After surviving a bullet wound at a rally and seeing his presidential immunity claims affirmed by the US Supreme Court this month, Donald Trump received another gift on Monday: his classified documents case was dismissed.
The only president to be impeached twice – and acquitted twice – and the country’s only former president to be convicted of criminal charges, the 70-year-old has often struggled to stay in power.
His mistakes, scandals and bitter statements have shocked millions of Americans. Many heads of state see him as a threat to global stability and the fight against global warming, and he has been accused of promoting far-right groups and insulting immigrants.
But every time he’s said to have drowned, he comes roaring to the surface, and this week he’s riding high, heading to Milwaukee.
The Republican National Convention on Thursday will ignore Trump’s vows of revenge on his political enemies and set aside his various legal troubles to formally nominate him as the party’s flagbearer in November’s election against President Joe Biden.
Trump, the flamboyant billionaire who emerged onto the political scene a decade ago as a super disruptor and champion of conservatives, now appears unstoppable.
“He certainly looks like he’s doing great,” Texas alternate delegate Orlando Donna, wearing a Trump pin and a brown cowboy hat, told AFP.
Donna, 64, like many conservatives, believes the various cases against Trump are politically motivated, “and he’s coming out of all of this justified.”
As for the shooting, some are calling it divine intervention.
“I personally think it was the hand of God,” former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker told AFP at the conference.
Walker, who briefly ran for president against Trump in 2016, said Trump has earned a reputation for being able to cope with anything.
“He’s never going to stop being a fighter,” he said. “And I think people here realize he’s fighting for them, and this victory is not just his victory, it’s a victory for the American people.”
– ‘Lots of obstacles’ –
Trump earned the nickname “Teflon Don” for weathering numerous storms.
The #MeToo movement led to the downfall of dozens of powerful Americans. Not Trump, while he has been accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse, liability for the sexual assault of writer E. Jean Carroll revealed in a civil trial in 2023, and an alleged affair with pornographic actress Stormy Daniels.
After an explosive “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced in 2016 in which Trump makes derogatory comments about women and boasts of touching his genitals, some Republican stalwarts withdrew their support, and it was predicted he would lose the female vote.
That didn’t happen, and he won the White House a month later.
Now, it appears he will perform another miracle, escaping three of the four cases against him before the elections.
“If the story of the last 18 months teaches us anything, it’s that there were a lot of obstacles stacked against President Trump, and the fact that he overcame them, I think, reflects how my faith in this country has grown,” businessman and former 2024 Vivek Ramaswamy told reporters at the conference.
“As Martin Luther King said, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice,” Ramaswami said. “I believe that is exactly what has been happening in recent months, days, and the past year of President Trump’s visit.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
