Trump’s Top 10 Best Moves Of 2024

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

What a year it was! My first column of 2024 declared it “The Year of Trump,” and there was never a dull moment as Donald Trump aimed not just to take back the White House, but to stay out of prison and ultimately to stay alive.

Now that the election is over, it’s time to look in the rear-view mirror and contemplate why Trump is not just the greatest political comeback in history, but the greatest showman in the world.

So let’s consider Trump’s Top 10 best moves in the most consequential election of our lifetimes. It could easily be the Top 100, but that would be bragging.

No. 10: If we think of 2024 as an election season rather than a calendar year, then the first big move by Trump was skipping the Republican candidate debates starting in August 2023 and thus reducing his opponents to desperate Lilliputians in search of a Gulliver. Without Trump, the public soon lost interest in Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Mike Pence (remember him?), and Asa Hutchinson. Even Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy barely peaked out of single digits and were soon vanquished. The August debate on Fox News was the high point with 13 million sets of eyeballs, with each subsequent debate shedding viewers, until the CNN debate before the Iowa caucuses could barely muster 2.5 million bored spectators.

No. 9: After cementing his hold on the Republican Party’s base with his commanding primary performance, Trump moved to change the leadership of the party as well. On Feb. 12, he announced his desire to see GOP chair Ronna McDaniel replaced by North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley, with Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump serving as co-chair. McDaniel had always had an arms-length relationship with Trump’s MAGA movement, and she was blamed by many in the party for not doing enough to ensure Trump’s victory in 2020, both before and after the Nov. 3 election, including her lackluster support for the president’s claims that the election was rigged.

No. 8: From the time he was indicted in the so-called hush-money trial in March of 2023, Trump realized that his popularity increased every time his enemies tried to put him in prison. Rather than resign from his campaign and concentrate on his legal woes, Trump wore each new indictment like a badge of honor. And he fought against the judges and district attorneys arrayed against him from his Truth Social page, calling them unhinged, corrupt, or simply Trump haters. Meanwhile, his attorneys battled in multiple courtrooms to prove not just his innocence, but ultimately his victimhood. When they argued before the Supreme Court that the president was entitled to immunity for actions taken while he was in office, the mainstream media portrayed Trump as desperate. This view was obliterated when the ruling came down in Trump’s favor on July 1, almost guaranteeing that most charges against him would be dismissed.

No. 7: The media also ridiculed Trump for campaigning in exceedingly liberal New York City. Once again, they played themselves for fools. Since Trump was spending so much time in New York City thanks to the Letitia James civil fraud trial, the E. Jean Carroll civil suit for defamation, and ultimately the so-called hush-money trial, what choice did he have? It should have been no surprise that the presumptive GOP nominee decided to campaign in his hometown. In April, Trump visited the Manhattan bodega where a clerk fatally stabbed a would-be robber and then was charged with murder by the same district attorney who had the former president on trial for vastly hyped felony charges based on the fact that he called payments to his lawyer “legal expenses.” Trump also visited a construction site and a local firehouse. But even better, and clearly one of the best moves of 2024, was Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the South Bronx while awaiting a verdict in the hush-money case. The Democrats’ smear against Trump as a racist looked pathetic as a diverse crowd of blacks and Hispanics joined whites to applaud Trump’s message of a stronger America.

No. 6: Seizing on President Biden’s ill-fated proposal to hold a presidential debate in late June, before either candidate was even officially nominated by their party, Trump again outsmarted the analysts. At the time, Trump was ahead in the polls and there was a general consensus that he had the most at risk in the debate. That perception proved laughable when Biden’s performance exposed him to be cognitively impaired and dangerously unfocused. In retrospect, some analysts think Trump made a mistake by debating so early because it forced Democrats to replace Biden as their candidate. Yet two simple words put that theory to rest: Kamala Harris.

No. 5: Harris’s inability to articulate a vision for the next four years and her refusal to separate herself from either Biden’s failed presidency or the radical leftist agenda of the Democratic Party made her an easy foil for Trump.

