The Trump Schtick: Play to Lose.

By Nii Bannerman

Donald Trump is up to something, and it's not about winning the White House. It's about doing his darnest - and dumbest - to stay away from it. Yes, to avoid the White House.

To borrow a popular American expression, "Y'all got played" by Trump!

Given a choice between his flashy casinos and the drabness of the White House, there's no doubt Trump would choose the casinos.

That's his world, where he thrives. He knows little else beyond that.

He might have talked in the past about running for president, but as usual he was b-essing in ways that only he knew and knows how to.

Other billionaires (those who actually had a few million dollars to blow on an election) had flirted with the idea of being president. In interviews with journalists, Trump had been asked if he, another "billionaire", would consider a run for the White House.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to promote himself, he had led them on, speculating on the kind of president he would be if he ran and won.

He never meant a word of it. It was typical Trump shtick that only added to his legend and growing nationwide appeal beyond his home state of New York.

Rumours abound that at one point he even said that if he decided to run, he would go Republican because they're so dumb that they would believe anything he said.

The opportunity to prove his theory came in 2015 when the Republicans launched their presidential primaries.

His strategy, it seems now, was simple: jump in there, make a few waves, win some of those dumb fans, and walk away, leaving the professional politicians to gouge themselves out as they always did.

The publicity bonanza would be incalculable (or "huuuuge", to use a favorite Trump rendition), as he got near-24-hour and free coverage by a gullible US media; he would spend as little of his purported fortune as possible, and even then most of the money would go to businesses that he owned or people who already worked for him, relatives included, and he would lose virtually nothing.

Smart businessman, that Trump.

Except that things didn't go quite as he had hoped.

He did say a few dumb things all right - like building a wall along America's border with Mexico and forcing Mexico to pay for it. (And if Mexico didn't pay? Maybe send in the nukes?)

Rather than making him seem like a pea brain, his outlandish proclamations and threats succeeded in lighting up the Party's dumb base; the leadership was riled somewhat and some eventually boycotted the Convention, but by and large it was "the base" that carried the day - and him.

As "the base" danced around him with ever-deafening and slobbering adulation, Trump fed them more and more of his nonsense. They became intoxicated by it and lost their heads further, creating a vicious cycle.

His folksy delivery, unlike the scripted gibberish of his competitors, only expanded his appeal and legend while hiding the obvious contradictions that he personified and the vacuousness of what he said:

(1) Despite his purported anti-immigrant stance, he actually has a thing for immigrants, so much so that 67% of his three wives so far have been immigrants, with one possibly working illegally in the US before regularising her status; (2) Eighty percent of his five children are, therefore, half foreign, not the full-blooded Americans that "the base" would like to see in or near the White House; and (3) he had been a major exporter of jobs to China - the very jobs that he and "the base" accuse China of "stealing" - by having factories there manufacture his ties and other sartorial accouterments.

He contributed to the gutting of American manufacturing.

None of these seemed to matter to "the base", most of whom, we have since learnt, were "white males without a college education". They lapped up all the BS and called for more with hedonistic abandon.

Some of Trump's competitors, like Marco Rubio, watching with alarm as their hyped advantages slipped away, turned to desperate and boorish attacks on him, ridiculing everything from the size of his fingers to that of his manhood to his failed businesses.

As a plain-talking outsider, Trump could indulge in such mud-slinging and get away with it; as establishment politicians, "Little Marco" (as Trump called him) on the others couldn't. The Trump brand, its legend, and its invincibility simply grew bigger and stronger with each attack.

This would continue all the way to the convention floor. By then, outwardly at least, Trump was savouring his conquest; inside, he was consumed by the haunting realisation that things hadn't gone according to plan, that he was riding a tiger of his own making that he was afraid to dismount.

So he had to keep riding, and riding, and riding, facing the possibility of leaving his beloved businesses for a job he never really wanted or understood, a job that would not give him the final say in all that he surveyed, thanks to something called Congress, the Judiciary and of course the American people - the checks and balances that under-gird American democracy.

In Trumpville, all he need to do was declare, "You are fired!" and his will would be done. No congressional push-backs and certainly no howling or insults from the public.

He was god!

In Trumpville, what Trump wants Trump gets.

All that would disappear in the White House. Something had to be done - find a way of dismounting the tiger without getting eaten by it.

His only option was (and remains) to make himself as offensive and unappealing to the general electorate (not "the base") as possible by making even dumber statements and attacking many more people at will.

So far, he's been succeeding amidst the gullibility of a Republican leadership that is yet to figure out his game plan, and a pliant and gullible the US media establishment that remains enchanted and fooled by his circus.

One newspaper even talked about the need to "save Trump from himself" and another talked of a "failing mission to tame Donald Trump's tongue".

Too late! Trump is already saving himself. He's determined to lose the election and be freed of a burden he never imagined he would bear, a burden he never desired in the first place.

Once he loses, "the base" of course would blame not him but "Washington politicians" for stanching their revolution and demonising their messiah, without possibly ever realising that they too were played by Trump.

One thing is for sure, though: No matter what happens in November, Trump will never run for president again.

And in the unlikely event that he wins, he may even resign midway through his term, exchanging the claustrophobia of the WH for the unrestrained expense of Mar-a-Lago and his casinos.

That's where his heart and head have always been. And that's where he belongs.

Anything else is an act, a schtick.

PS: I won't be surprised if Trump assisted his wife in her plagiarism as a way to sabotage himself. It was too blatant to have been an accident!