OPINION:
Not since Elvis Presley’s second act in 1968 after returning from military service has there been a bigger American comeback than the resurrection of Donald J. Trump’s political career. And he did it without a guitar.
Three years ago, the newly broken ex-president was roadkill at the end of a very short, explosive political career in the twilight of his life.
By hook and crook, they had finally beaten him. The Deep State had prevailed. The threat to the established order in Washington had been eliminated. The rabid jackals in the political press had finally pulled him down like a rusted statue.
It took a virus — one that government health officials now say should be treated as the common flu — to shut down the world’s economy to weaken him. All the rules protecting election integrity in America were discarded. And the torrent of media lies turned into gushers — both spreading conspiracist lies about Donald Trump and manufacturing elaborate cover-ups to protect now-President Joe Biden.
In the wake of the most corrupt mass mail-in election in American history, Mr. Trump was hounded from office. He retreated to his cavernous mansion at Mar-a-Lago, bitterly weaving his own narratives and nursing his miseries. He was inconsolable.
He was Citizen Kane in his Xanadu, Mr. Trump’s stately pleasure dome, with caverns measureless to man. Cost? No man can say.
He was Citizen Kane in Xanadu — only more alone.
The measureless crowds were gone. The flag-waving motorcades parked. His plane grounded. He was scorned. He was isolated in that way only billionaires can be with their high walls, empty days and contentment so far out of reach that no amount of money can buy.
Perhaps a better comparison is to Col. Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, cocooned in his heart of darkness deep in the jungles of Cambodia.
Had he gone insane? Had he strangled to death on his own caustic truths? Had the natives finally turned on their god-king and hacked him to little pieces in the dark, wet jungles of his isolation?
Whatever.
Mr. Trump was finished, a man with no future.
Old political allies turned on him with serpent eyes, tongues silently flicking for weakness. Politicians who owed their careers to Mr. Trump began plotting against him with reptilian blindness.
They schemed to take over the crowds he had created as if Mr. Trump were just another politician like themselves with transactional, transferrable loyalty.
But they made a crucial mistake. They thought Mr. Trump was merely a flawed man — vulgar, vain and tempestuous. A flawed man like them. Corrupt and dishonest, like them.
Certainly, Mr. Trump is a flawed man in a fallen world. He wears his flaws like gold-roped epaulets on his broad shoulders — without apology. Always without apology.
But his flaws were his salvation. Fueled by retribution and an unquenchable thirst for revenge, Mr. Trump brooded. He toiled. He raged. He spoke more truths. He refused to quit.
“Why do you keep fighting?” he was asked in his quiet mansion.
“Because if I don’t, who will?” he replied wearily.
So, they pursued him like wolves. They were sure he was finished, but when it comes to protecting the power of the political kingdom, no conquest is complete enough.
Arrest him. Jail him. Raid his Xanadu. Mugshot him like a common criminal. Bankrupt him. Destroy his family.
Make the rubble bounce, they like to say. Annihilate Mr. Trump and everything he ever stood for and anything he ever treasured in this life.
Take away his skyscrapers. Ruin his family. Erase his name. Jail him.
Jail him.
Jail him.
And then give lectures about democracy and political norms and election integrity.
Now they know. Mr. Trump is more than just a flawed man. He is a movement. And the more they pursue him, the more powerful his movement becomes.
Brooding. Unstoppable. A ferocious threat to the kingdom of power and corruption.
Their end is near.
Elvis is back in the building. The stage is lighted. The crowd is thundering.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
Correction: A previous version of this column misstated the nature of Presley’s military service.
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