately outrageous. This is straight from his book. And who is most vulnerable to this type of charlatan? The party that believes Fox is the most trustworthy network (when it is consistently the most error-prone, even more than MSNBC) and the party that has the least educated voters and who have been consistently lied to by their Presidential candidates pioneered by the prototypical Tea Party loon Sarah Palin, and recently, essentially all of the Senate and Congress. Including right now, the deal struck by Paul Ryan, caving in on most issues the party had promised the voters they would fight for. (Did you notice, Planned Parenthood remains fully funded haha... and a few months ago the firebrands wanted to shut down the government because of something ludicrous Carly Fiorina imagined she saw).

PIVOT TO THE GENERAL ELECTION

Now, imagine in this scenario that this was the plan all along. That Trump had segmented the race, found the opening with the racist wing, enough to pull into the lead or near the lead. Then to start to hammer relentlessly at the rivals, who do have weak spots. And again, where did we see that? Romney’s campaign. He didn’t defeat Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum by gentle comparisons. The fight got ugly into the South Carolina primary and then Mitt Romney took the gloves off and loaded massive carpetbombing TV ads on his rivals utterly destroying them. Thats how you win. Nice guys don’t win (the Presidency). Its what Hillary did to Bernie (within a Democratic party context, so it was far more gentle) in the first debate and its what Trump now has done to all his rivals (except Ted Cruz). He’s been the wrecking ball (and read the Ooda Loop) and yes, Trump moves so fast, the other campaigns can’t catch up. Plus Trump has owned all media coverage. I am certain, Trump had expected to spend some millions, maybe even dozens of millions of dollars in TV ads to destroy his rivals early but he didn’t need to. Then the ‘I am a winner’ and ‘he is still rising in the polls’ story has gotten a life of its own, and Trump has become ‘Teflon Don’ who is never damaged by anything he says. And he is the counter-puncher Trump who destroys all who attack him so many of his rivals now seem to be timidly afraid of him. Trump has achieved status of the Alpha Dog and many who want to replace ‘wimpy’ Obama with the strongest possible leader - see the ‘strength’ in Trump’s bluster and how he attacks fearlessly all others, who cower before him..For many simple-minded voters (Fox viewers, Tea Party supporters) this is what they believe is 'strength' so as Fox has told them Obama is weak, this carricature of 'a strong leader' is what seems appealing to them. Not to normal sensible people, they will take Hillary's type of strength always ahead of Trump's bluster - remember one in six Republcians even agree - but yes, for the lowly educated, older 'Archie Bunker' types, yeah, this seems like 'strength'.

When we move from the racist edge to the disgruntled white male uneducated voters, we are at the core of Tea Party support. This is Fox News profile. This is.. World Wrestling Federation ‘professional wrestling’ viewers. Viewers who like lies with their truth, and bluster in their entertainment. Viewers who like to ‘say it like it is’ and call a spade a spade (spade being a shovel, but also being a derogatory term for black people). And we see right as Trump was growing his support, he took it from the Tea Party next. And then split the extreme wing with Dr Carson, who recently has now lost his support to Ted Cruz. But Trump has kept growing while gradually. Nonetheless, he is now at TWICE the support of his nearest rivals or in other words, Trump’s support is roughly what Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio would have.. combined. And polling suggests yes, Trump is drawing in some who normally don’t bother to vote (for Republicans, and if they are attracted to Trump, these would never vote for Democrats).

So then take the etch-a-sketch moment in this plan. The moment Trump has his nomination secured, most likely not until he has the formal vote counted at his nominating convention - then would come the unprecedented flipflops where all hatred and past bigotry would be simply forgotten. Trump would look into the camera and say - I never said that. And because he is so ‘believable’ some who really didn’t pay that much attention, will believe that clearly the media is playing ‘gotcha’ questions to try to tilt the race to Hillary’s favor. And of course then Trump would pivot and accuse Hillary of being the biggest liar and utterly untrustworthy - so that voters in the end feel, they both are bad, which do we take. And a disgusted voter base would mean a lower voter turnout.. And lower voter turnout is bad for Democrats and good for Republicans.

So imagine Trump once he has secured his nomination as the Republican candidate to then issue some of his positions. First lets look at what would happen simultaneously on the other side. So. What will Hillary do about Obamacare? Hillary will be mostly quiet, will say of course she defends Obamacare and will not dismantle it. But will Hillary now run on ‘socialized medicine’ (as she did with Hillarycare in 2008) )as her platform? No. When she is asked, she’ll say she’ll look for ways to improve Obamacare but she will not replace Obamacare with Hillarycare (in her first term). She has other priorities. Thats our stage. Now take Trump the freshly-confirmed, cannot anymore be rejected Republican nominee for President. He is the businessman. He studied Obamacare carefully. It does not serve America well. Its too expensive, it is inefficient, the USA pays more and gets less. What CEO of any company would continue with that. So lets scrap it. And at this point all Republicans cheer wildly until they get the sting: Trump continues with, and lets take  in the healthcare system they have in Canada. Lets import it lock, stock and barrel. A socialized healthcare system! Trump has been for this for ages. Trump the businessman says, it costs more upfront but the benefits more than pay for it on the back-end. Over time it is far cheaper than only dealing with the emergencies and having millions without insurance. 

So when Trump suddenly dumps the Trumpcare total national socialized healthcare solution on America - the Tea Party will feel betrayed like never before. But Bernie Sanders supporters... will love this - and hate Hillary for not having the balls to promote ‘her’ idea of Hillarycare. Trump can - as a businessman - very fairly tack to the LEFT of Hillary in the general election! And immediately muddle up totally the race and portray Trump as ‘he is actually making sense’ guy and Hillary supporting outdated old Obamacare instead. But Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glen Beck and Ann Coulter would be burning Trump in effigy and having aneurysms.

Ok then the military. Mr ‘Make America Great Again’. Does he know anything about the military. No. He was against the neocons and their love of new wars. What if Trump comes in with his national security plan - Hillary being the tough Iron Lady - and says no, we need to cut military SPENDING and shift it to veterans and cut US bases abroad, let the Koreans and Japanese and Europeans pay more for their defense, I will shift money back home. To build our bridges and roads and hospitals and airports. Again. Hillary the strong foreign policy hawk. Her defense positions will be in line with current administration or more, not less. Bernie would want to cut defense spending. Trump would (again) tack to the LEFT of Hillary. And now, the Rand Paul type of isolationist and budget conservatives would applaud, good move Trump. Being a conservative yes, but not overspend on the military. The USA is the world’s strongest military as it is, no need to bolster it.

What about taxes. Tea Partiers want to cut taxes. Ronald Reagan raise taxes 11 times. Hillary has proposed some tax hikes. What if Trump, having read Hillary’s budget proposal, goes nuclear on that, and raises taxes for rich people - MORE than Hillary. Now he'd be the populist 'small guy' supporter who don't want bigger taxes for themselves but many DO want higher taxes for the rich guys who have been running the party recently. A populist position that would find some conserative support. And again the Bernie Sanders angle to the race. All those on the very left who loved Bernie and felt lukewarm about Hillary - and perhaps worried that she’s too hawkish on the defense, would find that actually, Trump is not that bizarre after all. Especially - if Trump abandons all talk of deporting illegals and stopping Muslims. He can still promise his wall, as a token to the extreme. But who are those Republicans gonna vote for? Hated Hillary or the sensible Trump who is still modestly a ‘conservative’ but who makes some sensible changes to the party on a few issues. And note, there is no way for the party to denounce or cancel its nominee at this stage. Trump can say and do what he wants. He could flipflop on any position he ever wanted, as he learned from Mitt Romney. But do it like Dick Cheney, look straight into the camera and repeat, I never said that. Its a lie by the media who hate Republicans and want Hillary to win. Oh, and Hillary lies all the time.

