What was Trump thinking?  Why did he invite a super-sized rally crowd to the Capitol on the very day members of Congress were prepared to expose the fraudulent election in front of tens of millions?  Why did Trump erase the chance for anyone, even opponents, to witness proof of the steal?

YouTube screengrab (cropped)

And why did Trump once more get rolled?  The TV cameras never displayed the electoral count proceedings -- instead predictably captured the Dem orchestrated breach into the rotunda.

Trump has been blamed for the mayhem, just as he was blamed for the CCP Covid 19 pandemic, its death toll, economic lockdowns, and stalled Covid 19 relief packages. Unfair, but predictable.

A Trump rally on the steps of the Capitol-- just days after the GOP’s utter humiliation in Georgia, aided and abetted by Trump’s own demonization of all things Republican in Georgia thereby suppressing R turnout -- while the Democrat media and never-Trumpers in Congress on both sides couldn’t wait to get rid of him -- was destined to end badly, and did.  Trump’s supersized ego betrayed the very supporters who are the unrelenting rank-and-file of the MAGA movement, and whose hopes and welfare he claimed were more important than his own.

It was all a trap, and Trump couldn’t resist the cheese. Snap!

Did Trump really want a second term in 2024?  It wasn’t going to happen for 2020 no matter how much we believe he, and we, were victims of a massive fraud. His last chance to make an indelible impression that he was the rightful winner was enjoined, making room for the last chapter in the Trump-hate narrative from the Dem politicians and their media, NeverTrumpers, and RINOs who have relentlessly tormented and hunted him down since November of 2016, through the final days.

So, why couldn’t he at least have left a graceful impression to step aside silently, giving no clue as to his real disposition, making his adversaries worry whether a retribution would come at a time of his choosing?   Or did Trump orchestrate a theatrical headlong rush into political gunfire, hoping to be a martyr, in an otherwise noble cause that he could never fully bring to completion?

Donald J Trump would never admit that he was the basket, not the fruit.  Of course, he plumbed and channeled the populist America First temperament into an unlikely ascendancy to the presidency.  But it never was only about him; he was not there at the beginning, and his grandiose lack of self-awareness was the grenade he allowed his enemies to roll into his own followers’ bunker.

Fair enough, Trump was the only voice to synthesize the hopes, and the grievances harbored by the deplorables -- which in the beginning were white working class everyday Marys and Joes, but in the end included inner city blacks, Hispanics, and a wide spectrum of recent and 2^nd generation legal immigrants who had found their voice in Donald  Trump -- albeit imperfect, impolite, bombastic, tasteless, raw, and coarse. On the other hand, he has been compelling, prescient, more often than not full of truths, mostly uncomfortable, impossible to switch off.

Thus, Trump’s exit amidst a vortex of contradictions and unfinished business was unnecessary as tragically scripted by Trump himself; after all, the election was never going to be reversed, but he could fight another day. His exit was destined to end badly when the alt- script written by his enemies was delivered to perfection -- all predictable, but he either couldn’t see it coming, or didn’t care.

Trump’s life has no tincture of nuance.  Trump’s entrances have always been gilded, speckled with melodrama and glitter.  Trump’s life has been the glory of binary choices, where decisions were his, alone, to make. If right, he could win big, relying on instinct.   If wrong, he could rationalize losses, leave debris cleanup to others, move on to the next charm, and find a new set of creditors.  No middle ground there, and little room for anyone but himself. That works for a sole entrepreneur -- while hits outnumber misses -- not for a president whose enemies are legion, but friends in governance are scarce.

Hubris is a common currency for politicians.  Trump was never a politician. An elected official, but not politician. But hubris also accompanies celebrity. Trump was always a celebrity first -- his embrace of the MAGA movement -- indeed naming it -- was convenient, primarily to advance his celebrity. Yet Trump began to embrace the movement, beyond cynical opportunism, where many of us witnessed a sincere conversion. Why couldn’t he shed, or at least trim enough incendiary vanity to disarm his detractors, and reverse the axiom “win little lose big” for his faithful?

Yes, he was unable to shake the desire for adoration -- the fatal defect of all celebrities. Thus, Trump torpedoed the cause that initially he seized for his own gain, soon fully smitten by its enduring allure -- liberty, unbounded economic freedom, earned self-esteem -- but in the end couldn’t navigate an embedded establishmentarian distaste and contempt for MAGA and everyone associated with it.

In the political world, Trump’s 50,000-watt voice for the dispossessed has been marginalized and silenced by establishmentarians who have prospered under globalist economics while trafficking jobs, and factories to China, and who have normalized lawlessness and perversion.

Those same establishmentarians have now confirmed their contempt and disdain for 75 million Americans whose voting rights were swept away with no explanation, let alone recourse, with fundamental rights now muffled and abridged.

And so, the dispossessed have returned home to face more Democrat tyranny, hollowed-out small cities and towns -- where thousands of storefronts remain abandoned, job losses are mounting, dignity flayed, faith mocked, free speech canceled, scorned and despised, heaped with racist, sexist, and xenophobic epithets.

The deplorables were not wrong to see in Donald Trump their champion to not only petition the government for a redress of grievances, but to set their America right.

But Donald Trump couldn’t help himself from stepping on his own messages, from alienating those people he needed most to install the MAGA policies that wouldn’t be overturned, from failing to cleanse his presidency from insubordinates, leakers, and active saboteurs.

Who else instead of Donald Trump could be both the bearer of hope and vessel of the bitter defeats in the last days?  Who else could be the one to lead us out of the wilderness and then back into it?  No one.

It didn’t have to end this way but couldn’t end any other way.