MICHAEL WOLFF: Trump is suddenly unhinged, uninhibited and more freakish than ever before - but is he really having a breakdown?

This is my tenth twelvemonth of penning astir Donald Trump and his unorthodox, norm-defying behavior.

And, arsenic we attack the apogee of this 2024 predetermination cycle, his actions, words and bearing person lone gotten much extreme, trending into the bizarre, if not freakish.

Never earlier has a nationalist figure, but possibly 1 having a disposable breakdown, displayed specified a mercurial, devil-may-care, uninhibited persona.

From casting disconnected a recent event successful Pennsylvania mid-sentence and swaying – for forty afloat minutes – to his ain playlist, to his daily, 90-minute and often incoherent speeches, oregon his unrestrained and expletive-ridden attacks connected his assorted enemies, it's a full caller benignant of WTF politics.

And it's not conscionable successful public; determination are reports of backstage atrocious behaviour too, of furies unleashed connected those closest to him, adjacent connected large Republican donors.

Even those closest to him are present struggling to explicate what surely appears to beryllium a willful determination to spit successful the look of restraint.

A Mar-a-Lago golfing buddy, who sees the erstwhile president often, precocious suggested to maine that this could beryllium owed to the accent of the hard last weeks of the campaign.

Several Trump aides, meanwhile, person speculated astir the lasting interaction of 2 assassination attempts. And then, of course, determination is the property factor: Trump is 78-years-old. But, putting a bully look connected it, immoderate successful his orbit enactment that his diminution – if that is what we're witnessing – is astatine slightest colorful, arsenic opposed to Joe Biden's bittersweet fadeout.

Another mentation is that Trump understands helium mightiness suffer – which successful specified a adjacent contention is astatine slightest a 50/50 anticipation – and recognizes the dire consequences that could follow: ignominy, jail, bankruptcy.

Some insiders way the escalation successful his uncontrolled behaviour backmost to Biden's exit from the contention and Kamala Harris's swift elevation successful July.

With Biden, Trump was assured of victory. But that was snatched from him. And his rage, his feeling of being the unfortunate of a large Democratic plot, has possibly pushed him implicit the edge. In his mind, it's already different stolen election.

What's more, this is each combined with the information helium would beryllium losing to a woman — the eventual insult.

But past there's the anticipation that, what mightiness look arsenic a self-destructive spiral, whitethorn really beryllium an denotation of Trump's ain consciousness of indomitability – of full assurance successful victory. And if so, past this off-the-rails behaviour is each the much consequential, due to the fact that it foreshadows the furies and impunity that mightiness qualify a 2nd Trump White House.

A White House successful which helium volition consciousness escaped capable and assured capable to beryllium arsenic Trump arsenic helium wants to be.

Despite cosmopolitan revulsion aft January 6, Republican donors and Party enactment rallying down Ron DeSantis successful the primaries, 4 indictments and a transgression conviction, Trump has persevered and prevailed. Now, he's connected a triumph lap.

Certainly, helium has repeatedly said that his unbridled sensibility is the cardinal to his success. His overseas argumentation modus operandi – the Trump doctrine, efficaciously – is that the much unpredictable and volatile helium appears, the much different nations fearfulness him.

And the information is that Trump being Trump, without restraint, often works.

You lone request look astatine his historical triumph implicit what whitethorn beryllium the astir concerted ineligible onslaught ever leveled astatine an American politician. Any tenable ineligible advisor would person encouraged him to question accommodations and colony with his prosecutors. Instead, helium has, with Trumpian bluster and contempt, unleashed a cascade of spurious efforts to delay, distract and look down the strategy which tried truthful hard to derail him.

And arsenic such, he's fought his mode to thing of a draw. If helium succeeds connected November 5, that gully volition go a full triumph against his detractors.

Outlandish behaviour is customarily punished. Society, and often the law, rises against it. For Trump, outlandishness yields success. He is an unruly man-child who appears to person reversed the astir basal regularisation of parenting: his atrocious behaviour is truthful often rewarded.

Which prompts the question: however does helium get distant with it?

Part of the reply is that helium provides specified a wide opposition to different politicians, among them Kamala Harris, whose behaviour is controlled, strategic, but unrevealing and possibly boring. Nowadays, it progressively seems that due behaviour is much apt to beryllium punished.

But different constituent is that Trump has created himself a bubble world. He was a bankrupt businessman, a gag successful his hometown of New York City, but connected 'The Apprentice' helium framed himself arsenic the unmatched master.

Now helium is signifier shifting erstwhile again, concealing his abnormalities — his regular unusual behavior, his transgression indictments, the representation of January 6 — with the accordant illusion that helium is inactive the president, much presidential, successful fact, than the existent president.

If helium wins, a leader of his triumph volition beryllium his apical aide, Justin Caporale – a cardinal Trump architect, who has directed each detail, look and consciousness of this campaign. From the wood-paneled backstage jet, to the podiums and mock-presidential seals, to the flood lighting and out-sized sets astatine his rallies, each of it sends a connection that present is simply a existent president. Here is the dominant, world-conquering, maestro of clip and place.

From the opening of the Trump era, the question has ever been whether helium is brainsick similar a fox, artfully gaming the system, oregon conscionable truthful overmuch successful different world — that is to say, simply brainsick — that helium has inverted the game.

If helium wins again, we volition beryllium ever further from knowing the truth.

If helium loses, possibly we instrumentality to much a recognizable modular of normalcy — though it is acold from wide that is really what radical want.