Trump would not do that on all issues, there would be several issues where he would hold the Republican line and play nice with the moderates, like normal GOP lines about lesser regulations etc, but in the general election Trump would now rarely anymore side with the lunatic fringe. And then were he to be elected, he would not govern as the one who ran as the extremist in the primary, he would not govern as the moderate Republican ‘anti-Hillary’ he would run in the general election - a THIRD Trump would emerge to govern. With whatever goals and ambitions that man had. Likely were that to ever happen (ie Hillary heart attack is the only way) then he’d be the most hated President ever and be impeached, possibly within his first year. But.. this is a DEFINITE possible scenario. I say this is significantly more likely than the conspiracy theory that Trump is a Trojan Horse for Hillary. And if a ‘pure businessman’ who held no political views and had no history of politics, came in to study the recent elections, how you get nominated, then how you win general elections, and did some competitor analysis of the field, and segmentation of the voters - then this is a ‘logical’ way to approach the election. If you were a pure moral vacuum of no political views whatsoever. Then yes, go find a niche of the Republican party. Pander to them like there was no tomorrow (like moderate Romney calling himself a severe conservative). Then blast the other candidates till their heads spin (like Romney). Celebrate your winning ways and leadership. Then when you have the nomination, forget all that and start a new campaign - as a CENTRIST moderate. Like Romney only far more so. To a Trumpian degree.

WHAT IF TRUMP IS TERMINAL

Thats all fine and good, and those scenarios are mutually exclusive. We should see from Trump’s behavior which is is, will he remain in the race and continue as the racist even past his loss. Or is he playing a con game and switch to Mr Nice Guy next summer. Or will he pull out and benefit Ted Cruz (maybe splitting the party) or will he quit, and some time later we find what gift Hillary will give to him in return for demolishing all moderate campaigns. There is one more scenario, and this is not mutually exclusive with the above, this could be a stand-alone case or could be part of one of the above. What if Donald Trump is dying. What if he is terminal. What if Trump has less than 5 years of life left? I know he had that hilarious doctor’s note to tell us he’s the most healthy candidate in history.. gosh that is funny. But in reality. There is no stipulation in the Constitution that the US President has to be healthy when he is voted in. William Harrison died of pneumonia just one month after his inaugration.

Now. Imagine being Donald J Trump. One of the richest people on the planet and you’ve built an empire of buildings all over, and then you find out that you have a terminal disease and you have say 2 years of life left. Now there is literally no chance to postpone your one dream of running for President. Its this time or nothing. And then.. suddenly it would not matter at all what people thought of you, or your buildings or your TV shows or your clothes. You knew you were dying, and this run was it. Either you become the 45th President (and die in office) or else you die trying but its the last run you make. Imagine what that mind could be like. Now throwing all caution to the wind, his legacy and reputation will not matter, all of his fortune is just pawns into this game, he will give it his all and its ‘make or break’. Consider the scenario. If Trump was dying (and obviously bribed his doctor for that fake certificate) then all this also would make sense. And then think Ted Cruz. Bill Clinton doesn’t need to be in any way part of it. But Ted Cruz might be, that Trump told Cruz he is dying, he will pick Cruz as his running mate, he only wants to get his name in the history books and when Trump dies, Cruz becomes the next President. The bonus for Cruz is that he then gets to still run twice, so he would establish the modern record for being in office the longest time.

And this would then explain their alliance. Now with the above, imagine what moves a terminal Trump would be willing to say and do, if he doesn’t need to live to see it come true, only to get elected. And that he’d be willing to sacrifice his fortune on this mission, meaning Trump-Cruz could have more money than Hillary’s campaign. And still with Trump on the top, he could make all those weird flipflops in his positions to defeat Hillary. Meanwhile Cruz wouldn’t care, its the guy on the top who does the policy stuff, Cruz gets to inherit the Presidency and then run his extremist Tea Party rule any way he wants, once Trump is buried a year or two into office. Whats not to like.

The main part on this is Trump’s complaints about 3 hours being too long to debate. He also isn’t doing any of the normal trailblazing stump events. He often sits in Trump Towers and does press interviews via phone. Is he really healthy or is he maybe terminal. And if a Billionaire worth 11 Billion dollars knew he has only a few years left, and this is the very last chance to run for President, he could be unpredictable and take gambles and say outrageous things that no sensible normal megalomaniac narcissist nutcase could ever think of doing. Would fit the pattern. The way to know this, is only if Trump dies in the next say 4 years or so (whether in office or not). If he dies and its some terminal illness, then we’ll know that doctor’s note was a total scam. But like I said, this is something that could be stand-alone reason/motivation/scenario or could be part of maybe all but especially the Cruz-partnership deal. And it would explain maybe best, why Cruz is so happy to play second fiddle to Trump while Cruz is really climbing in the polls and should look at the race as ‘either him or me’.

CAN TRUMP WIN THE NOMINATION

So can Trump win the Republican nomination this time? Of course he can. I calculated two months ago that Trump had the second easiest path to the most delegates behind just Ted Cruz and ahead of Marco Rubio. Now the polls are really at the razor’s edge. If Trump nationally stays at 35%-ish (RCP average, obviously, not individual polls) then I say Cruz has a slight edge because he’ll have a good run out of the SEC primaries of March 1 and then inherits a clear front-runner status. But if the polls get to 40% or above nationally, then I say its Trump for most delegates even as I don’t see him (by the current view, and current field) taking the nomination outright. They’d still go to June and it could be a deadlocked convention where nobody has the absolute majority of 50% plus one delegate to clinch the nomination. Cruz and Trump have the best chance for clinching the nomination but not before June. But if Trump moves to say 45% national support in RCP polling, then because of winner-take-all states, he could clinch as early as May.

But here’s a wrinkle. What if the convention is deadlocked. Say Trump only finishes with second most delegates and say Cruz is first and Rubio is third. And they have say 40%, 33% and 20% of the delegates. Now Cruz should have an easy chance of negotiating with either Trump or Rubio, so Cruz is nominated for President and the other, as VP. Trump could also try for Rubio to become his VP. Rubio could play the king-maker. And then.. think of the Art of the Deal. Who is the best negotiator of this field. Who do you think has the best chance of winning if Trump finishes second - and obviously Ted Cruz will never accept VP if he has more delegates. Trump is just the guy to negotiate some clever deal with Rubio that Trump becomes the nominee, not Cruz. Right? Besides, who can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams?

Only Trump is that rich that he could easily make a sweetheart deal for whoever is in that third place (in this case, Rubio, but it could be anyone from the field). Even Romney was not rich enough to afford to make this proposition. But Trump could buy that loyalty with a guarantee of lifetime of wealth for his VP. How? Sign three contracts each for 10 years. If Trump wins the nomination and wins re-election, and if then Rubio runs as VP for President in 2024 and wins and wins re-election, it means Rubio would retire from the Presidency in 2032 at the age of 63. But like all Presidents, then be a bit baffled, what to do with his life and like Hillary at one point complained, they - Bill and Hillary were ‘broke’ when they left the White House in 2001. So ex President Rubio is then appointed starting say March 2033 as the new Vice Chairman of Trump Industries, with a duty to attend four board meetings per year and get a salary of 10 million dollars per year. And a ten year contract. So Rubio would earn - ‘honestly’ a 100 million dollar bonus and retire so rich he can live off his interest income,

Then a second variation of that contract dated March 2025, if Rubio ran as the sitting VP for President in 2024, and lost. Then he gets 10 years as Trump Vice Chairman and his 100 million dollar bonus. And obviously third such contract for 2017, if they run together now in 2016, and lose, then Rubio will be guaranteed earning 10 million per year at the ripe young age of still 45 years of age - a millionaire - and have earned the total 100 million dollar bounty by age 55, again able to retire - or fund his own political pawns if he so desired haha.. Who else can afford to do this. But for Trump 100 million dollars is one percent of what he owns. He can afford this kind of deal and not even notice the money. But this secret deal would guarantee that whoever is in that third place, they would of course pick Trump’s offer rather than go with Cruz and end up with nothing.

So regardless of whether Trump finishes first or second to Cruz, I think Trump today, in late December 2015, actually has a slightly higher chance of being the Republican nominee than Cruz does !  Yes the CDB blog predicts, the person most likely to be the GOP nominee in 2016 against Hillary is... Donald Trump. Wow. I did not expect to say that on this blog haha. But there you go. Thats how I see it.

CAN TRUMP WIN

No. He cannot win the general election. None of the tricks I talked about will decide it for him. If Trump is the Republican nominee (ie not third party) then he might do all sorts of unbelievable stunts to get more TV time like he’s done now. But he is now subject to raised expectations. Just deporting Mexicans or blocking Muslims is not enough. All through the Spring of 2016 for the nomination, if Trump intends to dominate the TV coverage, he has to ‘increase the dosage’ and get more nasty. He could start to recite Adolf Hitler. He could cheer for violence at his rallies - as it happens. He can really really get nasty. And if he stays at the same level, nobody really pays any attention anymore. So, in the primaries, yes, it can continue to work. And then what of Hillary?

