Narrowing down the highlights of 2024 poses the greatest challenge to synopsizing history
Of all the topics that presented difficulty in this ultra-fateful year of 2024, none were more so than separating out the most striking political memories from the past twelve months.
Seeing as it’s the last day of the year, it’s fitting to look back and isolate a few episodes that will stick with us not only for the next four years – Donald J. Trump’s second term – but also for the rest of our lives.
It seems like an eternity ago, but 2024 began with a boatload of uncertainty. Not only was broken-down president senile Joe Biden bent on running for reelection, but the Republican Party looked to be hopelessly – and nearly irretrievably – divided. Still facing legal and criminal dilemmas that would trouble most people, Trump acted as though none of the “noise” bothered him at all.
More worrisome to the former president were the petty gripes and concerns among the small group of “challengers” for the party presidential nomination, led by, at least from appearances, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Trump U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who represented the GOP establishment, corporate interests – and generally, everyone who still didn’t like Trump.
DeSantis’s and Haley’s main rationales for going away from Trump centered on a “So many people despise him he’s simply not electable” argument. DeSantis hoped to entice conservatives away from the 45th president’s re-election effort. Haley, the lone woman in the primary field, centered her pitch on presenting a “moderate” voice who would appeal to independents and Democrats who were fed up with Biden.
Trump barely broke a sweat in dispatching the so-called rivals once the votes were cast. Simply put, it was the most boring presidential primary contest ever, rivaled only by the lack of interest stemming from the Democrats’ inability to challenge senile Joe Biden before the dunce eventually took himself out of the running in mid-July.
Other highlights (using the term loosely):
Lawfare against Trump fails to ruin his chances to win a second term.
Few would dispute that the legal cases involving Donald Trump took up a good share of the news headlines in the first half of the year, including the jury verdict in New York City finding the Republican guilty on multiple felony counts, an occurrence Democrats swore would finally derail the Trump train and make him toxic to American voters of good conscience.
It didn’t.
As was easily foreseeable, Trump’s unfair treatment at the hands of Democrat local prosecutors and the Biden Justice Department only served to turn him into a sympathetic character in voters’ eyes. Democrats always go overboard with their hysteria regarding Trump, and 2024’s legal proceedings reinforced the point. Cases in Washington, DC, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia only made it worse for the Trump-haters.
Assassination attempts focused the nation on what would happen if Trump were to suddenly disappear
In the craziest of all political years – 2024 – nothing rivaled America’s shock over witnessing, over and over again, news footage of a would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, getting off multiple shots at a nearby Trump as the candidate delivered a rally speech in the critical swing state.
“Geez, they’re really out to get him” was the likely typical reaction. Though the investigative authorities are yet to determine a motive – or they simply aren’t saying – one surmises there were a plethora of leftwing kooks out there who craved an opportunity to make a try at Trump.
Yet another unhinged and motivated left-winger attempted it in Florida a couple months later, shining the spotlight on the Secret Service’s lack of seriousness in protecting a former president and major party presidential candidate.
“Assassination theater” focused folks on the proposals Trump advanced. Democrats couldn’t take him down.
Conjecture over who Trump would nominate for his running mate failed to predict J.D. Vance
Coming just days after he was nearly killed in Pennsylvania, Trump once again took control of the news narrative by nominating Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio to fill out his ticket.
As expected, critics hated the choice, dismissing the young senator with an unmatchable life story as someone who didn’t add to Trump’s chances to beat Joe Biden (at the time). The negative naysayers, again, failed to take into account Vance’s intangibles as a political partner for Trump. J.D. was confident, positive, immensely articulate and fearless in doing battle with the establishment media. In other words, Vance did everything he was asked to do… and more.
Here's surmising Vance’s vice presidential debate takedown of the hapless cackling Kamala Harris’s choice for number two, Tim Walz, was a key to Trump’s late surge in the 2024 race.
Who did Americans want to be president? J.D. Vance helped clarify the answer.
Trump wins the 2024 election in a victory commentators labeled a “landslide”.
Some were undoubtedly disappointed, but all the drama on Election Night was largely over in terms of who would win by about midnight eastern time as it was clear by then that Donald Trump had defied all the liberal pundits, Democrat apparatchiks and the leftist anti-Trump establishment to win a second term going away.
Trump had done what many considered to be impossible – overcome every single obstacle the left had thrown at him to win (outright, this time, beyond the margin of fraud) – to earn the right to be inaugurated again three weeks from now.
Adjectives are still being invented to describe what Trump did. The American people made the choice – and it was evident they opted for competent leadership and a forward-looking vision to the “woke” nothingness of cackling Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democrats.
Trump also won the all-important (for argument’s sake) popular vote, adding an exclamation point to his success.
2024 will never be forgotten by historians. It was quite a memorable one.
Trump’s transition has been mostly smooth and sets the tone for a consequential 2025
Donald Trump’s resounding win in this year’s election would’ve felt incomplete if he’d been content to rest on his laurels and simply bide his time and enjoy what he’d accomplished as a real estate developer, tabloid celebrity, reality TV star, media mogul, first-time politician-turned outsider president – and then do what no one thought was possible, rise from the negativity to make the MAGA agenda a reality.
Few would have found fault with him if Trump had taken a few weeks to recover. But he didn’t.
Instead of allowing the establishment media to set the tone for his upcoming do-over administration, Trump unleashed a torrid of aggressive anti-establishment go-getters who will, starting the first day, figuratively wreck the nation’s corrupted government institutions and install new policies that (hopefully) will bring promised results for the American people.
That’s precisely what Americans hired Trump to do – lay waste to the keepers of the Swamp and the status quo. Business-as-usual simply wouldn’t do for a man like Donald Trump. The new president is serious about keeping the promises he made on the campaign trail, and the people he’s bringing in to run the executive departments share his urgency.
No one claims it will be simple to enact the MAGA agenda. Democrats retain too much power to foul things up on Capitol Hill, the Republican blue bloods are mostly still there and the establishment media won’t exactly dissolve itself and begin to support Trump and his mission.
But if 2024 is remembered for anything, it will be for providing a chance to bring in leaders who reject the current state of American politics and won’t be hesitant to devise new solutions to old problems, protect cherished God-given constitutional rights – and do things the right way. Donald Trump isn’t and has never been perfect. But he’s just the right man for the job in 2025.
Joe Biden economy
inflation
Biden cognitive decline
gas prices,
Nancy Pelosi
Biden senile
Kamala Harris candidacy
Donald Trump campaign
Harris Trump debates
J.D. Vance
Kamala vice president
Speaker Mike Johnson
Donald Trump assassination
Donald Trump
2024 presidential election
Tim Walz
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