Can anyone explain Trump’s monumental effort to destroy the Republican party on his way out the door?

Some people feel that if they can’t have things the way they want it, they’d rather burn it to the ground.

In the beginning, Trump signed a piece of paper say he would kiss the GOP’s butt. I doubt he was very happy with that, and now that he’s lost the election, he wants to instigate a “scorched earth”* tactic on the GOP as punishment for them not kissing HIS behind. (*So to speak.)

There’s so much that he’s done that’s inexplicable. This is just one thing in a sea of things.

The quick answer is that he doesn’t care and he never has. The party, to him, was something to be used to fulfill is whackadoodle personal goals – largely his ego.

It’s insane that we’ve put up with all of his illegal bullshit….and he’s still in office!
Talk about election tampering…..

The Republican base has been concentrated down to the worst Americans. They will stick with Trump no matter what he does. They don’t love him DESPITE his awfullness, they love him for it. He is maximizing his assholishness to keep them excited so they keep sending money. I haven’t looked lately but I think his “campaign” fundraising was already in the 9 figures a month ago.

Somebody has already said it here: it’s more lucrative for him to keep this up as long as possible than to let it go. Money and attention are what it’s all about. Power is the means to those things and not the end in itself.

Certainly he’s not really interested in keeping a job he doesn’t want to do and has barely done (“I thought it would be easier,” Trump, 4/28/2017). But by now, he’s worse off out of it than he is in it.

People get caught up in things, and emotion overrides anything rational. And nothing drives like fear and greed: the lizard brain and not the higher cerebral processes. I think that’s true for him, for his lawyers and everyone else around him, and for his benighted followers. They all (we all) have the basic, wordless reptile brain beneath everything else, and it can dominate the system.

Just wait, though:

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
—1 Corinthians 15:52 (KJV)

For people who are adept in reading unintended meanings and portents into scripture, “the last trump” should resonate. That’s the Bible (in first Corinthians, not one Corinthians), saying that the day of reckoning is coming. Is it? Hasn’t yet.

There was one, largely unnoticed, conspiracy theory floating around when Trump first took over, and it made the rounds for a couple of years. The gist of it was that Trump was selected and elected, to ruin the Republican Party, a deliberate ploy by powers unknown. Considering all that has happened during his tenure, and continues to happen at this stage of the game, I really have to wonder. If that theory isn’t true, it might as well be. Not saying I buy into that, just musing.

It’s certainly diabolical. My problem with it is that it is entirely too clever.

Delusions of grandeur, from day one, and continuing until the day he dies.

Remember when, during the 2016 debates, Hillary called him Putin’s puppet? She must have known something then.

The vile old clown of a man may have destroyed a political party but there will always be votes.

The GOP had been going down hill for years anyway.

@Jeruba That is the one charge that is inescapable—the thing about Trump as “Putin’s useful idiot”. The fact of it is not even questionable. The only question is whether the dummy’s collaboration is deliberate (criminal).