According to a presidential spokesperson, Trump had been having long conversations with himself for much of the past year, and a few of these sang the praises of “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
Even these soliloquies, or others involving sharks and electric planes, did not immediately doom his candidacy, and well into July Trump was considered to be in robust political health and to have a lock on the presidency in 2025.
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What put Trump on life support, and eventually killed him was the withdrawal of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. from the presidential race, which revealed Trump to be suffering from what medical professionals were calling “Narcissistic Derangement Syndrome”—a congenital condition brought on by never-ending exposure to open microphones, Fox News interviews, X feeds, and other people’s money that lead to delusions of political competence.
NDS, as it is sometimes called, led Trump to deliver hour-long monologues that instead of addressing affairs of state—fiscal and monetary policies; foreign policy in Gaza, Lebanon, and the Middle East; the crisis of homelessness; etc.—veered erratically around such questions of whether Vice President Harris was “really Black” or the progress of twenty million illegal aliens who were raping their way across the southern border with the intent of murdering “our wives and daughters”.
Trump is survived by his vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance. According to some accounts, when Vance came on the scene and attempted to revive the moribund Trump, he was attempting something similar to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Other reports suggest that Vance’s failed rescue attempt errantly focused on another orifice of Trump’s anatomy.
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Trump was not a natural-born politician who earlier had served in the House, Senate, or a governor’s mansion. Trump’s background in New York was as a flim-flam operator who managed to scam millions from banks, Wall Street investors, and limited partners who somehow believed that Trump was a man in full and good for his obligations, and not simply yet another three-card monte dealer shuffling decks (and real estate prospectuses) in Times Square.
If Trump had a political education, it came from hosting a sit-com game show called The Apprentice, on which he played the role of a successful chief executive officer and board chairman (critics called the portrayal “far-fetched”), and somehow convinced his television audience to believe that he had executive experience.
On that basis he was elected president in 2016, although much of that success was due to the weakness of his opponent, a former Walmart board member, Hillary Clinton, who reminded voters a little too much of her husband Bill, who stood for high office on a sexual predator platform (much as did Trump himself).
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In office, Trump devoted his presidency to various financial confidence games. American foreign policy was reduced to a protection racket with, for example, the Saudis sending Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner $2 billion (once Trump was out of office) in exchange for the Trump administration having turned a blind eye to Mohammed bin Salman’s dismemberment of a dissident journalist.
Other strongmen, such as the Russian president Vladimir Putin, were rewarded for their past investments in Trump Inc. with policies that encouraged greater Russia to consolidate its gains at the expense of Ukraine and NATO.
Domestically, millions raised for campaign finance (both when Trump was in office and out of it) became little more than a personal slush fund for the bag-man-in-chief—available for retainers, legal minions, hush money, and porn star payoffs (as contemplated in The Federalist Papers when discussing executive powers).
Finally, Trump converted the Supreme Court into a personal injury law firm (1-800-HELP-DON), in which he is its only client.
In other words, Trumpism turned out to be nothing more than the leveraged buyout of the American government in the service of a criminal family.
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Nominally, when the campaign expired recently in a string of incoherent interviews and off-the-cuff speeches, Trump was the head of the Republican Party, which by law would stand in line to inherit his legacy and might, in the coming weeks, be able to salvage some of the swing states (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, etc.) now leaning to the Democrats and Vice President Harris.
Unfortunately, when Trump’s candidacy died, the Republican Party was itself little more than an empty shell, reduced to a few clichés about immigrants flooding across the border and questions about Harris’s “blackness” (as if a future Trump presidency would impose Nazi-era regulations about Aryan purity).
When nominated in July to run for vice president on the Trump ticket, Senator J.D. Vance was promoted as Trump’s rightful political heir, capable of Tucker-like Trumpian one-liners about childless cat ladies running the country or women belonging barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.
In other words, there is no Republican Party that can pick up the fallen Trump mantle. It’s not even mentioned in the last will and testament, even as an out-of-wedlock child.
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As for final arrangements, at this point Trump’s body will lie in state (something he does well) until the November election.
It remains possible that the Republicans could recapture control of the Senate, but they will lose the House and presidency, and then face the reckoning that in 2025 its standard bearer (or maybe just his ashes) will be locked in prison.
Presidential polls still show Trump fractionally ahead in states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, but that was before Trump in recent weeks starred in The Running Dead, a documentary about a zombie penetrating the soul of a major political party, delivering monologues bordering on the insane, and leading it into the electoral grave.
According to various probate lawyers, Trump left his estate entirely to himself, on the belief that lawyers paid from campaign funds (including that $10 million in cash from Egypt’s strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi) will have figured out how he can take it with him (in unmarked bills).
