Donald Trump is on the cusp of an improbable comeback victory in the 2024 presidential election because the American people would not let him fail.
The campaign and its staff worked incredibly hard, and from the outside, the 2024 effort seemed to be the most well-organized, and professional, of Trump’s three attempts at the presidency.
Yet there were moments when Trump seemed to falter, and when he was lifted up by people who decided, on their own, that they would not let him lose.
Take, for example, the song “Fighter,” written by Breitbart News’ own Jon Kahn and recorded in his backyard studio.
It was written before Trump was grazed by an assassin’s bullet in July and stood up, with his fist raised. It was released the week of the presidential debate in September , when Kamala Harris was at her peak.
The song evokes the spirit of a man who never gives up, even when he is down: “‘Cause I hit harder when I’m tired.”
It soared to #1 on the charts.
Or recall the surprise announcement by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump the day after Harris was coronated at the Democratic National Convention.
Kennedy delivered a more searing indictment of Harris’s candidacy than any Republican. “Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing,” he declared.
These were efforts outside the campaign that shaped its message and infused it with energy.
Similarly, grassroots activists like Scott Presler took it upon themselves to register new voters when the party, and the campaign, were moving too slowly.
My former Breitbart News colleague, Michelle Dawi (née Moons), felt the campaign was missing the chance to register Arab American voters, so she set up tables outside grocery stores in Michigan and did so.
In May, I watched the news from New York with dismay, as a Manhattan jury convicted Trump of 34 bogus felony charges. I took down the American flag outside my house and hung it upside down as a sign of distress and defiance.
But I grew tired of angry gestures and decided to do something to help. I sat at my kitchen counter on Saturday night, June 1st, and began writing a plan for Trump’s first 100 days in office. Ten days later, The Agenda was complete.
A few weeks ago, I was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica — a left-wing enclave — when, stuck in traffic, I looked up to see a black man holding a Trump 2024 sign on a pedestrian overpass.
He knew he was not going to convince most of the drivers in that neighborhood to vote Republican. But he wanted to signal to those who quietly supported Trump, or were thinking of doing so, that they were not alone, not even in deep-blue California.
Much of the story of this campaign is about Donald Trump himself — a flawed protagonist who faced unprecedented opposition and almost insurmountable challenges, some of his own making.
Win or lose, loved or hated, Trump will be remembered by history as one of America’s folk heroes, a man who refused to conform, whose personality evokes the very essence of our unique national character — brash, but brave; insufferable at times, but invincible in the end.
Yet Trump would not be where he is today had millions of Americans not stepped forward to fight for him — and even to take a bullet for him, as firefighter Corey Comperatore did on that fateful day in Pennsylvania.
Trump’s opponents misunderstand that kind of devotion as a “cult of personality.” What it is, is a spirit Trump has reminded us how to find in ourselves — a refusal to surrender, a will to dream and to reach for the impossible.
Win or lose, that spirit is here to stay.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
