WERE WE UNABLE TO GET TRUMP OUT OF AMERICAN POLITICS BECAUSE HE HATES TO SLEEP IN UNFAMILIAR BEDS?

Here's a Reuters story from early in the 2016 campaign:

U.S. presidential candidates are spending long days on the campaign trail and their nights in a succession of budget hotels, often in small towns. Not Donald Trump.

After nearly every rally, the billionaire real estate developer hops into one of his planes or helicopters and returns to New York so that he can sleep in his own bed in his marble-and-gold-furnished Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan.

Here's an AP story from 2018, when Trump had been president for nearly two years:

Known for relishing routine and preferring his own bed, Trump has largely eschewed marathon trips during the second year of his presidency....

For a man who’s owned a private jet for decades, Trump has always shown a reluctance to sleep in unfamiliar places. He has stayed overnight at properties he does not own only a handful of times since taking office, and he has on at least one occasion laced into staff over his accommodations.

Three current and former White House officials said Trump has at times expressed frustration about travel overseas, and they have curtailed trips to his liking.

Trump is a millionaire's son who became a billionaire, and his name is on buildings all over the world, but he clearly hates to travel overseas. Trump was the president of the United States and wants to be president of the United States again, but he doesn't seem to like being in most of the states for very long, because only a few states have properties he owns.

I thought about this when I was reading today's news:

Former President Donald J. Trump has secretly spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as many as seven times since leaving office, even as he was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward....

The book also reports that Mr. Trump, while still in office early during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, secretly sent Mr. Putin what were then rare Abbott Point of Care test machines for the Russian’s personal use. Mr. Putin, who has been described as particularly anxious about being infected at the time, urged Mr. Trump to not publicly reveal the gesture because it could damage the American president politically. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Mr. Putin reportedly told him.

Trump has remained quite cozy with Putin. Remember when many of us used to say that if Trump were indicted for his many crimes, he'd flee America and get asylum in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.?

I know most of you want nothing less than a long prison term for Trump, but I would have been fine with just getting him the hell out of our lives forever. If he wins another election, he'll end the federal cases against him and probably find ways to avoid accountability in the New York and Georgia cases. Even if he loses the election, the Supreme Court has already shredded the constitution in order to give him immunity for many past crimes, and it will probably hand him another Get Out of Jail Free card as soon as it decides to review Jack Smith's latest brief.

An ordinary criminal head of state would have gladly sought exile. I think Putin might have provided it. It would have been an easy quid pro quo, and a thumb in the eye for Trump's Democratic successor.

I wonder whether Trump chose not to pursue exile simply because he doesn't like sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.
He couldn't bear to be away from familiar comforts, so he ran for president again. I would have been happy to see him go.