Number two, very soon he realized that what Letitia James and Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and E. Jean Carroll and Jack Smith were doing was so egregious that he would be sympathetic. And that started with the talks at the bodegas in New York or the mugshot. And that would win him empathy, that he would be everyman, the victim of this administrative state under the guise of lawfare.
And that was the second thing.

The third, he was convinced that Joe Biden was a waxen effigy. He said that from the very beginning. He's decrepit, and he knew that the Obama people would put in the most radical socialist agenda we've seen: complete open borders, no deterrence abroad. There's two big invasions, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine. Big crime spikes. We had a 21% aggregate inflation. Drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Kind of give aid to Israel, but only begrudgingly, and wage a rhetorical campaign against it. Appease the Chinese-that started at Anchorage, almost the first thing.

So he knew that their record would reflect well on his prior record. So you add it all up, and he was driven, in a Nietzschean sense, that anything that didn't destroy him was going to make him stronger.

Trump as a Historical and Tragic Hero:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I'm prejudiced because I'm a classical historian, but the Athenian Themistocles, against all odds, figured out how to beat the Persians at Salamis. It's a long story, but it was an intricate strategy. And then he revolutionized the Athenians by building a wall to the Piraeus and making it a sea power and a radical-what would become a radical democracy, very different than the rest of the city-states.

But the way he did it, he used methodologies that shocked the Athenians, and he was of dubious ancestry. Not that Trump is, but he is a Queens-accented [unclear] coming out of the jungle of Manhattan real estate. You have to survive in that and succeed. You have to have-you've seen everything possible in the human condition.

And so he saved Athens, but Athens didn't really repay him for that. And they concentrated on the methodologies by which he had succeeded more than they did the actual accomplishment. So he didn't end well.

And I've used that metaphor of the tragic hero. And he fits a lot of the John Ford stereotypes, American Westerns, where the society is almost paralyzed and it has existential problems, whether they're cattle barons or, in The Magnificent Seven, bandidos, or revenge killers in High Noon. And Americans are fascinated with this one lone person who comes out of nowhere and says, "I can solve the problem, and here's what I'm going to do."

And at first they're shocked, but they're so desperate, they welcome-that's what they did with Themistocles. And then they do solve the problem, but they do so in maybe an uncouth or an antisocial manner.
And there's no objections until they become very successful and the problem seems solved. And then they basically say that famous line in George Stevens' Shane: "I wish there were guns here." And when he rides off, he can say, well, there's no threat, but there's no guns now either.

Or in The Magnificent Seven, when Yul Brynner says-well, the old man says, "Well, they really appreciate it." And he said, "They won't-yes, they do-but they won't be unhappy when we leave."
Or John Wayne, when he walks out of The Searchers. He saves Natalie Wood. The whole movie is now resolved. Everybody's happy. Not one person says thank you to him. He turns out and you see that shot where he walks out by himself.

And that's sort of what Trump is. If you look at what he's done, it's just absolutely amazing. And even on the economy, we're talking about affordability right now. Yesterday, they said that business output is the highest in six years. Two days earlier, they said the poverty rate is the lowest it's ever been, at 10.5%. California's is 21%.