Media Shower

Let’s begin with a question:

In the past year, how many times has Donald Trump said something that you found A) outrageous B) offensive or C) the Trump combo meal, outrageously offensive?

Never before have we seen a major candidate for any kind of office, let alone president, litter the landscape with such verbal shrapnel. Until this election cycle, Trump’s brand of rhetoric was considered instant political suicide. The dreaded gaffe, with a history as long as politics itself, has always meant a politician’s chances would be sliced in half.

So when one sees a candidate who appears to be consciously going for gaffes on a daily basis, one has to wonder: Is this the strategy for winning the presidency, or is something else going on here?

What if “Making America Great Again” was just an elaborate content marketing campaign with “Trump insults” serving as the primary keywords? Stranger things have happened.

Like Donald Trump running for president.

Why So Unserious?

Since he announced his run on June 16, 2015, Trump has dominated media coverage. From ink-stained newspapers to the trendiest corners of Twitter, nary a day goes by where the Trump name isn’t trumpeted across the land.

His steady stream of comments deemed coarse, crude, or the #2 Trump combo meal, coarsely crude, have earned him the kind of publicity not even his bank account could buy. Of course, it’s almost always been bad publicity; the kind any sane political advisor would label poisonous to winning an election. But what if the goal was simply publicity itself? What if Donald Trump was only seeking to put a chokehold on America’s attention span for a year and a half? If so, then he has already won.

Jeb Bush (remember him?) said Donald Trump can’t “insult his way to the presidency.” Maybe he can, maybe he can’t. But we have learned that in America 2016, one can insult their way to the doorsteps of the White House and strengthen their brand in the process.

Helping Hillary, Hurting Republicans

“I like them both. They are just really terrific people.”

That’s what Donald Trump said about Bill and Hillary Clinton to ABC News in August of 2013. No, not to Access Hollywood in 2005, this was just three years ago.

But that’s only one example of Trump and the Clintons being cozy over the years. When you consider their relationship, Trump’s previous reputation as a political moderate, and a phone call between Donald and Bill in May of 2015, no tin foil hats are necessary to imagine a scenario where Trump entered the race to pave the way for a Hillary Clinton presidency.

But would Trump go through a grueling year of campaigning just to help out an incredibly powerful friend? Maybe not. But if the goals were to boost the Clintons and lay the groundwork for a new television network – “Trump TV: Making Basic Cable Great Again!”– that would also help explain Trump’s seemingly counterintuitive knack for criticizing Fox News anchors and fellow Republicans. Trump TV could position itself to the right of Fox and become the home for tens of millions of Trump loyalists that may find themselves looking for a new source of hope – and entertainment –  on Wednesday, November 9.

Of course, as we’ve learned with Trump and his Mount Everest-sized ego, there might not even need to be a legitimate reason for an 18-month campaign, whether it’s been presidential, self-marketing, or both.

Perhaps Donald Trump has run for president just “because it’s there.”