Donald Trump's Delusional 'Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' Brand Of Politics
Donald Trump's profoundly psychopathic delusion is now central to Republican politics.
We all know Donald Trump doesn’t like to lose. In fact, if you ask him, he never has.
Remember when he lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016? Trump claimed Ted Cruz “illegally stole” it, and he called for “a new election.” And when he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton later that year, Trump blamed that on “millions of people who voted illegally.” Imagine someone whose ego is so fragile that, even after winning the Electoral College, he still had to cry “fraud!” because he couldn’t stand even losing the popular vote count.
Hell, Trump even questioned the integrity of the Emmys after The Apprentice was repeatedly passed over for the top prize.
So, it should have come as no surprise that, in the wake of the 2020 election, Trump took this level of delusion to an absurd extreme by insisting that his unambiguous loss to Joe Biden—by a landslide margin of 7 million votes and 76 Electoral College votes—was actually the result of massive voter fraud.
It’s simply what Donald Trump does.
But you’ll notice which elections he never questions: those he wins. You see, when he wins, it’s always legitimate, and when he loses it’s always illegitimate. Call it Trump’s “heads I win, tails you lose” theory of politics.
Or, as Ernest Dumas wrote for The Arkansas Times:
It was not that he merely didn’t want to [admit he lost.] He couldn’t. And he never will, even to save himself from prison. That is the definition of a psychopath. The greatest man on earth cannot make a mistake, cannot be defeated, can never admit he lied, can never even say he was wrong.
But while Trump’s brazen delusional insistence that he is never wrong and never loses may be the product of one very deranged mind, it’s pretty clear that within not just MAGA but the Republican Party at large, this belief system has metastasized and is now a central, organizing principle of the conservative movement.
In today’s piece, I’ll take a look at how Trump’s deeply delusional worldview is leeching into other aspects of politics and how the Republican Party hopes to use Trump’s delusions to drive turnout in this year’s election.
This Is Trump’s Party Now
For all the brazenness and absurd delusion that underpins Trump’s apparently sincere belief that he is incapable of losing, the former president’s supporters have clearly embraced the theory.
Take Trump’s election lie.
Trump himself claimed earlier this year that 82% of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen from him, which itself is the result of profoundly delusional thinking.
In reality, of course, the number is far lower, with only around 30% of poll respondents agreeing with Trump’s claim of a rigged election. But among Republicans, that figure is much higher, even exceeding a majority of GOP voters, and over the course of the past few years, it has only increased.
Steve Benen of MaddowBlog traced the trend:
Of particular interest was the shift among self-identified Republicans: As 2021 came to a close, 39% of GOP voters said President Joe Biden’s election was legitimate. As 2023 wrapped up, that total was down to 31%, while 67% of Republicans said the Democratic incumbent was not legitimately elected, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
This comes on the heels of a CNN poll from August, which found very similar results.
This tracks with a Monmouth poll from last June showing while just 30% of Americans believed the election was stolen by Trump, that number jumped to 68% among just Republicans.
Despite courts saying otherwise, despite Trump’s own data guy saying otherwise, despite no verifiable evidence of massive voter fraud and despite the fact that this is a repeated pattern of Trump’s, rank and file Republicans have embraced his “Big Lie “ to an alarming degree.
But what about Trump’s 82% claim? Well, it looks like he didn’t invent it out of thin air. He was likely referencing this 2021 PRRI poll that found:
Among Republicans who claimed they trust Fox News more than any other outlet, 82% said they believed the election was stolen.
Yeah, that tracks.
The notion that trust in conservative media would correlate with distrust in the 2020 election is hardly surprising. I mean, look at how they’re reacting to even France’s shock election results, in which the far right came in a distant 3rd place after being projected to win a majority, MAGA is resorting to claims of fraud.
Pro-Trump right-wing influencer Catturd spelled out the MAGA perspective succinctly:
In the MAGA mind, conservative victories are the only legitimate outcomes. But this delusional theory of politics does not apply to election results alone. It extends far beyond elections.
