This article first appeared on the Dorf on Law site.

Why, really, is Donald Trump still running for president?

Many commentators have opined that he surprised himself with his success, that he was originally following the same strategy as the other no-chance candidates who were angling for something other than the presidency—a Cabinet position, a slot on Fox News, more book sales and higher speaking fees and so on.

In this telling, path dependence now finds Trump almost a victim of his own unexpected momentum. He might well know, deep inside his addled brain, that he has no business being president.

In fact, he might not really want the job, but he is too proud now to walk away. Besides, his ego will not allow him to give up on pursuing the greatest personal validation of all, becoming the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

All of that might well be true, but if even if it is, the story is highly incomplete. There is no good theory explaining why Trump says the outrageous things that he says, especially since so many of his statements are contradictory. (Sometimes, even a single sentence will include opposing claims.)

Could he really be running for president while having no policy goals that he really cares about?

And if he has become besotted by the idea that he actually could win this thing, then it becomes even more difficult to explain why he would do the things he does that have caused his poll numbers to plummet, such as attacking a federal judge because of his ethnicity, or gloating about his purported ability to predict the Orlando murders.

The best explanation available, I suppose, is that Trump now refuses to change his approach to politics, because his instincts have taken him this far. Why follow the advice of people who said that he would lose?

Again, there is something to that explanation, except that Trump has regularly backtracked on some of his more outrageous comments. See, for example, his awkward repudiation of his assertion that women who get abortions should be criminally prosecuted, or his weird walk-back of his claim that the national debt can be renegotiated.

In short, almost everything that Trump has said and done seems to be contingent on little more than his mood, making the question about what he really wants to do as president all the more mystifying. What does he really care about?

Trump's supporters appear to believe his claim that he will take the country back to its former greatness, no matter that he has never said how he would do that. Trump's campaign has been a classic America-first sales pitch.

If American greatness were really his goal, however, he would view every issue through the lens of how it would affect the United States. He would favor things that are good for us, whether or not they are good for anyone else. And if something is good for us and bad for our rivals, then all the better.

This is why I was so surprised by Trump's positive comments about last week's vote in Britain to take the U.K. out of the European Union. His comments—which have already been widely mocked—included the assertion that Brexit will "end up being a great thing."

The mocking of Trump, however, has mostly focused on his lack of awareness that he was speaking from a country—Scotland—that had voted strongly not to leave the EU., that he was only there to promote one of his failing golf courses and other eminently laughable aspects of his comments.

In my recent post lamenting the long-term political and economic dangers of the Brexit vote, I took only a few moments to mention Trump. I noted, "If logic mattered at all, Trump should not care about that issue. What, after all, does it have to do with making America great again?"

In the days since then, I have tried to put this question into a broader context, and the implications are even more worrisome than I initially described in that post.

Two of the countries that are have shown great interest in undermining the EU are Russia and China. Although Trump has been rightly criticized for his positive comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin, that infatuation has seemed to be based on admiration of Putin's tough-guy style. Trump before now has not actually said anything to indicate that he supports things that weaken the U.S. and strengthen Russia.

And Trump's list of supposedly anti-American threats always includes not just Mexico and Islam, but China. China, after all, is the major country that Trump blames for stealing Americans' jobs, and whose goods Trump would tax heavily.

When Trump said that the Brexit vote will be "a great thing," he explained that "the people have taken the country back and there’s something very, very nice about that."

But again, what in Trump's avowed worldview should make that nice at all? One group of non-Americans voted to harm themselves, based on unfounded fears about other groups of non-Americans who have moved into a country that is not the United States.

Even if it were not highly likely that this will end up harming the U.S.—especially the struggling American working class that Trump is conning—nothing about EU-U.K. relations should matter to Trump at all.

As I noted above, Trump has been notably inconsistent about his actual policy views throughout the campaign. The only consistent aspect of Trump's candidacy to date has been unrelenting bigotry. He has attacked immigrants, Muslims and women. When confronted, he raises the stakes rather than backing down.

And that thoroughgoing bigotry explains Trump's views on Brexit, too. It is not just that some people somewhere have taken their country back from some unspecified outsiders. No, it is older, angry, white people in England and Wales (who generally identify as Christians, although typically only in the nominal way that Trump himself claims to be a Christian) who acted on their fear and hatred of non-white, non-Christian people because their sense of superiority and power is threatened

If, by coincidence, it had appeared that the Brexit vote would somehow be good for the U.S., then we would not have been confronted with this moment of clarity. But the closest allies of the U.S. will be harmed, and the countries that are the biggest threats to global stability have been strengthened by the chaos in Britain.

The U.S. will likely be harmed economically, but perhaps even more significantly, the foreign policy challenges facing the next president will now be immeasurably more difficult to navigate.

In short, if Trump really wanted to make America great again, he would have had every reason to repudiate the actions even of non-Americans who share his bigotry. Why, from an America-first perspective, should people in this country suffer or sacrifice simply so that some non-American white people can have their way?

But Trump's candidacy is not, it turns out, devoted to the best interests of the United States. When it came down to a choice between nationalism or bigotry, Trump's instincts told him to cheer for the bigots. No one can say that he has been subtle about it.

