If it wasn’t clear before Saturday, it should be obvious now that there’s a part of Donald Trump that wants the Republicans to lose the midterm elections next week. Why else would he say what he said at that Georgia rally on Saturday?
“Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what’s happened in the Middle East, because they’re coming to Texas and they’re coming to Oklahoma and they’re coming to Louisiana and they’re taking that oil. My people say, ‘Please don’t mention that, sir, people are paying a little higher …’ I can just see the fake headlines: ‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ But I said, ‘I don’t give a damn, I’m gonna say it: We’re making a frickin’ fortune.”
There’s quite a bit to unpack there, but let’s just start with the most obvious thing. For a president to say 10 days before an election that he doesn’t give a damn that people are paying high prices—which is what he said, no matter how his apologists try to spin it—is, well, unusual. The way he defines “our country,” as consisting of just a handful of oilmen, is of interest as well.
Also, as ever with Trump, it practically goes without saying that it isn’t true that the United States is making a fortune off the war in Iran. It was true, for a while. In the war’s early months, with the Strait of Hormuz completely shut down, countries were indeed purchasing more U.S. oil. But that started to change in July, and now, it’s just no longer the case. Middle Eastern oil flows have returned to nearly pre-war levels. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Persian Gulf oil exports had surpassed pre-war levels. And OilPrice.com reported over the weekend that U.S. exports to Asia, which were driving the springtime export boom, have fallen off the cliff—by about 50 percent in one month—because of sky-high freight rates. “The cost of shipping crude oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast to China soared to as high as $80 million earlier this month,” the website reported. “That’s ten times the average tanker rates that had held for years before the Iran war.”
But what really makes Trump’s remark worth considering is not what’s happening on the high seas; it’s what’s happening in between his ears. And inside that aging, creaking, mildewed mind, so well lubricated by the venom he spews at enemies near and far, is unquestionably a secret and perverse desire for the Republicans to lose.
Why? Three main reasons. First, he’s not on the ballot, so he doesn’t really care. In fact, not only does he not care—he’d rather see them lose if he’s not on the ballot, because his Brobdingnagian insecurity is such that he’ll say to anyone who’ll listen, “See? They can’t win without me.”
Second, there’s definitely a part of him that wants to see the Democrats regain control of Congress. He sees politics, indeed all of life, as mortal combat—just one giant you-know-what swinging contest. If the Democrats take power and come at him and his people with their questions and subpoenas, there’s a part of him that will actually like that. He’s at home in that embattled zone. He’s lived on that knife’s edge his entire adult life, daring those poor vendors who had the misfortune of doing business with him in Atlantic City to sue him and go take a number. Among the lessons he learned from Roy Cohn is this one: If you’re not at war with at least 10 enemies, you’re not really living.
Third—and this is the reason that should be most concerning to normal Americans—he wants Democrats to win because he wants to be able to accuse them, with of course no factual basis whatsoever, of cheating. On a deep and visceral level, nothing in the world gives this twisted man more pleasure than leveling completely false accusations against people he hates. If the elections go the Democrats’ way, in the House and especially in the Senate, he’ll carry on for days, for weeks, about voting machines that supposedly converted Ken Paxton votes into James Talarico votes, or about fictional reports of thousands of noncitizens voting for Abdul El-Sayed in Dearborn or countless undocumented (though he won’t use that word) “Somalians” (rest assured he will use that word) pulling the lever for Peggy Flanagan.
And odds are strong that he’ll do more than complain. He’ll order Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate or maybe even block results, along the lines Blanche outlined last week with respect to Alaska. What else? ICE raids on immigrant communities where he alleges fraud took place? Invocation, finally, of the Insurrection Act, and the assumption of vast emergency powers? All as prelude, of course, to next January 3, when many people fear Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson will figure out a way not to seat the new Congress. If you somehow missed Michael Luttig’s brilliant and important piece on this for The New Republic on September 10, you need to read it.
So there’s no reason to be surprised that Trump said what he said Saturday. He uses that tired trope a lot—my people told me not to say this, but what the hell, I’m going to say it. It communicates to the MAGA-brained that Trump and Trump alone is the swashbuckling Quixote, brave enough to speak the unconventional truths that those timorous ninnies advising him would never utter. When they applaud these crazy lines that no other politician could get away with saying—that no other politician would ever dream of saying—they’re applauding that: the middle finger he’s waving at the world.
Trump’s entire political career is built around that premise. Remember in the original Jurassic Park, when that Australian guy who eventually got his arm chomped off was explaining to the others how the velociraptors probed the perimeter fences, looking for weaknesses? That’s Trump. He’s constantly probing the fences, seeing what new disgusting thing he can get away with and assuming that he can get away with all of it.
But voters have fingers, too—middle ones, and the ones they mark ballots with. Let’s hope they put them to good use next Tuesday.