Ryan Lizza traces the downward arc of neo- fascist pervert Donald "Rump" Trump's shampaign, and posits that Rump sees the approaching debacle and, narcissist that he is, is pivoting to a way to deal with it to his advantage:
... Trump knows he can’t win and that he has decided that the last stretch of his campaign should be used to set the stage for the aftermath of his loss. In this scenario, what’s crucial for Trump is to be able to convince his hardcore supporters that he—and they—didn’t lose, but that the dreaded Republican establishment sabotaged the Trump campaign in the final weeks. This strategy is in keeping with the way Trump has always spun his greatest defeats, from his failures in Atlantic City to his loss in the Iowa caucuses. He either denies that he failed or he argues that he was cheated.
Trump is either victorious or victimized, but never a loser. This week marked the end of Trump trying to actually win, and the beginning of him plotting to explain why the election was stolen.As always, Lizza's entire piece is worth the read.
It makes perfect sense that the neo- fascist narcissist needs a scapegoat to explain his likely loss to himself and to the credulous, white nationalist knuckle- draggers willing to follow him off the cliff. After the election, he knows he'll need an institutionalized bullhorn to maintain the fiction that he was a victim of dark forces -- whether it's the Republican "establishment" or voter fraud in "certain areas." His "plan B" has always been to try to maintain this white nationalist cohort as the base audience for a post- election media empire (there's always money to be made fleecing the rubes -- just ask Oxycontin Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox "News," or any televangelist). His hiring of Breitbart's noxious anti-Semite Steve Bannon as shampaign CEO was seen as a strong signal that he was on the way to implementing this "plan B." Continuing to exploit their
