Is Trump fighting to lose US elections?

The American mainstream media is viscerally hostile to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In turn, Trump publicly and frequently denounces American journalists as among "the most dishonest people I know".

The latest theory floated by a section of the US media is that Trump, consciously or subconsciously, wants to lose the presidential election.

The thesis was first articulated by Carl M Cannon, the Washington bureau chief of the popular website RealClearPolitics.

Here's what Cannon wrote: "I believe Donald Trump, the man who famously disparages 'losers', knows deep down he isn't equipped to be president. Let's call this more reflective subconscious entity 'Don Trump'.

"Donald Trump loves winning and hates losing, while 'Don Trump' knows that running a smart campaign and beating Hillary Clinton means he'd inherit a job he has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to perform successfully. 'Don Trump' wants to lose. He wants this campaign to be over so Donald Trump can go back to doing what he's good at: promoting his personal brand and counting his money."

The theme was picked up by others last week.

Joe Scarborough, who hosts the Morning Joe show on MSNBC, claims he has spoken to multiple sources who are "extraordinarily close" to Trump.

Also read: Guess whom The Simpsons want as US President?

They told him the dream scenario for Trump is to "lose the November presidential election to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by a narrow margin and then claim the election was rigged".

Trump first hinted that the election could be rigged at a campaign rally on August 1.

He has repeated that several times in subsequent rallies. It has since become a consistent theme of his campaign.

The Washington-New York "establishment" media says Trump's "rigged election" comment may be an escape chute if his bad poll numbers hold up and he does lose big.

But why would Trump go through all the trouble of running for president when all he wanted to do, as Scarborough says, was make the headlines?

Robert Kagan of Brookings Institute gave this explanation in The Washington Post on August 1, 2016:

"One wonders if Republican leaders have begun to realise that they may have hitched their fate and the fate of their party to a man with a disordered personality. We can leave it to the professionals to determine exactly what to call it. Trump is, in this respect, unlike a normal politician. A normal politician knows that no matter how much criticism gets under the skin, the thing to do is to smile and wave it off. You don't have to mean it. You don't even have to appear to mean it. But it is what you do, if only to avoid compounding the damage. Trump cannot make this simple self-serving calculation. He must attack everyone who opposes him.

"It's not really politically incorrect to say that a prisoner of war is not a hero because he got captured. It's just a way of saying, I don't care if you're a war hero. You criticised me and now I've got to hit you. Trump's insults are scattershot - only sometimes touching the raw racist and xenophobic nerves in society. The most important fact is that he is unable to control his responses to criticism. He must double down every time, even if it means digging himself deeper and deeper into the hole."

The accidental candidate

Trump didn't expect to knock out a field of 16 Republican candidates in the primaries, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. But he did.

Suddenly he found himself in a head-to-head with Hillary Clinton.

Subconsciously or consciously, according to the US mainstream media narrative - a narrative that has been strenuously contested by the Trump campaign - the mercurial billionaire now began to sabotage his own campaign.

He insulted Mexican-heritage federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, blaming the judge's ethnic background for his "unfair" handling of a case on Trump University.

Also read: Trump's 'biggest crisis' may cost him dear

There was widespread condemnation over the offensive remark.

But Trump had by now tapped into a deep well of anger among middle-class whites, especially men, who had been left behind in America's stop-start economy.

The genie was out of the bottle. Trump couldn't push it back in. For every insult he heaped on Muslims, Mexicans, the differently-abled, African-Americans, his own Republican critics and the media, his white middle-class support only grew.

Till Trump picked a fight with Khizr Khan whose son Humayun had died a hero in 2004 serving with the US army in Iraq. Trump's poll numbers now began to sink.

Undeterred, he then belittled co-Republican and House speaker Paul Ryan by holding back support to his bid for re-election to the House of Representatives.

To add to this litany of bizarre behaviour, he obliquely suggested Russia hack into Hillary Clinton's missing classified emails and that the US could use nuclear weapons in Europe.

Trump finally endorsed Ryan on August 5 to begin healing the open wound in the Republican party.

Then, pulling a rare rabbit out of a hat, he announced last week that he had raised $82 million in July, nearly as much as Hillary Clinton's well-oiled campaign machinery.

An unusual election

Where does that leave the US presidential election three months from polling day on November 8?

Hillary's lead in opinion polls is widening rapidly. It currently stands at an average of 7 per cent.

Trump, though, has vowed to fight to the end, especially in swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Also read: Parallels between Modi and Trump

Meanwhile, the latest theory put out by CNN (which Trump mocks as Clinton News Network) is that, with his poll numbers plummeting, the billionaire Republican candidate could either quit the race or be eased out by fellow-Republicans. That's wishful thinking.

As for Hillary, if she wins in November, she will rank among the most disliked presidents in US history.

Nearly 65 per cent of Americans polled regard her as "untrustworthy" and "dishonest".

It would be unwise to write off Trump entirely. He has a core voter base of 40 per cent disaffected Americans.

Hillary's own core vote base is around 45 per cent. There are another 15 per cent undecided independent voters.

They will decide the election.