Donald Trump was never smart, politically talented, or good at most of the things a successful politician is supposed to excel at.
What Donald J. Trump has always had in his favor is that he has demonstrated a level of commitment that no other candidate or president has shown.
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Trump’s entire adult life has been built on self-deception, but what has made Trump successful in American politics is his ability to make America believe his illusions are fact.
The president has never had an approval rating above 50% in a nonpartisan poll. So it’s not like his enlightenment worked on everyone, but it worked on enough people in a deeply divided country to get him into the White House twice.
One of the main reasons Trump won in 2024 is that he managed, through incessant repetition, to convince people that he was a good manager of the American economy. The truth has always been that Trump was riding the steam of the Obama economy and had already plunged the country into recession before COVID arrived.
Trump and his reputation for economic competence were saved by COVID. Without the pandemic, America would have fallen into recession. Trump would have had no excuses and his career might have ended in 2020.
When Trump returned to office, he faced an angry American public upset over costs and inflation. Each of Trump’s actions made the crisis worse, and so the president continued to try to put America on edge, but it didn’t work this time.