Political Weirdos

"What the hell do you have to lose" is one of those great little artifact statements from 2016. The kind that kinda could plausibly work for him back when he was a "political outsider" but I don't think it really works on anyone these days.

Even among his cult, there's an understanding and an acceptance of the fact that Trump essentially runs the republican party now. Everyone's bowed down, everyone's paid homage. Almost definitionally now, being in the republican party means you are pro-Trump. That may very well be the only metric upon which GOP politicians are judged in the modern day.

"What the hell do you have to loose" is one of those kinds of statements that worked in the context of "the establishment running the party ~~aren't racist enough~~ don't have your best interests at heart so why not give me a shot?" that comes with a kinda tacit admission that "I'm probably not going to be much better". But in 2024 Trump's just not the outsider anymore. He is the republican establishment.

Among the many other delusions he is clearly trapped in, I think he's also trapped in the delusion that he's some kinda evergreen outsider, despite the fact that he served four years as president and another four basically running the GOP opposition. I think that delusion is not helped by the fact that the republican base is so rabidly anti-intellectual that you kinda have to present yourself as "an outsider" in order to get anywhere, but if it's an outsider your looking for Trump just aint it.