I suspected it earlier but I couldn’t quite pin it down. My theory seemed to be too much of a long shot for myself and for others whom I shared it with, but with the end of US election and the horrid result it bore, I couldn’t dismiss my theory so easily. The more I looked into it, the more the pieces fit but still this is just a theory and you might not agree with it neither do I expect you to, but its worth investigating.

I have always known Donald Trump as an idiot who jumps at publicity the first chance he gets. Be it getting beaten up on WWE by Stone Cold Steve Austin, or running a campaign against Obama claiming he was born in Kenya, or being sexually suggestive when speaking about his daughter Ivanka or dancing (or rather trying to dance) in a random YouTube music video. But behind each of these moves Trump has always gained something, and that something holds the utmost importance for Trump: media attention.

Every time Donald Trump did something foolish on television, his name got hurled about the media and to a person like Trump that was a win because it meant free publicity for the brand Trump.

Even now as I write this piece, I am terribly aware that I am in fact doing the Trump organisation a service, by hammering this abhorrent brand into your brain.

If you find it hard to believe that Trump really does believe in the notion that all press is good press or that there is no such thing as bad publicity, let me give you an example. We all heard that Melania Trump’s speech was heavily plagiarised from Michelle Obama’s speech, now I’m not saying that this could be the work of an evil genius considering the sort of publicity the speech attained because of its plagiarism (which is a very likely scenario), but that Trump’s response after the speech sort of gives us a glimpse into what his campaign might really have been all about.

Good news is Melania's speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics especially if you believe that all press is good press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2016

He never apologised for the plagiarised speech and no one was held responsible for the blunder. Rather the whole media played into Donald Trump’s hand by comparing Melania’s speech to Michelle’s and having discussions about it. It wasn’t totally the media’s fault. They were only interested because the whole world was interested. It was something so hilariously stupid as are most of the things Trump has done all his life.

If you still need more reassurance as to whether Donald Trump really believes in bad publicity, then here is a quote from his biography titled The Art of the Deal in which he says:

“Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom line perspective, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

If the paragraph above has got you wondering whether Donald Trump really wrote a book, he didn’t. He used a ghost writer who came clean with the fact that Donald Trump didn’t write a single word of his “auto-biography” when he realised the possibility that Trump might actually become president (too late) because people believed he wrote the best seller.

Now, presuming that Donald Trump is a big believer in bad publicity and that is precisely how he’s managed to keep the Trump brand afloat despite the many bankruptcies he’s encountered. Is it really such a long shot to presume that Donald Trump's election campaign was really just a very massive yet low budgeted ad campaign for the Trump organisation?

He began his campaign with an absurd proposal to build a “big beautiful” wall along the US-Mexico border, he made fun of a handicapped reporter, he suggested putting a ban on Muslims from entering the US, and his Twitter feed was always full of rude, childish, snobbish and sometimes outright hilarious remarks about current affairs and his political rivals. But while educated and liberal Americans, and onlookers laughing at the probability of Trump ever actually winning the election re-tweeted his tweets, shared snippets of his speeches or commentaries made about his brash attitude, Trump was winning the entire time.

Soon Trump had become the Republican presidential nominee and reports were out that Trump had received an estimated 2 billion dollars in free advertisement. Why? Because he never had to hire media to cover his rallies. They were always present there, ever ready to capture the next absurd, racist, bigoted statement that Trump might make which they would then on loop on their channels and garner viewers.

Now if my theory were correct, shouldn’t Trump have pulled out of the race if he really didn’t want to be president? I would suggest that Trump never actually believed he would become President, which is why, he thought of going through with the whole ad campaign till the very end. We saw him in the three presidential debates, completely relaxed and unprepared, continuing to make dumb statements, even going as far as to call Hillary Clinton a nasty woman, using the term “bad hombres” for undesirable Mexicans and suggesting that pro-choice advocates supported “ripping babies” out of a woman’s womb.

Even in his final encounter with Hillary Clinton, which was at a charity roast arranged by the Catholic Church, he managed to get booed by the crowd when he unnecessarily raised the issue of Hillary Clinton's corruption, after making a genuinely funny joke about how the media bias against him could be seen by the fact that Michelle’s speech 8 years ago was applauded by the media while his wife Melania gave the exact same speech and was brutally criticised.  The joke was suspiciously funny because it was so uncharacteristic of the otherwise lame Trump. It hinted that there is more to Trump, that there is perhaps some form of dark intelligence at play.

Now I could provide more evidence to prove why Donald Trumps presidential campaign was really a Trump organisation ad campaign including this article by Micheal Moore (which I only found when googled if anyone shared my view) in which he claims that he knows “for a fact” that Trump only started his absurd presidential campaign to get a better deal from NBC for the next season of The Apprentice. Moore claimed that Trump merely wanted to be in a better negotiating position because he wanted more money for his reality TV show.

But perhaps all that is not so important. What’s important is what this episode teaches us about America. How did a man, who had (according to me) set out only to publicise himself and his brand by any means necessary through a ridiculous presidential campaign actually wound up becoming the head of the superpower.

Perhaps the supposedly most developed nation of the world has been going through a crises for the past several decades, which has more or less gone, unnoticed behind the flashy screen of free market capitalism and liberal values. The crisis is that of education. The fact that Donald Trump became president of the United States, (someone who I claim didn’t really want to become president) means that, among a lot of things wrong with America, there is an education crises,which is completely abnormal for any developed country.

This episode should makes us think that perhaps the majority of Americans lack the ability to think critically, which is precisely why when they saw someone who spoke out loud the first thought that stung him and made waves, not just throughout the country but the rest of the world, merely through his insane rhetoric, they decided that this must be it. Apart from all the hate speech and racist rhetoric, Trump used to say things which were outright stupid, I mean (keeping all the closeted racist sentiments aside) how did so many Americans fall for Trump’s proposal of making a “big beautiful” 3,000 kilometre long wall which he would make Mexico pay for? How stupid do you have to be to believe in something like that?

This must have been quite a revelation for Trump himself seeing how his entire body language changed after winning the election and having that talk with Obama.

In an interview after defeating Hillary, he even asked his supporters to stop harassing Muslims in, what seemed like a somewhat genuine tone.

So things are slightly differently twisted than they may seem. Perhaps Trump is a blessing in disguise for America. Perhaps now that Trump has happened, America might, instead of blaming Hillary (an outright diabolical individual), or the DNC or the republicans, or the conservatives, or fake news realise that among other things the USA really needs to fix its educational system. Because the only way a democracy, especially a multi-cultural one, can survive and be safe from tyranny is when the people are informed, educated and have the capacity to think critically - something which only education can instil.

Otherwise all anyone needs is a massive campaign budget or the ability and willingness to publicise themselves by making a fool out of themselves to become the head of state.