Trump the survivor

OPINION:

Former President Donald Trump electrified the GOP convention in Milwaukee on Thursday. He delivered a rousing message of unity after his near-death experience.

“What the events of last Saturday make clear,” he said, “is that every single moment we have on earth is a gift from God.”

The assassin’s bullet he dodged on that Pennsylvania field wasn’t his first brush with efforts to take him out. His political career is a tale of survival, having dodged an endless series of twisted prosecutions, slander and dirty tricks.

At the New York attorney general’s urging, activist Judge Arthur Engoron imposed a preposterous $454 million judgment over a meaningless disagreement in real estate valuation — a textbook example of an excessive fine.

Even if Mr. Trump’s appeal is rejected, leftists will still have failed in their goal of looting his bank account. Mr. Trump has more cash now than when their legal shot was fired, thanks to the $1.2 billion windfall from Truth Social.

Democrats expected the GOP would shun a candidate saddled with legal troubles, but the opposite happened. Support flooded in — breaking campaign records — as voters registered their outrage at the rigged prosecutions.

In his first outing as a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump had to parry Hillary Clinton’s smear that he was a Russian agent. Leftists in the media eagerly spread insane falsehoods, accusing the notorious germaphobe of cavorting in an unsanitary manner with ladies of the evening in Moscow hotel rooms.

The calumnies were relentless. When Mr. Trump said there were “fine people” who didn’t want historic statues torn down in Virginia, deceitful Democrats and activists in the media twisted his words to say he endorsed Nazis — even though the very next words in the transcript condemned the handful of neo-Nazis at the event.

Time after time, mendacious operatives knowingly misconstrued Mr. Trump’s words. When he mentioned an experimental ultraviolet light therapy, they said he recommended that people “inject bleach” as a medical treatment. This was a palpable fabrication, but the scoundrels didn’t care as long as it sullied Mr. Trump’s reputation.

Perhaps the greatest fraud of all is the yarn about Mr. Trump “inciting insurrection” by telling followers to “peacefully and patriotically” protest the handling of the 2020 election at the Capitol.

Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, refused the then-president’s offer of National Guard troops to keep things calm on Jan. 6. That allowed the crowd to get a bit rambunctious, so the left could claim a mob of unarmed protesters commanded by a guy in a Viking helmet was going to bring the government to its knees.

Over 1,000 of Mr. Trump’s supporters were arrested and jailed over this fairy tale. Even so, the Supreme Court just said the “obstruction of Congress” charge wielded against many of them was bogus.

When Democrats impeached Mr. Trump over Jan. 6, he never backed down. He didn’t pretend to be sick while a cabal of donors pushed him out of office and decided on a replacement better suited to their financial interests.

In Butler, Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s first thought when the bullets were flying wasn’t what was best for him — forever disproving the media lie that he’s a narcissist. He stood, a survivor, reassuring the American people because that was what the country needed in the moment.

That’s what leadership looks like.