If Donald Trump’s tirade against Judge Gonzalo Curiel arises from his sense that Trump University has become a threat to his presidential hopes, he may be right. Poetic justice has taken a hand. The failure of Trump U, and its resulting lawsuits, would not be a national story in the first place, subject of withering investigations by major press organs, if Mr. Trump weren’t running for president. Secondly, the lawsuits themselves portray a scam that precisely reflects the arc of Mr. Trump’s career, from tyro real-estate developer to peddler of his personal “brand.” Could there be a more apt example of the Peter Principle than if Mr. Trump’s latest brand extension-into presidential politics-ends up destroying his brand? His private interests, his public interests-Mr. Trump does not make distinctions. It’s all about one thing, Mr. Trump’s unhealthy love affair with an image of himself. That said, doesn’t his latest eruption seem like something more: if not a cry for help, an unconscious rebellion against the situation he made for himself? His improper remarks about the judge follow his improper threats against Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post. There’s a connection: A petition from the Post brought last week’s release of embarrassing trial documents, featuring testimony by former Trump U employees who came to regard his real-estate school as a swindle, that brought Mr. Trump’s furious charges that Judge Curiel was biased and a hater of Donald Trump. The Trump explosion comes just in time to humiliate Paul Ryan, after the House speaker’s reluctant endorsement of Mr. Trump. It comes just in time to humiliate John McCain (again), who faintly praised Mr. Trump as a candidate he could live with because America’s constitutional protections mean we won’t become “Romania.” Nowhere to be seen is Paul Manafort, the Republican wise man who was supposed to set the Trump campaign on a path to November electability. As a Washington Post headline put it: “GOP can stop waiting for the ‘new’ Trump to emerge.” Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is still obsessing over the growth in his Twitter, Facebook and Instagram followings. In an interview with media provocateur Michael Wolff in the Hollywood Reporter, he can’t get beyond wonder at the phenomenon that has swept him up. “Middle of the pack,” he recently admitted, is where he expected to rank in the GOP field. We come again to the Trump-as-democratic-accident problem. Mr. Trump has always been an interesting American specimen, enriching our national pageant, but he has left his natural sphere. He lacks the qualities to rise to the occasion in which he finds himself. Happily, there’s still time for Republicans, at their convention, to replace Mr. Trump with someone else, though this will require continued help from Mr. Trump. But he’s working on it. On Monday, he ordered his staff to double-down on vilifying Judge Curiel. He said on TV that a hypothetical Muslim judge might also be unfit to preside. And when and if the Trump U cases proceed to trial before a jury, whole voting blocs (women) will be on the edge of their seats to find out if they’re disqualified because Mr. Trump previously insulted them. All this offers a second chance for those prominent Republicans who, from party loyalty, misborn hopes for Mr. Trump’s transformation or a mistaken idea of their own populist bona fides. Courtesy – The Wall Street Journal