Is Trump A Double Agent For Democrats?

As America struggles to comprehend Donald Trump’s meteoric political rise and sustained popularity in the Republican Party, some have brought up the intriguing possibility that Trump is actually a double agent working on behalf of Democrats. Sure, it’s an outlandish proposition. But as far as Donald Trump conspiracy theories go, it’s actually one of the more plausible ones, and it deserves serious consideration.

I’m generally not a conspiracy-minded person, but I’ve been tossing this possibility around in my head for quite some time. While it’s admittedly far-fetched, I just can’t disregard the possibility completely. Just ask yourself, if Donald Trump was trying to sabotage this election for the GOP, what would his campaign look like? And I always come to the same answer: It would look exactly like the campaign Trump is currently running.

The GOP concluded in 2013 that if Republicans ever want to win the White House again, they will need to improve their standing with women and non-white voters, Hispanics in particular. If you wanted to ensure that Republicans lost the 2016 presidential election, then you’d start by ruining the party’s reputation among these voters.

You might begin by saying a bunch of awful things about Hispanics during your campaign launch, for example, and then forcing your Republican opponents to take extreme positions on immigration. If a female journalist asked you tough questions, you’d probably imply that she did so because she was menstruating at the time. If a woman challenged you for the nomination, it'd be easy to simply suggest that she was too ugly to be president.

In other words, you’d become exactly the kind of boorish, reptilian-minded brute the Republican Party is desperate to hide from mainstream voters in election years. For the would-be saboteur, this strategy is win-win. If you become the nominee, you’ll be unelectable because of how odious you’ve been. But even if someone else wins, you’d have engineered a situation where the eventual nominee is forced to account for your own sexist, nativist comments.

To ensure that Republicans didn’t come within a mile of winning the presidency, a Democratic double-agent would also kneecap any and every Republican candidate who actually did have a shot at winning the general election. They’d target candidates who proposed moderate immigration reforms in the past, for example, and take aim at any other candidates attempting to expand the Republican voting base. The ultimate goal here is to prevent as many Americans as possible from voting Republican in November.

But as far as sabotage goes, this is all still minor league. If you really, really, really wanted to obliterate the GOP’s chances in 2016, the best way would be to obliterate the Republican Party itself. Given how tenuous the GOP’s electoral coalition is at this point, that wouldn’t be hard. First, you’d identify the major areas of disagreement between GOP base voters and the Republican establishment. Then, you’d put as much focus on these issues as possible, adopting positions that the base loves but the elites hate. This would ensure a huge and ultimately irreconcilable internal fight within the GOP, and that would destroy any hopes of party unity in November.

I know, all of this sounds absurd. But let’s keep in mind that Donald Trump, for all of his bluster, is not a lifetime conservative and used to be quite liberal. Let’s also keep in mind his past chumminess with the Clintons, as well as the fact that Bill Clinton reportedly encouraged Trump to run for president shortly before he announced. None of these prove conspiracy, of course, and the idea that Trump is working on behalf of the Clintons is admittedly far-fetched. But they’re real-life facts to consider.

It’s likely Trump is in it to win it and that he has no ulterior motive. It’s also possible that, for whatever reason and on whoever’s behalf, he’s actively working against the Republican Party. One thing’s for sure: If he becomes the nominee and loses the election, the difference between those two propositions will be irrelevant.