Is This Behavior A "Tell"?

 In poker, "tells" are nonverbal hints as to what your opponent is thinking. We all have them. Trump - as a not terribly sophisticated person - has many of his own. The question is: Is his behavior a "tell" that he knows he's lost?

Trump is endlessly measuring himself against other rich people. He always has the "biggest" and "bestest" stuff and money and so on. His desperate need for external validation is well documented. So what are we to make of the collapse of his Truth Social stock? He was unable to sell off his shares until this week, as early investors wanted to avoid a pump-and-dump stock scam. Now that he's able to sell his shares, the demand for this meme stock will likely collapse. Hell, Twitter isn't worth anything, how can Truth Social be worth anything? How does this loss of (on paper) billions affect Trump?

We are also seeing him increasingly hawking bullshit like Trump crypto currency and Melania's "book". We've already seen the Trump bible and the Trump sneakers. I feel like there's one more desperate product that Trump and his family will foist upon the rubes who still think he's their divine champion. 

One thing Trump is really NOT doing is campaigning. When he does go out amongst the unwashed masses, he says increasingly untethered things like making John Deere pay a 200% tariff, claiming he will be "women's protector" despite being an adjudicated rapist, claiming other countries wouldn't fight without his permission when he was president or claiming that he's actually running against Obama or Biden. Still, he has far fewer events this year than he had in 2016 (obviously in 2020, there were fewer rallies). 

His behavior - hocking cheap bullshit, not campaigning - is not the sign of someone who is vigorously competing for the presidency. It's someone who wants to soak every penny he can out of his flock before his "Sell By" date hits. What's more, his family is a pack of similar creatures who are looking to get as much money as THEY can, too. Does anyone think Lara Trump isn't soaking up every unaccounted for penny at the RNC? They sure aren't spending it on campaign stuff.

I think that there's an excellent chance that if Trump gets his ass handed to him on Election Day - the 2020 result, plus North Carolina and maybe a state like Florida or even Texas - he flees the country  before his sentencing.