For example, the entire premise of Trump’s claim that the “liberal media” is “fake news” was designed to shield against any negative stories. As authoritarians throughout history have demonstrated, if you discredit the media as a whole, you can paint any bad story as “fake” and any good story…well it must be true if the “liberal media” writes it! Heads I win, tails…I win.
More recently, we saw a version of this as Trump has bizarrely sought to take credit for the huge stock market surge that we’ve seen under Biden. How has Trump taken credit for something that has nothing to do with him when he is simply a private citizen? As Trump tells it, investors are bullish on the markets because of polls showing him ahead, claiming that somehow Biden’s accomplishment is his own. So even a Biden win is a Trump win.
And most recently, we saw this strategy in action not just by Trump but by the entire right-wing media and political infrastructure ahead of the recent debate, spreading the bizarre claim that Joe Biden had taken a performance-enhancing drug at the State of the Union and would do so again to perform well at the debate. This time, the strategy was a way to defend against a possible Trump debate loss. According to Trump’s theory of politics, if Biden were to overperform expectations and trounce Trump in the debate, it would be because he was “cheating” with a drug. So just as with election results, by MAGA logic Biden could never win fair and square, and by extension, it was literally impossible for Trump to lose.
Which is Trump’s—and now the right’s—entire M.O.
As a recent Politico analysis rightly put it:
It’s a playbook Trump has followed for years, most notably ahead of the 2020 election and his criminal trial this spring in Manhattan. If Trump comes out the winner of the debate, his allies predict, then it will be in spite of the obstacles. If Trump stumbles, then he has already set up who and what to blame. It’s also a brand of grievance politics that has long animated Trump’s most fervent supporters and helped him, baselessly, explain away past political failures and legal setbacks.
Trump’s Delusions Fuel The MAGA Cult
It is not difficult to see why Trump’s supporters would find this worldview appealing, particularly when his false claims are seen through the lens of Trump as a cult or even religious leader.
As Milan Sime Martinic wrote in an article titled “The Trump Religion: Understanding The Allure” for The Week:
From conspiracy theories about election fraud to false promises on healthcare, his most loyal supporters exhibit an almost religious conviction, unwilling to waver even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Their steadfast allegiance reveals a faith-based core where belief comes first, and rationalization follows.
Trump famously uses myth to appeal to his supporters, and his election “Big Lie” is a perfect example. Not only is it a fiction lacking any evidence, and one which requires religious-like faith to believe, but it taps into his persecution narrative: the notion that he—and by extension, his supporters—is being attacked and kept down by fraudulent evildoers.
Again, Martinic:
Trump supporters cultivate a strong sense of oppression by demonized external evildoers seeking to destroy their way of life. Imagined leftist, immigrant and minority cabals are accused of inflicting harm on “true” Americans, poisoning the blood of the country. This is merely Trump’s version of the religious apocalyptic narrative of satanic threats to the divine elect, nurturing a siege mentality for political support.
Trump’s theory of politics in which you never lose and you’re never wrong offers supporters the same faith-based comfort that religions promise with prayer, eternal life, and salvation.
The myths spun by Trumpism provide a sense of existential purpose. His facile folk narratives offer adherents a feeling of psychological security, control and communal solidarity in the midst of the complexity and anxieties of a world that is changing. By dividing the world into heroes and villains, Trump masterfully situates his followers in a morally clarified reality.
After all, doesn’t the comfort offered by much of religion lie in the notion that no matter what happens, there is a larger plan? It seeks to provide order out of chaos and meaning out of meaninglessness.
For true believers, an answered prayer is confirmation of God’s existence and love; an unanswered prayer is confirmation that God has “a plan” that is greater than any of us.
This is precisely the comfort that Trump’s “heads I win, tails you lose” mindset offers his supporters.
Trump’s November Strategy Is Already In Effect
As we have seen for years now, Donald Trump’s biggest tell is that he always previews his potential loss, preparing his supporters ahead of time with preemptive claims of fraud. He did this both in 2016 and 2020, and he is doing it again in 2024.
