MICHAEL WOLFF: I’ve adopted Trump for ten years – and immediately he is extra unhinged than ever. But is he actually having a breakdown?

This is my tenth year of writing about Donald Trump and his unorthodox, norm-defying behavior.

And, as we approach the apogee of this 2024 election cycle, his actions, words and bearing have only gotten more extreme, trending into the bizarre, if not freakish.

Never before has a public figure, except perhaps one having a visible breakdown, displayed such a mercurial, devil-may-care, uninhibited persona.

From casting off a recent event in Pennsylvania mid-sentence and swaying – for forty full minutes – to his own playlist, to his daily, 90-minute and often incoherent speeches, or his unrestrained and expletive-ridden attacks on his various enemies, it’s a whole new style of WTF politics.

And it’s not just in public; there are reports of private bad behavior too, of furies unleashed on those closest to him, even on major Republican donors.

Never before has a public figure, except perhaps one having a visible breakdown, displayed such a mercurial, devil-may-care, uninhibited persona. 

Even those closest to him are now struggling to explain what certainly appears to be a willful determination to spit in the face of restraint.

A Mar-a-Lago golfing buddy, who sees the former president often, recently suggested to me that this could be due to the stress of the hard final weeks of the campaign.

Several Trump aides, meanwhile, have speculated about the lasting impact of two assassination attempts. And then, of course, there is the age factor: Trump is 78-years-old. But, putting a good face on it, some in his orbit note that his decline – if that is what we’re witnessing – is at least colorful, as opposed to Joe Biden‘s sad fadeout.

Another explanation is that Trump understands he might lose – which in such a close race is at least a 50/50 possibility – and recognizes the dire consequences that could follow: ignominy, jail, bankruptcy.

Some insiders track the escalation in his uncontrolled behavior back to Biden’s exit from the race and Kamala Harris‘s swift elevation in July.

With Biden, Trump was confident of victory. But that was snatched from him. And his rage, his feeling of being the victim of a great Democratic plot, has perhaps pushed him over the edge. In his mind, it’s already another stolen election.

What’s more, this is all combined with the fact he would be losing to a woman — the ultimate insult.

But then there’s the possibility that, what might appear as a self-destructive spiral, may actually be an indication of Trump’s own sense of indomitability – of total confidence in victory. And if so, then this off-the-rails behavior is all the more consequential, because it foreshadows the furies and impunity that might characterize a second Trump White House.

A White House in which he will feel free enough and assured enough to be as Trump as he wants to be.

Some insiders track the escalation in his uncontrolled behavior back to Biden’s exit from the race and Kamala Harris’s swift elevation in July.

Despite universal revulsion after January 6, Republican donors and Party leadership rallying behind Ron DeSantis in the primaries, four indictments and a criminal conviction, Trump has persevered and prevailed. Now, he’s on a victory lap.

Certainly, he has repeatedly said that his unbridled sensibility is the key to his success. His foreign policy modus operandi – the Trump doctrine, effectively – is that the more unpredictable and volatile he appears, the more other nations fear him.

And the truth is that Trump being Trump, without restraint, often works.

You only need look at his historic triumph over what may be the most concerted legal attack ever leveled at an American politician. Any reasonable legal advisor would have encouraged him to seek accommodations and settlement with his prosecutors. Instead, he has, with Trumpian bluster and contempt, unleashed a cascade of spurious efforts to delay, distract and face down the system which tried so hard to derail him.

And as such, he’s fought his way to something of a draw. If he succeeds on November 5, that draw will become a total victory against his detractors.

Outlandish behavior is customarily punished. Society, and often the law, rises against it. For Trump, outlandishness yields success. He is an unruly man-child who appears to have reversed the most basic rule of parenting: his bad behavior is so often rewarded.

Which prompts the question: how does he get away with it?

For Trump, outlandishness yields success. He is an unruly man-child who appears to have reversed the most basic rule of parenting: his bad behavior is so often rewarded.

Part of the answer is that he provides such a clear contrast to other politicians, among them Kamala Harris, whose behavior is controlled, strategic, but unrevealing and perhaps boring. Nowadays, it increasingly seems that proper behavior is more apt to be punished.

But another element is that Trump has created himself a bubble world. He was a bankrupt businessman, a joke in his hometown of New York City, but on ‘The Apprentice’ he framed himself as the unmatched master.

Now he is shape shifting once again, concealing his abnormalities — his daily strange behavior, his criminal indictments, the memory of January 6 — with the consistent illusion that he is still the president, more presidential, in fact, than the actual president.

If he wins, a hero of his victory will be his top aide, Justin Caporale – a key Trump architect, who has directed every detail, look and feel of this campaign. From the wood-paneled private jet, to the podiums and mock-presidential seals, to the flood lighting and out-sized sets at his rallies, all of it sends a message that here is a real president. Here is the dominant, world-conquering, master of time and place.

From the beginning of the Trump era, the question has always been whether he is crazy like a fox, artfully gaming the system, or just so much in another reality — that is to say, simply crazy — that he has inverted the game.

If he wins again, we will be ever further from knowing the truth.

If he loses, perhaps we return to more a recognizable standard of normalcy — though it is far from clear that is actually what people want.