I think I finally figured out why the orange creature ran for President.

[kydo]

It was either jail, death or become President. While we claim the person holding the office of President is not above the law, that's not completely true.

I'm not saying anything most of DU don't already know. I'm not that smart. So here goes.

orange man baby is connected to the mob. He does hotels real estate and casinos, all mob havens. He has had many bankruptcies which kind of reduced him to getting money from shady places, like Russia. All that leads to the cops and FBI watching you. It's very unlikely he has not done anything illegal. Of course he has.

The only way to not go to jail or be offed is to become President. There, not only does he have lots of power, he can change the rules. He has yet to act like a President but he sure has used it's power to benefit his interests.

Now he bought himself the Presidency he might still end up in jail. Or dead. It's never a good idea to piss off the Russian mob oops leaders.

[RDANGELO]

1. There may be something to that.

As long as he is in office,he can't be indicted. In the mean time, he has become a hero to about 30% of the country which makes it harder to put a jury together that would convict him.

[Roy Rolling]

25. Plausible

But only if his Russian bosses forced him to remain a candidate. Trump isn't smart enough to be the head of a crime syndicate, he's Fredo.

[HopeAgain]

2. I don't think Trump's ego and arrogance

Would have allowed him to see himself as vulnerable to getting caught this early in the game. It's always their arrogance that brings people like this down, their flaunting of the rules and the enforcers.

It is starting to look like maybe the Russians planted the seed in Trump's head that he could actually become President years ago and have been encouraging/helping/ensnaring him along the way. This is all part of a big Russian effort to destabilize the west.

[Atman]

3. Youre way over-complicating it.

At his age he could afford to wait out the mob. His presidential run was merely a publicity stunt gone horribly wrong. It’s really that simple. He was trying to squeeze NBC for more money in his contact negotiations for a new season of The Apprentice. He threatened to quick the popular show and run for President—again—instead. A guaranteed headline-grabber.

NBC had seen all Trump’s bullshit before and called his bluff. Then Trump made the ‘Mexican are rapists’ comment and NBC found themselves holding all the cards. They fired him. Trump now found himself exposed. Admit that it was all a ruse? Beg to be taken back? It’s not in his character. Instead, he opted to play along, knowing full well that he’d stand no real chance of ever being nominated. It would be a glorious months-long self promotional tour for his next gig, whatever that may be.

Things quickly began to go off the rails and people were taking to his campaign. But no worries, he’d never beat Hillary Clinton, right?

The rest is history. Sad, dark history.

[MrsMatt]

5. Agree.

He was looking for publicity.

He'd gotten away with his shady dealings for so long (and from what I understand, it was a bit of an open secret), he never thought that anything would come to light.

[yardwork]

7. The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower says that CA developed the entire campaign. Trump came later.

This needs looking into. Mercer and Russian money funded the development of a presidential campaign - complete with slogans like Make America Great Again and Build the Wall and Lock Her Up.

THEN they found a candidate to read the script. Apparently it was not originally going to be Trump.

[ToxMarz]

17. It may be lucky it was Trump

Imagine if they had gotten someone smart, charismatic and without all the demonstrably corrupt baggage.

[many a good man]

23. So true!

He probably could have gotten away with all of it if he wasn't such a big mouthed, narcissistic moron

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. Not as you laid it out. Trump trademarked MAGA in Nov 2012, days after the election.

Contradicts your narrative.

[Atman]

34. You can trademark anything at any time.

Although I find it hard to believe he was granted a trademark for such a common term, which Reagan had already used for his campaign. But it is completely consistent with “my narrative.” Which isn’t actually mine. It has been widely discussed since the early days of his PR campaign. So he hated Obama and was looking for another way to make a buck. Making some hats does not at all discount “my narrative.”

[Bernardo de La Paz]

36. But yardwork's narrative has CA inventing the MAGA slogan, which is clearly untrue.

I was replying to yardwork, not to you Atman.

It is yardwork's narrative that is not true. I said nothing about your post.

[yardwork]

37. It's not my narrative. I may have mistaken what the whistleblower said.

[EffieBlack]

20. This is my take, as well

[Dustlawyer]

22. He also needed money which he could get by running.

I do not think he planned on actually winning when he first started his campaign. Like Gingrich he was running to stay in the spotlight to build up his brand.

[dalton99a]

4. Trump is a low-life thug who should be sitting in jail

not the Oval Office

[magicarpet]

6. Now the international corps of black bag top secret spy guyz....

....are all royally and totally pissed at him. They are all shaking the bushes and turning over every rock looking for dirt to take him down.

[highplainsdem]

8. Trump's been talking about running for president since the 1980s

[3Hotdogs]

9. The answer comes from an utterance he made. I believe it was early in 2016.

He said he would make money from running, whether I win or lose the election.

[Vinca]

10. It was either that or he discovered the adoring mobs fed his narcissism and couldn't stop himself.

[Trueblue Texan]

11. Running for the presidency was just another deal...

I'm willing to bet Putin has been pressuring him for years to run and he finally ran out of excuses. He finally was forced to pay up and now Putin has Trump and America where he wants them.

[Botany]

12. Trump's mob/russia/money laundering connections are part of it but in ....

... 2013 he was in Russia for his Miss Universe Pageant and at that time he already
owed the Russians and the Russian mob millions if not billions because he was a failure
@ his businesses and they had been propping him since the 1990s. At a meeting they
told him to run for President, they would help to rig it for him, and they would keep
up their money laundering agreement using Trump & Kushner's properties.

[imanamerican63]

13. Thanks Obama!

All this in a nutshell! But have to remember he grabbed the attention of his base with the best words!

