Stubbornness, divine providence, and Donald Trump

Donald Trump has always been a complex character, but to fully understand him now, one must begin with the assassination attempt at Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.

Listen to how Trump described that experience in his second inaugural address:

Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed to take my life. Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.

Even his harshest critics were hesitant to challenge Trump’s grandiose assertion, because — at some level — they could put themselves in Trump’s shoes. And now, three months after the election and a mere three weeks after he was sworn in, the evidence is plain that Trump is a politician reborn, with a purpose renewed. If “Make America Great Again” started as an election slogan, it has been transformed into a divine mission.

An alternate history

Trump 2.0 is the Democrats’ worst nightmare. If he had won a second term in 2020, forcing him to govern with a Chuck Schumer-controlled Senate, he would have been virtually powerless. He would have limped through that second term with the usual bluster and name-calling, but without any new vision or agenda. His mandate would have been simple — keep the economy strong and don’t rock the boat too hard. Play golf whenever possible.

There would have been no Elon Musk and no Department of Government Efficiency. There would have been no Robert Kennedy Jr. or Make America Healthy Again. It is unlikely that there would even have been a housecleaning at the FBI or CIA. Remember, there would not have been a raid at Mar-a-Lago, nor a “deranged” special counsel, nor a Jan. 6 riot in the U.S. Capitol. We would be living in an entirely different world, led for four years by an entirely different Trump on a glide path to retirement.

Viewing Trump as a real-life Mule, the random element in an otherwise orderly and predictable set, is beyond question. He is a disruptor deluxe.

The 2024 election would have been a complete unknown. Republicans would have scrambled to find a worthy successor to Trump, but there would be no anointed one. Almost certainly not Mike Pence, but then who? Josh Hawley? Tom Cotton? Nikki Haley? Tim Scott? Not JD Vance, who would still be a mid-level author and would never have been elected senator from Ohio. The Democrats would not have had to suffer through the embarrassment of a senescent Joe Biden. They would have had a legitimate primary battle in 2024 between Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.), J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.), and Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and maybe Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Kamala Harris would have been an afterthought — or would have withdrawn before Iowa, just as she did in 2020.

The likelihood of a Democratic victory after two consecutive Trump terms would have been high. MAGA itself might have fizzled out from attrition and eight years of mainstream media overkill.

So it’s easy to theorize about the role of divine providence bringing us to this point, but one can’t discount the importance of Trump’s own character in asserting his will against the established order. His ability to withstand the full-court press of two impeachments, two special counsels, two assassination attempts, and multiple felony indictments and convictions to convince the American public to return him to the White House is nothing short of miraculous.

Who is this man, anyway?

If Trump was indeed “saved by God,” there must have been a reason — something that made Trump a perfect vessel for reshaping our times, even though not perfect himself. So what is it?

I’ve tried to think of analogs for Trump’s persona in life and literature and largely come up empty. As a politician, Trump is sui generis. You can scan the Bible for other examples of imperfect perfection such as King David and Cyrus the Great, but it’s best not to impute to a contemporary such as Trump the authority of the Old Testament. Where else do we turn?

A few authors have noted the similarity of Trump to Napoleon Bonaparte, including for his ego, his exile, and his support from the common man. I myself have written twice about such a connection, including once in 2016 before he was elected and once in 2022 after he was banished to Mar-a-Lago. The columns stand the test of time, but there might be one avatar for the Donald drawn from literature that is even more appropriate.

I am thinking of the character known simply as the Mule in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy. Book two of the science fiction series, “Foundation and Empire,” introduces the Mule as a character of such intense individuality that he has the power to break every expectation, exceed every limit, and avoid virtually every trap put in his way as he attempts to conquer the galaxy.

As Asimov has another character explain, “He has no name other than that of the Mule, a name reportedly applied by himself to himself, and signifying, by popular explanation, his immense physical strength, and stubbornness of purpose.”

We need not worry about physical strength in our comparison, but “stubbornness of purpose” can be applied to Trump and to only a few others in U.S. history, including George Washington during his role as commander in chief of the Continental Army and Abraham Lincoln as commander in chief of the Union Army. Were it not for Trump’s extraordinary second term, his divine commission, we might never even have understood his stubbornness of purpose. Oh yes, he was considered mule-headed for his unwillingness to follow political conventions, but until his return from exile, he still tried to curry favor with the ruling class by trying to fit in with expectations rather than imposing his will through brute force.

When Corey Lewandowski encouraged Republicans to “let Trump be Trump,” we thought we knew what he meant. And to some extent, we did. It meant that the unpolished, imperfect Trump was the most authentic politician since “Give ’Em Hell, Harry” Truman and that voters would reward that authenticity with votes. But it wasn’t until the last month or two that we could appreciate how the untrammeled Trump would be able to completely reshape not just the political world, but the actual world, by following his instincts and just getting things done.

A great disruptor

Which brings us back again to the Mule. In Asimov’s epic narrative, the Mule is the one unpredictable factor that has the potential to change the course of galactic history — a history that has otherwise been mapped out with surprising precision by Hari Seldon, the inventor of psychohistory. Seldon provided mankind with a plan to rescue civilization from a coming dark age, and everything was going swimmingly until the Mule arrived on the scene. From that point on, everything became unpredictable, as this one individual is so far outside the box that the box becomes irrelevant.

That is Trump. There are other similarities too. People either love the Mule or hate him, in part because of a technique of mind control that the mutant was born with. No one has accused Trump of possessing extrasensory abilities, but they do accuse him of being a cult leader — a Svengali who can brainwash his disciples and expects absolute devotion. Maybe they are right, but it is not necessary to conclude that Trump uses mind control in order to explain his impact on the zeitgeist. Sufficient is “stubbornness of purpose.”

Viewing Trump as a real-life Mule, the random element in an otherwise orderly and predictable set, is beyond question. He is a disruptor deluxe. And depending on the outcome of his mass reinvention of American political norms, he will either be — like the Mule — the progenitor of a new world order created in the service of self-aggrandizement, or something more.

What that “more” can be, we are waiting to find out. But one thing is certain: There is no one else like Donald Trump on the world stage today. His kind arrives once in a generation, or once in a hundred years or more. Or on the scale of Asimov’s “Foundation” — once in a millennium.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.