How Donald Trump’s political career rose from the dead

Four years ago, Trump looked beaten. His Democratic opponent Biden defeated him by a comfortable majority in the 2020 presidential election.

The courts rejected his attempts to challenge these results. His last-ditch rally, where he urged his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers certified the results, ended in a violent mob attack that sent those inside scrambling for safety. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were injured.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao were among many Trump administration officials who quit in protest. “There is no doubt the impact your rhetoric has had on the situation, and this is a turning point for me,” DeVos wrote in her resignation letter to the president.

Even South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies, has broken with the president.

“All I can say is they exclude me,” he said on the Senate floor. “Enough.”

The shift away from Trump spread to the corporate world as dozens of major companies — including American Express, Microsoft, Nike and Walgreens — announced they were suspending support for Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results.

On Biden’s inauguration day, Trump broke with 152 years of tradition by refusing to attend the ceremony and instead flying back to his private club at Mar-a-Lago earlier that morning, accompanied by a handful of his closest aides and family.

According to Meridith McGraw, author of the book “Trump in Exile” – an account of the former president’s period after leaving the White House, his mood was gloomy.

“He was angry, frustrated, unsure how to spend his days and had no plan for his political future,” she said.

Media coverage and political conversations this month reflected uncertainty about his future. After a clear election defeat followed by chaotic scenes on Capitol Hill, some of the statements were even more definitive, suggesting there was no going back for Trump.

“And so comes the end of Donald J. Trump’s bold, explosive, and sometimes brilliant political career,” reads one opinion piece in The Hill.

The subtitle of a January 2021 opinion piece in The New York Times read: “This terrible experiment is over.” The headline was even more direct: “President Donald J. Trump: The End.”