Deliberately Unpopular

In an article that could almost be an answer to my entry yesterday about why the President acts so self-destructively, Vox published an interesting piece (link here) titled "Why Trump keeps doing unpopular things to please his base."

The writer then presents five possible explanations for Donald Trump's seemingly bizarre and counter-productive behavior. I'm most convinced by the last one: "It’s a strategy for surviving his scandals." He then compares Trump's apparent plan with Richard Nixon's earlier in 1974 before he resigned in the summer of that same year.

This seems like a very short-term strategy on Trump's part because he's too unpopular to have a long-term one. He's like a nearly drowning man just barely keeping above the waterline.

Trump may be waiting for some kind of unknown lifeline to save him -- a terrible terrorist attack, perhaps, or a horrible war with North Korea. If so, this is hugely troubling -- that he's willing to put the entire country at risk simply to save his own ass.