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00:21A stunning political comeback.
00:24Donald Trump's return to power.
00:26A new chapter in American history will begin.
00:29Drawing on years of interviews,
00:31his long history of overcoming obstacles.
00:34Trump cannot see himself through the prism of loser.
00:39And opposition.
00:41His second presidential campaign was a revenge tour.
00:44Now on Frontline, Trump's comeback.
00:48For Trump, today's inauguration marks the greatest political comeback in generations.
01:02He comes back to the White House.
01:04Remarkable when you consider the way you left the White House.
01:07Enjoying what was thought to be an impossible milestone.
01:12You think back to after January 6th.
01:15The thought of him coming back to the presidency was not even remotely a possibility.
01:20A total impossibility.
01:23To everyone but Trump.
01:25So help me God. So help me God.
01:28Congratulations.
01:29Congratulations, Mr. President.
01:32The political comeback is complete.
01:34He is now president.
01:36We will never see anything like this in the lifespan of this country, I think, ever again.
01:42It wasn't just the most historic, most improbable, impossible comeback.
01:49It was a roar back.
01:53It was Donald Trump's greatest comeback in a lifetime of trying to prove he was a winner.
01:59In the scope of American history, it's almost unbelievable.
02:04In the scope of Donald Trump's life, it's kind of routine.
02:09The story of his life is massive swings between utter failure and glorious victory.
02:20And here's Trump about as triumphant as it gets.
02:26It's a story that goes back decades.
02:29I don't think you can understand Trump's presidential career
02:33without understanding his history in business.
02:39In entertainment.
02:41His life story in New York.
02:44His father and the family that he grew up in.
02:48For him, winning is everything.
02:50Tell me about the early days of Donald Trump.
03:01What kind of a family life do you have?
03:02I mean, did you go outside and play ball?
03:05Or did you have what we call a normal life, a normal upbringing?
03:08Well, Rona, I think I was probably brought up in a very normal fashion.
03:15I have brothers and sisters.
03:18I have wonderful parents, wonderful family, really very wonderful family.
03:21Are you like your dad?
03:24Well, I hope so.
03:25I have a very wonderful father.
03:27And I would hope I'd be somewhat like my father.
03:30What's he like?
03:31A strong, dynamic gentleman.
03:35Is he loving, kind, giving?
03:37Absolutely.
03:38Absolutely.
03:39Totally.
03:40Fred Trump was a machine.
03:45I mean, he was a human machine.
03:51He was driven beyond whatever the description of driven could ever mean.
03:57And when you look at the picture of Fred and you look at Donald, you see the great resemblance between the two.
04:05And when you think about Fred's energy, you see how it is channeled through Donald.
04:12The way the game got played in his household was, if you did not win, you lost.
04:19And losing was you got crushed.
04:22Losing was you didn't matter.
04:24Losing was you were nothing.
04:28In the beginning, young Donald wasn't the winner in the family.
04:32That was his older brother, Freddie.
04:35My dad was the favorite initially, simply because he was the first.
04:40He was the namesake and the heir apparent, right?
04:43Mary Trump has been publicly critical of the way her famous uncle and grandfather treated her dad.
04:50He mattered to my grandfather as an extension of his ambition.
04:54But as my father grew older, his personality became clear.
05:01He was sensitive.
05:04He was kind and generous.
05:07He liked hanging out with his friends who adored him.
05:10And maybe worst of all, he had interests outside of the family business.
05:14My grandfather understood none of that.
05:19He wasn't a killer.
05:21His father told the boys to be killers, but Freddie was never a killer.
05:27He wasn't hyper aggressive.
05:29He wasn't hyper competitive.
05:30My grandfather treated him so poorly with such little respect and made his life miserable.
05:37Donald was able to watch what my grandfather considered the mistakes that my dad made.
05:44He took that lesson to heart and became the killer, the tough guy, the person who would do anything in his power to be the winner.
05:53Could never be wrong.
05:55Could never admit a mistake.
05:57And avoided being kind because all of those things in my grandfather's universe spoke to an unforgivable weakness.
06:03And my grandfather finally started to see in him the son he wanted.
06:13As he grew older, Donald seized the chance to be the winner in his father's eyes.
06:20The older sister, Mary Ann, told me that Donald was like a wind, a hot wind at Fred Jr.'s back.
06:28He didn't quite throw him under the bus to mix metaphors, but he was certainly right behind him.
06:37Donald was standing right there and ready to take over.
06:41Do you think you have to have a killer instinct in order to be successful?
06:46I think you have to have some, to a large extent, I think you do have to have at least a winning instinct.
06:51I think that the world is made up of people with either killer instincts or without killer instincts.
07:00And the people that seem to emerge are the people that are competitive and driven and with a certain instinct to win.
07:07As Donald rose in the family real estate business, Fred Jr. fell out of favor.
07:14My grandfather shoved Donald's success in my dad's face a lot.
07:21And I think he found that difficult.
07:26He left the family business and became an airline pilot and an alcoholic.
07:33My dad had just bought in hook, line and sinker into the family's assessment of my father as an alcoholic failure who'd never accomplished anything.
07:44And their line about Donald as this extraordinary, self-made, brilliant businessman.
07:50Donald told me that he and his father had perhaps been way too hard on him.
