Donald Trump appears with his wife, Melania, and son Barron at his election night watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Donald Trump pulled off the ultimate comeback. See how we got here
By Michael Williams, CNN
Published November 7, 2024
Donald Trump appears with his wife, Melania, and son Barron at his election night watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Four years ago, Donald Trump was a man facing defeat.
A grueling campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden for a second term in the White House, taking place amid the Covid-19 pandemic, was dragging into the late hours of Election Day. As the country and the world waited anxiously to see whether Trump would be gracious as the votes were counted — or at least careful in his rhetoric at a precarious moment for the country — the president took the stage at the White House and proved that he would not go quietly.
“We were getting ready to win this election,” he said.
“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump falsely added.
Those six words would set the standard for the years of deception and lies that would follow, ultimately resulting in a violent insurrection at the Capitol and culminating with Trump facing criminal charges for his alleged efforts to overturn the democratic will of the American people.
Days later, Biden would be declared president-elect.
Trump’s defeat, and the ensuing extreme and allegedly unlawful actions done in his name by his supporters and his close allies, left the nation more divided than it had been since the Civil War and would temporarily render him a pariah in mainstream Republican politics after Biden took office.
But his time as an outcast would not last long.
Four years later, Trump has again reclaimed control of the White House — and promises to enact an agenda that he says will not be hamstrung by the aides, Cabinet members and generals who surrounded him during his first term and kept his impulses in check.
Despite a felony conviction, two attempts on his life and rhetoric that would have surely sunk any other political campaign, he has completed the ultimate comeback.
In the years since that 2020 defeat, Trump has experienced personal tragedy, including the death of Ivana Trump, who was his first wife and the mother of his three oldest children.
He relocated from New York, where he was born and where he and his father made their last name famous as they built a real-estate empire, to his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. That home became the nucleus of Republican politics and a destination for GOP power players to make a pilgrimage to kiss Trump’s ring as it became clearer that he would remain the leader of the party, even if he was no longer the leader of the country.
It’s where, in August 2022, the FBI recovered hundreds of classified documents in a stunning raid. Trump’s alleged mishandling of those materials would form the basis of one of four criminal cases brought against him during his period out of the White House.
Months later, Trump used the estate to announce his intention to seek the White House in 2024 — opening his third presidential campaign.
But as he set his sight on the next race, a series of investigations into his first term were reaching their head.
In late 2022, the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol issued a damning, 800-plus page final report that laid the blame for much of the violence that day squarely at Trump’s feet.
“None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” it said.
As a cascade of investigations swirled around Trump’s time in office and its chaotic, bloody end, the first criminal case brought against the former president centered on his first successful run for office in 2016.
A grand jury in New York returned an indictment against Trump charging him with falsifying documents to obfuscate payments to an adult-film star who alleged an affair with Trump years earlier.
It was the first time a former president had faced criminal charges. It would not be the last. He was charged in federal court for charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents just months later.
But as the criminal cases against Trump snowballed, he still sought to litigate the results of the election he lost in 2020.
“That was a rigged election,” the former president said during a CNN town hall, “and it’s a shame that we had to go through it.”
Though several Republicans mounted primary campaigns against Trump, most of them were wary of saying or doing anything that might anger him.
During an August 2023 debate, eight Republican primary candidates were asked whether they would support Trump if he were the nominee and convicted in a court of law.
The group included Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, who defied the wishes of his boss and certified Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Six of the candidates, including Pence, raised their hands to signal they would still support Trump. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wagged his finger. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson was the only one who indicated he did not plan to support Trump if he were to be convicted.
Trump was not on the stage, but the power he exerted over those who were was clear.
The challenges to Trump’s grasp on the Republican Party were unsuccessful. His two strongest opponents, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, would both drop out and endorse him.
The Republican Party was his for the taking. But, the legal hits kept coming.
The day after that debate, Trump stood for a mug shot in Fulton County, Georgia, where a third criminal case had been brought for his alleged participation in a conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 election.
In a civil case, another New York jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll.
And in May 2024, the New York jury on his hush-money case convicted him on several charges of falsifying business records. It was another first for the former president — the first time a former commander in chief had been convicted of a crime.
Trump was a felon. His path to the White House remained open.
The shakeups in the race, though, were not over.
On June 27, 2024, Trump participated in the first — and ultimately, only — debate with Biden, who had defeated Trump’s bid for the White House years earlier and cast his opponent as an existential threat to democracy.
But Trump’s performance — which was strong, albeit largely fact-free — was mostly forgotten thanks to the 81-year-old incumbent’s unsteady and feeble showing. It set off a cacophony of second-guessing among Democrats that would eventually lead to the president dropping from the race and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place against Trump.
And just weeks after that debate, Trump barely survived an attempt against his life.
A sniper’s bullet grazed the former president’s ear as he was giving a speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Trump survived, but one of his supporters, seated behind the former president, did not. The gunman was killed by police after firing multiple shots.
Politicians across the aisle raced to denounce political violence, while Trump’s supporters were energized to coalesce around their near martyr.
Trump’s leadership of the Republican Party was cemented just days later, as the party nominated his candidacy for president for the third time in a row.
The MAGA movement has flipped from being a branch of the Republican Party to fully encompassing it, and Trump has retaken his position at the party’s kingmaker.
With his election, Trump once again has reached the pinnacle of personal and political power — and promises to push that power past its limits as he embarks on another term.
This time, he says, he will make sure no one stands in his way.
