From defeat to dominance: How Trump climbed back to the top of the Republican Party

MILWAUKEE — Save for the very tip of his ear, Donald Trump literally dodged a bullet Saturday. Then, he rose to his feet. With blood streaked across his right cheek and drawn lips, the once and possibly future president pumped his fist in the air.

In just a handful of frames, the most terrifying moment of the 2024 presidential election — a barely failed assassination attempt — became a visual metaphor for the much longer arc of Trump's resurrection from the depths of political ignominy to the edge of the most powerful perch in politics.

The anti-establishment outsider who thumbed his nose at political norms has built his comeback by executing on a more traditional and practical brand of politics.

His emphasis on "unity" at this week's Republican National Convention is not the sign of a pivot. Instead, it is the shopworn watchword of candidates who believe they are winning — one that puts a trailing rival between the rock of agreeing not to fight and the hard place of risking blame for any discord.

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Trump vowed that he wouldn't play "prevent defense" in this election — that he wouldn't sit on a lead and try to run out the clock. But that's exactly what he did by skipping Republican primary debates, stepping into the shadows to keep a spotlight on President Joe Biden's struggles in recent weeks and conducting a vice presidential search that — in traditional fashion — landed on the candidate he'd started with: Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will reach the summit of the Oval Office again, but his resurgence already ranks among the most unlikely displays of political staying power in American history.

When Trump left the White House kicking and screaming, lying about his election loss and refusing to attend Biden's swearing in, his approval rating stood at 34%, according to Gallup. Rather than focus on burnishing his legacy in his final weeks in office, he pressured election officials to reverse his defeat, accused his vice president of treachery for upholding the election result and sent his supporters to the Capitol, where they ransacked the world's most recognizable symbol of democracy.

The House impeached Trump for a second time on Jan. 13 — a week before he would leave office — with 10 Republicans joining Democrats. On Feb. 13, the Senate voted 57-43 against convicting him, falling far short of the two-thirds mark needed. Still, Trump was the first president impeached twice by the House.

Most politicians would have slithered away from the scene, eager to avoid further embarrassment. Not Trump.

For a couple of weeks, he stewed quietly in his own juices. But in late February 2021, Trump returned to the political arena by addressing the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. He promptly won a straw poll for the activists' favorite for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and he broke with tradition as a former president by attacking his successor.

“We all knew that the Biden administration was going to be bad — but none of us even imagined just how bad they would be, and how far left they would go," he said. He told the crowd that his political engagement was “far from over" and hinted that he might run for a “third time.” 

By the spring of 2022, Trump felt bored at his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago. He wanted to launch his 2024 campaign before the midterm elections, the traditional starting gate for prospective presidential candidates.

“I’ve laid out my case on why I think he should do it,” longtime Trump adviser Jason Miller said in June 2022, adding that it was important for there to be "clarity about what his intentions are."

Trump even considered announcing his candidacy on Independence Day that year.

The impatience was pure, old-school Trump. But the final call showed a deference to conventional political wisdom.

Trump listened to the advisers who told him to wait at least until the midterms, and chose to campaign for other candidates throughout that year's election season. That could satisfy his urge to get out on the trail without distracting from Republican efforts to win House and Senate races — and potentially spare him from being accused of dragging down the party.

Nonetheless, his penchant for taking sides in primaries for a wide range of federal and state offices, a move many politicians avoid, frustrated some in the GOP. Trump was more interested in his own political needs than those of the party.

In the wake of his 2020 defeat, he appeared to be bent on continuing to remake the party in his image — another sign that he planned to come back. His midterm endorsement record was mixed — he mostly backed Republicans in safe races — but it was particularly bad in high-profile contests in key Electoral College battlegrounds.

Notably, JD Vance, whom he endorsed in a hard-fought GOP Senate primary in Ohio, went on to win the primary and the general election. Trump named Vance as his running mate Monday.

Trump, whose Supreme Court picks helped overturn abortion protections in 2022, blamed fellow Republicans for worse-than-expected midterm results, arguing they were collectively too extreme on abortion. Many in the party pointed their fingers at him, making the case that he had backed flawed candidates. It was clear, at that point, that the 2024 GOP presidential primary had begun, and Trump's foes in the party were eager to try to show that he was politically toxic.

Consequently or coincidentally, Trump's standing with Republican voters took a hit after the midterms. For the first time, his poll numbers in hypothetical Republican primary matchups dipped below 50%. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won re-election by about 20 percentage points in Florida, began to surge.

For a brief moment, Trump looked like he might be vulnerable in a GOP primary. DeSantis had trailed in a handful of polls by about 30 percentage points in 2022. But after the midterms, DeSantis cut his deficit in half. Trump was down to the core of his base.

But there was never a point at which any political player had more clout — or a firmer base — than Trump. His core supporters would walk through fire for him.

Anti-Trump Republicans, and more than a few Trump fans who worried about his electability, clamored for other GOP luminaries to jump into the 2024 race. DeSantis, who had won the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary on the strength of Trump's endorsement, was already the favorite of movement conservatives.

In the immediate aftermath of the midterms, Trump publicly chided DeSantis for dodging questions about his 2024 intentions, attacking his onetime ally for lacking "loyalty" and "class." And Trump bestowed a nickname, "Ron DeSanctimonious," that would stick to the Florida governor.

Trump formally launched his comeback bid on Nov. 15, 2022 — nearly two years before the election. DeSantis played Hamlet in Tallahassee, refusing to be baited into announcing his own candidacy on Trump's terms.

Newly re-elected, the governor wanted to get through the first legislative session of his second term before bidding for higher office. Trump, having hired ousted DeSantis adviser Susie Wiles as a top aide, bet that DeSantis was running and raced to define him early.

Trump and his team hit DeSantis fairly regularly. DeSantis absorbed the blows, refusing to punch back at Trump — until Trump predicted in late March that he would be indicted in Manhattan.

As the rest of the Republican Party's leaders rallied around Trump, DeSantis waited several days to comment on the pending indictment. When he did, he coupled broadsides against the prosecutor with a low-key dig at Trump — a mention of the sordid details.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair, I just, I can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said.

Trump fired back on Truth Social, his media platform: “Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are 'underage' (or possibly a man!). I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!”

DeSantis would later say that he never recovered from Trump's indictment, which may not have helped the former president with swing voters but certainly provided a boost with the Republican primary electorate.

Trump's polling averages quickly bounced back up above 50% at the national level, and he was never really threatened. Nothing, it seemed, could shake his grip on the party.

The candidate who grabbed hold of the GOP's attention in a series of debates during the 2016 election resisted his desire to fight and listened to aides who advised him not to get on a stage with his rivals. That way, he would deny them a chance to attack him directly and potentially gain traction.

Trump was indicted three more times in 2023 — once in connection with keeping classified documents, once over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and once, in Georgia, over his efforts to reverse the outcome in that state. Each time, as Trump argued he was being unfairly targeted by Democrats "weaponizing" the justice system, he solidified his support within the GOP.

He won the Iowa caucuses with 51% of the vote to DeSantis' 21% and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley's 19%. Before the New Hampshire primary, DeSantis dropped out. Trump beat Haley there 54% to 43%, crushed her in her home state of South Carolina, 60% to 40%, and swamped her on Super Tuesday.

Haley, who would embarrass Trump by continuing to receive significant minorities in future primaries, suspended her campaign in early March. Trump won his third consecutive Republican nomination without much of a fight.

Trump never lost his taste for trashing adversaries — his GOP rivals, President Joe Biden, prosecutors and others — in interviews and on social media. But his strategy, executed by Wiles and fellow senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller, reflected a more traditional approach to campaigning than his previous two bids.

“He’s now more knowledgeable about what it takes to be president after his first term. He’s more knowledgeable about how to interact with the media. His personnel instincts are, I think, better honed,” Wiles told NBC News in a March interview. “The new skills are inside the package of the same Donald Trump, and I think that’s what’s making the difference this time.”

For most of the past three years, Biden and Trump have been locked in an incredibly tight race, according to polls. That perhaps shouldn't be surprising, given that a turn in less than 45,000 votes across three states would have won Trump a second term in 2020.

But in recent weeks, Biden's main contrast with Trump — calm versus chaos — has been turned on its head. On June 27, the two men squared off in a debate using rules Biden's team devised and that Trump's camp agreed to — a result of Trump having vowed to debate Biden anywhere at any time.

The 81-year-old president appeared to lose his train of thought repeatedly, looked frozen at times and boasted — in error — that he had "finally beaten Medicare." (He likely meant to say that he had forced drug companies to lower the prices of some pharmaceuticals for seniors.)

Alarmed Democrats began calling that night for Biden to exit the race. One Democratic House member told NBC News that the president should "throw in the towel."

Trump stepped back to let Democrats fight among themselves — and watch Biden's messy cleanup effort. At times in the past, Trump has struggled to contain himself when there's an opportunity to beat up on an opponent. But he nearly disappeared from public view for two weeks.

Even when the Supreme Court granted former presidents broad immunity from prosecution, a decision that led to the dismissal of one of the cases against him and complicated at least two others, he chose not to let that news overwhelm Biden's struggles.

He also conducted his search for a vice presidential candidate in a relatively quiet fashion — at least for him — with his campaign aides steadfastly guarding details that he had not revealed himself. The final stages of that search played out in secrecy — amid Biden's push to stabilize his own campaign — until Trump named Vance on Monday.

Before he finalized his decision and two days before the Republican convention opened in Milwaukee, Trump held a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Shortly after he began speaking, a sniper opened fire on him from a rooftop. Trump reached for his ear and dropped to the ground. He was briefly covered by Secret Service agents. Then, before they shuffled him off stage and into a waiting car, he stood on his feet, pumped his fist and shouted, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

Two days later, he appeared at the convention with a bandage covering his right ear, and soaked in the boisterous cheers of Republican delegates who were overjoyed to see their fighter back in the ring.

When he takes the stage Thursday night to accept his third consecutive GOP nomination and address the delegates, Trump will be on the verge of completing a political comeback unlike any in American history. He has survived low polls, bad midterms, outrage after Jan. 6, impeachments, Republican rivals, being convicted of a crime and bullets.

It is not clear what will come of his conviction in New York or the pending charges against him in federal and Georgia courts. But none of them are likely to be resolved before the election.

Now, the only thing standing between Trump and a return to the White House is the judgment of the electorate.