A Historic Comeback

By Keem Abdul

Not since Grover Cleveland in 1892 has a former President of the United States of America returned to the White House. It has taken 132 years for Donald John Trump, a Republican who first led the country from 2017 to 2021, to repeat that feat. Like Cleveland, a Democrat, who lost his re-election bid in 1888 to Benjamin Harrison (only to deny President Harrison his own second term bid), Trump controversially lost to outgoing President Joe Biden in 2020, only to now deny Vice-President Kamala Harris (the President’s replacement after he was pressured into abandoning his re-election campaign) the chance to become the country’s first female President.

Against the expectations of many political pundits who had predicted a narrow win for Harris, as well as of Democratic supporters who were energized by her late entry into the race and the record-breaking flood of donations that trailed it – Trump secured a victory that was, though not overwhelming, at least a convincing mandate for the next 4 years. Unlike in 2016, when he won 303 Electoral College votes in his race against former First Lady Hillary Clinton (but lost the popular vote), and in 2020, when he lost BOTH the popular and Electoral College votes in his loss to Biden, Trump won both sets of vote tallies this time around – 277 Electoral College votes to Harris’ 224, and just over 71 million votes (roughly 51% of the overall tally) to 66 million (about 47%) for the Vice-President.

The 2024 election comes after a contentious and highly dramatic campaign characterized by dramatic twists and turns on both sides of the political divide. Just prior to the commencement of the campaign, Trump was faced with a mountain of legal challenges that would have daunted a lesser man and made him abandon his presidential bid. The former President was hit with four indictments by federal prosecutors, each of which carried several counts and penalties, namely, a) that Trump illegally conspired to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden – that is, he pressured officials to reverse the results, knowingly spread lies about election fraud and sought to exploit the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021 to delay the certification of Mr Biden’s victory and stay in power; b) That he made a payment of $130,000 (known as hush-money) to an adult-film actress, Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, to keep quiet about her claim that she had sex with Trump, a claim he denies; c) That Trump and 18 other defendants criminally conspired to overturn his very narrow defeat in the state of Georgia in the 2020 election – according to a ‘leaked’ phone call in which Trump was allegedly heard asking the state’s top election official to “find 11,780 votes”; and d) That Trump not only mishandled classified documents by taking them from the White House to his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida after he left office, he also tried to obstruct efforts by the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) to retrieve the files and the criminal investigation into his handling of them.

After a lengthy trial, which seriously disrupted his campaign schedule (but did not prevent him from going to his campaign venues – he reportedly went to about 900 political rallies) a court in Manhattan, New York, found him guilty of all 34 counts relating to the first charge – i.e. a) above.

So Trump headed into the election as a ‘convicted felon’, with three other serious criminal charges still hanging over his head like the proverbial Sword of Damocles. At the time of this writing, he is yet to be sentenced for those 34 convictions.

If his supporters thought all this was trouble enough, they were in for a rude (and near-fatal) shock.

On July 13, as Trump was speaking at an open-air campaign rally near the town of Butler, Pennsylvania, he was shot and wounded in his upper right ear. According to the authorities, the shots were fired by one Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old man, who fired eight rounds from the roof of a nearby building, killing one member of the audience and injuring two others before he, too, was killed by the United States Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team. This near-assassination was followed by another reported attempt, this time near the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

In the midst of all this, the only silver lining for Trump seemed to be his face-to-face debate against Biden on June 27 (when the incumbent was still the Democratic Party’s ‘presumptive nominee’ before dropping out for Harris). Biden performed so poorly in that debate that not only was Trump adjudged to be the clear winner, but if Biden had remained in the contest, the 2024 election would surely have resulted in a landslide victory for Trump.

That positive scenario for Trump was quickly reversed on July 21, when Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsed his Vice-President, Kamala Harris. At first, Trump and his campaign team were disconcerted by the sudden change in the opposite camp, and struggled to come to terms with the surge of enthusiasm generated by Harris’ entry into the race. And as Harris graced one campaign event after another, flashing her smile and trying to exude positivity, Trump began to look like a goner.

Before long, however, Harris’ post-endorsement allure gradually faded; her honeymoon period with the American electorate drew to a close as the American public (especially those who hitherto did not know her that well, or what she stood for) began to scrutinize her record as VP, her policy priorities and general behavior on the campaign trail more closely. And under the glare of such scrutiny, her many inadequacies, her rhetorical faux pax, her policy inconsistencies, her refusal to engage the electorate in a more robust manner, and her futile attempts to distance herself from President Biden’s chequered record, were impossible to ignore. And the people decided that, for all her charm, intellect and relative youth compared to Trump, Kamala Harris was NO alternative to the Donald.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In hindsight now, Trump’s return to the highest office in America seems predestined, in spite of the many hurdles that stood in his way. There were many who were 100% sure he was on course for victory. This writer was one of them; as a matter of fact, I placed a monetary bet on Trump’s victory. My confident bet has now been handsomely rewarded with a $10,000 windfall! Talk about cashing in early on Trump 2.0!

If the prospect of a second Trump tenancy at the White House feels like a bittersweet vindication, it certainly is. This, afterall, was a man who began his campaign to return to power from the very day he relinquished power on January 20, 2021 – after a turbulent tenure in which the opposition Democrats tried every trick in the book to make his presidency a lame duck – including two impeachments by the House of Representatives. At a point, even major stakeholders in his own party abandoned him.

Thanks to his tenacity, however (and the momentum created by this win on down-ballot elections across the nation) the Republican Party is set to run the entire federal government – ie control the White House, the House of Representatives, and probably the Senate. The grassroots base he has created, which goes under the name, Make America Great Again (MAGA), has come to stay as a movement that will define American politics for some time to come.

Donald John Trump seems to be the modern archetype of a ‘flawed hero.’ No, he is far from a benign candidate, and he is prone to gaffes and unforced errors. But in the course of the 2024 campaign cycle, he has demonstrated a certain insight into the psyche of the average voter, namely, longing for a return to better days, and a readiness to ‘DREAM BIG AGAIN’ – as a banner on his campaign headquarters reads.

In the end, one might even say there’s a divine hand behind Trump’s victory – proof, if proof were needed, that God indeed rules in the affairs of men, and whoever has been blessed and ordained by God, cannot be stopped by the machinations of man.

Congratulations, President-elect Trump, the 45th (and soon to be 47th) US President.

• Keem Abdul, publisher and writer, hails from Lagos. He can be reached via +2348038795377 or Akeemabdul2023@gmail.com