West Palm Beach – For Donald Trump and his closest allies, vindication has never felt so good.
Inside the Palm Beach County Convention Center at last night’s GOP victory party, Republican after Republican boasted to anyone within earshot that Trump’s decisive victory represents the culmination of a transformative, generational political movement. In interviews and text messages with National Review, even the sleep-deprived Republican lawmakers and operatives who expected a decisive GOP win marveled at the remarkable nature of Trump’s achievement.
Put simply by Republican senator Eric Schmitt on his way out of Trump’s party: “It’s the greatest political comeback in American history.”
The redemption arc is indeed one for the history books. This week caps a roller coaster of a campaign cycle for Trump marked by two assassination attempts, four criminal indictments, a switcheroo atop the Democratic ticket, and much more. And that’s after a party establishment in Washington hoped and prayed he wouldn’t run again in 2024 following his two impeachments, the storming of the U.S. Capitol nearly four years ago, and the poor GOP midterm performance that followed.
None of this stopped him. Not only did he run away with the GOP presidential primary for the third consecutive cycle in a row, he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris this cycle quickly and decisively, running up historic margins in blue states and, according to exit polls, improving his performance among key demographics Democrats have taken for granted.
And he did it with a united party behind him. Unlike in 2016, when Trump faced a floor fight from rattled Republican National Committee delegates and lawmakers baffled by his rise, he received a hero’s welcome at this year’s convention in Milwaukee from a united party that was triumphalist about his chances of retaking the White House.
In a matter of weeks, he will enter the White House and begin his second term with a stronger grip on the party than ever before, a reality that seemed unthinkable even to many Republican lawmakers not so long ago. As longtime Trump ally Roger Stone put it to National Review last night in West Palm Beach: “He had an intensity in his base that surpassed even Reagan.”
Even in the closing days of the race, the former president’s allies were still reeling from the intensity of it all. “When you think about everything he’s been through — they tried to take away his wealth, take away his business, put him in jail. A lot of his lawfare cases had significant penalties with them,” Trump pollster John McLaughlin told NR Sunday evening. “And it all fell apart.”
Here inside the Trump election watch party late Tuesday evening, Republicans spoke about the Republican enthusiasm on the ground that many Democrats and pollsters couldn’t capture through the very end. “It’s not just the base, it’s the new base,” Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin told NR late Tuesday evening, referencing Trump’s new support among former skeptics like Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This 2024 campaign will also be marked by a series of stirring images that only fueled his rise, most notably an August 2023 mugshot and one year later, in July 2024, a post-assassination-attempt photo that showed Trump’s instinctual spirit — raised fist, blood-streaked face and all. Other memorable 2024 campaign images were simply iconic, such as his garbage truck photo op and the picture of him waving from the drive-thru window at McDonald’s, where he worked a shift wearing a fast-food apron over his classic look — blue suit, white shirt, and red tie.
The Golden Arches stunt in particular vindicated the Trump campaign’s deliberate effort this cycle to leverage the former president’s unique persona. The stunt doubled as an opportunity to troll his opponent — who says she worked there during her time in college without providing any details about the experience — and gave him vivid imagery and tons of earned media that sucked up all the oxygen at a critical point in the race.
“The reason why it was just a grand slam for him,” explained Trump adviser Tim Murtaugh in the early hours of Trump’s election watch party here Tuesday evening, is that he went into that McDonald’s as none other than Donald Trump. “He’s not going in there pretending to be a McDonald’s employee,” Murtaugh told National Review. “He’s not in there pretending or putting on some kind of character. The only suit he ever wears is Donald Trump.”
And that persona is not easy for any modern political figure to defeat or to replicate. “We will never see a politician like Donald Trump in this country again,” Murtaugh added. For now, at least, the party will get one more term out of him before any other Republican can give the president-elect’s 2024 electoral feat the old college try.
Audrey Fahlberg is a politics reporter for National Review.
Reprinted with permission from National Review – By Audrey Fahlberg
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