Recently, Donald Trump drew gasps from Republicans when he appeared to support expanding gun control laws during a bi partisan meeting with congress members. He even ridiculed members of his own party for being afraid of the NRA! Trump seemingly working against the party he is supposed to lead is nothing new: several months ago he seemed to endorse a clean bill for the Dream Act at a similar meeting, only to move in the opposite direction several days later. It's obvious in both cases that his innate desire to be liked by everyone made him say things that the Democrats in the room would like, even if he never intended to stick by them. To put it another way, his egotistical desire to be admired in the moment was more important to him than the political party he now is in charge of.
This raises an interesting question: could Donald Trump ever have run for the presidency as a Democrat? That may seem crazy, but remember that this is a man who used to be pro choice, and who has even donated money to Planned Parenthood in the past. His recent "conversion" to being anti choice was obviously made out of political necessity and not some spiritual awakening. Looking at his history of books and interviews over the years shows a man who appears mostly moderate politically. What happened was his embracement of birtherism, that noxious belief that Barack Obama was not born in this country. He first started peddling this nonsense in interviews back in 2011, and the more he said it, the more Republican voters cheered him on. Since there's nothing he loves more than people praising him, he kept repeating it more and more, even going so far as to deny that the long form birth certificate that Obama eventually released was authentic. Then he immersed himself in right wing media and quickly discovered that their abiding principle was that undocumented immigrants (they call them "illegals") were ruining our country. So, when announcing his candidacy, he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, and, sadly, he never looked back.
But what would have happened if he had embraced a different conspiracy theory? In the years after 9/11, a surprising number of people on the left became convinced that there was a conspiracy by the Bush administration to lie to the public about them, some thinking that the president knew about the attacks in advance and did nothing to stop them, and others going so far as to say the attacks themselves were carried out by the government as an excuse to justify the later invasion of Iraq. Trump was often critical of the Bush administration in interviews he did at the time. What would have happened if he started to agree with the 9/11 conspiracy theories? Would leftist voters cheer him on? Would he keep repeating it? I think it's possible that he very well could have run as a pro choice, pro LGBT rights candidate in the Democratic primaries. Would he actually have won? Well, that's a tougher question; I like to think that his constant boasts and lies would hurt him more with Democrats than it did with Republicans, not to mention his lack of political experience. Still, you never know; his candidacy seemed like an utter joke two years ago, and now here we are.
Obviously this all conjecture, but my point is that we are in the unique situation in which we have a president with little interest in actual politics, and who's abiding principal is his unshakeable belief in his own almost god like nature, and for whom loyalty to him is more important than any other issue. The result is utter chaos; a regime in which cabinet members are constantly being fired or quitting because they can't keep up with a president who constantly lies and changes position, all while expecting them to completely fall in line with him and constantly praise him like a small child learning to read. Quite simply, Trump has not ever seen the presidency as a position that will allow him to make the country better, but instead he sees it as a marker of his own greatness, another sign that he is a winner. He truly seems to be a psychopath that cannot ever care for any other person in the world, and who has left a wake of disorder all around him. We'll see how this turns out for the country and for the world, but right now, things don't look good.
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