No, I don't believe that Donald Trump will drop out of the race and I don't believe, as some are theorizing, that he's trying to sabotage his own campaign. I think the truth is, as it often is, real simple: Trump wants to be the most famous person on the planet. Always has, always will.
There are reports that when John Kasich was in discussions about maybe being his running mate, Kasich was told that as vice-president, he'd run everything. I can believe that. It's always looked to me like Trump cares about the fame and fortune of Donald Trump and nothing else. He wants the title and the ceremonial portions of the gig, plus he probably has some thoughts about legislation that would be favorable to Donald Trump.
Beyond that, he doesn't care. Doesn't care about abortion or gay rights or health care or anything else except to the extent that certain stances help him get elected and would keep his approval rating up. But as long as he can veto things if they harm him personally, he doesn't care. That's why his stances seem so malleable and he seems to know surprisingly little about foreign affairs, laws, the Constitution, etc. Once he's sworn in, someone else can handle all that.
What looks like self-sabotage to some is, I think, a matter of him retreating to what's worked for him in the past. Successful people tend to do that, especially if they don't fully grasp why they've been successful. They cling to old habits like a fierce superstition. I once worked for a guy who had the kind of money that matches the low-end estimates of the Trump fortune. This fellow — the one I worked for — would go around the office shutting off lights whenever possible and asking secretaries to type on both sides of a piece of paper to save money.
It was often pointed out to him that he was spending a lot of his time trying to save fifty cents and maybe he had better, more lucrative things to do instead. He agreed (sometimes) it didn't make sense but could not stop. Deep down, his view was that turning off lights and trying to save on paper were the kinds of things that had made him wealthy and he was afraid to abandon those practices.
In a more political context, I remember an interview with Michael Dukakis not long after he lost the presidency to George H.W. Bush. It was pretty obvious in the closing weeks of that campaign how it was going to go and when it did, Dukakis was asked why he hadn't tried changing his style of campaigning. His reply was along the lines of "Hey, that style got me the Democratic nomination for president!" It had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams and he couldn't dump something that had worked for something new and untested.
I suspect that's how it is with Trump. It got him this far…and I'm sure at Trump rallies and almost everywhere he goes, it feels like he couldn't be doing better. Everything we think pegs him as an uninformed, impolite looney brings big cheers at his speeches. To the extent there's any sort of logic at work, it probably goes roughly like this: If I don't have those mobs swooning over me, I got nothing. Also, I think he just plain loves mobs swooning over him…and he doesn't do the polite statesman thing very well.
Anyway, that's what I think about him at the moment and I think I'll try to get through the remainder of the weekend without thinking about him. 92 days until all this is over.