But in order to ensure that he would attract disaffected Democrats to his own campaign, Trump did something that would have been unthinkable eight, or even four, years ago: He reached out to Democrats and found common ground. Most significantly, he saw that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had been maligned and mistreated by Biden’s campaign, first as a Democratic candidate and then as an independent. Trump recognized that not just the Kennedy name but the Kennedy agenda would broaden his coalition and make him nearly unbeatable. When RFK Jr. suspended his own campaign and endorsed Trump on Aug. 23, the electricity was palpable. It didn’t hurt that the mainstream media hated Bobby Kennedy nearly as much as they hated Trump. Add that to Trump being endorsed by former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and tech billionaire Elon Musk and it was clear that Trump was intent on building a coalition that could not just win the election but help him govern.

No. 4: While we are on the subject of campaign appearances, none made Trump more human and more endearing than his visit to a Bucks County McDonald’s restaurant in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania two weeks before the election. While trolling Harris’ dubious claim that she had worked for the fast-food chain while in college, Trump also proved himself to be a billionaire of and for the people. Donning an apron, Trump learned how to prepare French fries the McDonald’s way and served meals in the drive-thru window to delighted customers. The photo of the former president waving to fans outside the restaurant was one of the indelible images of 2024.

No. 3: You know you had a good year when surviving not just one but two assassination attempts fails to break into the Top 2! We won’t dwell on the second assassination attempt since the accused assailant doesn’t face trial until at least late in 2025, but no such qualms need bother us when talking about the shooting by Thomas Matthew Crooks at Butler, Pennsylvania, since Crooks was shot well and truly dead, as Hemingway might have put it.

When you are talking about Trump’s best moves that day, it is hard to ignore his head turning to the right to read an immigration chart that was displayed on a giant screen. Because of that fortuitous gesture, Trump was shot in the ear instead of the head, thus surviving what was very nearly a fatal blow. That was providential, but what the wounded candidate did next was pure Trump. After being helped to his feet by the Secret Service agents who had surrounded him, the bloodied Trump raised his fist three times and entreated the shocked crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” This was the stuff of legends.

No. 2: Perhaps the most audacious political move of the 2024 campaign was Trump’s decision to outsource most of the Republican get-out-the-vote effort to two independent super PACs – Turning Point Action and America PAC. The Republican Party had always run a distant second to Democrats when it came to making contact with voters and getting them to the polls, but establishment pols thought the answer was for the Republican Party to spend more money. Trump counter-intuitively decided to spend less by soliciting the support of outside groups that would spend their own money and use their own volunteers to reach impassioned voters. Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action and Elon Musk’s America PAC were laser-focused on getting out the vote in the seven so-called swing states. The fact that Trump won all seven demonstrates just how successful the new strategy proved to be.

And at No.1 for Trump’s best moves of the year, it’s the Trump Dance! As the terpsichorean equivalent of Trump’s devil-may-care attitude, the Trump Dance was unleashed on the world at an unknown date, but it perhaps became most famous during the Oct. 14 campaign town hall when Trump decided to stop taking questions after two people in attendance suffered medical emergencies. It’s not unusual for Trump to halt his campaign rallies when someone is in distress, but in this case, after several minutes the crowd spontaneously broke into a chorus of “God Bless America.”

This inspired Trump to request “Ave Maria” on the loudspeakers, which inspired the candidate to then order an impromptu music fest. For roughly 40 minutes, the soon-to-be leader of the free world led the delighted crowd from the stage and added his unique dance stylings that mostly consisted of waving his arms with closed fists, swaying left and right and acting completely un-self-consciously as he mouthed the words to “Y.M.C.A.”

There actually wasn’t much dancing, but it inspired thousands of TikTok videos and the absolute disdain of the legacy media. MSNBC declared, “Questions mounting over Trump’s mental acuity after derailed event turns into dance fest.” Rolling Stone called the event “a bizarre instant-classic trainwreck.” So much for the perspicacity of the mainstream media, which had never understood Trump or his attraction. The real trainwreck of 2024 was the press coverage of Trump. And when multiple NFL stars performed the Trump Dance to celebrate touchdowns one weekend, it was obvious that Trump had won not just the election but the cultural war that had been declared against him in 2015.

Now it’s on to 2025, and it’s a safe bet that the coming year will be “The Year of Trump 2.0.” I can’t wait.