Trump Jumps

by JASmius



I'll let Charlton Heston deliver my lede:

Property tycoon Donald Trump, one of America's most flamboyant and outspoken billionaires, threw his hat into the 2016 race Tuesday for the White House, promising to make America great again. The sixty-nine-year-old long-shot candidate ridiculed the country's current crop of politicians as "stupid" and vowed to take on the growing might of China in a speech launching his run for the presidency.

"I am officially running for president of the United States and we are going to make our country great again," he said from a podium bedecked in U.S. flags at Trump Tower on New York's Fifth Avenue.

The vid above was more about the "[H}e finally, really did it!", not so much the "You blew it up!".  The Donald isn't going to "blow up" the GOP field.  He didn't even specifically say that he was running for the Republican nomination; everybody is simply assuming it.  Which, I suppose, is the only actual political leverage he has, because running as an independent in 2016, and obviously able to self-finance such a campaign out of his estimated $9 billion fortune, Trump could be a what Michael Bloomberg always wanted to be but never quite had the resources or "oomph" to pull off, a "super Ross Perot" who, if he had a mind to it or if the GOP pissed him off, could make 2016 a triple threat contest that crippled the Republican nominee and guaranteed a third Clinton term.

I'm not sure what exactly would piss off Trump that wouldn't involve any pokes at his Obama-sized ego.  But then, that ego, as Allahpundit observes, is why he won't stick around himself long enough for voters to demonstrate with their ballots how unpopular and unserious a faux pol Trump really is.  And why would he bother and throw away good money (no matter how much of it he has) when he can use the aforementioned leverage to play kingmaker instead?:

There’s a catch. There’s got to be. There’s no way Trump will subject himself to the humiliation of finishing twenty points behind Bush, Rubio, or Walker in the early states. One way or another, it’ll never reach that point. Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller thinks today’s event is actually a fake-out and that Trump’s planning to announce the formation of a Super PAC, not his candidacy. That way he can throw money around in the primary and play kingmaker without subjecting himself to rejection by the voters. Another possibility is that he jumps in, hangs around in the race for awhile so that he can participate in the debates, and then finds some pretext to drop out before Iowa if his polling continues to disappoint. He won’t subject himself to the caucuses and to a vote in New Hampshire unless, against all odds, he looks poised to win.

Why couldn't he do both?  Pretend to be a candidate for now, get on those debate stages through sheer universal name recognition, monopolize the mic to dispense his trademark bombast, look at all the other GOP "hopefuls" and bellow, "You're all FIRED!!!", draw a ton of Trumpcentric press, then drop out with Tony Stark-esque fanfare ("What more do you want?  I tried to play ball with those assclowns.  My bond is with the people, and I will serve this great nation at the pleasure of...myself.") and THEN announce the formation of "TrumpPAC"?  And, long about a year from now, THEN announce an independent "third party" run?

Have I stumbled upon the Trump master plan?  You have to admit, it would be the ego capstone to his peculiar public journey.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark found his destiny not as a munitions tychoon, but in a suit of "avenging" high-tech armor.  In real life, Donald Trump has found his destiny in a bouffant and a big mouth.  And yet he may wind up having a bigger impact than Iron Man ever did.  And not for the better.

He couldn't have put it any better himself.