What started with a golden escalator ride in Manhattan now almost a decade ago, has now transformed into the single most impactful movement of a political figure since FDR.
Had Trump gone away after he lost in 2020, it would have been a blip on the radar with a caveat of him exposing that there was an underlying sentiment of Americans feeling like they had been forgotten by their leaders.
Now, 2015-2029 will be singularly defined as the Trump era. Every single prism of life has been touched by it and will leave a last positive impact on our nation for years to come.
Single handedly, Trump took a country on the brink and reminded us how to fight back for what we stand for.
Donald Trump has willed his way, through sheer force and energy I’ve never seen in another human being in my life, into one of the greatest comeback stories in American history.
He should be an inspiration to all to never back down, never give up, and know that you can always fight your way back.
As we watched rioters storm the Capitol on January 6th, I was dismayed, and thought he was done for good. We now know a lot more about that day than we did at the time.
But this race forever changed when Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was raided by the FBI in August of 2022, we knew that this was more than about Trump.
They were after you, and he was just standing in the way. Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden, and numerous other figures had found themselves in document transit mix-ups, and none had ever had their homes raided by the FBI.
In November of 2022, after Republicans vastly underperformed expectations in the midterms due to some poor candidates who wrongly were labeled as the ‘voice’ of the MAGA movement.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis surged in the polls.
But when the first indictments were brough in New York in the spring of 2023, Trump started to pull away in the polls. While the Republicans had a diverse group of up-and-coming Republicans that showed they had a strong bench and ready cabinet, from DeSantis, to South Dakota Governor (and our pfp) Doug Burgum, to Vivek Ramaswamy --- this was never a competitive race.
For me, the turning point for realizing just how much these court cases were coming from above was what happened in our home state of New York. When AG Letitia James said he lied about property values, but then listed his 5th avenue apartments on the Upper East Side at $67,000 each, we knew that they would cook something up to get him. She also ignored all inquiries as to how I could sign up for one of these mortgages. Every friend of mine in the Real Estate industry knows they vary estimates.
After the Trump convictions on this, Real Estate executives called NY Governor Kathy Hochul worrying that something like this could happen to them. She assures them this was a one-time thing. Without realizing it, she admitted this was all political. The banks testified they were glad to do business with him. It didn’t matter, and as soon as the Democrats realized this was backfiring in the polls, they stopped using the term “convicted felon.”
Then came July 13th. I was hungover in a Popeyes. I remember looking at my phone and seeing a Jonathan Turley tweet “President Trump has been shot. He is down.” While a part of me thought he was dead, my gut instinct told me he’d be OK. I didn’t see his fist pump until a few minutes later, but we knew this meant more in that moment. I remember feeling fight or flight before that. I couldn’t imagine how it would have unfolded if he hadn’t lived.
Ronald Reagan once said “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” I think when we saw the images that showed that if Trump hadn’t turn his head at the last millisecond, on a chart that was almost always on the other side from him, that God played a hand in keeping him alive.