Evidently a lot of voters did. In retrospect, the line nicely captures Mr. Trump’s almost unfailing ability to act against his own interests.
“Pretend I’m on the ballot,” President Trump advised last month.
The following year, he won. But as Tuesday’s election has reminded his party, there’s only so much advantage to be had from ignoring ordinary political calculations. Never has so successful a politician so consistently spoiled his own and his party’s advantages. Mr. Trump’s fans know this. Press further and you’ll find the own-goals are in some mysterious way part of the appeal. Mr. Trump doesn’t view political reality, or reality, in the way other politicians do. That his bumptious comportment and cockamamie rhetoric have appealed to so many people for more than a decade is a measure of the electorate’s weariness with conventional political behavior. The habit extends to international affairs. Mr. Trump threatened to take Greenland by force and for a moment seemed serious. Later he asked for military assistance in Iran from the European allies he’d insulted. He didn’t get it. In a similar vein, all Mr. Trump had to do to install a conservative ally as Canada’s prime minister was nothing. Instead he joked about making Canada the 51st state and gave the victory to Mark Carney, whose government promptly cozied up to China and generally sides with America’s critics abroad. Some forms of political self-harm you can laugh at. Others you can’t. The president refuses to enforce a law, passed by large majorities in Congress, requiring the divestiture or ban of the social-media platform TikTok, even as it spreads hatred of both America and Mr. Trump. Wantonly slapping tariffs on a constantly changing assortment of the world’s goods had the effect of debilitating growth and alienating merchants and consumers forced to pay more for affected imports.
He won again in 2024.
His supporters heard a candidate who, whatever else might have been true about him, didn’t operate according to ordinary political calculations. Speak to them at rallies and they will refer to his latest own-goal and roll their eyes and say they wished he hadn’t said or done it but they love him all the same.