[dlk]

14. Delaying the Inevitable

[Nitram]

15. I beg to disagree. Trump ran for president, as he had done before, purely for the free PR.

He didn't expect to win. If he hadn't won, he'd still be below the radar. Winning was his biggest mistake.

[FakeNoose]

28. I think the Russians used Cheeto to mess up our elections

Certainly Michael Cohen had to be involved in all of this, now that we're learning about his connections to the Russian mob. But as for Trump's motive - yes I agree with you - it was the free publicity that he CRAVES. He never thought he'd actually win, he just wanted a new reality show franchise out of it.

[mercuryblues]

16. My theory has always been Russian sanctions

trump borrowed a lot of money from Russian oligarchs. They also have some sex related video on him. Both make him blackmailable. I suspect he was not the only R in the primary the Russians had their sights on. Get someone they could control. They wanted those sanctions gone and unfettered access to the oil pipeline.

To pull off something like this, you need a lot of people. People talk.

This is why I laugh when people spout the Clinton (name your conspiracy here) as the gospel truth. For them to do everything they have been accused of thousands of people had to help them. People brag. Hell. Bill couldn't even have sex in the oval office with an intern, without the whole world knowing about it. But they believe that the Clintons were drug runners, killed scores of people, Hillary is a lesbian, who has sex with Anothe man to father Chelsea. In Cahoots with terroists to take over America, funneled weapons to the contras, and more, without anyone bragging. Maybe they did but the FBI is all under control of the Clintons and none of them will spill the beans.

[Lonestarblue]

18. Money, money, money!

Trump could not maintain his lifestyle without the support he had gained from the Russians and their need to launder billions of dollars theough his real estate company. Trump owed Putin. Putin and other Trump backers saw an ignorant man whom they planned to manipulate. They didn’t all necessarily want the same things, but they all knew that Trump is corrupt to his soul and would do nothing to jeopardize their ability to protect their illegal acquisition of even more money. The income from the Trump Organization may not be enough to support Trump and his children in the lavish lifestyle they prefer, so he needs off-the-books ways to bring in money. The presidency was a way to set up quid pro quo relationships with governments willing to swap loans (Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner maybe) for favorable U.S. treatment. The Mercers saw another path to establish their form of government. Putin saw a way to get his man in the White House, although that has not worked out so well for him because Trump became even more of a megalomaniac with his election and perhaps believes that he is now more important than Putin. If Trump were as rich as he claims, he could simply have retired to Mar-a-Lago and played golf, which is clearly what he prefers doing most of the time—but his ego was too stoked by the idea of being the most powerful man in the world that he could not resist the idea of becoming president. He was too stupid to understand that he would be expected to actually do the job.

[elocs]

19. I think the answer is simple: ego and being humiliated by Obama at the correspondent's dinner.

[link:

|

He had to sit there and take it. I think that's when he decided to seriously go after the presidency to become the anti-Obama president, trying to destroy anything Obama had done.

[Moostache]

21. Newing my plea to the universe yet again..

"Life giving mother of us all, please see fit to explode the heart of Donald J Trump and end his stain on humanity."

[Scarsdale]

31. No!

Most of us want to see him publicly humiliated, along with his greedy "kids" and hauled off to prison. Take the bastard down, along with the gop members who were all taking Russian money, and now have to protect the slimebag.

[Moostache]

33. That works for me too....either way. (n/t)

[Wounded Bear]

26. I've always thought that Trump figured being President would give him immunity...

a yuge "Get out of Jail Free" card. Like any authoritarian, he thought that he could treat the AG as his own personal defense attorney, and that he could schedule, start, and finish FBI investigations on his whim.

So far, our systems of government are holding up, but just barely. The truly worst "collusion" has been between Trump and the Repub led House and Senate.

We are on the edge.

[Eyeball_Kid]

27. Trumpy's been running one step ahead of disaster.

I've often thought that he's riddled with debt to sociopathic killers, he's on the run from stiffing people who want revenge, he's paid off countless victims of his arrogance and deception, and yes, he's using the presidency to protect his ass from getting tossed to the curb and having his nasty creditors looking him up.

[randr]

29. Pay back to the Russian mob

They set him up to destroy our democracy.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

30. I Figured He Was In Over His Head With The Russian Mob

So in exchange for them forgiving his debt, they decided to turn him into their inside man. They already knew they had the voting machines hacked and could install him in the White House to do their bidding. I think they underestimated his sheer stupidity, and never expected that he would somehow fuck it all up within the first year.

By the way, I ALSO agree with the premise that this all started as a publicity stunt to "increase his brand." One that he's pulled before, by the way. Almost every time he's had a book to sell, he's made public statements hinting that he might run for President, and his book sales would go through the roof. I think HE underestimated the sheer stupidity of the Republican VOTERS in this country, and never expected they'd take to him. I even half suspect that as he continued to lead in the polls, he kept saying more and more outrageous things in the hope that his poll numbers would start to tank so he could drop out. But, once again, we see that you can never go wrong counting on the stupidity of Republican voters.

So, at the end of the day, I think it started out as a practical joke that went too far, and then the Russians seized on it to use a "useful idiot" for their own purposes.

[Scarsdale]

32. He never wanted the job.

Remember, Donald Jr. (Beavis) approached the aides of Kasich, asking them if he would like to be the most powerful VP in history, in charge of domestic and overseas policy? They asked what tRump would be doing while Kasich was doing this? With a smirk, although I think that is his normal expression Beavis said "Making America great again". Kasich refused the offer, and the rest is history. The damage that has been done in the short tenure of this bloated orange ass will take years to correct.

[grantcart]

35. No pure ego. This was his third run in 17 years.