In the season so far, Trump’s main rivals have been timid, or slow, or openly unwilling to attack him. Walker first and Jeb Bush, then Ben Carson, now Ted Cruz. He’s been given ‘a pass’ by his direct rivals. Has Hillary given Trump a pass? Not once. So in the general election if Trump says something vile, the press will flock to Hillary to ask for her opinion. Then its one against one, and Hillary will demand to get (approximately) equal time and with only two candidates - she WILL get more-or-less equal time. And Hillary will every time sound like the only adult in the conversation. This schtick will not play in an even-handed two-person race. He will look like the loon he is. So the media advantage that Nate Silver calculated will be at least severely diminished if not vanished.

What about the Ooda Loop? Hillary’s campaign is clearly calculating on what happens in the news and they go test their responses before committing, this takes at least a day in the news cycle. But her answers - when they come - are almost always dead-center where the political populist position is. So how about Trump running the confusion with bewildering nonsense? He’s shown his hand. What the Hillary campaign needs, is to pre-test idiotic ‘only Archie Bunker would say stuff like this’ bullshit, and how to best respond. For that you’d need a large national panel of voters, and a simulation engine with systematic A/B testing of responses. Now where did we see that? Ah, Mr Messina with Obama 2012 and the Narwhal miracle machine. Now all Hillary needs to do is hire a couple of Archie Bunkers to spew hatred every day, and listen to Ted Nugent and Duck Dynasty and all the wackos in the comments sections of Breitbart and Drudge, and there you go. The vile is there. Trump is mostly aping what the Archie Bunkers are already saying. So she pre-tests the responses. Then she has someone on her team monitoring what Trump is saying and the moment another grenade slips out, that assistant sends it to Hillary’s smartphone - together with the best tested response - and Hillary is ready to answer within 5 minutes of Trump saying something ludicrous. Hillary will have a year of time to refine her ‘Narwhal 2.0’ machine to handle Trumpisms. And she will crush him on those. Not for the lunatic fringe racists obviously, but for the moderate voters in the middle. Remember the polling - already today one in SIX Republican voters will go with Hillary rather than Trump. He is facing a bloodbath.

Then the wave and the tsunami wave. Hispanics who are now becoming the largest minority, more Hispanic voters than blacks. Trump is despised by Hispanics, he gets 14% of their support. Romney only got 35% and the Republican party calculated they cannot win the general election if they get anything below 40%. Trump gets 14%. He is toast. And thats not the biggest wave. The once-in-forever tsunami wave in US Presidential elections of any subgroup is when the largest voter group crests - that is the only voter block that is more than half. Women voters. Women already prefer Democrats and Hillary has a big female gender gap to her favor against all Republicans. Who does worst with women? Trump. He cannot win against Hillary in 2016. I say its 20 points if Trump runs as the Republican, its even worse landslide for the Democrats, if Trump runs as an Independent.

What about the pivot strategy? The base Republicans would hate Trump like nothing seen in recent politics. He would seriously have to worry about assassination attempts by the gun-crazed conspiracy-wing of the Tea Party. Yes, Trump could confuse a lot of the electorate with wild flip-flops. And who would still seem like the sensible choice in all of that, Hillary. Who are most vulnerable to lies? Republicans. Who are most loyal and love Hillary? Democrats. Who are the most educated and value honesty? Democrats. Trump cannot bring enough new voters in for all he loses directly from Republicans to Hillary. Its not possible for him to win against her (except for a Hillary health incident like a heart attack). And a hate-filled campaign might suppress general votes - but still not the WOMEN’s surge that is inevitable with Hillary on the top of the Democratic ticket. The only way the Republicans could hope to cancel out a tsunami-wave effect of the woman on top of the Democratic ticket, is by nominating a woman on their side. And as far as I can tell, Trump isn’t a woman and is quite unlikely to undergo a sex change in time for November 2016 haha. So the female surge will bury him no matter if its a high turnout election or a low turnout election. He can’t win.

On the third party run, I wrote before, that the mathematical opportunity exists that if Trump appeals to the extreme right, and splits the conservative vote, and then a very moderate candidate like Jeb Bush, John Kasich or George Pataki runs in the middle, and that candidate then decides not to even constest for conservative voters, but calculates, that as Hillary has moved so far to the left then the middle candidate could steal enough moderate voters to prevent Hillary winning and Trump just might grab the victory. It ain’t happenin'. That has already been torpedoed so thoroughly by Trump’s mad positions that poison his chances for the general election. And a three-way split, Hillary is the known quantity, she’d easily hold at least 40% of the base on her side (plus the female voter surge) and Trump and whoever on the middle would have no chance to get to 40% but would both get something near 30%. Far more likely Hillary takes 50% and the others do roughly 25/25 each. Yeah. 25 point drubbing. Hillary would win nearly every state if its a 3 way race. But mathematically yes, there is a scenario that has Trump squaking in. That is not plausible anymore.

THE GLASS JAW

So let me end on a bit of the Democratic side to this. In the primary race, Trump seems unbeatable and a wrecking ball. Now consider the general election. I put it to you, my readers, that in the general election Trump has a glass jaw. He will collapse on the first hit and go down. How? Almost anything Trump has said in the past half year, is the most absurd general-election-losing vile garbage. Its like the ultimate fodder for Jon Stewart back when he ran the Daily Show. So the standard Hillary Clinton ad would run like this:

Donald Trump said this (video). Major political leaders disagree with Trump (video of one Democrat and two Republicans disagreeing strongly with Trump). Trump was asked to change his mind, he didn’t (video). This is not presidential (video of one Democratic and one Republican President, living or dead, saying exactly the opposite of what Trump said, or if alive, condemning Trump). This is not presidential. This is what Hillary said (video). And Hillary says she approved the ad.

That format ad would run on Mexicans. Then a week later, another of the same format ad would run on women. Next it would run on immigrants. It would run on blacks/Black Lives Matter. It would run on Muslims (and variant, on religious freedom). It would run on war heroes. It would run on being compared to Hitler. It would run on admiring Putin. It would run on not understanding the nuclear weapons. and on and on and on and on. Always. This is just one way to attack Trump. Note - its never happened that one candidate had almost everybody in his own party reject at least something he said. So this is not just one or two 'sore loser' rivals to Trump. Mitt Romney condemns Trump on many things, John McCain does so as well. And then the PRESIDENTS. While this tactic would not change the minds of most who already liked Trump, it would be devastating to all 'moderates' and 'independents' in the middle. Yes, Hillary would beat Trump easily by 20 points, at least.

The racist wing loves him. But Trump has never apologized for his racism. So now its everybody who ever was a Republican who condemns what Trump has said. Even Ted Cruz occasionally says its not what he thinks or would say or do. And every single time there is contemporaneous video of Hillary taking Trump to task on it. Who wins in this case. All those in the middle, the moderate undecided voters - they go with Hillary. She can’t lose to Trump. And once the Hillary campaign started against Trump, he would ALSO experience attacks that he has so far not witnessed, and they would be devastating. Like his bankruptcies. Like his first ever press clippings where he was taken to court for discrimination against minorities as a landlord. Like his stamina, complaining about 3 hours vs Hillary doing 11 hours in the Benghazi hearings. Like Trump swapping wives every decade while Hillary is sitll with Bill and on and on and on. Trump is one of the most flawed candidates, if not the most flawed candidate ever to run for a general election - and the Republican party bosses know this. Thats why they are running scared. And now, in December 2015, it does look like Trump is the front-runner to actually win the nomination. Wow.

So is it that Trump is the Trojan Horse that made a deal with Bill Clinton. Or is Trump planning to split the Tea Party away from the GOP and run with Ted Cruz as an independent. Or is Trump wily as a fox, playing a total con game on the base of the GOP and intending to pivot to moderate positions after the convention. Is Trump maybe so ill he is terminal and this is his last hurrah, a desperate man with nothing left to lose. Or is he just the bigoted fascist racist asshole that he seems to be. We’ll know probably in the next year as this plays out. Stay tuned and do comment on what you think.

Comments

[Winter]

@Tomi,

There is indeed ample confirmation of Trump's Narcissism, for who might still need it:

Is Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weigh In!
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/donald-trump-narcissism-therapists

Note that Narcissism is a dangerous personality disorder with sometimes devastating consequences for those around the patient.

