Trump’s Last Laugh

2024 has given Donald Trump the proverbial ‘Last Laugh’

When the 2016 election chaos was still fresh, I may have been among the first to posit what a potential Trump run might look like in 2020. At the time, most couldn’t seem to fathom it. After all, members of Donald Trump’s own party, even members of his own administration, were abandoning him and rejecting his pleas to look into irregularities in the most irregular election of our time.

But the way I saw it, even though he didn’t win a second consecutive term, the votes he collected—a record number for a sitting president—proved that he’d grown even more popular in 2020 than he was in 2016.

And the four years he was forced to sit out allowed him to do several things that may now make him more effective from a political standpoint as a president in a second term:

• It gave him time to take measure of his first four years and any lessons learned.

• He had the chance to disentangle and distance from the Covid pandemic disaster.

• He was able to take stock of who in his midst was not really on his side.

• It gave him the chance to rethink his entire team and strategies.

• It provided Americans a comparison of what four years without Trump at the helm looked like in terms of foreign policy and wars; the cost of goods; cultural issues; and a host of other key issues.

And more importantly, only with the benefit of having to sit out for four years did Trump end up crafting an unexpected, new coalition that may result in an historic realignment of politics.

This is a unique and diverse coalition including the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Junior, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and Joe Rogan.

Trump also increased his support among Blacks and Hispanics.

The new Trump Republican party looks more like a “big tent” party with moderate Republicans and traditional Democrats joining on key issues that have come to a head over the last eight years such as censorship, medical freedom, health and health care, crime, foreign wars, government corruption and overreach, the persistent bureaucracy, and more.

Trump was impeached twice but acquitted both times in the Senate. He was charged with numerous crimes. They tried to keep him off ballots, disqualify him, put him in jail, censor him, and fine him millions. But no matter what Trump’s enemies have thrown at him, he has tended to emerge victorious in the long run— whether it’s in the Supreme Court or the court of public opinion.

And much as Trump’s enemies attempted to portray him as fascist, Hitleresque, and anti-immigrant, he actually drew strong and increasing support among immigrants, including Hispanics, Muslims, and Asians, which played a role in his 2024 win.

If Trump was “cheated” out of a second term after 2016, in 2020, he has managed to make lemonade out of lemons in the most remarkable way. He will enter a second term in a much stronger political position than he would have in 2021.

He now stands to make a stronger and more enduring mark on America and American history.