PicoBlog

I know it seemed as if he gloried in it, and at times he certainly did, especially when it put him in the limelight, and during his rallies (which mirrored those of Hitler at Nuremberg), but I’m inclined to think that he came to rue his decision to take on the presidency because he never would have faced the legal challenges he does now if he’d stayed just a corrupt real estate mogul and TV celebrity in New York. Also, I suspect he knew he was in over his head in the Oval Office, though he never would have admitted it.

In fact, I’m thinking that his decision to run again was motivated not so much by a desire to be president again as it was a combination of ego vindication following his 2020 loss and the idea that the only way he was going to avoid legal sanction was if he could be re-elected and use the office to escape punishment.

That’s all just my reading, of course, but while I don’t credit him with vast intelligence (more like just vast cunning and the ability to read a crowd) one can’t help wondering if, once he faced all the varied challenges and responsibilities of being the president of the United States, he realized in his own heart just how unprepared he was. He never really had a real presidential agenda - he is too impulsive, transactional, and self-serving. There must have been times when he began to understand just how consequential his actions could be, not just for the US but for the larger world as well. Again, it’s not something he ever would have admitted, but his present and clear desperation to be re-elected as he feels the various nooses approaching him is not that of a man who wants the ‘glory’ of being president, but rather the increasingly manic words and actions of someone facing, for the first time in his life, forces he can’t outlawyer, outlast, outbuy, or outtalk.

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