The Greatest Comeback of All Time

Donald Trump’s stunning election victory represents not only the greatest comeback in political history but perhaps in all of history.

When we think of great comebacks, we usually think of the sports world. There are many examples to choose from, but on any list would be the comeback by Team USA against New Zealand in the 2013 America’s Cup sailing competition. New Zealand was ahead 8-1 and only needed to win one more race to secure the America’s Cup. In contrast, the USA had to win eight races in a row. There is also the 2017 Super Bowl victory by the New England Patriots, who overcame a 28-3 third quarter deficit against the Atlanta Falcons. These were challenging feats, but they were not nearly as impossible as what Trump has just accomplished.

In the world of politics, there is Grover Cleveland’s comeback. He was first elected in 1884, defeated in 1888 and then re-elected in 1892, making him the only president to have served two non-consecutive terms. Trump will be the second. However, unlike Trump, Cleveland was not bombarded with fabricated cases, relentless prosecutors, continuous media attacks, or the January 6 narrative. Trump was also effectively banned from speaking for two years. Cleveland had no such problems.

Even Trump's initial victory in 2016 pales in comparison to 2024, and that is not because 2016 was easy.

Eight years ago, Trump was consistently trailing in the polls, and many believed he was destined to lose—perhaps even Trump himself, considering his apparent lack of preparation for assuming the presidency. However, he was not yet the pariah he has since been portrayed as. The biggest obstacle in Trump's path in 2016 was the Access Hollywood tape, which emerged as an early October surprise. The essence of the Access Hollywood story was that Trump had made a lewd remark. That’s how innocent things were back then, relatively speaking. But this did not stop the media from becoming completely unhinged. And it wasn’t just the media. Many Republicans, particularly establishment types such as likely new Senate Majority Leader John Thune, demanded that Trump withdraw in favor of Mike Pence. Trump ignored them and emerged victorious.

However, all of that seems like child's play when we consider what Trump faced in 2024. It was as if there were a thousand Access Hollywood tapes, each one infinitely worse than the original.

Instead of what Trump correctly referred to at the time as locker room talk, he suddenly found himself being faced down by the multiple rogue prosecutors, indictments, and even a conviction. He was also targeted by an extremely partisan Department of Justice (DOJ). It is often overlooked that even before the hyper-aggressive Jack Smith was appointed as special counsel with wide-ranging powers to pursue Trump, the DOJ had orchestrated a raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Federal agents spent an entire day rummaging through Trump's office and personal residence, removing a substantial number of items, including passports, memorabilia, and various other belongings. Never has an individual been subjected to such intense judicial persecution, much of which was either outright illegal or, at the very least, beyond what should be acceptable in a rule of law society.

However, that was not the end of it. Another hyper-aggressive prosecutor, this time in Georgia, not only indicted Trump, but also two dozen of his associates, including individuals who had worked in the first Trump administration. The plan was to pressure these individuals into fabricating stories about Trump in exchange for leniency or get-out-of-jail cards. Similar case strategies were also pursued by rogue officials in New York, where even the law was changed in order to prosecute Trump. Retroactively changing the law to persecute a particular individual is something even the worst dictatorships would find unpalatable. Yet, because it was Trump, this move was not only accepted but even celebrated.

And let’s not forget the fact that the legal harassment did not begin in January 2021. It started as soon as Trump announced his candidacy in 2015. For most of his first term, he was entangled in the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative, which was fabricated by his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The federal government weaponized this false narrative in an attempt to ruin Trump’s presidency and, ultimately, oust him. For years, the media breathlessly ran with the baseless claim that Trump was a Russian agent. No ordinary person could have overcome such relentless adversity.

There is also the January 6 incident which, all on its own, would have crushed any other candidate. Despite Trump’s repeated pleas for his supporters to remain peaceful, he was made a scapegoat and completely ostracized. Immediately following January 6, he was banned by major social media companies. His Twitter account, which was his preferred means of communicating with the public, was shut down. He was impeached for a second time. Most networks declared that they would not cover him or anything he said. No other politician could have withstood such an onslaught, neither practically, in terms of having their communications silenced, nor mentally. Most would have lost their mind.

For the most part, Trump never showed the effects of the endless attacks. The only exception came around the time of the 2022 midterms when he was visibly losing his cool by attacking Republican governors.

However, within a short period of time Trump regrouped and started focusing on regaining the White House. In what must be considered one of the shrewdest political decisions of the entire campaign, Trump chose to effectively sit out the Republican primaries. While others, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, were tearing each other apart, Trump remained on the sidelines, relying on his base of supporters to propel him through the vote. He was proven right. Despite, or perhaps because of, never having spent a single second on a debate stage with his Republican challengers, Trump easily secured the nomination.

