Has Trump 2.0 Learned From Trump 1.0?

It's hard to believe, but we're finally here. Four years after all the Sturm und Drang that followed Donald Trump's 2020 electoral loss to Joe Biden, the maestro of Mar-a-Lago is set to be inaugurated once more on Monday as president of the United States.

And what an absolutely wild ride it has been. In the interim four years, Trump has completed nothing less than the single most remarkable comeback—political or otherwise—in American history.

Trump has been prosecuted—four separate times, by three different prosecutors. He was "convicted" of a "crime"—the precise legal theory of which we actually still do not know—in a quintessential show trial in bright-blue New York City. One would-be assassin nicked his ear, coming within millimeters of murdering him on national television. A second would-be assassin was nearly able to fire a clear shot at him on his own Florida golf course. Two opposition party presidential candidates, working in tandem with an ever-supine...