The China Mail - Trump: political Houdini does it again

Fast-forward eight years and America's incoming 47th president looks like Nostradamus, winning the keys to the White House on Wednesday despite incredible odds.

He is the most controversial man in the country, narrowly avoided being killed in an assassination attempt, and at 78 will become the oldest person to take the Oval Office in US history.

And that's before throwing in the fact that he's out on bail in three criminal jurisdictions and fighting gigantic civil penalties for sexual assault and fraud. Despite victory, he faces sentencing in just a few weeks on nearly three-dozen felonies related to his 2016 presidential campaign.

Yet in defeating Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump has once more shown he can defy all political and legal gravity.

Many thought this time he wouldn't manage.

He'd closed out November of last year with a 47.4 percent average in opinion polls -- a number that only shifted by one point upward in the intervening year.

Far from moving to the center, he continued to publicly praise foreign dictators, while threatening fellow Americans with military reprisals. He re-upped his once unprecedented, now trademark, claims that Democrats were trying to rig the election against him.

Trump's longest-serving chief-of-staff called him a "fascist."

For most candidates, any of these controversies, let alone the legal issues, would have been career-ending.

Yet for Trump, controversy is all part of the show.

Even an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally that left him bloodied could not keep down the man whose self-branded persona as the ultimate deal-maker has embedded itself in the American psyche.

Now, Trump is about to be reinstalled as the commander in chief of the most powerful military in history, despite a criminal record that would bar him from serving as a private in the army.

And his legal woes could disappear as the new president -- emboldened by presidential immunity from prosecution -- issues pardons, fires federal prosecutors and gets backing from a Supreme Court dominated by his allies.

- 'Enemy from within' -

Born wealthy and growing up as a playboy real estate entrepreneur, Trump astonished the world by winning the presidency on a hard-right platform in 2016 against Democratic heavyweight Hillary Clinton.

The Republican's first term began with a dark inaugural address evoking "American carnage."

It ended in mayhem when he refused to accept his defeat by Joe Biden, then rallied supporters before they stormed Congress on January 6, 2021.

In office, Trump upended every tradition, ranging from the trivial (what got planted in the Rose Garden) to the fundamental (relations with NATO).

Journalists became the "enemy of the people" -- a phrase he would later tweak to the "enemy from within" as he called for reprisals against all political opponents.

On the world stage, Trump turned US alliances into transactions as friendly partners like South Korea and Germany were accused of trying to "rip us off."

By contrast, he repeatedly praised -- and continues to praise -- the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Throughout, he increasingly dominated the Republican Party, which dropped all opposition and ended up winning him acquittal in two impeachment proceedings.

That loyalty to Trump only deepened after he left the White House, with senior Republicans regularly trooping to see him at his palatial Florida residence and in the dingy Manhattan courthouse where he was tried for fraud this year.

- Autocratic drift -

Before he rode down the golden escalator of Trump Tower in New York to announce his 2016 White House bid, Trump was best known as a TV personality.

He was famous mostly for the ruthless character he played on reality show "The Apprentice," as well as for developing luxury buildings and golf resorts, and for his wife Melania, a former fashion model.

The political rise was meteoric. But academics have noted parallels between his evolution and those of autocrats in countries where democratic institutions exist only as facades, allowing populist strongmen to take power.

Millions were thrilled by his attacks on politics, his coarse language, his promises to expel illegal immigrants, and the gaudy glamour that he brought to blue-collar Americans beaten down by globalization and deindustrialization.

At the same time, more than half the country agrees with Trump's top White House aide John Kelly that the tycoon is a fascist, according to a recent ABC poll.

In office, he relished the daily controversy, joking about changing the US Constitution to stay in power indefinitely. As he campaigned to return to power in 2024, he again called for termination of the founding document.

Trump's allies dismiss such talk as mere rhetoric.

But Trump broke all precedent when he refused to concede his 2020 loss, ultimately unleashing a mob on the US Capitol, while his vice president, Mike Pence, went into hiding.

Unprecedented -- but forgiven by just enough US voters to allow the showman to get away with it again.

S.Wilson--ThChM