Trump Is Self-Sabotaging His Campaign Because He Never Really Wanted the Job in the First Place

By Michael Moore, Reader Supported News

17 August 16

riends,

Donald Trump never actually wanted to be president of the United States. I know this for a fact. I’m not going to say how I know it. I’m not saying that Trump and I shared the same agent or lawyer or stylist or, if we did, that that would have anything to do with anything. And I’m certainly not saying that I ever overheard anything at those agencies or in the hallways of NBC or anywhere else. But there are certain people reading this right now, they know who they are, and they know that every word in the following paragraphs actually happened.

Trump was unhappy with his deal as host and star of his hit NBC show, “The Apprentice” (and “The Celebrity Apprentice”). Simply put, he wanted more money. He had floated the idea before of possibly running for president in the hopes that the attention from that would make his negotiating position stronger. But he knew, as the self-proclaimed king of the dealmakers, that saying you’re going to do something is bupkus — DOING it is what makes the bastards sit up and pay attention.

Trump had begun talking to other networks about moving his show. This was another way to get leverage — the fear of losing him to someone else — and when he “quietly” met with the head of one of those networks, and word got around, his hand was strengthened. He knew then that it was time to play his Big Card.

He decided to run for president.

Of course he wouldn’t really have to RUN for president — just make the announcement, hold a few mega-rallies that would be packed with tens of thousands of fans, and wait for the first opinion polls to come in showing him — what else! — in first place! And then he would get whatever deal he wanted, worth millions more than what he was currently being paid.

So, on June 16 of last year, he rode down his golden escalator and opened his mouth. With no campaign staff, no 50-state campaign infrastructure — neither of which he needed because, remember, this wasn’t going to be a real campaign — and with no prepared script, he went off the rails at his kick-off press conference, calling Mexicans “rapists” and “drug dealers” and pledging to build a wall to keep them all out. Jaws in the room were agape. His comments were so offensive, NBC, far from offering him a bigger paycheck, immediately fired him with this terse statement: “Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.” NBC said it was also canceling the beauty pageants owned by Trump: Miss USA and Miss Universe. BOOM.

Trump was stunned. So much for the art of the deal. He never expected this, but he stuck to his plan anyway to increase his “value” in the eyes of the other networks by showing them how many millions of Americans wanted Him to be their Leader. He knew, of course (and the people he trusted also told him) that there was no way he was actually going to win many (if any) of the primaries, and he certainly would not become the Republican nominee, and NEVER would he EVER be the President of the United States. Of course not! Nor would he want to be! The job of being President is WORK and BORING and you have to live in the GHETTO of Washington, DC, in a SMALL 200-year old house that’s damp and dreary and has only TWO floors! A “second floor” is not a penthouse! But none of this was a worry, as “Trump for President” was only a ruse that was going to last a few months.

And then something happened. And to be honest, if it happened to you, you might have reacted the same way. Trump, to his own surprise, ignited the country, especially among people who were the opposite of billionaires. He went straight to #1 in the polls of Republican voters. Up to 30,000 boisterous supporters started showing up to his rallies. TV ate it up. He became the first American celebrity to be able to book himself on any show he wanted to be on — and then NOT show up to the studio! From “Face the Nation” to “The Today Show” to Anderson Cooper, he was able to simply phone in and they’d put him on the air live. He could’ve been sitting on his golden toilet in Trump Tower for all we knew — and the media had no problem with any of that. In fact, CBS head Les Moonves famously admitted that Trump was very good for TV ratings and selling ads — music to the ears the NBC-spurned narcissist.

Trump fell in love with himself all over again, and he soon forgot his mission to get a good deal for a TV show. A TV show? Are you kldding — that’s for losers like Chris Harrison, whoever that is (host of “The Bachelorette”). He was no longer king of the dealmakers — he was King of the World! His tiniest musings would be discussed and dissected everywhere by everybody for days, weeks, months! THAT never happened on “The Apprentice”! Host a TV show? He was the star of EVERY TV SHOW — and, soon, winning nearly every primary!

And then... you can see the moment it finally dawned on him... that “Oh shit!” revelation: “I’m actually going to be the Republican nominee — and my rich beautiful life is f#*@ing over!” It was the night he won the New Jersey primary. The headline on TIME.com was, “Donald Trump’s Subdued Victory Speech After Winning New Jersey.” Instead of it being one of his loud, brash speeches, it was downright depressing. No energy, no happiness, just the realization that now he was going to have to go through with this stunt that he started. It was no longer going to be performance art. He was going to have to go to work.

