The real reason Trump isn’t actually trying to win the debate — or the election

I was reading about the first debate, to be aired tonight at 9 pm on CNN, when I came across this item in USA Today: Donald “Trump has foregone traditional debate prep. He's received verbal policy briefings and keeping up with the news, a Trump campaign official said. But he has not done practice rounds against a stand-in for [Joe] Biden."

That’s it.

In the whole story, there’s one thin paragraph about his preparation, or lack of it. It came after many thick paragraphs describing Biden’s labors. He has spent the last week at Camp David, practicing for his “faceoff … in a television studio in Atlanta,” where there will be no audience and microphones will be silenced while the other is speaking.

“Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain is leading his prep,” USA Todayreported. “Biden’s campaign has declined to say who’s playing Trump, although it is said to be Biden attorney Bob Bauer.”

The newspaper went on to say: “Biden’s early prep work typically involves group brainstorming sessions with his staff that hone in on topics and messaging, said Bill Russo, a former longtime aide to Biden who was the deputy communications director for his 2020 campaign. The second phase is about knocking [Trump] off his game, Russo said.”

“The purpose of doing the mocks is really to kind of make sure that that punch in the face happens not for the first time on the debate stage, in front of a national audience, but behind the scenes,” he added.

So the president is taking the debate seriously, regarding it as an opportunity to bring more attention to the election, to expand his base with people who have not been paying attention to politics, to remind these “undecided” voters of Trump’s final years in office, “when a deadly contagion was ravaging the country and a violent mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Biden,” and perhaps even “change the narrative about his age,” the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, Trump (who is 78; Biden is 81) isn’t taking the debate seriously. He hasn’t prepared. He hasn’t studied. He hasn’t done any homework. He doesn’t see it as an opportunity to expand his base. (That’s why he’s lying about Biden’s “drug use.”) He doesn’t seem to care whether more people are paying more attention to the election. And he seems immune to concerns about his age, despite exposing his habitual incoherence during a recent meeting of America's top CEOs.

What’s happening here?

He isn’t trying to win.

Trump is not trying to win the debate, same as he’s not trying to win the election. Biden is trying. Trump isn’t. The difference is Biden will accept the outcome of the debate, just as he will accept the outcome of the election. Trump won’t. He’s a winner. He’s already won. He never lost the last election. That there’s a debate to go through, and an election, is a technicality. Trump owns reality. We have to comply.

The debate is like a test. You can prepare for it and hope for the best, or you can slack off and suffer the inevitable consequences. Biden is preparing, because he can’t slack off. He can’t slack off, because the stakes are of his own making. They are of his own making, because he is committed to accepting the outcome of the debate and the election.

There are no stakes for Trump.

Let that sink in.

There can be no stakes, because there are never stakes for a man who denies accountability. There is literally no risk when consequences are for someone else. Trump could piss himself – on purpose, not accidentally – and it would make no difference. He would declare victory any which way, if only by running down his opponent even harder than before, with the help, of course, of the Republican Party, the rightwing media apparatus, and Russian and Chinese operatives.

When you deny that causes have effects, you can tell whatever lie you want, and if you have enough people behind you, the lie becomes real.

Think about it. Everything about this election presumes something so big that it’s invisible to the naked eye, which is that Donald Trump is trying to win. But why would an authoritarian, who refuses to concede that Biden win, try to win the current one? There is no point when you never lost the last one. Why prepare for a debate when you’re going to declare yourself the winner? Preparation is for suckers and losers.

When you think about it even more, it makes more sense. Why isn’t Trump trying to expand his base? Why does he keep saying things that alienate independent voters and some Republicans? Why does he play footsie with unpopular policies, like a national abortion ban? Why does he actually say that he doesn’t need any more votes than the ones he already has? (It’s not because he thinks he secured a majority.) Why does he keep doubling down on his base as if that’s all that matters?

Because winning isn’t the point.

Cheating is.

And he’s going to do that by accusing Biden and the Democrats of cheating. He could piss himself on live television tonight, but it wouldn’t be his fault, because Biden’s nose is a snowblower. (Or because CNN “rigged” the debate or because Jake Tapper hates him or because Choose Your Own Adventure.) Same thing for the election.

He and the Republicans have lied so much that, according to the Post, “his campaign and the Republican National Committee are spending historic sums building ‘election integrity’ operations in key battleground states, preparing to challenge results in court, and recruiting large armies of grassroots supporters to monitor voting locations and counting facilities and to serve as poll workers.”

Why try to win when you can hire thugs to intimidate voters and harass election officials? Why try when you find friendly judges to invalidate your opponent’s votes? Why play by the rules of the game when the rules of the game don’t apply to you? You’re playing your own. Campaigning for president is for suckers and losers. Who wants to be a president? Despotism is for winners. Despots rule.

So much of Donald Trump’s campaigning does not make sense, but that’s because we’re trying to understand it as if he were a normal presidential candidate who is trying to win by normal means.

As Rex Huppke reminded us, he ain’t.

The more we insist he is, the less we understand. Indeed, I think, the more we insist, the more we are blind to dangers that are coming.