The Washington Post has a piece by David Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey and Jonathan O’Connell on the future of The Trump Organization. It’s not a surprise that the vultures are circling, hoping to buy up the scraps of the business at a discount considering the toxic brand of the Trump name after Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency. What I didn’t anticipate is that Trump would be disinterested in returning to his business career.
For now, however, Trump is a businessman again. Since he left office, his eldest sons — who ran the business while Trump was in the White House — have briefed their father extensively, according to Trump’s advisers.
But people who have spoken with Trump recently say he has shown little interest in taking back day-to-day control.
Instead, these people — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations — said Trump has focused almost entirely on politics. They said he has talked about exacting revenge on his political enemies, securing more money for his political action committee and running for president again.
It has always been my belief that Trump did not run for president with the intention of winning the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency. He hoped to use the publicity of his campaign to help his business empire, especially his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow which was then near the top of his mind. But I guess power is intoxicating and his interests and priorities have shifted.
I really expected that he’d make it a priority to take the reins of the business back from his sons, who I assumed he’d accuse of incompetence. Since the Supreme Court just ruled that Trump’s tax records must be shared with the Manhattan prosecutor’s office, this seems like it should be an urgent concern. If I were the ex-president, I’d be huddled with lawyers and forensic accountants, and looking for ways to raise revenues to pay all the back tax bills that are coming.
But I guess I should have learned from observing Trump’s work habits in the White House that he’s only motivated to seek attention, and his gift is to turn attention into money. That strategy currently works in the political sphere where he can get donations for a potential future run for the presidency, or simply to help him exact revenge on his enemies. But it’s not working nearly so well in the real estate and licensing world.
Republican senators should have understood this better. By acquitting him twice in impeachment trials, they kept him politically viable, at least in theory, and that gave him an easy way to make money he will now turn against them.
So, Trump is not returning to his office in Manhattan but rather hanging out in Florida where he’s laboring under the delusion that he has the luxury of plotting revenge while ignoring his business and legal problems. He turned half the country into a madhouse, so it’s fitting that he is also detached from reality. But his capacity to do evil is still off the charts, so there should be no let up on punishing him for his crimes. Even the Senate Republicans should understand this, and if they don’t already, they soon will.
Trump is mentally ill, and people who have training in dealing with the mentally ill have a chance of getting their heads around the totality of Trump’s actions. I think when psychiatric non-experts attempt to figure Trump out, they often make the mistake of explaining his actions via normal, sane, rational motives. Mistake.
ETTD. Trump’s establishment Republican party enablers are just being typical Republicans when they support him. 1. They are arrogant enough to believe that although everybody else got burned by the fire, they can get away with it and even profiteer from it. 2. They are also stupid enough to believe that totally disregarding the well-being of others will somehow not come back to wreak a vengeance on them.
If people thought Trump1.0 was unhinged, dangerous and scary; wait until Trump 2.0 is rolled out over the next couple of years. Unless his attempt is stymied due to either legal issues or health issues, he is going to dedicate himself 110% to coming back to power so he can finally burn down what’s left of the house of American democracy and, most important to him, exact as much vengeance as he possibly can on anyone who he even remotely perceives as having been disloyal. I think that is why so many Republicans are not shifting gears, but doubling down on their increasingly cultish support of Trump. They know what his obsessive mission is, and it appears increasingly likely that he is going to be singularly focused on this. There are certainly a lot of “unknown unknowns” as to what the future holds on this. The Party of Trump could continue to shed the last bits of those with a modicum of sanity and/or dignity and be so weak by the time his opportunity rolls around that his prospects are damaged to the point that he bails. Or things could coalesce in a fashion that his power and ability to win actually increases. One thing is for certain, he is not going to go quietly into the night, and the energy and fanaticism of his supporters is not going to easily dissipate. Trumpism is very much alive and anxious for the next call to action from The Dear Leader.
It’s not clear to me what would present a wise strategy for the Republican party. Aligning with Trump is a short-term tactical thing that seems on a collision course with demographic reality. The question is whether it’s wise even as a short term tactic. They’ve made hay by throwing in with racists for decades but it’s starting to come apart. The question for me is whether we witness an implosion of the Republican party or the entire nation. Perhaps even the entire world.
Good analysis here, thanks. A tip-off more me was Trump raising over $200 million after the election (and keeping 90% of it) to “fight the stolen election”. A couple of more fundraising quarters like that and he can pay off whatever he owes in back taxes and penalties *and* use it as an example to raise *more* money for whatever he wants to do.
(In the olden days, i.e., mid-20th century, aging machine politicians like Boston’s James Michael Curley basically used campaigns for office as a way to finance living in the style to which they’d be accustomed. Trump’s actions seem not unlike that.)
For Trump, politics is the ultimate con.