Two impeachments, electoral losses, the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, and now a felony conviction — nothing has alienated enough Republican voters or legislators to end former President Donald Trump’s political career. On the contrary, polls indicate Mr. Trump has a good shot to return to the White House despite an unbroken run of negative headlines and legal setbacks.
In this episode of History As It Happens, we revisit the appeal of Trumpism after another major milestone: a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 counts in a hush-money case involving falsified business records and an encounter with an adult film actress.
At a Las Vegas rally over the weekend, Mr. Trump again heaped praise on the Jan. 6 rioters, accused opponent President Biden of being a criminal, and riffed in a stream-of-consciousness manner about subjects unrelated to the campaign, such as shark attacks and electric batteries in boats. Mr. Trump also has threatened to use the justice system to seek revenge against his political foes if reelected in November.
“One thing about a political leader is that it’s hard to put an -ism on them until they are gone from the scene,” said Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at the National Review. “With Trump, so much of [his appeal] is Trump’s own personality. And we have seen certainly that Trump is able to win elections, or at least he has won one. And he’s leading at the moment in this one. But many of the people who have tried to imitate him have not.” In other words, the man is his movement, which seeks to rally voters behind Mr. Trump’s list of grievances against what he describes as a rigged system.
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