Everyone is so angry at Donald Trump! I don’t get it. I understand disgusted, grossed out, creeped out, revolted, frightened, extremely anxious, even terrified. But I don’t understand angry or let down.

The past few days I’ve been reading stuff from both sides of the political aisle complaining about The Donald’s lack of interest in civil discourse, his gutter tactics. Op-ed’ers accuse him of wanting to destroy America and the Republican Party.  Writers and politicians insist that he’s pandering to racists, misogynists, and stupid people. There’s so much anger behind the words.

And I don’t think that’s fair at all.

The Donald doesn’t want to destroy America. I firmly believe he wants America to be the most successful nation in the world. It’s in his own self interest.

The Donald doesn’t want to destroy American political institutions. He wants and needs a very successful, one-party system of elected government to make all his dreams come true. And many people would argue, from both sides of the political aisle, that this is what we have already anyway. So what’s the big issue? Why so much more anger for The Donald than for our broken political institutions?

The Donald isn’t pandering to racists and misogynists. That suggests that he’s reaching out to them from a different place in order to use them. This is all wrong, in my humble (NOT) opinion. He’s not pandering or using them. He’s one of them. He speaks to and connects with them because he understands them completely. He’s communing. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, nor elicit anger. It’s just sad, so very sad.

With just a few weeks left in the presidential race, I tend to read the news these days like a woman drinking water after 40 days and nights in a dry desert. For the past week, I’ve been reading that The Donald is going back to his core followers with his ugliest messaging, talking smack about jail for Clinton, making fun of NFL players for being wimpy about concussions, making cheap hay of Bill Clinton’s sexual exploits as a reflection on Hillary, talking worldwide conspiracy theories about the Clintons, blah blah blah. It ain’t helping in the polls, and everyone wants to know why he’s tanking Republican dreams this way. Doesn’t he know that, in order to win the election, he needs to reach out to moderates, women, not-racists, and all the reasonable people out there looking for any excuse not to vote for Clinton? Why isn’t he doing it? Is he insane?? He wants to destroy everything!

I don’t understand the blind spot. To me, Trump’s behavior is perfectly rational and makes perfect sense. The man is not stupid. He may lose control sometimes, and he may be a complete asshole, but he’s also very calculating and he knows how to read polls. He’s a survivor. He knows he’s got only the longest of long shots at winning the election. That gig is up, only this time he can’t turn to a bankruptcy court for an exit strategy.

What he can do is build his new brand, his political brand, while he’s got free media coverage up the yin yang. That’s what I believe he’s going to be doing until election day. The Donald has been messaging his brand — not to his core political base, but to his core consumer base. He’s building a market to sell to. He doesn’t care about votes and swing states and all that nonsense anymore. Sure he wants to be president, but barring that? Market share.

What will he sell? I have a pretty good guess. He’s got Ailes from Fox and Bannon from Breitbart in his pocket. I have little doubt that they’re already sharing notes on a new Trump-wing media empire. (I can’t rightly call it right- or left-wing, because no one really knows what The Donald is.)  And maybe steaks, or bottled water. I see his name showing up on product lines in some big-box stores like Walmart. There is so. much. money to be made, and so much ego to stroke. Those millions and millions of people who voted for The Donald in the primaries are going to love his post-election product launches. And who knows, maybe he’ll set up a Norwex pyramid. 

The Donald has it all going on.  He manipulated the tax code to avoid paying taxes for years and years, thereby personally living the tax-free dream. He’s all about personal profit and enlargement, and thus necessarily serves the greater good (because when a man gets rich, wealth trickles off him like sweat). He understands that the role of government and courts is to protect rich people just like him — hence bankruptcy laws for deadbeat debtors and tax loopholes for real estate developers. He has fully embraced the idea of unleashing politically-motivated threats of criminal prosecution and personal destruction on his enemies, just as Republican congresses have been doing for years. He’s got a lifetime of free marketing ahead of him, thanks to the Establishment Media’s obsession with him. The Donald perfectly expresses the wet dreams of right-wing America and Chicago-schoolers of two or more decades ago.

So why is everyone so angry and disappointed? Give The Poor Donald a break.

And vote on November 8, for the love of country.

Or on November 28, for the love of The Donald.