A most un-presidented' comeback

Donald Trump has pulled off a modern political miracle. His return to the White House is a story about American society, but it is also a story of Trump's political resilience.

- Prashant Jha

No other leader in any democracy, let alone a democracy of the complexity and history and sophistication of the US, has ever done what Trump has done in the last nine years.

Trump is the only person since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who has been a nominee of a major party for president three times in a row. He is the only former American president who, after a criminal conviction, not just won his party's nomination but has also won the national elections yet again, with an even bigger margin.

And he is the only leader who has taken over one of the two major parties and completely reshaped its ideological world view and political base.

Trump's electoral win of 2024 it will make him only the second non-consecutive US President after Grover Cleveland 131 years ago - has to be seen in the context of his political debut in 2015.

No one thought that Trump would win the Republican presidential nomination for the 2016 elections. Yet, Trump decisively beat his more established rivals, from scions of established dynasties such as Jeb Bush to senators such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, to make the most unusual political debut in the presidential race.

Few thought he would defeat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election that year. Yet, Trump defeated the former First Lady, senator, and Secretary of State and demolished the Blue Wall, picking Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and reshaping the path to the American presidency.