See for mental health details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

[untomi]

"he seems to be, a bigoted, racists, hateful, inconsiderate, narcissistic, xenophobic, egomaniac and a destructively delusional one at that."

You forgot to mention that he's also a wanna-be James bond character.

Oh, sorry, I thought you were describing yourself (Tomi) and LEFTist that detail out.

You're meaning to describe Trump.

If you're going to persist in wiping your hinder parts with the candidates, try applying a little bit-O-fanny fudge Clinton's way by describing her many nasty, down right evil traits as well..

[Winter]

Note that Trump will have a legacy. It is now shown that therre is a huge potential for a "genuine" Front National style anti-democratic party in the US, like there is in Europe, Russia, and Turkey.

Someone will jump into that segment. So I expect that some type of Tea Party will splitt off. Within US party structure, this might be a split in the GOP along state boundaries.

[Winter]

Tomi

“America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.”

― David Letterman

These are the die hard supporters of Trump.

And why Trump can lie with impunity?

I recognize this from European populists. His supporters do not care about the truth. They want bloody revenge on the "establishment. If the establishment wants to protect the environment,destroy the environment. If the establishment is against discrimination of minorities, deport them all. They want a strong man who will take revenge, by any means.

Just seeing the establishment in a fit of rage is its own reward in itself.

[tz]

Hillary lies about Trump being used by ISIS in videos for recruiting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAX8DDt0QGo#t=66

[tz]

"Sir Edmund" Hillary Clinton lies as bad
http://www.westernjournalism.com/top-7-hillary-clinton-lies-liberal-medias-trying-hide/
Her supporters don't care about the truth.
The rich ones giving to the Clinton foundation just want access and payback if she is elected.
The poor ones just want to stay on the public dole.
She is the same establishment Trump's supporters are trying to destroy.
Hillary's supporters don't care about the truth.
This might get interesting.

If the Trump campaign calls, I will suggest sending all the refugees and illegal immigrants to Finland where Tomi can be there to welcome them with open arms.

[Catriona]

OK, you've lost it Tomi. Trump is a narcissist, and he's running to promote himself. The WSJ had a good op-Ed piece over the weekend. Trump can't actually finance a long campaign. He's been getting tons of free media. Even today Face the Nation spent its entire panel time devoted to Trump vs Saturday's Democrat debate. But Trump has only about $70MM in liquid assets. Romney spent $44MM of his own money in 2012. Trump won't get any SuperPAC support. So he'll run out of money quite quickly.

The GOP nomination will come down to Cruz or Rubio. That said, Trump is a symptom of the state of American politics. There is a not insignificant portion of the populace who doesn't trust either party to fix what's wrong with our country.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Winter, untomi and tz

Winter - thanks on the links to narcissism and yeah Trump is clearly having a major narcissistic disorder that is obvious and anyone commenting on it says he is just about as perfect a case of that as possible. Some psychologist said that they were collecting Trump video for educational material and had earlier planned to hire actors to play out such behavior, but Trump does it so obviously and blatantly in his normal life - he is the walking talking case study for students to observe and learn about that disorder.

untomi - haha funny and yeah... I do see elements of Trump's behavior in myself too. I clearly have a huge ego and am to some degree a narcissist as well. But I trust nobody thinks I am a bigoted racist or hateful, inconsiderate or xenophobic. And my megalomania has been kept in check as has my Bond villainesque tendencies by my modest standing in life. In another life, however, I could be posting these blogs from inside a hollowed-out volcano and stroking a white cat. Nah, I'm not a cat person. I'd feed that ugly puss to my vicious dog.

Now about your desire for me to write about Hillary. I will, when there is something to bother about. There is nothing going on, at that side of the aisle. She is sleepwalking to her coronation and the usually rambunctious Democratic party has been hypnotized to follow that path as if zombies. There is nothing to write about. Nada. Even that Benghazi witch-hunt turned out to be a victory lap for Hillary. untomi, I will write about Hillary when there is something to report. I won't waste my readers time putting her name on some nonsense of no news, even if some conservative readers would like me to say nasty things about her 'for a change'. untomi - the Democratic party is not talking about boycotting Hillary as a candidate. They are not calling her a communist. They are not saying they would give their money to the Republicans if she becomes their nominee and they are not saying they would vote for the other side if she wins their party's race. But - TOTALLY UNUSUALLY - Trump IS getting all that from his side. Many in the Republican party are saying they will boycott the election if Trump is the nominee. They are calling him a fascist - something no Republican has called their front-runner in decades. DECADES. Many Republican donors have said they would give their money to Hillary if Trump becomes the nominee, and more saying they'd vote for Hillary. The polling says ONE IN SIX Republicans would abandon the party and vote for Hillary if Trump is the nominee !!!! One in six. Thats an election landslide loss. Its Mondale or Goldwater level crushing defeat.

The reason I write about occasional election topics is if there is something significant happening. On the Republican side there have recently been several significant events such as the brief rise and rapid collapse of Dr Ben Carson or now the unstoppable rise of Trump. I write about what is happening. And then I'm honest about it. The Trump phenomenon is a wrecking ball to the Republican party. I report it honestly. Incidentially its what MANY of the LEADERS of the Republican party including former Republican Presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney have said. Its what current party leadership like Paul Ryan in the House and Mitt McConnell in the Senate have said. Its not just me here on this blog as the weird 'liberal' writer. I call it as I see it - and once again - what I called, also REPUBLICAN and CONSERVATIVE writers have seen. But when Hillary does have something happening, I'll be on it, don't you worry. But the nomination is not a fight, its a coronation and thus, very likely the first real relevant Hillary blogs won't come until next summer with the Conventions and her pick for Vice President...

Winter - on Trump's legacy. Ok, yeah. One, there has been a number of really tiny splinter parties in the USA that do also from time to time nominate Presidential candidates. Rand Paul's dad Ron Paul ran on the Libertarian Party's ticket for example. And there are a bunch of Nazi-type ultra nationalist right-wing nutcase parties that occasionally nominate some head of the Ku Klux Klan etc as their Presidential candidate to obviously less than 1% national vote results. What Trump might do, is create an opportunity for those lingering, festering voter groups to collect together, perhaps as the new Tea Party/Freedom Party/Trump Party or perhaps, separate from that and the Republican party, one could just kind of grow organically more-or-less around Trump. A kind of Le Pen style nationalist party. It would suck voters away from the Republicans and even if the new party only got to say 10% of the national support and won a few seats in the House, it would tilt national elections massively against the Republicans, effectively splitting their vote and giving large majorities in every way to the Democrats.

Now I have said for years that what would be good for the USA is to get rid of the two-party duopoly and move to more pluralistic democracy with more viable national parties. Yes its a kind of sad development if the first national 'new party' is the Nazi party, sorry Nationalist Tea Party/Trump Party of hatred and xenophobia and racism - but that sentiment exists. If it had its own party, and those who really are such 'haters' left the Republican party, the Republicans could get back to their freedom-appreciating liberty party it was as the one of Lincoln that freed the slaves. So it would be a healthy development for the USA, if the nutcases are packed into one loonie party on the Right, the Republicans can invite back their moderates who are living in exile listing their party affiliation as 'Independent' - and then have the sensible new Republican party fight for the middle with Democrats, for sensible solutions, while the loonie right wing nuts yell and sream from the sidelines but at least, are not in power. As to European democratic trends, I would see sooner or later after that happened for something like the European 'Green Party' concept take hold as a revolt inside the Democratic party and if Hillary rules as the Iron Lady she seems cut out to become, she could alienate many idealistic younger voters who could split into that Green Party. And yeah, with Bernie Sanders's brave but doomed campaign, you'd kind of hope his legacy would be a genuine, if maybe modest size Socialist Party to be kind of the left-wing end, where the Tea Party would be the right-wing end. And the USA in say a decade or two, could evolve from the current rigid two-party system to four or five parties.

