My theory as to why Trump is the candidate for the moment is, like all Trump exegeses, post hoc. But here’s the best I can figure: First, to succeed the way Trump has, you have to be rich. Having your own money allows you to claim you’re not beholden to anyone, and allows you to circumvent the donors and organizations that are normally the gatekeepers of party politics. (Trump is lying when he redundantly claims he’s “self-funding my campaign,” but he has a point when he notes that, unlike the other candidates, he doesn’t spend his time groveling at the feet of the Koch brothers or hosting high-dollar fundraisers.) For Trump’s blue-collar fans, he appeals as a class traitor—one willing to side with the little guy over his snobby friends.

Second, you have to be famous. It’s hard to get a megaphone for the kinds of views Trump holds unless you have your own. Trump’s views, from protectionism to racial and religious bias, are the kind of sentiments that have popular, but not elite, currency—the kind you can lose a television show for espousing. But Trump already had a TV show before he started saying these things, and 6 million Twitter followers; he couldn’t be shut out by party bosses or any collective sense of propriety. A random no-name billionaire who wasn’t particularly conservative and said offensive things would have been unlikely to get much attention with an out-of-nowhere presidential campaign, but Trump had a built-in audience that made him impossible to ignore.

But there’s a third, essential element: Trump doesn’t care about his reputation. Plenty of people are rich, famous, maybe a little bit racist, and somewhat to the left of the official GOP platform. But they tend to be concerned about what other people think of them. This inhibits them from being fully outrageous or politically incorrect. Trump, on the other hand, acts like a man with nothing to lose. He has given up his show, his beauty pageant, and his Macy’s tie line for his campaign; his brand, which he claimed was worth $3 billion, has sustained inestimable damage. Yet he persists in saying the things people aren’t supposed to say (because they’re false and offensive).