About four weeks after saying Donald Trump will win the presidential election, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore has changed his mind and believes the Republican nominee is "self-sabotaging" his own campaign for one reason: he never wanted to be president in the first place.
In a Huffington Post op-ed, Moore writes that Trump's presidential campaign grew from a publicity stunt into the realization that he had become the Republican party's nominee.
"Donald Trump never actually wanted to be president of the United States. I know this for a fact," Moore writes. "I'm not going to say how I know it. I'm not saying that Trump and I shared the same agent or lawyer or stylist or, if we did, that that would have anything to do with anything. And I'm certainly not saying that I ever overheard anything at those agencies or in the hallways of NBC or anywhere else.
"But there are certain people reading this right now, they know who they are, and they know that every word in the following paragraphs actually happened."
Moore explains that Trump initially ran for president to gain more traction and leverage for his NBC show "The Apprentice," as he wanted to be paid more by the network. But when his support and momentum began to build, Trump decided to keep playing along because, as Moore writes, "Trump fell in love with himself all over again, and he soon forgot his mission to get a good deal for a TV show."
In recent weeks, however, Trump's poll numbers have dropped amid controversial statements he's made about the parents of a dead American soldier and Second Amendment comments that were taken by some to refer to assassinating Democrat Hillary Clinton, along with the fact that he's not spending money on television advertisements.
Moore thinks it might be self-sabotage that may lead to Trump exiting the campaign.
"Maybe it's all part of his new strategy to get the hell out of a race he never intended to see through to its end anyway," Moore writes. "Because, unless he is just 'crazy,' the only explanation for the unusual ramping up, day after day, of one disgustingly reckless statement after another is that he's doing it consciously (or subconsciously) so that he'll have to bow out or blame 'others' for forcing him out.
"Many now are sensing the end game here because they know Trump seriously doesn’t want to do the actual job — and, most importantly, he cannot and WILL NOT suffer through being officially and legally declared a loser — LOSER! — on the night of November 8th."
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