2016 August 11^th

Trump is now speculating about what he would do if he loses the election. He says that he would take a nice long vacation. I doubt that he would because I believe he will get together with Roger Aisles, who is also out of work, and together they will found the Trump TV network.

To suggest in the middle of the August, before the November election, that you might lose and what your plans would be then, does not inspire confidence in your fans…and highly P##### off the folks at the RNC. No matter, Trump has been throwing up straws like these before: Recall his comments about the election being “rigged” getting himself and his fans ready for the inevitable. Finally recognizing that he will lose is the first sign of some healthy reality testing.

Then back to fantasyland we go: Trump claims that President Obama founded ISIS…and that Hillary Clinton was the cofounder. He has repeated this assertion whose logic goes like this: President Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq and Hillary Clinton helped out the Libyan strong man Muammar Khadafy, thus opening the door for the rise of ISIS. That makes them the founders and co-founders of ISIS. This same logic, or its absence, would make Abraham Lincoln the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump brags about his education at The Wharton School, but he somehow missed out on the elementary logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc, because “B” follows “A” doesn’t mean “A” causes “B.”

At this point, although Trump had originally meant that by withdrawing troops from Iraq and removing Khadafy, President Obama and Secretary Clinton had created the environment congenial for the rise of ISIS, Now Trump has convinced himself that they are responsible for the rise of ISIS in a much more fundamental sense. The mechanism is not unheard of, if you say something that you don’t believe and say it often and firmly enough, you’ll come to believe what you say; otherwise you have to admit that you are lying. I believe this is what has happened to Trump and it’s happened before. He insisted that Megyn Kelly attacked him at a debate when she simply asked him about comments he had made about women; that a gold star father attacked him by asking what he had ever sacrificed.

Trump’s paranoid streak means that he will believe he is being attacked even when no attack is intended. The result is that he will flail away at anyone, particularly at the press whose job it is to report what he says. He has even “withdrawn the press credentials” of the Washington Post because he doesn’t like what they print about him. Alienating the press is a particularly stupid move for any political candidate. Trump’s paranoia will lead to an unendingly hostile Donald Trump who perceives attackers everywhere. Hostile candidates usually lose elections. Trump is well on his way.

Now that Trump is well behind nationally and has been told that the RNC will have to begin deflecting resources to down ballot candidates, what does Trump say? He says that Hillary Clinton is now worried about losing the election.