As to Tea Party split itself as break from Republican party. That has now become nearly a hysteria among GOP leaders and Politico had an article saying if Trump becomes the Republican party nominee, then a REPUBLICAN candidate should run as the 'Independent' and 'split' away from the main party, so that some disgusted Republicans would have a kind of political and moral home in the election, that they would not have to select between the evil of Trump or the evil of Hillary haha. And then that this martyr would of course lose to historic levels but at least it would help eliminate Trump's chances of beating Hillary because most serious politicians see that a Donald Trump as US President would be a gamble at the nuclear war brink. He is utterly unpredictable and ridiculously easy to provoke. He is totally everything the planet does not need, for nuclear annihilation stability. What the world needs is stable leaders. Even unpredictable Putin in Russia is a far greater threat to nuclear annihiliation than past Soviet or Russian leaders including Stalin and Krushchev. But I do find it funny how quickly the conservative writers went from 'Trump cannot possibly win' to 'our party is in danger of being destroyed'. That switch was literally in a few weeks. (and if you read my earlier analysis of Trump and his impact.. I did warn this was on the cards if Trump kept being viable.)

On your next comment - gosh thanks. David Letterman is/was the best. And on that truth vs enrage, yeah, it is weird, and kind of sad but also very true. I wonder if that has somehow been manufactured. Like take terrorism. There are hundreds of mass shootings in the USA every year, every year some kill far more than what happened by the Muslim couple in San Bernardino. And after the World Trade Center attack in 2001, how many successful Muslim-terrorist attacks have there even been in the USA, a handful. Now. Should Americans be incredibly alarmed at the GUN VIOLENCE? Yeah. Is that unusual. No. Should Americans be incredibly alarmed by TERRORISM. Gosh no. There were more than one airline hijacking PER DAY one year in the 1970s, it was that common. One lousy 'Muslim terrorist' shooting in California and the whole country is in shambles. Come on! This is totally manufactured fear, utterly pointless. But is it perhaps created by 24 hour news sensationalism, not just by Fox, this is certainly the way Wolf the Blitzer dude does his show on CNN nightly. Anger and fear every night, especially if its terrorism. The reality of how rare 'terrorism' actually is, in the USA, is utterly not in proportion to the fear and hysteria about it that they have. This is baffling to me. And I kind of ponder if the terrorist leaders really knew, how little they apparently would need to 'achieve' to utterly paralyze the USA... And I wonder if part of this is the Obama factor combined with (Trump-created) birtherism. That if George Idiot W Bush was the President, after a San Bernardino shooting, he'd be on TV saying, come on folks, relax, all is ok, that was a rare isolated incident. Please go back to Christmas shopping. And most would take that as reassurance. But if Obama says there isn't a big terror threat in the USA, Fox yells at him for ignoring a blatant obvious huge threat, and the rest of the TV channels invite some Dick Cheney's or similar idiots to say how wrong the President is. That even as he is not a Muslim, he gets now painted as if he WAS a Muslim and somehow he was trying to find common cause with the terrorists. Its bizarre. But yeah, thanks for all the fear-mongering Fox and friends (and CNN !!)

(more replies coming

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Winter]

Just one example of why Trump can lie with impunity, his supporters do not care about reality at all:

CNN Interviews Trump Supporters - They Don’t Care That He’s Lying
“Don’t try and screw this up - you’re not gonna convince me otherwise”
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/45298_CNN_Interviews_Trump_Supporters_-_They_Dont_Care_That_Hes_Lying

"I’ve been saying for a while that the right wing voting base simply doesn’t care whether Donald Trump is lying or not, and this CNN video appallingly demonstrates that point. These people have been so thoroughly brainwashed by years of right wing propaganda that a blatant fascist like Donald Trump can just step in and take control at this point."

[Winter]

Lindsey Graham drops out of the race.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/21/lindsey-graham-drops-out-of-presidential-race.html

[Kim]

That is a thought-provoking read. I think I agree with Ahonen's hypothesis / speculation, that Donald Trump wants to be elected to be President (or at least to be the Republican nominee), but doesn't actually want to be President. Bluecat has said much the same thing.

And...I don't know which is more terrifying - the idea that Trump knows 75% of what he says is total bullshit, or the possibility that he believes it at the time he says it.

One thing Ahonen is wrong about - Donald Trump is taking donations - 4 million dollars worth, according to the FEC. There is a link to donate on the Trump website, easily accessed by going to jebbush.com.

So I don't think Trump drops out before the Republican convention and likely floor fight. He likes a rumble, and the idea of thousands of people shouting his name and waving his signs will feed his gigantic ego.

Ahonen reminds us of Trumps long association with WWF at his hotels, and writes:

Trump is playing us. He’s campaigning not on US Presidential race rules, he has decided to play with Pro Wrestling rules instead.

If nominated, Trump will probably even run a credible general election campaign. Perhaps his goal is simply to wreck political discourse in this country, to cheapen and degrade all civility and journalistic integrity, to remake all of that in his own reality-show, crass, pro-wrestling, gloriously fake image. don't think that he can win in a general election... but if, all deities forbid it, he does....

Then it will be to make the US Presidency his vehicle for the biggest "deal" ever. To make Cheney's shameless war-mongering in order to get contracts for Halliburton look like small potatoes. To build up the Trump empire.

And if a few eight year old Muslim girls or five year old Syrian boys get stomped in the process, hey, just cut to the commercial break, which will be all flowers and sunshine.

[Millard Filmore]

@Tomi: "even if the new party only got to say 10% of the national support and won a few seats in the House"

A new party would need to get to work rather quickly. The effort required to get on the ballot of the states is not trivial. An appalling number of petition signatures are required to be turned in some months before the voting. Only the big parties are grandfathered into an election.

[Wayne Borean]

Tomi,

I think you are missing something. Donald Trump maybe a narcissistic maniac, but he's also extremely smart. So if he is so smart, why is he acting like this?

I don't know. Not for certain. But I can guess. What if Donald Trump knows something we don't, something important?

Trump has money, enough money to hire lots of private detectives. What could those detectives have discovered? What if they turned up something about Hillary Clinton that isn't known, and is really negative?

There are dozens of possible scenarios. Trump is smart. What has Trump got in his pockets, Precious...

[Stephen Reed]

Tomi,

I very much enjoyed reading your post, especially your intriguing speculation, and your increasing focus on Donald Trump.

As a Trump supporter I could remark on every paragraph but let me just say a few things from the perspective of a well educated former Texas Democrat and Obama volunteer who is not only changing parties, but is volunteering for the Trump primary campaign in Texas.

Among your scenarios, I suggest that the Trump you see is the real Trump. Your market segmentation comment is correct.

Being older than you, I can recall a time in the USA when there was very limited immigration, when there was no terrorism, when everything available for purchase was made in the USA, when union jobs were plentiful, and when a man made enough income so that a wife could stay at home to care for numerous children full time. Trump remembers that time too and that is the theme of his campaign.

Here is what Trump calls "Crippled America" ...

Globalism, the new world order, the free movement of capital, intellectual property, goods/services and labor have greatly benefited the world as a whole - who should know better than yourself. But back in the 1950's the USA was about half the world economy and now is a much smaller part. When I go to a Walmart (largest department store chain) everything is manufactured in low wage countries outside the USA. Legal immigration and visas drive down the price of high tech labor in the USA, and illegal immigration drives down the cost of low-skilled labor. In Austin, a sanctuary city where I reside, there is an out migration of african americans who choose not to compete for low wage jobs that illegals take.

In the era before the Vietnam War, the USA was not the world's policeman. In the following decades, Republican and some Democrat neocons (the pro-war military/industrial complex) engaged the USA in a series of expensive foreign wars.

--------

Regarding 9/11, I recall credible news reports at the time that Muslims in New Jersey were cheering as the towers fell. Increasingly, anti-jihad web sites and blogs are attracting American audiences. I hope that if you have young female relatives in Finland that they are very cautious given the news of numerous rapes by Muslim immigrants there.

-----

Trump is winning not only by force of personality, intelligence, and political instinct, but winning because his issues resonate with the republican electorate. I understand Populism to be a good thing for a democracy, to the extent that issues popular with most people should be supported by politicians. As you know in the USA our democracy is not perfect; in recent years elections have proven so expensive that special interests, e.g. industries, trade associations, unions, etc. donate to candidates and elected officials to the extent that unpopular laws and policies are common in the USA. Trump knows this well from the viewpoint of having made such donations to politicians. But free from the need to accept donations because of his personal wealth, Trump can adopt popular issues which have long been ignored by the donor class and their establishment politicians.

