Donald Trump is an enigma. He is both enormously popular and widely reviled. He is an unapologetic liar and the illuminator of unspoken truths. He is a joke and a hero, a character and a caricature.

The real question is; what exactly is he really up to? Does Donald Trump even want to be President? Below are the updated odds on the four most likely scenarios of what the hell Trump is doing.

Donald Trump is a Clinton Plant — Odds: 4–1

Donald Trump is a close enough friend of the Clintons to have had Hillary sitting in the front row at his wedding ceremony, and to be a regular golf partner of Bill. A Democrat for most of his life, Trump has contributed money to Hillary’s political campaigns, and the Clinton Foundation.

It is curious that shortly before announcing his intention to run for President, Trump reportedly had an extended phone conversation with former President Clinton in order to discuss the potential campaign.

And what a campaign it has turned out to have been. In addition to his increasingly bizarre and often offensive behavior, it is a campaign in which Trump has taken a proverbial flamethrower to the Republican establishment. He has had very public spats with John McCain, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Fox News. And of course the person he eviscerated most viciously was the original presumed Republican nominee (and Hillary opponent) Jeb Bush.

Now the Democratic establishment is running a campaign to elect a candidate who, according to polls, would be the most unpopular person ever elected President, and almost certainly the most scandal ridden. And they are doing so not through highlighting the merits of Hillary Clinton, but through the rallying cry of ‘Stop Trump’.

It almost begs the question of what exactly Slick Willy and The Donald talked about on the phone that day.

Donald Trump wants to ‘Make America Great Again’ — Odds: 5–2

“Trump Exposes Globalist Coup Over America” — Alex Jones; InfoWars.com Headline

It is hard to deny that the American political system, especially in the wake of Citizens United, has trended dangerously towards oligarchy. Certainly the popularity during this election cycle of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders shows strong anti-establishment sentiment percolating within the population.

Dig beneath the orange-tinged veneer of Donald Trump’s buffoonery and you will find a candidate who opposes the TPP and trade deals like it, calls out the Federal Reserve and election fraud, and does not fund his campaign with special interest money.

It is interesting that Trump’s anti-establishment positions and rhetoric have made him the target of attacks by people like the Koch brothers and essentially all of the W. Bush era neoconservative power structure. Even more interesting is that people like this would disavow the Republican candidate to the benefit of so-called Democrat Hillary Clinton.

If this is, as Alex Jones calls it, “the beginning of 1776 part two”, does that make Donald Trump George Washington?

Donald Trump Misjudges ‘The Art Of The Deal’ — Odds: 8–1

At its inception, the presidential campaign of Donald Trump was seen as something of a joke, a publicity stunt. Michael Moore suggests it was a negotiating tactic, a leverage point in the parlay over a new television deal.

However, to the bewilderment of many observers Trump rapidly progressed from a man who “wasn’t even familiar” with what a political ground game was, to the Republican front-runner and someone whom the American public could not turn their television on without seeing. As Moore put it, he went from being the star of a television show, to the star of EVERY television show.

Trump is now close enough to the presidency that he can imagine both the work required with actually being President, and, perhaps more importantly, the prospect of being branded a loser in a very public way on election night.

It seems now that tales of Trump’s shenanigans are coming faster and more furiously than ever; the fight with the Kahn family, the infamous 2nd Amendment comments, the rejection of popular polling. Are these storylines simply media sensationalism run wild? Or are they an attempted self-sabotage in response to a negotiating tactic that got away from the master of the ‘Art of the Deal’.

Donald Trump plays the character ‘Donald Trump’ — Odds: 7–2

Stephen Colbert made a career playing the role of ‘Stephen Colbert’, a cartoonish version of the stereotypical Republican. While they may share the same name, one is a real-life human being, and the other is a fictional television character.

Donald Trump, fresh off his success in the lead role of the television series ‘The Apprentice’, is running for President as a loudmouth, arrogant bigot. In fact, it could be said he is running for President as a cartoonish version of the stereotypical Republican.

Coincidentally, during this election cycle Trump has received billions of dollars of dollars in free media coverage, much of it beamed directly into the homes and minds of the target audience for products like Trump steaks, Trump ties, and Trump University.

In the 1980's the theater of war between the United States and the Soviet Union was decidedly more theater than war. It is perhaps appropriate then that the American President at that time, Ronald Reagan, was a literal actor. Now, with the decline of the integrity of American democracy perhaps what is being witnessed is a television show in which a man named Donald Trump, playing a character of the same name, runs for President.