If Donald Trump thought the US election would boost his profits, he’s got it very wrong

Macy’s and other partners severed ties after his opening pleasantry about Mexican rapists. Bookings at some Trump hotels have collapsed. The poor souls who go to breitbart.com to feed on race-baiting and crazed conspiracies are the only market Trump has left

Trump TV might be his last feasible business venture (Getty)

Not to tempt fate, but if a guy who knows a bit about reading polls is correct, the US election is indeed over.

Barack Obama’s latest deadpan comic outing took him to Mean Tweets, a section on US talk show on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which celebs read out Twitter nasteries.

After reciting various attacks (one blaming him for a sub-standard hair conditioner), he finished with this one from a would-be successor. “President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!”

“Well, @realDonaldTrump,” he replied, “at least I will go down as... a... president.”

Obama is so famously cautious that he would not taunt the Donald as a loser without knowing for sure, from internal polling, that the tangerine huckster is toast.

In which blessed event, it must be time to stop checking Nate Silver’s 538.com every four minutes for the latest poll from Florida, and to ask a couple of questions.

Firstly, was @realDonaldTrump’s candidacy ever @forreal? And what becomes of him after 8 November?

When he announced his nomination run back in June 2015, few thought he had a genuine desire to be president. The doubt has persisted until a fortnight before election day.

Different motivations are the primary thrusters for different candidates. Some crave power for itself (Richard Nixon), some for the attention (Tony Blair), and others for the chance to change the status quo (Margaret Thatcher).

With Trump, the motivation remains bizarrely opaque. He may be an attention seeking egomaniac, but he has no interest in political power at all. No instant gratification junkie, whose best notion of Arthurian chivalry is postponing the lunge until 30 seconds after being introduced, waits until he is almost 70 to start chasing it.

Trump’s addiction is to money – making it, boasting about it, exaggerating how much, and using it to hide the inadequacies his candidacy has so generously unmasked for our amusement. “Are you not entertained?” asked Alec Baldwin, sampling Gladiator in one of his Saturday Night Live turns as Trump. And by God, at least until it became scary, we were.

How could a poisonous madman on such a lavish scale fail to entertain? Heath Ledger was so entertaining as the Joker, another New York (Gotham) cartoon-wicked anarchist with demented hair, that he won a posthumous Oscar for The Dark Knight.

If there is a template for Trump’s presidential persona, it is the character Ledger descibed as a psychopath without empathy. When Batman asks Alfred to explain why the Joker committed his latest outrage, the butler replies: “Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Ring any bells? Trump, who has been sanguine about watching the world burn by using nuclear warheads, can’t be reasoned with, as his campaign team would confirm. Until it went wrong, he found running for president excellent sport.

“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?” says the Joker. “You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it!” Replace “cars” with “office”, and “one” with “the Oval Office”, and there’s the Trump campaign in a nutshell.

Unlike the Joker, Trump is looking for money. If causing mayhem was one of his motivations (“Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos,” as the Joker puts it. “I am an agent of chaos.”), more than anything, surely, he wanted the free publicity.

How do you calculate the amount of TV, radio, old and new media publicity his run has generated? It is literally priceless. Eventually, however, it may be possible to cost, albeit not exactly as he planned.

The law of unintended consequences tends towards the ironic. A presidential run conceived dramatically to boost the value of Trump’s empire will achieve the exact opposite.

The day after the “pussy-grabbing” tape was aired, he greeted fans gathered outside his apartment block in solidarity. When you saw a Gucci plaque screwed into the Trump Tower facade, you wondered what luxury brand would want its name degraded by association with his?

The commercial damage is already visible. Macy’s and other partners severed ties after his opening pleasantry about Mexican rapists. Bookings at some Trump hotels have collapsed.

You needn’t be the commercial genius of Trump’s self-estimation to know this: if you’re selling your name as a guarantor of marbled elegance and gold-plated gracious living, best not turn it into a synonym for neantherdal sexism, vicious racism, vitriolic abusiveness and star-spangled vulgarity.

If Trump is considering the post-election launch of a TV network far to the right of Fox, it may be because he has no choice. What existing network would hire him now? The poor souls who go to breitbart.com to feed on race-baiting and crazed conspiracies are the only market he has left.

They are many, and research suggests they are not dirt poor. They can afford subscriptions to a cable network, and the merchandising tat he would flog there, but not $600 per night rooms at a golf resort.

One could make various predictions about Trump’s future. If you offered even money on Melania filing for divorce by inauguration day, I’d borrow from Wonga to put that bet on. But the safer bet is that, whatever Donald Trump is worth today – whether $300m or $10bn – he will be worth much less before long.

In his stump speech, Trump says that if he loses, his run will be the greatest waste of money in his life. With the exception of that ancient confession to sexual assault, it may be the lone incontrovertible truth heard from the sick joker’s mouth during the entire campaign.