In 2020, Trump’s false proactive claims of a rigged election led supporters to question the point of voting at all. Famously, ahead of the Senate runoff in Georgia, exasperated voters asked then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel
“Why should we vote in this election when we know it's already decided?”
McDaniel tried to contain the monster she and Trump’s movement had created:
“It's not decided. This is the key—it's not decided. So if you lose your faith and you don't vote and people walk away—that will decide it.”
Likewise, Trump’s 2020 claims that voting by mail was inherently fraudulent appeared to backfire, leading to a marked Democratic overperformance among mail-in votes that year.
So this time, in order to prevent self-imposed GOP vote suppression as a result of his fraud claims, Trump has already debuted his new slogan: “Too big to rig.”
According to Philip Bump of The Washington Post, Trump’s new messaging was on display at a recent Virginia rally.
“We want a landslide that is too big to rig,” he said at a rally in Virginia this month. “That’s what we need because they’re going to be cheating, and they’re cheaters, and we’re going to be watching them, and we’re going to prosecute.”
The point here, of course, is clear:
For the most part, it’s just a way for Trump to accomplish two things at once. He wants to reinforce the idea that the 2020 election was somehow ripped away from him (it wasn’t) and that his supporters need to turn out in November.
But he also suggests there is a way to overcome the rigging by voting more.
In 2020, Trump’s wholly invented claims that the election was rigged actually backfired, leading some Republican voters to sit the election out altogether.
This year, at least in terms of voting, Trump and the RNC seem to have learned their lesson and are already planning ahead, using preemptive claims of fraud to surge MAGA voters to the polls.
But what will happen when he does lose in November? This time, it’s not just Trump who will be insisting he won the election. He has trained the entire MAGA and Republican movement to do his “Big Lie” bidding, including his parade of VP contenders who are regularly asked if they will accept the results of the election regardless of the outcome.
To a person, they have delivered a bad faith caveat: They’ll accept the results “if” the election is free and fair. And yet, it was Trump’s claims of election fraud that sowed distrust in America’s elections in the first place and lay the groundwork for voter suppression measures around the country.
The bad news is, the onslaught could prove much more coordinated and widespread as MAGA Republicans take up Trump’s bogus claims and seek to go on the offensive with them.
The good news is, we will be far better prepared for this attack, and as will our state governments, institutions, and courts. Should Trump lose the election, he will be in a far less favorable place to seek to overturn the results than he was in 2020. But that may simply mean he will press his false claims all the harder.
The real, real issue on the table is that without limiting voting "rights" of certain populations, the Republican Party will never, ever win a fair election again. (assuming that all eligible voters actually vote) This is a very real power issue and controls a great deal of the Republican thinking. Take a stroll through Washington DC sometime. Notice the vast amount of money present. The Republican manifesto certainly since Nixon has been that the working class is made to be used and profited from, the middle class similarly profited from, and amongst those who do this is a deep class point of view which puts them above those people such that "those" people are not seen as human. Since they are not "human," it is a great waste of resources and tax dollars to make sure that they are taken care of. Thus we get the Nixon response to the "Great Society" and all the rights clarified in the 60's and 70's. I happen to believe that the terms "racism", "ageism," and "sexism," are terms that refer to "class." And that class is to a large degree one paycheck from bankruptcy. From the point of view of the very wealthy, that means they are not "human" and they are made to be used. In the law, employment is referred to as "master/servant" law. And that is the essence of it. Donald Trump is daily acting the part that made him millions where nothing else had done so. That is the "part" he represents and what he is supported in acting out--the heartless, cheating, lying, corrupt successful businessman whose interactions are all transactional, totally without heart. How this is acceptable to any Christian eludes me!! (Perhaps they are not really Christian.)
Get them to repeat the ‘bloodless revolution, if the left allows it’ rubric and then flip it. Either the Proud Boys and sycophants and clansmen are ready to prowl the streets, fully armed, ready to shoot neighbors and family, or they have to crawl back under the rocks from whence Trump summoned them. Bloodless? That is a threat and they all need to eat their words. Put up or shut up!!