How Donald Trump came back from 2020 ruin to be 2024 nominee

Donald Trump is now the only Republican three-time presidential nominee in history. 

That achievement was unthinkable in January 2020.

Back then, his personal polls had hit rock bottom after the Jan. 6 Capitol demonstrations.

Republicans had just lost two Senate seats to hard leftists in Georgia. 

With those defeats, an increasingly unpopular Trump was blamed by many Republicans for losing the Senate, along with the House.

He was faulted for allowing the Biden-Harris administration to implement the most hard-left agenda in the modern era. 

Over the subsequent two years, a demonized Trump faced four separate criminal proceedings and a civil suit — some of them with the apparent support of the Biden White House. 

Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago residence in a historic first was raided by an FBI swat team.

They swarmed his home allegedly because Trump had improperly removed classified files.

Oddly, President Biden had far earlier done the same, but would be later exempted by a special prosecutor due to his cognitive decline. 

After Trump seemed to hit rock bottom, he nonetheless announced his intention to run for president again.

His Democratic opponents promised to remove his name from as many as 16-state ballots. 

Meanwhile, the E. Jean Carroll civil suit and the Letitia James conviction would soon strip Trump of some $300-400 million in fines, even as he faced three other prosecutors determined to convict, jail, and neuter him. 

As the Republican primaries began, eight veteran office-holders and skilled politicians jumped in.

Most reassured voters that they could continue Trump’s MAGA agendas but without the liabilities of the president who had forged them. 

The two most successful, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, were seasoned pros who had been solid governors.

Both had either worked for Trump or sought his help for reelection.

At Trump’s nadir, DeSantis was out-polling Trump in late 2023 and early 2024. 

So how in less than two years did Trump rebound to win the Republican nomination?

How did Trump thrive, even as his successful rival incumbent Joe Biden evaporated after their June debate and was soon removed by a veritable cabal of Democratic back roomers? 

And now how did Trump find himself often dead even in polls with Biden’s replacement Vice President Kamala Harris?

First, “old Joe Biden from Scranton” did not govern from the center as he had promised. Instead, he bitterly divided the nation. 

What followed was a disastrous administration: a destroyed southern border with 10 million illegal aliens pouring across, rising crime, hyper-inflation, high interest rates, the humiliating collapse in and flight from Kabul, and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. 

The American people increasingly compared the Biden three-year disaster with Trump’s record as he left office: no wars, a secure border and legal only immigration, low inflation, low interest rates, and low unemployment.

Next, the left’s calculated lawfare on Trump utterly backfired. Anti-Trump judges proved to be publicity hounds and unapologetically biased. 

The obsessions to get Trump were in stark contrast to the exemptions given the Biden family’s financial shenanigans and Hunter Biden’s alleged criminal activities. 

As a result, public empathy grew for the now “underdog” Trump, who was fingerprinted with a mug shot— only to be seen as an everyman victim of warped American justice.

Trump’s Republican primary rivals were soon placed in an impossible quandary.

Sympathize with Trump—the victim of partisan lawfare—and they would only increase public support for their opponent. 

In the end, neither the talented DeSantis nor Haley could square that circle.

Both concluded that their political viability hinged on rejoining a rebooted Trump movement.

So how will the most amazing comeback in modern political history end for Donald Trump in 2024? 

He faces a biased media determined to shield Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz from defending their hard-left records, personal liabilities, and weird past pronouncements. 

The abrupt removal of candidate Biden, and the coronation of Harris, who has never entered a single primary, along with the return of big-money leftwing donors all took the ascendent Trump campaign by surprise.

Trump has now somewhat readjusted. He remains in many polls near even in the popular vote and slightly ahead in Electoral College forecasts. 

So far Trump has survived an assassination attempt.

He has stymied partisan prosecutors, demolished Biden in a debate, and is raising more money than in his past two bids. 

But Trump still faces enormous hurdles in what is becoming an utterly bizarre 2024 race.

The strangest of all remains the unapologetic media fusion with the Harris-Walz ticket. 

Their shared strategy is for Harris and Walz to run out the clock — by avoiding the media, non-teleprompted interviews, and unscripted press conferences.

Only that way can both pose as moderates and disown their own progressive records.

Whether the historic comeback of Donald J. Trump ends in success with a second presidential term, or a near-miss defeat, hinges on how well in a mere 80 days of this abbreviated campaign Trump can expose the true agendas of Harris and Walz.

That feat will require Trump to curb his ramblings and name-calling and focus solely on penetrating the near iron-clad Democratic-media propaganda dome.

Trump has shown he has the energy, will power, and cunning to overcome the near impossible. Now he faces his greatest challenge of all—that of focusing on Trump himself. 

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of the recently updated paperback edition of “The Case for Trump,”, from which this essay was adapted.