Author’s note: While Trump’s decisive victory resolved some of the questions raised in the piece, I have decided not to update it as it seeks to capture a snapshot of a particular moment in time.
(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) “All of a sudden everything was over,” Nick said. “I don’t know why it was. I couldn’t help it. Just like when the three-day blows come now and rip all the leaves off the trees.” –Ernest Hemingway, “The End of Something”
Tuesday, for better or for worse, marks the end of what has been a truly epochal journey.
Hours from this writing, it may end in glory or crushing heartbreak, perhaps even horror, but it will end.
At a rally Saturday in Greensboro, N.C., with only seven more campaign stops to go on Sunday and Monday, former President Donald Trump seemed to get a bit sentimental about his decadelong saga, spanning the past three election cycles.
“We’ve been waiting for four years for this,” he remarked, launching into a familiar line about how he might have spared himself the stress and expense of another presidential run, avoided the relentless lawfare attacks and assassination attempts, and lived out his golden years in the lap of luxury.
“I could have been on the beach—I could have been lots of places, but I would have had no interest,” he said.
While he may have seemed exhausted at times during his sprint to the finish line, Trump never slowed down, recognizing the magnitude of the moment.
“What we’re doing—remember, this is the greatest political movement, probably in the history of the world,” he said. “And this is the movement that is going to bring our country back.”
CENTER OF THE ACTION
With the possible exception of Pennsylvania, no state has been more significant to safeguarding Trump’s pathway back to the White House than North Carolina—the state where my own present journey as Headline USA editor began in 2018, when I relocated from its northern neighbor, Virginia.
It was a bit ironic, in a way, to be moving from within an hour’s drive of Washington, D.C., to a six-hour drive away in order to make my foray into political journalism.
While Charlotte is a fast-growning and bustling city, one of the gems of the modern South, it seemed a bit like Siberia for a reporter hoping to be in the center of the action, cultivating influential sources and witnessing major events firsthand.
That is, until the tightening of the 2024 race brought the center of the action to me.
Final North Carolina update: 🔴 NC is now the most important state in the election, and it all comes down to a red Election Day.
Map updated: https://t.co/OQmut71g35
As predicted in prior updates, yesterday was the Democrats' final and historically best shot at chipping away…
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) November 3, 2024
For a few fleeting weeks, I had the opportunity to cover at least six different campaign events featuring Trump, his vice-presidential running mate JD Vance, and campaign surrogates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. If I had the wherewithal, I might have made it to many others.
I became intimately acquainted with the media pen, oft-derided by Trump at his rallies as he gamefully lambasted the “fake news.”
Yet, partaking in that symbiotic love–hate relationship Trump has with the media, I also delighted in witnessing firsthand the making of history, coming twice to within mere feet from the podium where he spoke, and even riding once in the motorcade from one event to another.
I found myself straddling two worlds: that of the jaded and cynical journalists who treated it as another day at work, and of the throngs of supporters who waited hours in line for the privilege of being in the aura of the fearless MAGA leader.
Although I have no reason to believe Trump recognized my face or my work, I will never know if he was looking and pointing directly at me when, in Greensboro, he acknowledged that there were “a couple good ones” in the media pool.
TRUMP’S ANTI-DEPRESSANT
As much as Trump’s supporters have basked in the privilege of hearing him speak, Trump also seemed to see his campaign not as the means to an end, but as an end unto itself.
“You know the way to stop depression: Work your ass off,” Trump told the audience in Greensboro.
“You don’t have time,” he continued. “You want to work so hard that you don’t have time for depression.”
Having perfected the art of the improvisational “weave,” he seemed reluctant, on Saturday, to be letting go.
“It was a confluence of things that happened, and it became something so special,” he said.
“… We want to get this done, and then after that, what we’re going to have is a different form—a probably different name, not a word ‘rally,'” Trump continued. “But we’re gonna be much happier, because we’re going to set our country into the right path.”
AN UNWRITTEN VERSE
In the tumultuous days after the 2020 election, inspiration struck, and I wrote a poem envisioning Trump’s triumphant 2024 return.
Although certain details may have grown outdated, it has held up remarkably well and, at times, proven to be uncannily prescient.
My poem "Return of the MAGA" composed in November 2020 and revised last November is still as relevant now as when it was written, if not more so.https://t.co/gSjNV529CP pic.twitter.com/yZYEk4HIRX
— Ben Sellers (@realbensellers) June 1, 2024
In mere hours, the poem, however, will be nothing more than a footnote, with the next verse still unwritten on a blank page.
With any luck, Tuesday will be, as Trump himself said, “Liberation Day” for America.
Trump: Nov. 5, 2024 will be #LiberationDay in America pic.twitter.com/hMaptKAC8W
— Ben Sellers (@realbensellers) November 5, 2024
Yet, in the off chance that things go awry, forcing us to relive the nation-rending anxieties of the 2020 race and the subsequent Biden presidency, we can be assured that the MAGA movement will carry on in some form.
Trump himself will never simply fade away (as World War 2 Gen. Douglas MacArthur lamented in his famous 1951 retirement speech), but will continue to fight, fight, fight until the very end.
Sweet though the prospect of victory may be, it is the struggle that has secured Trump’s legacy in the annals of U.S. history. And another defeat at the hands of the deep state would simply give him the opportunity to begin the journey anew en route to 2028.
As Hemingway’s hero, Nick Adams, comes to realize, “He felt happy now. There was not anything that was irrevocable.”
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
