Is the universe conspiring to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office?
Did Donald Trump pay a visit to the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 near Clarksdale, Miss., in the summer of 2015 to make a special deal with the devil? Does he have a rabbit’s foot made from the genuine Easter Bunny? Does Trump have a desk drawer full of four-leaf clovers in his office at Mar-a-Lago?
Because I’m not sure how else to explain the fact that Donald Trump is the luckiest man to ever attempt to climb the greasy pole of American electoral politics.
Trump, famously, entered the GOP primary race in the summer of 2015 against a dozen accomplished and credentialed Republican politicians. But — luckily for Trump — the field was too big, and the GOP base fractured across multiple candidates, giving the larger-than-life Trump the chance to consolidate a plurality of the vote.
Of course, Trump didn’t have a lot of donors in his corner at first, but — luckily for Trump — Jeff Zucker, Joe Scarborough, and their fellow media moguls decided to ride The Trump Show for all it was worth, centering their wall-to-wall 24-hour coverage on the spectacle and giving Trump an estimated $1 billion in free advertising.
Then, when Trump had finished a disappointing second in Iowa and it looked like Marco Rubio might surge into New Hampshire and beyond, Chris Christie torpedoed Rubio in their infamous debate exchange. Lucky, again.
Later, around the time of the decisive South Carolina primary, when it seemed that Trump could only be stopped by the united efforts (and the rumored Cruz-Rubio or Rubio-Cruz joint-ticket talks), the senators from Texas and Florida couldn’t agree on a compromise, and the GOP establishment folded. Lucky, again.
Then, amazingly, Donald Trump was matched in the general election against, of all people, Hillary Clinton: a woman who had built a reputation for vindictiveness, pettiness, and untrustworthiness, and who had been unpopular with the American people for two and a half decades. What’s more, Hillary Clinton — of all people in politics — could not effectively prosecute the case against Trump’s cruelty and piggishness toward women, encapsulated by the Access Hollywood tape, because she had protected and defended her piggish husband for years and blamed Bill’s “bimbo eruptions” on the women involved. When, despite all this, Hillary was set to win anyway, FBI director Jim Comey suddenly announced the return of a classic Clintonian scandal (more Hillary emails discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop) just a week before Election Day. Incredible luck.
Two cycles later, after Trump’s 2022 midterm senatorial-candidate choices had failed across the board and it looked like Trump might be finally successfully challenged for the GOP nomination by Ron DeSantis, Alvin Bragg indicted Trump in New York City for a petty crime that would only serve to once again bind the GOP base to Trump. DeSantis never had a chance. Trump was lucky again.
What’s more, the Alvin Bragg–Stormy Daniels case was the only Trump case, out of four, that has gone to trial. The much more serious federal charges related to the mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice — which, if put before the public, could have potentially hurt Trump’s standing with the Republican base — are tied up in federal court, possibly for years. The cases surrounding January 6 are going nowhere fast, and they may even be thrown out by lower courts on the basis of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. And, of course, in Georgia, Fani Willis’s RICO prosecution of Trump and his allies has imploded because of Willis’s insane decision to hire her paramour to work on the case. Incredible luck, again.
Now, Donald Trump is set to face either a politically crippled Joe Biden, who the entire country thinks is too old to do the job, or a swapped-in nominee (Kamala Harris? Someone else?) who might be leading a Democratic Party that is fractured by Biden’s reluctance to go quietly, or riven by Biden’s Israel–Gaza policy, or at war with itself over the decision to replace the black and female Harris with an electable alternative.
Donald Trump, of course, has his own talents that aid his quest for political power: his animal cunning, his genius for self-promotion and hype, and his inability to feel shame or embarrassment.
But has there ever been a luckier man who has pursued higher office? One could almost believe that the universe is conspiring to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office.