Trump was already a long-term investor, but he massively upped his stake when he announced his third bid for the presidency. It was an in-your-face purchase, a statement buy, supposedly showing confidence that the stock was going to fly for the next two years, right up until Election Day 2024.But his flat and dreary launch, not the glitz surrounding it, told a very different truth. It was a profoundly unpropitious start, to put it mildly. Trump was meandering, purposeless.
Stumbling through the rubble of his midterm hopes, Trump seems to have decided he needed a bold gesture to show he wasn’t rattled. His answer was to declare for the White House earlier than anyone had in modern times, as though there was a popular clamor for another four years that had gathered irresistible momentum and could no longer be assuaged. But it was an unpersuasive conjuring trick — the sort where you can see the hapless magician’s clumsy sleight of hand.
Trump appears to believe that because his supporters admire his willingness to punch back rather than cower when faced with criticism, all he has to do is to show defiance in every circumstance, no matter how egregious. It is as though any outrage will do. But ugliness alone, to put it tautologically, is not appealing. Being repellent is not a strategy, at least not a vote-winning one.
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