Donald Trump doesn't want to win the US election – why else would he sabotage his own campaign?

You may be horrified to learn that you and Donald Trump may well want the same outcome from this year's presidential election. You both want the same thing. You both want Hillary Clinton to win. In fact, he might want that more than you do.

Trump cannot actually want to be President. It just makes no sense. A man who defines himself by his ability to make money (however much that ability may be in doubt) cannot easily watch his businesses go into a blind trust.

A man whose opinions are fluid and whose grasp of policy detail is slender, to say the least, cannot be one who wants to wade through documents every morning, before breakfast. It seems he has no intention of doing so - one report has it that he expects his vice president to be "in charge of domestic and foreign policy". Which doesn't leave much, aside from the arduous task of "making America great again".

So maybe what Trump really wants is a near-miss. To establish the Trump brand on a global scale, then go back to his gaudy palace to exploit it and make some real money. The realities of presidency could be evaded, while the advantages of having become one of the most famous people in the world could be all his. His stint on The Apprentice gave him nothing on this scale.

So he must have been panicking. Leading in the polls must have unnerved him. So he pulled out his favourite weapon, his mouth, and, in a metaphor he'd be proud of, shot himself in the foot with it.

It's the only explanation for his increasing irrationality, even by his own standards.

And if Trump looks at the social media data, he'll be pleased to see that he may be starting to succeed in damaging his own candidacy, in just the way he likes.

The social media analysis company Impact Social looked at 678,000 tweets on two topics - the "Russian hack" of the Democratic Party emails and Trump's apparent call for them to finish the job and find Clinton's "missing emails" and the fallout from the war of words over the speech by the bereaved parent of a Muslim US soldier, Khizr Khan at the Democratic convention.

And if Trump had wanted to sabotage his campaign, he's played a blinder. You don't appear to encourage Russian espionage if you want to be US President. You don't insult the memory of a dead war veteran if you want the White House. Textbook political suicide.

But these bizarre interventions have given him what he wants above all else - the attention. The Twitter conversations were dominated, as ever, by Trump - his "share of voice" on the platform was 74%, compared to Clinton's 26%. Ideal for the Donald.

Even better, for a man looking for his own political downfall, was the sentiment around it. Whereas Clinton has a three-way split (48% negative, 30% positive, 22% neutral), Trump managed a 68% negative sentiment (only 12% positive). Nice work.

So, first off, his seemingly treasonous act of calling upon Russia to hack away was a significant blow. The specific conversations around that were 83% negative for Trump - and much of that negativity (nearly a third of it) concentrating on his own dealings with Russia , plus 5% called it criminal, 18% treasonous. So far so good.

The fallout from the war of words with the bereaved parents of the Muslim soldier attracted 85% negativity (these are great numbers, Donald). Khan's speech was a torpedo under the water of Trump's campaign, dominating the discussion, with 62% of the negative tweets talking about his takedown.

He has attacked immigration, he has attacked Muslims, but the minute he personalised it around a veteran, it went too far. It could well prove to be the iconic moment that blocks a Trump presidency. The Donald must be hoping so.

And the numbers are starting to look as he would want them to. There will be those who worry it's just the bounce from the Democratic convention and Trump will be one of them. But you can have confidence that he has more in store if things start to look good again. He's damaged himself before, he can do it again. And that's just the victory he's after.