When he left the White House, Donald Trump was a pariah.
After years of bending Washington to his will with a single tweet, Trump was diminished. He was a one-term president rejected by voters and then shunned by large swaths of his party after his refusal to accept his defeat culminated in an insurrection at the US Capitol.
But three years later, Trump is on the cusp of a stunning turnaround, with the 2024 Republican nomination closing in fast.
Already, he is the first nonincumbent Republican to win the party\u2019s contests in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and his standing could improve further this week with a win in Nevada\u2019s Republican caucuses, which his last remaining rival has chosen to skip.
And he did this all while facing 91 felonies and a civil fraud case that threatens his control of much of his business empire, among other legal troubles.
The story of how Trump became his party\u2019s likely standard-bearer for a third straight presidential election is a reminder there was an opening, however brief, when the GOP could have moved beyond him.
It shows how little has been learned from 2016 as his critics again failed to coalesce around an alternative. And it demonstrates how Trump turned his unprecedented legal issues into a winning strategy.
\u201cI think everybody got in the race thinking the Trump fever would break,\u201d said longtime Republican strategist Chip Saltsman, who chaired former Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s 2024 campaign. \u201cAnd it didn\u2019t break. It got hotter.\u201d
A derailment
Trump campaign aides say their first sign of momentum was a trip to East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023.
Following a lackluster announcement and slow campaign start, Trump received a rousing welcome from residents demanding answers after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed, prompting evacuations and fears of air and water contamination.
With Democratic President Joe Biden deciding against a visit, Trump was briefed by local officials, blasted the federal response as a \u201cbetrayal\u201d and stopped by a McDonald\u2019s.
Trump was again casting himself as the outsider fighting big business and Washington. \u201cIt kind of reminded people what it was they liked about Trump to begin with,\u201d said senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita.
The charges roll in
Ralph Reed, the head of the influential Faith and Freedom Coalition, was at Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida last spring for a charity breakfast when news of the first indictment broke.
\u201cYou could feel the ground shift immediately,\u201d Reed said.
But instead of calls for Trump to suspend his campaign, the response from Republicans was one of indignation. For many, the charges confirmed Trump\u2019s loudly stated grievances that the system was rigged against him, and the donations started pouring in.
Other candidates were put in the awkward position of having to defend their chief opponent to avoid siding with Democratic prosecutors or Biden\u2019s Justice Department.
\u201cIt made him a victim, and nobody\u2019s better at playing the victim than Donald Trump,\u201d Reed said.
Desantis-in-waiting \u2026 And waiting
For months, Trump\u2019s stiffest competition for the GOP nomination appeared to be the governor of Florida.
Fresh off a landslide reelection victory in November 2022, Ron DeSantis was a rising conservative star and one of his party\u2019s only bright spots in bruising midterm elections.
But DeSantis chose to wait until May 2023 to launch his campaign, giving Trump and his allies a six-month head-start.
\u201cWe made a big bet,\u201d said MAGA Inc. CEO Taylor Budowich. \u201cWe decided to go after him early and define him before he could define himself.\u201d
Trump\u2019s team poured millions into ads hitting DeSantis for previously backing Social Security cuts, played up DeSantis\u2019 awkward interactions with voters and employed ridicule as a strategy, including a memorable \u201cpudding fingers\u201d ad that highlighted unsavoury reporting on DeSantis\u2019 eating habits.
Mccarthy\u2019s mar-a-lago pilgrimage
Rival campaign aides said Trump\u2019s road to the 2024 GOP nomination began just three weeks after the Capitol riot when then-Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy travelled to Mar-a-Lago and posed for a photo next to a grinning Trump at the moment he was at his weakest.
The visit signalled the party was not ready to give up on Trump.
\u201cI thought it was the kiss of death for McCarthy, for the party and for the country,\u201d said Mike DuHaime, a senior adviser to the 2024 presidential campaign of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump critic. \u201cIt breathed new life into Trump.\u201d
The endorsement game
At the same time, Trump\u2019s team worked aggressively behind the scenes to line up endorsements that would signal his continued dominance of the party.
Trump invested \u201chundreds and hundreds of hours\u201d in relationship development, working the phones and inviting officials aboard his private plane, said Brian Jack, a senior aide who has led the effort.
Marc Short, a top adviser to Pence\u2019s campaign, pointed to Trump\u2019s more than 200 midterm endorsements. While Trump had mixed success that November, he proved a powerful kingmaker in GOP races.
\u201cEveryone saw the candidates he endorsed in their primaries won their primaries, signalling to others that, \u2018I better show my allegiance to Trump or I\u2019m going to be in trouble,\u2019\u201d Short said.
Beyond the endorsements, Trump\u2019s team worked closely with state parties as they set delegate allocation rules, encouraging winner-take-all contests and other changes that would benefit a front-runner. It was all part of a more disciplined operation than Trump\u2019s previous campaigns.
\u201cWe were closing doors to our opponents in the Republican nomination seven months ago before they even realised that was happening,\u201d LaCivita said.
The loyalty factor
As the first nominating contests neared, Trump\u2019s team harnessed the dedication of a loyal fan base. The move paid off well in Iowa, where historically frigid temperatures cut expected caucus attendance in half.
In Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump\u2019s team marvelled at how DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley spent most of their time and money going after each other instead of him \u2014 just as his opponents had when he chose to skip the debates.
In the end, DeSantis came in a distant second in Iowa and dropped out shortly after. Haley, who finished third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, has pledged to remain the race, but her path forward remains tenuous.
(AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When he left the White House, Donald Trump was a pariah.After years of bending Washington to his will with a single tweet, Trump was diminished. He was a one-term president rejected by voters and then shunned by large swaths of his party after his refusal to accept his defeat culminated in an insurrection at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}