Michael Tomasky: If Trump Can't Win, He's Going to Take America Down With Him

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/if-trump-cant-win-hes-going-to-take-america-down-with-him



He needs everything to be about him, and to divide the rest of the world into winners who love Trump and losers who hate him. And he wants to inflict pain on the losers.

Michael Tomasky
Special Correspondent

Updated Jul. 23, 2020 9:08AM ET / Published Jul. 23, 2020 4:23AM ET

Is it not obvious what Donald Trump wants? He knows now that he stands a good chance of losing. He tells Chris Wallace “fake polls,” but he knows. And you can practically feel the conviction rising inside him: If I’m going down, I’m taking the country down with me.

He wants police confrontations with protesters. And he doesn’t want them in Portland. I mean, it’s fine. But Portland is the equivalent of that town in Connecticut where they do summer stock in some old musical. Trump wants confrontations in New York. He wants to play Broadway!

I’m sure that some of you, even some of you who don’t particularly like him, think I’m being unfair. That he couldn’t be that malevolent. That maybe Tuesday’s presser and his endorsement of masks, however equivocal, indicates that he can be serious, is capable of change. If this is you, I have one question for you: When, since he rolled down that escalator five years ago, has Trump pleasantly surprised you or impressed you as having risen to an occasion?

The answer is never. There have been rare occasions when some TV pundits decided he looked “presidential,” by which they really meant that they were expressing their amazement at the fact that he managed to read a script for a change without heaping schoolyard abuse on people he hates. But those few episodes just prove how embarrassingly low the bar for “presidential” has become.

No—he’s been this way since 2015, he’s been this way his entire adult life, he’s been this way since he was 3. He needs for everything to be about him, and he needs to divide the rest of the world into winners who love Trump and losers who hate him. And he wants to inflict pain on the losers.

</snip>

[NCDem47]

1. Seriously, like a five-year-old

"If I can't have it, then nobody can" Proceeds to break it.

[Initech]

2. Seriously, he's tanking it.

And by that I mean he's going down in a blaze of glory.

[GoCubsGo]

3. He already took us down.

Most people just don't realize it yet.

[smirkymonkey]

4. I absolutely have no doubt about this.

In fact, it would not surprise me if he were to start a nuclear war. He is that sick. There is nothing too low for him. He needs to go, by hook or by crook. Read into that what you will.