The Trump saga might have been very different had his ego been a little smaller and his foresight a little better.
Let’s assume what is increasingly apparent, that Trump’s campaign for president was backed by Russia, with their motives in mind. The goal seems to have been for Trump to decimate the GOP from the inside and to create, in effect, a Trump third party: a renegade, racist, anti-Constitution disloyal opposition aimed to sabotage the American political process--all by Trump losing the general election.
Picture that: whether he loses in a landslide or a tight race, Trump screams that the election was rigged. Then, financed by dark money, he makes Trump Force One, his television shows, his properties, Right-wing media from the ostensibly sane (the Murdoch companies) to the extreme fringe (InfoWars and their brethren), and his family all props for a personal campaign seeking hearts-and-minds support from the base, political influence, and (of course) profit. He holds his rallies, fires the adoration of the bottom of the GOP’s barrel--those most likely to have been hurt by the GOP already and most eager to be hurt by them again--and brokers his endorsements for the candidates he wants before crowds who obey him. Trump is, in effect, the leader of the American Right, making it a Trump brand, while holding no office. He is a private citizen exercising his 1st Amendment rights to foment cynicism, civil discord, faithlessness, and even violence to discourage the base from voting, to prevent his opponents from voting, to promote contempt and mistrust for the press, all to undermine the people’s faith in democracy and the Constitution.
Rally by rally, district by district, he builds colossal power without the need to finance it like an Adelson or a Koch. In fact he makes money burning away the GOP Establishment and helps Russia to replace them with shills in the agencies and the judiciary who serve their interests and his. Investigations into his finances and his businesses are killed before they start. The religious Right and the 2nd Amendment backers form a phalanx around him. He cuts the ribbon on Trump Tower Moscow and proudly joins the oligarchs while cementing his family's future as citizens of that invisible nation whose legal residences are tax havens and whose business is global, covert, and subject to no laws.
Trump's problems could all have been avoided at the GOP convention had he declined the nomination with a blistering speech of the kind he gave at his Inauguration, electing instead of serving to act as outsider, kingmaker, scold, and the moral force of the GOP, above its quotidian work but holding all the strings. He could have won everything he wanted and obliged himself to nothing, with no scrutiny, no liabilities, the base's fevered love, and the whole American political system to blame if things didn't go as he said. He could have been an emperor, literally above the law.
None of this is far-fetched. He's said as much. The biggest mistake Trump ever made was winning and taking the Oath.
The systems and processes of our republic are being tested, but they aren’t broken. They could have been. The good that has to emerge from this is a galvanized people with more vigilant institutions. Stay strong. Pay attention. Trust Trump to keep making mistakes and to require the GOP to make them with him. And in 2020, win again.