In Greek tragedy, the protagonist is brought own by who they are: to have escaped their downfall, they would have had to be someone else. It is in this sense that I call the fall of Trump a tragedy.
It brings to mind Ajax, a tragedy written by Sophocles:
The great warrior Achilles has been killed in battle. As the man who now can be considered the greatest Greek warrior, Ajax feels he should be given Achilles’ armor, but the two kings, Agamemnon and Menelaus, award it instead to Odysseus. Ajax becomes furious about this and decides to kill them. However, Athena steps in and deludes Ajax into instead killing the spoil of the Greek army, which includes cattle as well as the herdsman. Suddenly Ajax comes to his senses and realizes what he has done. Overwhelmed by shame, he decides to commit suicide. His concubine, Tecmessa, pleads for him not to leave her and their child, Eurysaces, unprotected. Ajax then gives his son his shield, and leaves the house saying that he is going out to purify himself and to bury the sword given to him by Hector. Teucer, Ajax’s brother, arrives. Teucer has learned from the prophet, Calchas, that Ajax should not be allowed to leave his tent until the end of the day or he will die. Tecmessa and soldiers then try to find Ajax, but they are too late. Ajax has indeed buried his sword - by impaling himself upon it. Before his suicide, Ajax calls for vengeance against the sons of Atreus (Menelaus and Agamemnon) and the whole Greek army. Tecmessa is the first one to discover Ajax’s body. Teucer then arrives and orders that Ajax’s son be brought to him so that he will be safe from foes. Menelaus appears and orders the body not to be moved.
The last part of the play is taken up with an angry dispute regarding what to do with Ajax’s body. The two kings, Agamemnon and Menelaus, want to leave the body unburied for scavengers to ravage, while Ajax’s half-brother Teucer wants to bury it. Odysseus arrives and persuades Agamemnon and Menelaus to allow Ajax a proper funeral. Odysseus points out that even one's enemies deserve respect in death. The play ends with Teucer making arrangements for the burial.
No one made Trump do any of the things that led to his downfall. He could have listened to competent advisors. He could have taken COVID-19 seriously. Instead he was too proud. Trump had to upstage the experts. They made him feel stupid and weak. A president ought to consider experts to be an extension of their own power. Imagine if the world’s greatest experts would take your phone calls any time, day or night — but Trump wanted to be a God, and rule by nothing but his own power. Even being the President of the United States of America wasn’t enough to fill the void inside him.
After losing the election, Republicans were lining up to show how they were the heirs of Trump. He would have had a good chance of getting the Republican nomination himself in 2024 if he wanted to run. He had done the unthinkable and cast Reagan from the Republican pedestal and put himself there. He would have been the elder statesman of the GOP for the rest of this life.
And then he threw it all away. He cast himself off his own pedestal. He ruined any hope of him being remembered fondly. Any historian who wants to polish up Trump’s image is going to have their work cut out for themselves.
It’s tragedy not because people will miss Trump — they won’t — but because everything that went wrong for Trump happened because Trump did it to himself. It really couldn’t be any other way, because to have avoided this, he would have had to be someone else. And what makes Trump irredeemable is that he’s not capable of recognizing that he is need of redemption. He’ll go to the end of his days thinking it all went wrong because he was stabbed in the back. King Lear made the mistake of listening to flatterers who didn’t love him, and scorned the one who loved him and told him the truth. Lear at least understood his folly at the end. Trump never will.