Soon, though, his karma caught up with him. Calling Mexicans “rapists” should have disqualified him on Day One (or for saying Obama wasn’t born here, as he did in 2011). No, it took 13 months of racist, sexist, stupid comments before he finally undid himself with the trifecta of attacking the family of a slain soldier, ridiculing the Purple Heart and suggesting that the pro-gun crowd assassinate Hillary Clinton. By this past weekend, the look on his face said it all — “I hate this! I want my show back!” But it was too late. He was damaged goods, his brand beyond repair, a worldwide laughing stock — and worse, a soon-to-be loser.

But, let me throw out another theory, one that assumes that Trump isn’t as dumb or crazy as he looks. Maybe the meltdown of the past three weeks was no accident. Maybe it’s all part of his new strategy to get the hell out of a race he never intended to see through to its end anyway. Because, unless he is just “crazy,” the only explanation for the unusual ramping up, day after day, of one disgustingly reckless statement after another is that he’s doing it consciously (or subconsciously) so that he’ll have to bow out or blame “others” for forcing him out. Many now are sensing the end game here because they know Trump seriously doesn’t want to do the actual job — and, most importantly, he cannot and WILL NOT suffer through being officially and legally declared a loser — LOSER! — on the night of November 8th.

Trust me, I’ve met the guy. Spent an afternoon with him. He would rather invite the Clintons AND the Obamas to his next wedding than have that scarlet letter (“L”) branded on his forehead seconds after the last polls have closed on that night, the evening of the final episode of the permanently cancelled Donald Trump Shit-Show.

Postscript:

Don, if you’re reading this, do it soon. Give your pathetic party a chance to pick up the pieces and nominate Ryan or Romney so they can be the ones to lose the White House, the Senate, the House and yes, praise Jesus and the Notorious RBG, the Supreme Court. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re only the logical conclusion to a party that has lived off the currency of racism and bigotry and fellating the 1 percent for decades, and now their Trump has come home to roost.

A Better Olympics Is Possible

By Mark Perryman, Jacobin

17 August 16

We can turn the Olympics from a corporate wonderland into a place of mass celebration and popular competition.

or generous commentators, the spirit of the Olympics might be captured in the words of the modern games’ founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin:

The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.

These liberal ideals, of course, were never really manifested, not even in the first modern games in 1896 Athens.

But the disparity between Olympic ideology and reality has only deepened since commercial imperatives took over the competition. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics established a new tradition: the enormous public subsidy of private goods in the name of sports. Since then, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has sought some kind of moral justification for its capitalist excess.

In place of de Coubertin’s humanist principles, the games now promise host cities an even more useless set of values: the event will regenerate urban space, attract tourists, and increase popular engagement in sports. There is not one piece of evidence that hosting the Olympics achieves any of these goals. In fact, in most cases, they produce precisely the opposite effect.

This sad reality seems like cause to just give up on the whole damn charade. And with a distinct strain of left political culture that rejects sports in general — and competitive, nationalist sporting events in particular — there’s no doubt a constituency itching for it all to come crashing down.

But following Jules Boykoff’s theorization of the Olympics as “celebration capitalism,” let’s instead imagine celebration socialism: an internationalist event that boosts popular participation in sports, equalizes competition between nations, and actually benefits the host community.

There’s already a heritage to draw on. In the 1930s Popular Front era, all manner of Workers’ Games and Women’s Games were held. In 1936, the Spanish Republican government organized the antifascist People’s Olympiad in direct opposition to Berlin’s Nazi Olympics of the same year.

Taking inspiration from the five interlocking rings that have come to symbolize the games, I propose these founding principles: decentralize the hosting duties, boost live viewership, provide free access to more events, balance international participation and success, and reject corporate sponsorship.

1. Break up the Olympics

Decentralization spreads the Olympics — which traditionally encompass more than twenty sports that all require different facilities and attract different crowds — across a wider geographical area. Already, World Cup soccer does this; in 2002, it even allowed Japan and South Korea to co-host the event.

This plan would not only allow host countries to use existing facilities, but also encourage them to site new construction wherever would most likely be used again. Certainly, spreading the events out over a whole nation (or nations) would inconvenience the governing bureaucracy and the corporate class of sponsors and media backers who prefer that their five-star hotels sit only a limousine ride away from all the venues. For most people, however, it would be no great loss.

