I DON'T KNOW WHAT TRUMP PLANS TO ANNOUNCE, BUT I ASSUME IT WILL BE UNDERWHELMING (updated)

WTF?

Here's some speculation:

Trump won't be announcing a running mate. The video suggests that this announcement, like most things in his life, is all about him. He wouldn't depict himself as a superhero only to give someone else the spotlight. And if he somehow manages to win the nomination -- which polling suggests is becoming less and less likely -- he won't run with DeSantis because DeSantis is clearly too ambitious and would threaten Trump's alpha status. At this point, I don't believe DeSantis would run with Trump. Why should he saddle himself with that has-been when the most powerful man in America, Rupert Murdoch, could be on the verge of getting him elected president?

There's a name for people who announce a running mate before the nomination is decided: they're called losers. Ronald Reagan did it as a desperation move in 1976. Ted Cruz did it in 2016. It was a futile act in both cases.

Maybe Trump plans to announce that he's a candidate for Speaker of the House, although that's unlikely. He's expressed support for Kevin McCarthy. Also, he wouldn't win. The Constitution says he can do it, but why would he try?

A few possibilities, all of which would be underwhelming and embarrassing:

* He's returning to Twitter.

* He's filing some ridiculous new lawsuit to overturn the results of either the 2020 election or the Arizona gubernatorial election (though I don't know how he would have standing in the latter case).

* He's publishing a book of his correspondence. (We already know he's planning to do that, but maybe, out of desperation, he's planning to announce the book himself in the hope of getting one decent news cycle, not that anyone cares.)

* He's just going to rant about his usual grievances, but he plans to do it in a very QAnon way, with references to "the Storm" and so on, so believers will think he's a superhero who'll soon round up all the liberal cannibal pedophiles.

Or maybe Vladimir Putin likes him enough to let him get the credit for the release of Paul Whelan. That would be real news. But even the Russians don't seem to like Trump anymore.

Beyond that, I'm stumped. Any thoughts?

*****

UPDATE: Okay, maybe Trump really is running for Speaker. At Post, Seth Ambramson writes:

Went online to see Roger Stone writing about Trump running for Speaker of the House, Michael Flynn writing about Trump running for Speaker of the House, MAGA-world hangers-on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer and Forgiato Blow writing about Trump running for Speaker of the House, and Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman being suspiciously quiet on Twitter except for a single highly random “like” of a tweet about the Speaker of the House race and how Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes to win it and has no path to get those votes....

It certainly is what Bill Kristol just tweeted he is certain Trump is going to do, and it would be consistent with Trump’s bizarre, obtuse, superhero-themed announcement from yesterday....

Trump running for Speaker of the House as a bizarre compromise pick between McCarthy and the House Freedom Caucus holdouts would also—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—make a lot of political sense for Trump in terms of keeping him in the spotlight, raising his profile during his presidential campaign, and putting him essentially in control over the narrative in Washington as well as the minute tactics of elected Republican officials there for the duration of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

But how would he win? We know that much of the GOP is fed up with Trump and blames him for the 2022 midterm results. We know that even House members who fear alienating Trump supporters can say that while the Constitution allows for a Speaker who isn't an elected member, picking someone outside the House is just a bad idea. And while there aren't many GOP moderates in the House, there are enough to deny Trump a majority. So how will he get 218 votes? And if he loses -- if he's a loser, the worst thing, in his view, that he can possibly be -- then what? He'll say the vote was rigged? In Congress? How?

Maybe he'll announce that he's ready if asked, on the assumption that he won't be asked. But won't he look like a loser if he's not asked? I just don't get it.

*****

UPDATE: The announcement was even more absurd than I expected: