Happy New Year: Trump’s Top 10 Best Moves of 2024
COMMENTARY REAL CLEAR POLITICS
What a year it was! My first column of 2024 declared it "The Year of Trump," and there was never a dull moment as Donald Trump aimed not just to take back the White House, but to stay out of prison and ultimately to stay alive.
Now that the election is over, it's time to look in the rear-view mirror and contemplate why Trump is not just the greatest political comeback in history, but the greatest showman in the world.
So let's consider Trump's Top 10 best moves in the most consequential election of our lifetimes. It could easily be the Top 100, but that would be bragging.
No. 10: If we think of 2024 as an election season rather than a calendar year, then the first big move by Trump was skipping the Republican candidate debates starting in August 2023 and thus reducing his opponents to desperate Lilliputians in search of a Gulliver. Without Trump, the public soon lost interest in Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Mike Pence (remember him?), and Asa Hutchinson. Even Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy barely peaked out of single digits and were soon vanquished. The August debate on Fox News was the high point with 13 million sets of eyeballs, with each subsequent debate shedding viewers, until the CNN debate before the Iowa caucuses could barely muster 2.5 million bored spectators..................
No. 3: You know you had a good year when surviving not just one but two assassination attempts fails to break into the Top 2! We won't dwell on the second assassination attempt since the accused assailant doesn't face trial until at least late in 2025, but no such qualms need bother us when talking about the shooting by Thomas Matthew Crooks at Butler, Pennsylvania, since Crooks was shot well and truly dead, as Hemingway might have put it.
When you are talking about Trump's best moves that day, it is hard to ignore his head turning to the right to read an immigration chart that was displayed on a giant screen. Because of that fortuitous gesture, Trump was shot in the ear instead of the head, thus surviving what was very nearly a fatal blow. That was providential, but what the wounded candidate did next was pure Trump. After being helped to his feet by the Secret Service agents who had surrounded him, the bloodied Trump raised his fist three times and entreated the shocked crowd to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" This was the stuff of legends.
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