The proposed ban on Muslim immigration is a case in point. Trump made the dramatic announcement on the heels of the Muslim terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, the latter hitting very close to home for the American electorate. I would argue that existing federal immigration law gives the US President the right to make such a ban with arbitrary criteria - but that is not important. The takeaway is that neither the donor class nor the political establishment could have made such a ban because they are concerned about the reaction of the Muslim majority countries, and domestic Muslims. Trump on the other hand knew that his proposal would be popular among persons who might possibly vote for him in the primary election. This is the nature of Populism. He characterized the ban as common sense. If there was no way to completely vet Muslim immigrants for anti-American sentiment, then simply not accept them and save the lives that would otherwise be lost due to certain immigrant terrorists. Opinion polls have proven Trump correct in how popular his proposed temporary ban would be among Republicans, and supported to a lesser extent among independents. Unlike Europe, Muslims registered to vote in the USA are a small percentage, and would vote for the democratic candidate anyway by probably 80% - so Trump could ignore them.

Birthright citizenship / Anchor Babies is another case in point. The donor class cannot agree to this, but it is quite popular among his base of supporters - a populist issue. I believe that a President Trump will get a constitutional case before the US Supreme Court and win it.

Trumps proposals for trade, for the use of military force, for limiting immigration and deporting illegals and Muslim refugees, will - he argues - restore the American economy, and American culture to how I remember it in the 1950s. I accept that China, Japan, and Mexico and maybe the rest of the world will suffer recession as a result.

Suppose that a President Trump finds a way to tax imported cell phones so as to compel their manufacture in the USA for sale to American customers. How much of a tax would it take? And would Americans be willing to pay substantially more for a cell phone in order to create lots of domestic manufacturing jobs?

------------------

I predict that if Trump wins Iowa, he will win every other state. At the moment Cruz leads in Iowa. If Cruz wins Iowa, I expect that Trump will win New Hampshire and then win every other state. And should Cruz win Iowa and remain second place in most other states, the Trump could choose Cruz as his Vice President running mate, thus obtaining the support of Cruz delegates at the Republican Convention, and securing his flank on the right among conservatives for the general election.

In the general election, I believe you are correct about the pivot. Being a former Democrat, Trump is well positioned to propose centrist populist policies to sway independents in the swing states. I agree with you that Trump will get left of Clinton on one or more issues - refactoring foreign trade to create US manufacturing jobs being one of them.

You believe that Trump will be crushed in a general election against Hillary Clinton. I believe the opposite. Setting aside arguments on Trump's electability, you completely leave out the numerous disadvantages Clinton faces ...

* The FBI may present evidence that Clinton has committed national security felonies or obstruction of justice felonies. No felon has ever been elected US president. Obama would be forced to either pardon her or instruct his Justice Department not to prosecute her. Either alternative is damming to both Clinton's campaign and to Obama's legacy.

* The USA is tired of Clintons. Hillary is proven loser, to Obama in the 2008 primary where she was also the initial front-runner. Bill Clinton may not necessarily a plus for Hillary Clinton as a campaign surrogate.

* Hillary is tied to Obama, inheriting his policies and forced to defend them. Obama is increasingly unpopular in the USA, with the situation becoming more similar to that of McCain in 2008 having to defend the unpopular G W Bush.

* Trump and numerous financial experts predict a recession in the USA, perhaps as soon as 2016 as the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates. A recession is very bad for an incumbent or a candidate forced to defend an incumbent in the same party.

* Trump will conduct his general election campaign in the same fashion as his primary campaign with regard to political advertising. It is proven that Trump gets media the high ratings they crave, and I expect Trump to have a similar proportion of free media exposure versus Hillary Clinton similar to what he enjoys over the current republican field. Trump has a faster decision loop as you point out, and will react to events faster than Hillary keeping her confused.

* Trump will characterize Hillary Clinton as not having the strength nor stamina required for the office of President. His observation is based on fact, which should become apparent over the grueling primary campaign schedule.

* African Americans will not turn out for Hillary Clinton in the same numbers as when Obama was running.

* Hispanics may respond positively to a Trump message on limiting illegal immigration because they would benefit from less competition and safer neighborhoods.

-------

I eagerly await your next article on the American election.

[Wayne Borean]

Stephen,

I read your comment with interest. At this point in time, I'm projecting a Trump Primary win.

Why? There's several reasons:

1) Trump isn't a politician. Americans don't trust politicians. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Though the analogy is bad, since the American electorate has been fooled by every president since Nixon.

2) Trump isn't depending on the donor class. This makes his choosing Cruz as running mate unlikely, since Cruz is beholden to donors. I have no idea who Trump would pick for a running mate, the only other presidential candidate who isn't beholden to the big donors is Bernie Sanders. A Trump/Sanders ticket may seem insane, but both men have enough policies in common that it might work.

3) I don't see Hillary Clinton as a weak candidate, but I do consider her flawed. The woman is a psychopath (guess based on seeing her on TV). Nothing matters to her but Hillary. In my opinion, that is a huge Achilles heel. Sanders would be a far better choice as the Democratic candidate.

4) Terrorism isn't immigration related. Most terrorism is internal, like the shootings at the Jewish Centre. Terrorism in the U.S.A. has always been internal, the KKK being a good example of a terrorist organization. The few cases of terrorism that have external causes are driven by American foreign policy (Boston Marathon and Fort Hood shooter).

5) If you are so concerned about immigration, you should self-deport, and give the land back to the First Nations.

6) Trade is a fun subject. As a former Major Accounts Sales rep, who did a lot of international travel, I liked lack of barriers. Hell, I took advantage of the situation, wiping one competitor out of a market niche (which left us in control of that niche - a very satisfying outcome). But I also saw the damage that uncontrolled trade did. A lot of the U.S.A. looks like a third world country. Far too many people are super poor, far too many people are working two or three jobs to make ends meet. There has to be a better way to handle things.

7) Fixing trade does nothing unless the limitations in banks are brought back into force. Canada was considering deregulating the banking sector, fortunately the financial meltdown started, and deregulation became politically toxic.

8) Taxes, taxes, taxes. Two things need to be done, first the tax code needs to be simplified. Second, exemptions for people earning more than $200k need to be abolished, and minimum tax for those earning above that level need to be 50% or maybe higher. Those earning less than $40k should pay no Federal taxes, and no State taxes.

All of which leads us to whether or not Trump can win. As I said in an earlier comment, Donald Trump is smart. I can't see him running for President without having gamed out the entire thing from the start. He may want everyone to believe he is shooting from the cuff, but he isn't. I know. I may not have pulled deals at his level, but I've worked some pretty large deals, and you don't play silly buggers when working with millions (or billions) of dollars.

[Stephen Reed]

Wayne,

I build on Tomi's pivot argument to suggest that Trump picks Cruz as VP.

If Trump needs Cruz delegates at the convention, then he can offer Cruz the VP slot as part of the deal. If Trump does not need Cruz delegates by virtue of winning enough delegates himself, then Cruz as VP would appeal to the religious and conservative Cruz supporters that otherwise would dislike positions that Trump will take in the general election as a result of his pivot towards the center.

Cruz has signaled his acceptance of this outcome by not attacking Trump in the primary, rather Cruz is chummy with Trump and they have appeared in a joint event to protest the Iran treaty. Cruz has evolved his positions on the issues to be more like Trump in nearly every case. This again is a signal.

Hillary is very likely to choose a young hispanic male as running mate. Cruz would match up nicely against this decision of Hillary.

Personally, I do not care for Cruz, and being a Texas voter, have voted for the democrat instead. Nonetheless, and given what we know now, I believe that Trump will choose Cruz.

Regarding my views on immigration and the threat of terrorism, they are widely shared by Trump supporters, and perhaps shared by a majority of American voters if the questions are framed in a certain way.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi tz, Catriona and Winter

tz - haha ok, Hillary Clinton lies too. Big whoopte doo. We knew all that, she was not campaigning as a saint. But look at the freshly-announced PolitiFact Lie of the Year award. They categorially stated that Trump has simply lied more than any politician they have ever measured. So yeah, PolitiFact also measured that 26% of President Obama's statements are untrue and 28% of Hillary Clinton's. They are both less than ALL Republican nominees this time! Even the least lying Republicans lie 32% of the time. Carly Fiorina was up to 50%, Ted Cruz 66% and yes, Donald Trump lies 76% of the time. You want to accuse Hillary 'also' of lying, then yeah, she lies far less than half, almost as little as a third as much as Trump. Now I'd prefer politicians never lie, but that would be naive haha. But I'll take the least lying candidate over the most lying candidate EVERY TIME. And I would never vote for one who lies more than tells the truth ie lies 50% or more.

