The remarkable comeback of Donald Trump

Less than four years ago, Donald J. Trump ended his presidency in disgrace.

America was still emerging from the carnage of the Covid pandemic. A million had died from the virus. Millions more were sick. And tens of millions were out of work as a result of the economic and social upheaval caused by the lockdowns.

Considering the dire state of the economy, it's no wonder that President Trump had been defeated in the presidential election of 2020. What's surprising is how close it had actually been.

Despite his mishandling of the pandemic, and public fatigue with four years of 'mean tweets', Trump received more votes than he had in 2016.

But it was not enough to overcome Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who won both the popular vote and the electoral college. Claims of election fraud were tossed out of court. And Trump, who could never see himself as anything other than number one, lost the White House.

The honourable thing to do, the thing all others had done before in American history, would have been to concede graciously and promise a smooth transition.

But Trump never played by the rules of the game. Political norms aren't his thing.

So, he did all he could, right up to the certification of the vote, to find a way to stay in power.

On January 6 2021, his failure to concede led to an angry mob storming the Capitol Building, with chants to 'Hang' Trump's own Vice President, Mike Pence, for his refusal to go along with a cockeyed scheme to send electors back to their states, and to seat a new, pro-Trump group, who would hand him the presidency. It all ended with several dead, and the Congress impeaching him for a second time, on January 13.

Trump, realizing he'd finally gone too far, repudiated the violence and the mayhem, conceded defeat, and promised he would go peacefully on January 20. And go he did: but again, bucking precedent, he did not attend his successor's inauguration.

That seemed to be the end of the Trump political odyssey.

There was no way, people said, he could come back from that.

Then came the criminal prosecutions: charges over hush money paid to a porn star; charges over mishandling of classified documents; and charges of election interference, filed in Georgia and Washington D.C. And then the New York civil suits, related to fraud and defamation.

While they would all deny it, it seemed that the entire infrastructure of power in the USA, judicial, political, academic, media, were all focused on ensuring that Donald Trump would not return to the White House, but instead, would die behind bars.

But all that seemed only to backfire on them, as Trump began his amazing political comeback.

Despite a very lacklustre start to his campaign (even FOX News cut away from his flat announcement speech), and despite not participating in a single debate with his Republican opponents during the primary season, Trump went on to secure the Grand Old Party's nomination for President for the third time in his life.

Then, notwithstanding his status as a former president, he was found guilty on all 34 counts in his New York hush money case, making him the first convicted felon to be a presidential nominee.

It was a low-point in American political history.

But then things started turning Trump's way: in an early debate against President Biden, Trump had the good fortune to be up against an opponent who appeared mentally incompetent. In comparison, Trump actually looked like the 'stable-genius' he always claimed he was.

Then, the Supreme Court ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for 'official' acts while in office, causing much of the criminal proceedings against Trump to be paused or halted altogether.

But most notably of all, came July 13: at a rally held in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump had the amazing luck (or was it Providence?) to turn his head at the exact moment when shots rang out, and a bullet that would have surely killed him, instead grazed his right ear. Falling to the ground as bullets still flew through the air, Trump stood to his feet when word was given that the gunman was dead, and with blood streaming down his face, he raised his fist and chanted: Fight, fight, fight!

An iconic moment that showed for all the world to see that you can never count Donald Trump out.

Whatever you think of him, he demonstrated his grit. And therein lies the marvel of the man: his extraordinary resilience. Whatever is thrown at him, be they impeachments, lawsuits, prosecutions, even bullets, he still gets back up. That's what a winner does.

Indeed, Trump appeared so unbeatable that President Biden, despite his initial refusal to drop out, did just that, handing the nomination over to his deputy, Vice President Harris.

That curve ball threw Trump off his stride, and his debate performance against her, where he infamously said that Haitian immigrants were eating 'cats and dogs', led many to declare that Trump's campaign was in troubled waters.

But only weeks out from the election, and the polls being virtually a tie, Trump remains within striking distance of triumph.

Despite millions considering him something of a bad joke, and recoiling in horror at the prospect that this often-boorish man could return to the Oval Office, millions of others look back fondly to the pre-Covid Trump era, when basic things like buying groceries and filling up their car, weren't so prohibitive. And they contend that a 'strong man' like Trump is exactly what the world needs right now, with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, not to mention the necessity to return to a secure border policy to stem the flow of millions of illegal immigrants pouring into the US.

If Trump does win in November, it will go down in history as the greatest political comeback of all time.