If he stops now, it might break the spell for a good number of his supporters. We're probably past that point, though.

Trump's current behavior outside of his trail would be massively self-destructive if he wasn't obviously guilty as hell of some of the things he's been charged with. It's far better for Trump to be perceived as losing because he was "being Trump", and not because of the evidence.

Trump was never a businessman. He was always a gambler, and he's a brilliant liar. The thing that made me realize that Trump, while incompetent to lead is a genius at lying was "read the transcript". Trump had the moxie, and the sheer contempt for his followers , to get them all wearing "Read The Transcript T Shirts, knowing that most of them wouldn't actually read the transcript for the call to Ukraine that got him impeached. That is some very advanced lying.

I wouldn't say that Trump is good at lying. He's just a little smarter than his supporters.

I've had this discussion before. Even for a psychopath, Trump is a brilliant liar. If you think he's he's stupid, it's because he's fooled you into thinking he's stupid. So much of what he's accomplished is because his enemies underestimate him. Rupert Murdoch didn't create the Trump Monster. It was the liberal media. NBC put him on TV as a joke, playing an infallible business genius for 14 years on the Apprentice, and left him on because it was profitable, and what's the harm?

He's incompetent at governing, and may not even be a very smart criminal, He's an amazing liar. I mean, who could have predicted that he'd be leading in the polls right now?

Lying constantly about everything isn’t being a genius liar

The man is a bumbling moron who Mr Magoo’d his way to the top primary by being born very rich and white

And yet, he is also constantly underestimating everybody else, and it keeps biting him in the ass in schadenfreudeudenal ways, so I'm not sure it's working.

The truth is that it's not that he's a GOOD liar, it's that he was trained by Roy Cohn to use the PUA tactic of just lying ALL THE TIME, and that way for every 9 lies everybody calls out, there's 1 that slides through, and he considers that a win. It's a tactic, but not a good one on a sustained basis, especially when he himself isn't a lawyer and can't hire a good lawyer because he doesn't pay his bills and gets stuck with the idiot showboats on Twitter that beg to work for him for free.

He's like Dale throwing pocket sand in everybody's face: it works a few times, he thinks it's a success, and then he just gets kicked in the balls for it when the opposition is prepared.

It’s even better! He will lose all his money and THEN go to prison!