Now does Hillary represent 'the establishment' yes and totally so. Not just the political establishment in general, she has taken the most public position since Daddy Bush on running for the third term of the sitting incumbent President. So Hillary represents Obama too, and Obama today is nowhere near as popular as Ronald Reagan was back in 1988. But thats also a problem for Trump. Only PART of the Republican base is angry at the establishment. Almost none of the Democrats are. And the vast majority of the Independents in the middle are NOT angry at the establishment. So this appeals to the base voters in a Republican primary. Its a losing proposition - just look at Bernie - on the Democratic side and would be a colossally losing proposition in the general election. But good luck with that haha. I'll be here in November 2016 when you can come and cry about your loss..

Catriona - so where was it that I 'lost it'? Wasn't that exactly what I wrote? That Trump's a narcissist and that I did't see his money going to be spent in the general election so as this early part has been almost free, he can enjoy it, but once the money is needed, I can't see him wanting to spend his cash. Where was I lost? On the GOP nomination coming down between Cruz and Rubio, yes that is a distinct possibility (and would be healtier for the party than for Trump to run all the way to June). But Catriona. Except for Iowa, Trump leads in ALL the in-state polls. All of them. Even Florida, home of your Rubio or Texas, home of your Cruz. Texas will be proportional but Florida? Its winner-take-all and if Rubio cannot win in his home state, he is truly toast. Every recent poll that came out, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachussetts, Trump is ahead everywhere. The last state-wide poll other than Iowa, where Trump was not ahead was Wisconsin more than a month ago, where Trump was a tight second to Ben Carson and by now, Carson isn't gonna win anything out of Wisconsin either. If Trump can score well - winning some, and placing well in others - in the early states that award proportionally, and then do well on March 15 when the winner-take-all states start - come on, and defeat Cruz back home in Texas and defeat Rubio back home in Florida, gosh, why on earth would you think Trump would be out of it?

I argued here in the blog that Trump may not be SERIOUS to run, but he is LEADING and even if he's not serious, he may win it without even wanting, because this method works (for the World Wrestling Federation voter, sorry, for the Fox News voter, sorry, for the Tea Party voter) for enough of a plurality in the Republican base, that as long as several Republicans split the rest, and neither Cruz nor Rubio emerges as the clear alternative - then Trump will keep picking more delegates. But yes, if Trump QUITS voluntarily, then BY DEFAULT it would fall to Cruz vs Rubio. If Trump stays in it, its Trump vs the pair of midgets. Rubio is not strong enough to take Trump down. Cruz might be, but he is unwilling. And until Trump gets plastered from all sides, he stands. And then he goes on to collect tons of votes as the Alpha Dog. The in-state polling is truly alarming if you are thinking of the party and any rival to Trump. Me, here at the CDB blog, gosh I'd love to experience a deadlocked convention actually that the voting goes on, on the floor, with no decided nominee at the start. I'd love to witness that scenario once (on either side, as I've said, I have no dog in this fight)(oh, and a deadlocked convention especially with 24 hour news and social media and Twitter) and it is becoming increasingly likely. Plus as I've written, the GOP is diseased with TeaPartyitis and that disease must be cured, and to get there, the party will need to experience an epic loss. So the sooner the better for the USA. And with that, I of course hope that Ted Cruz becomes the nominee this time to bring that epic loss to the party the soonest, to get the cure also working the fastest and get the party back to pursuing sensible goals.

On Trump the symptom of the nation - no. Absolutely not true. He is only a symptom of the Republican side, who for just reason, feel betrayed by the repeated lies by Bush-Cheney, then Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, then serial liar Mitt Romney and now the current Senate and Congress. I mean, at one point its 'shut down the government because of Planned Parenthood' and a few weeks later - a REPUBLICAN budget with FULL FUNDING for PP. I mean, come on. If I was a Republican voter, gosh I'd be mad too. But the Democrats are not mad. We just saw the poll last week that the vast majority of Bernie's supporters would be perfectly happy with Hillary as their President. And most in the middle, the moderates, they HATE what Trump is doing, not that they'd be somehow begging to burn down the Capitol. There is SOME anger on the left and in the middle. Yes, some voters would be also taken from Hillary if Trump ran. But nothing NOTHING like the one in SIX that would desert the Republicans to vote for Hillary.

Gosh, thats the biggest loss since.. who was that guy who spoke of Lets Make America Great Again, but actually meant it? Yeah, the Reagan Democrats. They didn't vote for Reagan because they wanted an ultra-conservative. they voted AGAINST JIMMY CARTER. That is EXACTLY what Trump would do now. He'd create a class of Republicans who would vote AGAINST TRUMP and they would be known as 'Hillary Republicans' and they would be a big reason why some Democrats over around year 2025 will suggest that Hillary's face should be cut into the rock next to the four American statesmen on Mount Rushmore as the first woman President who 'was so bipartisan' haha. Wouldn't that be the most bitter pill to all who hoped to put Reagan's old mug onto the rockface haha. That Trump came and enabled hated Hillary to get her grandma's grin onto the cliffs.

Winter - gosh yeah, its really painful to watch those vox pop interviews of Trump supporters. Its like someone has polluted the gene pool and the worst nutcases are let loose. Its sickening to listen to them. But God bless them, haha, they will have their moment and then hopefully at some point in the future, someone will explain to them what a lie is, and why lying will not get your elected President, and that yes, Trump was actually a bad boy, yes and thats why he lost.

But the point is true. The base Fox News viewer has been conditioned to accept these lies as truths. So the Republicans made their bed, now they have to sleep in it (for many election cycles). Incidentially... what do you think Hillary will do with House and Senate inquisitions once she has both houses (but not before)? You think she hated Benghazigate. You think she hated WHITEWATER. And the impeachment hearings for Bill. You think Clintons are at all vindictive? I betcha that Congress where Democrats take both houses (either 2016 or 2018 or 2020 or very latest 2022) will be a serious attack of 'PROPER' hearings but against really many Democratic targets including all of the Clintons' enemies. And they will subpoena all emails... So yeah, obvious ones like Dick Cheney haha and the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson. But also... all Republicans of the Benghazi hearings... and then what about Fox News? The USA has the freedom of press but what could a massive congressional hearing reveal about the mission of Fox to distort the truth and deliberately lie and to DECIDE not to correct errors? It would be a First Amendment nightmare but somehow I think if the Democrats controlled both Houses, they could call the Fox News management for some grilling in front of the nation and expose some of their lies. And then toss some of their management to prison next to Dick Cheney and perhaps.. perhaps Fox might evolve to a less lying more honest network. Who knows. But I could see the DEMs trying that. And if this was when Hillary has flipped the Supreme Court, it might even stand up to the court challenges haha. Give us all your emails... I am sure Hillary will want emails of all her rivals. All of them. And then humiliate them on hearings, true witch-hunts. Because this was not the first time she was attacked this way, and they also did it to her husband Bill. Its just one more reason why Hillary is so determined to flip not just the Senate, but the House.

For me, I don't care about the others but Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowiz and that gang, I'd want to see them rot in prison for the rest of their lives. Nixon's Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman was thrown to prison (but only 18 months) for Watergate as well as many lower ranks. (VP Spiro Agnew only resigned as part of a plea-bargain related to his tax mess). I think the Iraq war lies are a far worse crime than that and hoping that once Democrats have both Houses, they do run the too-long-delayed hearings about that war. And I'd love W Bush to also be found guilty but then for Hillary to pardon - only W but not the others. But Cheney is the worst war-criminal and he (and his gang) should live in prison till the day he dies.

(more replies coming, keep the discussion going)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi all

Two items of news. First off, yeah, Lindsay Graham quit the race (thanks Winter for posting the news here). He had no supporters left to divide to anyone, so it won't help anyone.

Then the Cruz news. Quinnipiac poll just out gives Trump 28% and Cruz 24%. Its the highest Cruz has ever been. Its the third highest polling of anyone other than Trump (Ben Carson received twice national a polling level above 24% and Jeb Bush never reached higher than 23% in any poll). Note that even this poll has Trump still up one point from their previous poll one month ago, so while Q has Trump below his RCP average, this poll means even Q finds Trump still on a slight upward tick. But this is one of those polls that consistently has Trump nearer 30% than 40% (based on methodology) and Cruz is really now nipping on Trump's heels. Can Trump just go along and ignore Cruz, as Cruz is clearly headed for a win in Iowa and now nationally starting to close the gap. Of course one poll does not mean anything more than a warning, we have to see if other polls will repeat this finding but now, if the gap is only 4 points as Quinnipiac counts it, then an 'Iowa Bump' after Cruz's victory there, could close that gap all by itself and Cruz could find himself a point or two ahead of Trump on the days after Iowa and heading to New Hampshire. (who was losing, obviously Ben Carson. Who else was gaining, Chris Christie has his national polling up to 6% which is his highest level since May). Oh, and add Cruz and Trump together and you have 52% of the Republican support haha.. Is this really their dream ticket.

