LaRue writes at Structure Matters. He is former deputy director of the Eisenhower Institute and of the American Society of International Law.
“On the advice of my doctors, their direction actually, I must withdraw as a candidate for president of the United States.”
Could Donald Trump really utter those words? As likely as not.
Consider what he knows: His odds of bucking conventional wisdom as he did in 2016 are very low. Even if he wins the Republican nomination for president next summer, his slim chances in the general election are eroding further. Such wisdom may never be tested, however, if he quits before facing a loss he cannot get close to derailing.
Trump says he will soldier on no matter what. Just a common lie, with the big one to follow. The facts – the voters have spoken against him all four times, from 2016’s three-million vote margin to 2022’s red fizzle – demolish all reasons for him to remain on the ballot until November 5, 2024.
His pending loss is even more likely, given that his culpability for his legal troubles is seriously damning and could soon include more indictments. His MAGA base is notably thinner and barely paying lip service against his arrests. Trump’s ultimate demise becomes clearer as prominent former Republican backers publicly peel away, such as Senator John Cornyn did in May.
Trump has little choice but to bring out his exit strategy, a path he counts on having – bankruptcy, anyone? – for his every endeavor. His 2024-campaign version could have been his plan from the beginning, or it is at least contending now for his preferred course of action: Withdraw because of poor health news.
This excuse would be believable. At age 78 in January 2025, he would be as old as Joe Biden was when he entered the White House in 2021. Add Trump’s physique to any prognosis and he has plausible health reasons that could necessitate dropping out. He would blast Biden “for not withdrawing in 2020 the way he should have, as I’m doing now,” and could even blame the “witch hunt” for exacerbating his chosen illness. The Next Big Lie rests easily in his back pocket.
It may seem odd to suggest that Trump would seek to save face by faking illness, but such a lie is not out of bounds for our nation’s most treasonous grifter. Perhaps his prior claims of good health were false and his new health excuse would be both old and real. Either lie would be true to form.
When he makes this announcement is anyone’s guess. While he will walk away in a healthy or unhealthy heartbeat, he will do so when it is most advantageous to him. This timing decision is his last grasp of control.
Odds are that he stays in the race as long as possible to be in and monetize the spotlight, and perhaps even to wallow in a MAGA-led convention lovefest. These goals are narcissistic enough to have been his only ones from the start, as he could have entered the race never intending to finish it. Does anyone think Trump cares about the upheaval he would cause by dropping out just before Labor Day?
(That a convention swan song remains possible is due to the dysfunctional nominations process, which uses low-vote, multi-candidate primaries that advance first-past-the-post, plurality winners. It must be changed to reduce the risk of selecting future undemocratic outliers who cannot earn majority support.)
But Trump might depart before the primaries in order not to jeopardize his chance of earning a pardon from a Republican victor. If he waits until after the convention to depart, he does risk making it harder for his Republican successor to win, notwithstanding how he will rip into “the even older guy” on his way out.
And he could still hang on until the bitter end. But that would only give Trump two more months in the brightest spotlight, which may not be enough to accept if it also means swallowing the reality of his fifth straight loss.
So he will exit the ring rather than wait for the count.
Idle speculation? Giving him too much credit for such deliberation? Perhaps, but we have previously underestimated his willingness to go to unimagined extremes. Without the tools of incumbency, his desperation may lead him to surprise us. Anything remains possible when it comes to Trump.
If he uses the Next Big Lie to step away, we can take little comfort in knowing that he will not again be president. His closing acts will be destructive, and Trumpism and election denialism will remain, even if weakened.
Let us prepare for the reconstruction to follow; it always has, whether after the Civil War, the Gilded Age, or other polarized periods. (And let’s not forget the Electoral College’s role in putting him in the White House to begin with – a second core problem to fix.)
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.