To the surprise of many, particularly those in the media establishment, Trump’s support remained remarkably resilient despite the numerous challenges he faced. In fact, by early 2024, he was essentially tied with Joe Biden in the polls. How can this be explained? Various factors have been suggested, including the perceived weaknesses of the Biden presidency, inflation, the disaster in Afghanistan, and others. However, at its core, the explanation lies in Trump's extraordinary power of personality. Here is a man who built a real estate empire, then reinvented himself as a casino mogul before venturing into the hotel and golf club business. Following that, he became the celebrity host of a show that ran for 14 seasons. In other words, Trump has been at the forefront of cultural trends for over 30 years. This longevity is highly unusual. Most people achieve fame for a time and then fade into obscurity. Yet, Trump has continually reinvented himself, and when 2024 came around, he was poised to do so once again.

While the strength of his personality kept him in touch with Biden in the polls, it was Biden's meltdown during the debate on June 27, 2024, that not only propelled Trump into the lead but also effectively knocked Biden out of the race. There was no recovering from that performance. It is important to note that Trump played a significant role in this outcome by allowing Biden the space to undermine himself. A previous version of Trump would have been less patient and more impulsive, potentially diminishing the impact of Biden's collapse. However, this new version of Trump exhibited self-discipline. He patiently and silently stood on the debate stage, observing Biden's disintegration, just like the rest of us.

Subsequently, Democrats anointed Vice President Kamala Harris to become their nominee, despite her never having received a single vote in either the 2024 or 2020 primaries.

But this did not mean that Democrats and the media were simply going to cede the White House to Trump. Quite the contrary. Immediately, the media portrayed Kamala, a person whose entire career path is characterized by failing upward, as the next Barack Obama. Unsurprisingly, her favorability numbers skyrocketed. If the media's behavior was questionable in 2016, and egregious in 2020, it was beyond monstrous in 2024.

There are countless examples we could mention, but they are perfectly encapsulated by what CBS's 60 Minutes did when Kamala gave a nonsensical word salad answer to a foreign policy question. CBS secretly edited out her entire response and replaced it with a slightly more coherent answer she had given to a completely different question. To get Kamala elected, they literally burned their credibility and then poured countless gallons of fuel on the flames.

But it didn’t work. Despite the media’s efforts, the polls remained close with Trump even ahead at times. Undoubtedly the most significant factor in Trump’s remarkable victory is that he continued to exhibit the patience and self-discipline that he had demonstrated during the June debate. There were no verbal slip-ups or late-night tweets. Even when Trump was shot, he remained not only remarkably calm but focused on the task ahead: Fight, fight, fight!

Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention was unusually serene, in particular the first half. It reflected a man who had confronted death and emerged as someone who appeared to have found God.

Even though Trump had been reinstated on the Twitter platform by its new owner, Elon Musk, he maintained such discipline that the media had no choice but to start attacking unrelated individuals in an attempt to undermine Trump. This would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, when Trump's late-night tweets provided the media with endless fodder for crafting false narratives.

One of the most notorious examples of the media having to attack unrelated people was when they falsely claimed that a speaker at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally had disparaged Puerto Ricans. He had done no such thing. Puerto Rico is known for its waste management issues, and the speaker—who was not a formal speaker at all but rather a comedian who had been hired to warm up the crowd—had simply referenced those challenges in a joke.

On the topic of Madison Square Garden, Trump's discipline led the media to become so desperate to fabricate false narratives that they portrayed the event as a Nazi convention reminiscent of the 1930s. The onslaught was relentless; nevertheless, Trump maintained his composure time and again. Throughout the campaign, he exhibited a remarkable level of constraint.

There is no other human being, dead or alive, who could have pulled off this comeback. Trump went from being the pariah of the nation—accused of staging an insurrection and incessantly compared to Adolf Hitler—to the White House.

What remains to be seen is whether Trump can channel his newfound discipline—which is also characterized by a focus on substance and the fact that he has surrounded himself with top-tier allies and staff—into a presidency that finally initiates the process of fixing America. This includes drastically cutting the federal government, significantly reducing the crippling national debt of $36 trillion, building a border wall, implementing immigration policies that prioritize merit rather than providing Democrats with a large influx of new voters, and so much more. If Trump can put America back on course, he will not only have achieved the greatest comeback of all time but also become the greatest president in American history since Lincoln, and perhaps of all time.