"People laughed at first, and thought his immediate surge in the polls was a fluke, but they were wrong: his support stayed high, as he both reflected and shaped the party’s base by humiliating GOP leaders to establish dominance over them. ...
For Trump personally, the stakes in 2024 have never been higher. The risks he’s taken to get here have crossed so many legal boundaries (forget about ethical lines, come on) as to make this quite existential for him."