How This Fist Pump After He Was Shot Won Trump the White House

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

68% : The TV-born illusion of Trump as a genius businessman gained renewed luster.
59% : The elevation of the stage resulted in a camera angle that made Trump look more heroic and the full tableau more iconic.
59% : Meanwhile, thanks to TikTok, some young women were for the first time hearing the Access Hollywood Tape in which Trump brags that when you're a star, you can grab women by the p---y.
57% : During the 14 seasons of the reality show The Apprentice, the power of image had transformed Trump in the public mind from a nepo baby with multiple bankruptcies who headed what was jokingly called the Trump Disorganization into a brilliant billionaire businessman with a supposed golden touch.
51% : And that no doubt contributed to the considerable crowd that Trump drew when he came to Butler on July 13 this year.
51% : The usual human backdrop changed from the classic MAGA types at earlier rallies to young women holding signs reading "Women for Trump.
50% : Not even that ultra-liberal neighborhood was untouched by MAGA, the movement that Trump likes to call the biggest in American history.
48% : The episodes had been contrived and heavily edited, but Trump had demonstrated a flash of actual genius as a showman when he channeled the authoritarian New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner by pointing a finger at a disfavored contestant and improvising the show's most famous line.
46% : At 78, Trump is only three years younger than Biden, yet he strode onto the stage with a steadier and more energetic stride than his incumbent opponent had been showing in recent months.
45% : After initially insisting in the spring that he was not donating to either candidate, Musk was now all in with Trump, using the free speech he had purchased for $44 billion.
44% : Trump and Vance were apparently banking on countering any woke courage against their supporters' continued delight in them just saying whatever they want.
41% : It seemed Trump was likely chosen as what the FBI termed a "target of opportunity" simply because he was speaking near Crooks' home outside Pittsburgh.
41% : "If Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election," Musk contended in a September 29 post that got more than 100 million views.
40% : "Eight years later, Harris was facing Trump in a nearly even race that promised to ultimately come down to which of the two movements can edge out the other; women or MAGA.
38% : In the moments after he literally came within an inch of being killed, Trump responded to his actual near death with the same showman's genius he had shown in reality television.
34% : Not that Trump saw the truth.
32% : His supporters had hoped he would prove himself otherwise during the debate with Trump in June.
32% : A search of his phone indicated he had searched for Biden's schedule as well as Trump's and a friend told the agents that he did not so much hate either candidate as politicians in general.
32% : Elon Musk joined him on the stage wearing a black MAGA hat and an "Occupy Mars" T-shirt; The richest man on earth literally leapt for joy, the post shooting image having provided him with a pretext to support Trump despite the former president's history of racism, fraud, sex abuse, and 34 felony counts.
32% : Fight" when Trump took the stage.
30% : But that did not stop Trump from saying that "they" had tried to kill him after failing to stop him with investigations and indictments and other "lawfare."
29% : And in the words of one former law enforcement official who had protected Trump in the past against just such an attack, "He's a TV guy before he's anything else.
27% : "On Sept. 10, Harris rattled Trump in the first and only presidential debate.
27% : On Oct. 15, four days after the Walz disaster, Trump returned to the scene of the attempted assassination and the now iconic image.
25% : And, having squashed the fix, Trump declared, "I alone can fix it."Then came the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate.
24% : The resulting legislation had seemed likely to pass when Trump ordered GOP lawmakers to kill it because he wanted the border to remain a political liability for the Democrats.
23% : For Trump to have accepted defeat would have been for him to suffer what psychiatrists term narcissistic collapse, where a grandiose self-image collides with actuality.
23% : But Trump ignores a movement that drew more than 500,000 to Washington.
19% : Once again, Trump sought the power of image, donning a reflective vest and attempting to board a garbage truck that he arranged to pull up to his plane on the tarmac.
15% : JD Vance, had been first to spread the falsehood about Haitians eating pets and some Republicans had come to view him as a poor choice by Trump.
15% : Trump was at a Wisconsin rally early Tuesday morning when he spoke of Nancy Pelosi as "evil, sick, crazy."

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