Donald Trump Wants to Bury America With Him

Wednesday night in Dallas, Donald Trump declared that the 2026 midterms would determine “if our country stumbles at the starting gate of our next 250 years or surges forward and never looks back.” That is how he began his long, rambling convention speech, promising to “leave the world in our dust.” 

But far from a display of power and forward-looking ideas, Trump’s speech came off more like a sermon from Jonestown. And observers noticed. My own overriding thought was: “This speech was like some sort of performance art piece of a live entombing of a mad king and his most loyal followers.”

Talking to a historically unprecedented midterm party convention that was called so he could force himself back onto the electoral center-stage, Trump constantly circled back to—or rather, weaved his way through—legacy issues like his ballroom, the wall, and his tariffs. He whinged about the three elections he claims to have won and played coy about the actual third term he almost certainly doesn’t intend to attempt. 

He was eager to lie, as he always is, that the venue for his speech was packed. And he called attention to some of his most devoted rally attendees:

And I want you to remember me in four or five years when this country's rocketing. Remember, I'm the one that got it started. [Audience members call out "Trump 2028"] You know who they are, right? Oh, look who we have. Front row Joes. Look at 'em. Wow. That's great. And we have the great ladies from North Carolina. Can you imagine? So they've been to 217 rallies. They're beautiful. They have wonderful husbands, but I never see the husbands. The husbands, I think you're driving your husbands crazy. No, they've been fans right from the beginning, of our policy. I guess they're like me, but of our policy. And front row Joes, it's number 412, I think. What do they do for a living? They make a lot of money, I think. But you guys are fantastic.

This was around the point in the night that the notion of retainer sacrifice first entered my head. My colleague Samantha Hancox-Li has an elegantly simple theory for why Trump has become even more obsessed with legacy and with slapping his name on buildings and projects than he already was over his lifelong career as a shameless self-promoter: fear of death. As she put it:

I really cannot maintain enough that my current theory of Donald Trump is that he is utterly gripped by the terror of death, and is desperately attempting to leave some mark on the world that history cannot erase—this is the point of the wars, the annexation threats, the D.C. vandalism. I think right now he is genuinely fixated on adding new American territory as the brass ring, the thing they'll never be able to take away from his memory. I also think he can't make it happen. So as 2029 approaches we are going to more and more see a family annihilator presidency.

It’s a macabre but convincing psychological assessment. Rather than making America great again, Trump is inflicting grievous harm on it with tariffs, now upgraded to import bans against select Canadian goods; an illegal war; and a total ransacking of our public and private sectors for the enrichment of his courtiers and his family. And he is going to bury us all with him in a tomb of his own design—a ballroom. 

On the ballroom itself, Trump boasted that he was leaving a great work of art and practical utility to his successors:

And it will be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world. It'll be the best, and it's by the way, drone-proof, bulletproof, everything-proof. It's got glass this thick, six inches thick. It's gonna be great… People forget. You know, they say, “He's building a ballroom for himself.” No, I'll be there for a few months. I'd love to have it for a long time. But they've wanted a ballroom at the White House president's for 150 years. You know, we have the president of China coming in two weeks who's, you know, I’m, I get along great with him. We have a very good, that's better. You know, it's a good thing, not a bad thing. Some people say, “Oh, it's terrible.” That's a very good thing, but we have like 101 people. We could have 2,000 people. I could have this whole stadium would like to go there. So we're building something that's going to be the most beautiful anywhere in the world. When I was in China, they have a building. It's called the Great Hall of China. It's a serious hall. This is a very large hall, but we're going to top it, you know? We're going to top it, and it's going to be at the White House. And all these presidents to come, hopefully mostly Republicans, but Democrats also are going to be very thankful that they have it. And it's gonna be an honor to, to do it.

These are the ramblings of a neurotic, dangerous madman. 

But lest you think Trump was speaking out loud to himself, his audience of sycophants made sure to chime in with timely chants of “USA!,” “Trump!,” and other sacred words. And that’s what Trump requires because his greatest legacy is his following, all the Americans who boosted his rise and the many more he has dragged down into the moral gutter with him. He made this clear as he talked about his longest, most enduring political insecurity—crowd size. Trump crowed that his venue was full, adding, “Nobody has left. It’s a great tribute to Trump. And yet I’ll read in the New York Times that Trump lost his audience shortly.” This was interrupted by chants of “Trump!” from the crowd. 

If Trump is taking America down, if he is going to bury this country, all the good in it and all its prosperity and potential, then he wants his most adoring and loyal retainers with him. He wants his cult locked inside. 

The ego of the authoritarian is not at all incompatible with self-annihilation. Take Jones as an example, of course. But also take Hitler, who took his own life in his Führerbunker attended by his inner circle. But they’re never usually satisfied with only destroying themselves. Their families, followers, and, even the nation must come with them. 

Featured image is the Führerbunker, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V04744 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.