Ok, will do replies next

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Oh, sorry, forgot. Quinnipiac found that over half of Americans would be ashamed if Trump was their president and only a quarter would be proud.. yeah.. and he loses by 7 points if matched against Hillary. There was another poll just recently, might be PPP, that tested the three-way matchups, if race was Trump vs Cruz vs Hillary, Hillary wins by 45 and the two got something like 25 and 20. And if its Trump vs Rubio vs Hillary, Hillary still wins but only by something like 40 over the two others.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Winter, Kim, Millard and Wayne

Winter - thanks. Its funny, so the one candidate who believed in global warming and not deporting Muslims and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens etc, that guy is kicked out of the race for no support. And this was the most warmongering candidate so you'd think for all the desire of bombing the arabs until the sand glows, haha, according to Cruz, that a Graham would find a slice of support. But no. (personally I think it was the low height standing next to Santorum. He looked like a pygmy - and this coming obviously from another pygmy).

Kim - thanks. And gosh I agree "I don't know which is more terrifying - the idea that Trump knows 75% of what he says is total bullshit, or the possibility that he believes it at the time he says it." So about the donations, yeah, Trump is selling his hats and made four million on that yeah. But I thought he doesn't have a pure 'donate here' campaign but yeah, if you say the button is there, then yes. Ok. That makes some sense but 4 million per quarter is utterly peanuts if the general election campaign would cost at least $1 Billion to be competitive against Hillary's money machine. And I cannot see Trump gambling his whole fortune or a vast slice of it, on such a bad bet as his run in the general election. It doesn't make sense to me. But if we see Trump now ramping up his donations intake to say 20 million this Christmas quarter and then to say 40-50 million by the next quarter, then yeah, it would start to make sense - and would suggest he's in it at least to the convention and possibly beyond.

I do totally agree that Trump would love the massive convention audience to scream his name and those balloons to drop on his candidacy. He'd love to be the candidate at that stage. And then yes were Trump ever to become President (as I said, a late Hillary heart-attack would alter the race dramatically) then it would be like a supersized version of The Apprentice meets Pro Wrestling haha. I do think most people would pay attention to his rants and 'press conferences' but he would be soon impeached. Not before he had transferred billions to his family - and then given them all Presidential pardons to prevent any criminal prosecution haha.

Millard - I hear you. I saw somewhere that one of the states has a very early deadline well before the Republican convention (might be Ohio) that kind of prevents Trump waiting to the convention and then running as Independent, and a bunch of them were right at that time, including Texas. And yeah, he'd need huge numbers of signatures but .. he'd have the money to hire a staff fast, and his Tea Party supporters could be mobilized real fast if he needed. He is a social media sensation definitely so he'd have the ability to mobilize those and should be able to match the onerous signature counts with only a modest amount of pain. But its likely if he started late, he would miss a few states totally. Ever further diminishing his chances of winning in a three-way race. (see above polling on three-way)

The Democratic dream is Cruz as their rival. Their Christmas present would be Trump as their rival. The combination of all Christmases coming at once, would be for Trump to run as a third party candidate.

Wayne - I totally agree with you. Trump is smart. He 'has to be smart'. His book, The Art of the Deal, was truly one of the biggest selling business books of all time and regularly recommended to all involved in any negotiations (I haven't read all of it, I read parts of it way back when. It didn't seem as useful to me, because so much of that was 'hardball' negotiations of the kind attorneys do when in litigation, and I trusted more my instincts of persuasion learned in debating and all the debate books I had already read, but the Art of the Deal is a kind of must-read for any negotiators, at least to recognize the 'hard nosed' negotiator when they appear across from you haha).

So Wayne, me too. Why would such a smart guy go into this (like this). I don't know, which is why I have been scratching my head and reading reems about him and thinking abut it, to come up with those four (or five) scenarios. Now that Trump would know something that the rest of us don't, about Hillary, yeah. That is possible. Its INCREDIBLY unlikely. I think Hillary is probably the most researched politician in history, because its been so obvious she would run for President, long before 2008 came along, and because the Clintons were so smelly of all kinds of scandals starting with Whitewater. So anyone with any nose for wanting to win a Pulitzer award, or write a bestselling book, has been digging into the Clintons for DECADES. Yes, its plausible that 'only Trump' has something that would be devastating to Clinton but that is HIGHLY unlikely. Its FAR FAR more likely that FAR MORE damaging history of Trump is discovered as the hungry media pack is now digging through his dirt. Remember, Hillary KNEW from before 1992, that she would follow Bill and run for office. She took all those 'I did not have sexual relations' lies and lived stoically through them standing alongside the hubby. She has played the long game on this, and knew from Whitewater hearings that anything may be drenched up. She's kept herself clean as a Catholic nun haha. She cannot have skeletons because they could sink her. I don't mean she is an angel, I mean that she won't have the obvious smoking guns. She'll be sleazy and untrustworthy, I'm sure. But she won't have any financial or sexual or other such skeletons in her closet. She's far too ambitious to let that happen. Bill may well have more, but not Hillary.

Now. That being said. If we NOW look at the Trump 2015 year, and if this all was planned, or at least 'sketched' that he'd go not only against the Mexicans but also women, John McCain, journalists, Muslims etc - if this was all part of the plan - then yes, Trump might have a completely unforseeable 'second act' for the General Election that could be some kind of masterstroke, similar to how appealing to the racist wing was to break into the race at that late date. It could be really something weird. Imagine a bribe to the Americans. Like the Alaskans now get a check as payment for the oil drilling taxes. So imagine something really outrageous but theoretically valuable. Sell a couple of national parks but in areas that are so valuable that he can pay all American taxpayers say 1,000 dollars. So sell something worth say roughly 200 Billion. Bribe the Americans for his vote. Promise this check is sent on the last day of February to all taxpayers. Something like that would horrify a slice of the country but most low-income people - this would be a huge infusion to their household and many struggling with credit card debt, would be a life-saver. The land held by the USA is worth about 1.8 Trillion dollars. Trump could go so far as selling a bit over half of that and promise all tax payers 5,000 dollars as his bribe haha...

I agree, if he really is going to run, and this is his PRIMARY season gambit he HAS to have something 'clever' and 'unforseeable' for the main election. Has to be. What Wayne suggested, gosh that would be a game-changer, picking Bernie Sanders as the Vice Presidential choice (but he would never in a million years agree to it). But again, it COULD be something really radical and weird, maybe something like a TV celebrity like himself, so Oprah, Letterman, Jon Stewart (all who would totally say no, but that TYPE of person, someone might be in his pocket, ready to say yes). Sarah Palin would be the Dumb & Dumber pairing that only the Tea Party would love but no, Trump is not a dummie.

Could there be something really outrageous but a promise that conceivably he could also deliver. Say abolish the national speed limit on the highways, so that just like Germany, you could drive as fast as your car can go. Could something like that ignite the voters and get them to vote for Trump even after all the nonsense. I'm thinking of his wealth. He could pay out of his own pocket but thats not big enough. If he liquidated all he owns, he couldn't pay all Americans even 100 dollars haha. He could theoretically promise all say a night or two nights for free at some Trump resort but just to have all Americans use up that coupon, would take a decade or more haha, so again, difficult to imagine. But some bribe, and selling some US government property could be a key - could be really raping the nation for Trump's personal gain. He'd be murdered for it by almost all sources though. I don't know. If he is serious, he HAS to have some 'awesome' plan to it, not this bullshit about banning Muslims or deporting illegals haha (or just building the most beautiful fence and having Mexico pay for it)

I totally agree with you, Trump is one of the smarter ones to run for office (nowhere near the smartest, not in class of Obama but maybe on par with Hillary and obviously anyone would be smarter than W Bush) and he cannot be going into it knowing this is it, there is no game plan for the general election, he will just continue with what played so well with the racist edge of the Tea Party haha.

(more coming)

Tomi Ahonen :-)