2. Open the gates

The second Olympic ring follows from this: increasing the geographical scale of the event would allow more people to see it. The experience of watching sports vastly improves if spectators can do so live. By placing events in the largest possible arenas, slashing ticket prices, and encouraging maximum attendance, the new games could turn into a mass celebration. A country’s ability to enable this would become a key condition of the bidding process.

Again, there’s precedence. While most boxing matches take place in arenas where tens of thousands can watch, the Olympics holds them in relatively tiny venues.

Further, the four-year cycle of the games — as well as the decentralization effort — would slowly build a base of popular support, letting the people own the games through their participation. The crowd would become as much a part of the spectacle as the competitors.

3. Bring the spectacle into the streets

We can take this even further by moving as many events as possible out of the arenas. The marathon, road cycling, and race walking are three sports that take place on the streets and are free to watch. During the London Olympic Games, spectators lined the streets around the cycling time trials. Thousands turned up on their bikes, and some even rode the course beforehand. Others brought a picnic, avoiding the corporate behemoths that otherwise controlled every food and drink outlet.

These new games would vastly expand this part of the program, adding a half-marathon, a 10k race, road relays, and a multi-stage bicycle race that could last all ten days.

The same could be done with yachting if the host nation’s coastline allows crowds to gather. A canoe marathon or a point-to-point rowing race — like England’s Oxford versus Cambridge event on the Thames — would draw citizens to the riverbank. All of these innovations would give the games back to the people.

4. Play the world’s games

Next, the program would have to be rebalanced. European and North American teams now dominate the most prestigious events. For example, in 2012, only one of the fourteen rowing gold medals was won by an African athlete. Of the thirty yachting medals, China managed only a silver and Brazil a solitary bronze.

No African or South American participant won an equestrian medal — there are eighteen — although Saudi Arabia did win a single bronze. There were no Asian or African medalists in canoeing, field hockey, or modern pentathlon; no African athletes got onto the diving, fencing, or gymnastics podiums either.

Compare this to the spirit of accessible sports like soccer, boxing, and running. In athletics — an umbrella term that includes track and field events and road races — Jamaica ranks third in the medals table, Ethiopia fourth, and Kenya fifth. Cuba comes in third in boxing. These two sports awarded medals to participants from Turkey, Algeria, Mongolia, Thailand, and India.

And what could be more international than soccer? Between the men’s and women’s teams, medalists came from Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.

Unlike the rest of the Olympic program, most anyone, from most anywhere, can participate in these sports. Rather than add yet more expensive sports — tennis, golf, and windsurfing being the worst recent examples — we can prioritize sports that have the potential to be truly universal.

Up until 1920, tug-of-war — a contest of strength between two teams that requires only a length of rope — was an Olympic event. And darts — set to debut in the 2024 games — needs next to no equipment.

Poetry was once an Olympic event so why not add games that aren’t classified as sports — like chess — or massively popular activities — like ballroom dancing, which could become the summer games’ corollary to ice dancing — that would lower the barrier for participation.

If we don’t want to completely redesign the Olympics, we might simply extend the athletics program, adding ultra-marathons, hill- and mountain-running, and a cross-country race.

An Olympic movement charged with developing a program that undercuts the privilege that excludes a vast majority of the world would understand sports as radical project founded on mass popular participation and would stand in stark contrast to the cartel that the International Olympic Committee seeks to protect at almost any cost.

5. Take corporate money out of sports

The final new Olympic ring would reestablish the symbol as a representation of the games, not as a logo for the sponsors. This may be hardest part to achieve in an era of such rampant commercialization. But already, all Olympic sites are entirely advertisement-free, strictly policed to protect the integrity of the event from ambush marketing.

Of course, every square inch outside the venues and every minute of commercial breaks are filled with images of the five rings pushing all manner of products. If we take sports seriously — and the best it represents — we would reject this state.

A new Olympics would not amount to a revolution. But it would put the values of popular participation and global equality at the center, replacing the counterfactual and neoliberal mantra of the current games.

Celebration socialism would deconstruct the binary opposition of competition and participation. Perhaps the games need to address this aspect most of all. And doing so isn’t that hard. Start with the most iconic Olympic event of all, the marathon: the elite runners lead, the fun runners take up the back, and in between, a race for all.

All this is a rough sketch, but it’s a worthwhile effort to imagine a different kind of Olympics, replacing both Coubertin’s empty liberalism and today’s voracious capitalism with an event that would truly inspire mass, international participation.