Neil H. Buchanan is an economist and legal scholar, a professor of law at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Taxation Law and Policy Research Institute, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He teaches tax law, tax policy, contracts and law and economics. His research addresses the long-term tax and spending patterns of the federal government, focusing on budget deficits, the national debt, health care costs and Social Security.

(Newsweek)

'The end is coming,' says Ron Paul

The historic U.K. vote to leave the European Union is a sign of a major global meltdown, not just a watershed that marks the end of a unified continent, former Rep. Ron Paul says.

"I think [the EU] will become nonfunctional," Paul told CNBC's " Futures Now " on Tuesday.

"It really is coming to an end. It doesn't mean tomorrow or the next day, but people are going to be really unhappy. The end is coming, but it isn't coming because of the breakup," he added.

Paul attributed the fallout to "bad fiscal policies" around the globe. He said that as long as interest rates remain low, the markets will remain in bubble territory.

"I think what everyone is looking at is there was a vote, an important vote and it went differently than expected and it sent shock waves through the markets, but I think the concentration is on the wrong issue," the former Libertarian and Republican Party presidential candidate said.

Instead, he said, what has caused so much turmoil is what happened before the recent declines.

"What has been preceding this situation that we have throughout the world and this country as well is artificially low interest rates. It causes people to make mistakes in buying bonds," he said.

All major U.S. indexes fell back into negative territory for 2016 on Friday and Monday after the Brexit vote, getting a twinge of relief on Tuesday. Still, Paul expects a heap of market weakness to come.

"Catastrophe doesn't come unless there's something that precedes it, and what sets the stage is monetary policy, artificially low interest rates, zero interest rates," he said. "There's a lot of instability still out there, and this hasn't been corrected yet. I don't think it's going to correct easily," he said.

"We are running out of steam."

By Serajul Quadir

DHAKA (Reuters) - Islamist militants shouting "Allahu Akbar" attacked an upscale cafe in the Bangladeshi capital, killing 20 foreigners inside, before police stormed the building on Saturday and rescued 13 hostages, officials said.

The attack, claimed by Islamic State, marks a major escalation in a campaign by militants over the past 18 months that had targeted mostly individuals advocating a secular or liberal lifestyle in mostly Muslim Bangladesh.

Six gunmen were killed during the police operation and one was captured, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said in a TV broadcast.

All 20 victims were foreigners, the spokesman for the Bangladesh army said. Colonel Rashidul Hasan said he could not yet confirm the nationalities of those who had died, most of whom were killed by "sharp weapons".

Many people in the expatriate community in Bangladesh work in the country's $25 billion garment sector.

The army concluded an operation to clear the cafe after a 12-hour siege that began when gunmen stormed the restaurant on Friday night. Two police were killed in the initial assault.

The 13 hostages that were rescued included one Japanese and two Sri Lankans, the army said.

One Japanese man was among those rescued and taken to a Dhaka hospital with a gunshot wound, a Japanese government spokesman said. Seven Japanese were unaccounted for.

An unknown number of Italians were among the hostages who were killed, a source at Italy's foreign ministry said on Saturday. Seven Italians were in the cafe when the attack started, including several working in the garment industry, Italian media have reported.

Islamic State posted photos of what it said were dead foreigners killed in the assault.

Gowher Rizvi, an adviser to Hasina, told Reuters security forces had tried to negotiate with the gunmen.

SPORADIC GUNFIRE

The hostage crisis began when security guards in the Gulshan district of Dhaka, popular with expatriates, noticed several gunmen outside a medical center, Rizvi said. When the guards approached, the gunmen ran into a building housing the restaurant, packed with people waiting for tables, he said.

Ali Arsalan, co-owner of the restaurant, said that his staff told him the attackers yelled "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) as they stormed the building that is split between a bakery and the O'Kitchen Restaurant.

Police said the assailants exchanged sporadic gunfire with police outside for several hours after the gunmen attacked the restaurant around 9 p.m. on Friday.

A police officer at the scene said that when security forces tried to enter the premises at the beginning of the siege they were met with a hail of bullets and grenades that killed at least two of them.

Television footage showed a number of police being led away from the site with blood on their faces and clothes.

A cafe employee who escaped told local television about 20 customers were in the restaurant at the time, most of them foreigners. Some 15 to 20 staff were working at the restaurant, the employee said.

The rescued Japanese man was eating dinner with seven other Japanese, all of whom were consultants for Japan's foreign aid agency, the Japanese government spokesman said. He did not know what happened to the others.

SPATE OF MURDERS

The hostage crisis marks an escalation from a recent spate of murders claimed by Islamic State and al Qaeda on liberals, gays, foreigners and religious minorities.

A Hindu priest was hacked to death on Friday at a temple in Jhinaidah district, 300 km (188 miles) southwest of Dhaka.

Both Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for many of the killings, although local authorities say no operational links exist between Bangladeshi militants and international jihadi networks.

Bangladesh security officials say two local militant groups, Ansar-al-Islam and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, have been behind the spate of violence over the past 18 months. Ansar pledges allegiance to al Qaeda, while Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen claims it represents Islamic State.

"The bottom line is Bangladesh has plenty of local, often unaffiliated, militants and radicals happy to stage attacks in ISIS's name," said Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at The Wilson Centre in Washington D.C., using an acronym commonly used for Islamic State.