Trump Is Preparing to Bury His Own Party

 

Donald Trump is not trying to save the Republican Party. He is constructing an alibi for its defeat.

His speech Thursday night was not a presidential address, a legislative argument, or even a recognizable campaign message. It was another prolonged public autopsy of his wounded ego, performed by the patient himself while the Republican Party stood nearby pretending the smell was coming from somewhere else.

Republican candidates facing voters in November needed help. They needed an economic argument, a plausible plan for lowering prices, some evidence of competent government, or at least a reason for exhausted voters to leave their homes and support them.

Trump gave them paranoia.

He returned to the ancient burial ground of the 2020 election, exhumed every rotting grievance he could find, and waved the remains at the country as though Americans had been waiting six years for another tour of his psychological basement.

This obsession has already cost Republicans dearly.

After Trump lost the presidency in 2020, Georgia held two Senate runoff elections. Republicans could have retained control of the Senate. Instead of encouraging his supporters to vote, Trump spent weeks telling them the election system was corrupt, fraudulent, and probably controlled by whichever foreign villain had wandered into his imagination that morning.

Hundreds of thousands of voters who had participated in November stayed home in January. Democrats won both seats. Republicans lost the Senate.

Trump did not merely fail his party. He actively poisoned its voters against the act of voting.

Now he is doing it again.

His message to Republican voters is essentially this: The voting machines are crooked. Mail ballots are crooked. Election officials are crooked. Immigrants are voting. China is interfering. Venezuela is interfering. The press is interfering. The courts cannot be trusted, the states cannot be trusted, and the final count cannot be trusted unless Donald Trump approves of the result.

After hearing all of this, the logical question for a Republican voter is not “How quickly can I get to the polls?”

The logical question is “Why bother?”

Trump has created a political religion in which voting is sacred only when he wins. When he loses, the sacrament becomes a conspiracy. Elections are legitimate when they flatter him and fraudulent when they contradict him.

If you are worried about landing, don’t take off.

Trump entered elections knowing the rules, praised those rules when they carried him into office, and denounced them when voters removed him. He accepted the game when he believed he would win and tried to overturn the table when he lost. Now he is still prosecuting reality for refusing to flatter him.

Republican candidates should understand what is happening. Trump is not preparing the party for victory. He is preparing himself for defeat.

He expects Republicans to lose at least one chamber of Congress in November. Perhaps they will lose both. Rather than accept responsibility for unpopular policies, failed leadership, economic anxiety, political exhaustion, or the public’s growing disgust with his administration, Trump is manufacturing the explanation in advance.

The election was stolen.

Illegal voters did it.

Foreign governments did it.

The media did it.

Disloyal Republicans did it.

Everyone will be responsible except the man standing at the center of the wreckage with the gasoline can in his hand.

This is not strategy. It is narcissistic self-preservation.

Trump’s deepest loyalty has never been to the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the Constitution, or even the country. His loyalty is to the mythology of Donald Trump: the infallible winner, the persecuted genius, the solitary hero surrounded by traitors and fools.

Any person, institution, or political party threatening that mythology must be sacrificed.

Republican officeholders have spent years convincing themselves they could manage this bargain. They would surrender their dignity, repeat his lies, excuse his corruption, and applaud his every humiliation of the country. In return, they believed he would deliver his voters whenever they needed them.

They misunderstood the arrangement.

Trump’s followers belong to Trump. They do not belong to the Republican Party. He can summon them, discourage them, enrage them, or persuade them the entire political system is pointless. Republican candidates are merely names printed beneath his on a ballot, useful until the moment their interests conflict with his emotional needs.

Thursday night, those interests collided.

Vulnerable Republicans needed optimism. Trump delivered despair.

They needed discipline. He delivered delirium.

They needed a message about the future. He dragged the country back into the sewer of 2020 and demanded everyone crawl inside with him.

Democratic voters who watched the speech were probably reminded exactly why they oppose him. They saw a president consumed by conspiracy, hostile to elections, and openly threatening the legitimacy of votes he suspects may be cast against him. Trump did not demoralize those voters. He gave them a reason to organize.

Meanwhile, his own supporters heard a familiar sermon of futility. Their leader told them the system is hopelessly compromised, the opposition cheats with impunity, and even a man possessing the powers of the presidency cannot stop the invisible forces arrayed against him.

Some campaign message.

Republicans once claimed to represent personal responsibility. Their leader now represents its complete psychological opposite. Every failure is sabotage. Every criticism is treason. Every loss is theft. Every inconvenient fact is part of a conspiracy.

A political party built around such a man eventually inherits his sickness.

Republicans may soon discover the price of having converted themselves from a governing party into a protective shell around one man’s ego. They surrendered policy to grievance, judgment to obedience, and principle to personality. They believed they were using Trump, while Trump was hollowing them out from within.

Now the bill is coming due.

When Republican candidates lose in November, Trump will not accept blame. He will accuse them of weakness, disloyalty, or insufficient devotion. He will claim the election was stolen, demand investigations, and begin another round of purges. He will stand upon the ruins and insist the collapse proves he was right all along.

Trump is not leading the Republican Party toward an election.

He is marching it toward a grave and demanding applause from the pallbearers.