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Donald Trump’s 2024 in Pictures
Text by Michael Gold
Donald J. Trump entered 2024 with a mug shot, four pending criminal trials and lawsuits questioning whether he should even be on the ballot.
He faced a collection of ambitious primary opponents eager to loosen the former president’s hold on a Republican Party that remained firmly within his grip, even after his 2020 election loss and efforts to overturn it. On the other side was President Biden, who had already carved out a path to defeating him and remained confident he could do so again.
It was a set of hurdles that would have stopped most other political candidates cold, or that might have given Republican voters some pause. Mr. Trump pushed ahead.
Taken as a whole, the Trump campaign of 2024 embraced crass, vengeful and even apocalyptic imagery. The former president used profanity on the trail, flung a stream of sharp personal insults, vowed “retribution” against his enemies and predicted World War III and other catastrophes would break out if his opponent won the election.
The chaos was seen as a virtue. Increasingly unfiltered, Mr. Trump built a message on his grievances. He argued that his foes were so focused on taking him and his movement down that they were ignoring the real concerns of American voters.
Republicans seemed to reward him for the turbulence. Mr. Trump’s year got off to a strong start, with a landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses that cleared the field of competitors. He followed it with a dominant win in the New Hampshire primary that set up an easy cruise to the nomination.
