Donald Trump Defies All Odds to Win 2024 Election Amid Legal Battles

Washington:

Donald Trump touted his ability to “get away with it” as the defining theme of his life when he first ran for president in 2016, boasting that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York without losing a single vote.

Fast forward eight years, and America’s new 47th president looks like Nostradamus, winning the keys to the White House on Wednesday against impossible odds.

He is the country’s most controversial man, having narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt, and at 78, he will become the oldest person to occupy the Oval Office in US history.

And that doesn’t even include the fact that he’s out on bail in three criminal jurisdictions and fighting gargantuan civil penalties for sexual assault and fraud. Despite his victory, he faces sentencing in just a few weeks on nearly three dozen felonies related to his 2016 presidential campaign.

However, by defeating Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump demonstrated once again that he can ignore political and legal gravity.

Many thought that this time he would not cope.

He ended last November with an average of 47.4 percent, according to opinion polls, a figure that has moved up only one point over the past year.

Instead of moving to the center, he continued to publicly praise foreign dictators while threatening his countrymen with military reprisals. He reiterated his once unprecedented and now signature claims that Democrats tried to rig the election against him.

Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff called him a “fascist.”

For most candidates, any of these controversies, not to mention the legal issues, would be career-ending.

For Trump, however, controversy is part of the show.

Not even an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania that left him covered in blood could deter a man whose self-proclaimed image as a top dealmaker had become ingrained in the American psyche.

Now Trump is about to be reinstated as commander in chief of the most powerful military in history, despite having a criminal record that bars him from serving as a private in the military.

And his legal troubles may fade as a new president, emboldened by presidential immunity from prosecution, issues pardons, fires federal prosecutors and wins the support of a Supreme Court dominated by his allies.

“The Enemy Within”

Born into a wealthy family and raised as a playboy real estate entrepreneur, Trump surprised the world by winning the presidency on a far-right platform in 2016 against Democratic heavyweight Hillary Clinton.

The Republican’s first term began with a somber inaugural address reminiscent of “American carnage.”

It ended in chaos when he refused to concede his defeat to Joe Biden and then rallied supporters before they stormed Congress on January 6, 2021.

While in power, Trump upended all traditions, from the trivial (what was planted in the Rose Garden) to the fundamental (relations with NATO).

Journalists became “enemies of the people,” a phrase he later reworded to “enemy within,” calling for reprisals against all political opponents.

On the global stage, Trump turned US alliances into deals as friendly partners such as South Korea and Germany were accused of trying to “rip us off.”

On the contrary, he has repeatedly praised – and continues to praise – people such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Throughout, he became increasingly dominant in the Republican Party, which abandoned all opposition and ultimately secured his acquittal in two impeachment proceedings.

That loyalty to Trump only intensified after he left the White House, with senior Republicans regularly gathering to see him at his palatial Florida residence and at the dark Manhattan courthouse where he was tried for fraud this year.

Autocratic drift

Before he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York to announce his bid for the White House in 2016, Trump was best known as a television personality.

He became famous mainly for his ruthless character, which he played in the reality show The Apprentice, as well as for his construction of luxury buildings and golf resorts, and for his wife Melania, a former fashion model.

The political rise was rapid. But scholars have noted parallels between its evolution and that of autocrats in countries where democratic institutions exist only as a façade to enable populist leaders to rise to power.

Millions were delighted by his attacks on politics, his crude language, his promises to expel illegal immigrants and the flamboyant glamor he brought to blue-collar Americans hurt by globalization and deindustrialization.

At the same time, according to a recent ABC poll, more than half the country agrees with Trump’s top White House aide, John Kelly, that the tycoon is a fascist.

While in power, he enjoyed daily controversies and joked about changing the US Constitution to remain in power indefinitely. While advocating a return to power in 2024, he again called for the founding document to be terminated.

Trump’s allies dismiss such talk as mere rhetoric.

But Trump broke all precedents when he refused to concede his defeat in 2020, ultimately unleashing a mob at the US Capitol while his vice president, Mike Pence, went into hiding.

Unprecedented, but forgiven by enough US voters to let the showman get away with it again.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)