07:58They used to say to him because he was an airline pilot, what's the difference between what you do, Freddie, and driving a bus?
08:08After years of heavy drinking, Fred Trump Jr. died of a heart attack at 42.
08:13You had a brother, Fred Jr.
08:17Right.
08:18Who died.
08:19Your brother was open, too vulnerable maybe, drank.
08:24Did this make you, I don't know, close up, keep it all inside?
08:30I learned a lot of things from Fred, but I did learn from myself that I don't want to be open.
08:37I don't want to make myself vulnerable.
08:43He had become his father's apprentice and early on learned a vivid lesson in how to engineer a comeback.
08:56There came a day in 1973 when the federal government sued Donald and Fred by name and their company for racial bias.
09:04This was one of the greatest racial bias cases of its time.
09:07This was a particularly egregious case because the Trump Organization had allegedly put large C's to connote people of color who were applying for apartments.
09:21The government had him nailed.
09:25They had the Trump Organization nailed.
09:27There were multiple Trump employees who confessed that they had been instructed to divert black applicants for apartments,
09:36to discourage them, to tell them that apartments had been rented when they hadn't been.
09:41Donald Trump's regular lawyers tell him, settle it, just move on, do the right thing, do what you're supposed to do under the law.
09:51And Trump's not happy with that advice.
09:55He wanted to fight the allegations.
09:58He found one of New York's most notorious lawyers, the infamous Roy Cohn.
10:03Roy Cohn.
10:04No one was as powerful as Roy Cohn.
10:07Roy Cohn was the man about town.
10:10He was the one who connected everyone.
10:12He was the one who put people together and deals together.
10:16In one day, you might see Carmine de Sapio.
10:19He was an old mafia don.
10:22Or you might see Cardinal Spellman from the Catholic Church.
10:25Or you might see George Steinbren, the owner of the Yankees.
10:28They all were clients of Roy's.
10:30It was a crazy assemblage of people.
10:34Roy Cohn had 20 years of being a really aggressive, no-holds-barred, go for the jugular, fight back,
10:45anybody says something to you, throw it back at them guy.
10:48He was famous for that behavior.
10:53I met him at a supper club.
10:56And we were seated at tables next to each other.
10:58We were introduced.
11:00And he said, listen, I've spent two days with these establishment law firms about a case we have.
11:05It was a civil rights case or something.
11:08And they were all telling us, give up, do this, sign a decree, and all of that.
11:12He says, I followed your career, and you seem a little bit crazy like I am.
11:16And you stand up to the establishment.
11:19Can I come see you?
11:20And I said, sure.
11:21Cohn would lay out a comeback strategy that appealed to Trump.
11:25Do whatever it takes to win.
11:28When they met, Roy said to him, you might be guilty, it doesn't matter.
11:34Go after the Justice Department.
11:36Don't ever admit guilt.
11:38Fight it.
11:39You'll kill them.
11:40Just deny everything and fight.
11:43And Trump was totally taken by that, and he hired Roy Cohn as his lawyer.
11:47That was a defining moment for Donald Trump.
11:53Roy Cohn showed him that you can turn around a situation just by ignoring the facts and going after your attacker.
12:04Trump countersued the Justice Department for $100 million.
12:10I have never, nor has anyone in our organization ever, to the best of my knowledge, discriminated or shown bias in renting our apartments.
12:20This is a classic example of where Trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is he's a counterpuncher.
12:29So somebody comes after him and says that he's done something nefarious and horrible.
12:36And he just goes back at them with all guns blazing.
12:40You know, boom, boom, boom.
12:43And admits nothing.
12:44Never admit anything.
12:46Never say you made a mistake.
12:48Just keep coming.
12:50The discrimination case wound up where the Trumps agreed to a large settlement.
12:56And they played it as a win.
13:00The strategy was you always play it as a win.
13:05Roy went on the offensive and said this is a victory.
13:08Trump was vindicated.
13:10He knew before anybody else did that the court of public opinion is often more important than a court of law.
13:18The lesson from Roy Cohn was don't go the way the establishment does.
13:26Don't play by the rules.
13:30With Roy Cohn's connections and his father's money, Trump put his mark on Manhattan.
13:36A luxury high rise that could project his status as a winner.
13:41When he built Trump Tower, he got a whopper tax abatement that was intended for poor areas of town.
13:51His building was built a block away from Tiffany's.
13:55That was a deteriorating area of town?
13:59I don't think so.
14:01You can get away with almost everything.
14:04And Donald took that to heart.
14:06That's the only metric that counts.
14:11On opening night, Trump's salesmanship seemed to pay off.
14:15And they had the fabulous opening.
14:18La Creme de la Creme of New York showed up for the opening of the Trump Tower.
14:22It was an amazing event.
14:24And it looked so glamorous with the waterfalls and everything.
14:29It was really magnificent.
14:30Donald was like a kid in the candy store. He was so excited.
14:36You know, you have dreams and aspirations and you hope they're going to turn out great.
14:41And then when they turn out and they're great, look how happy you are.
14:46It was just a monumental day for him.
14:49Despite it all, he couldn't win over those he most wanted to impress.
14:54The establishment of New York thought of Trump, if they thought of him at all, as a joke, as a vulgarian, as someone who was silly, who was just a vulgar builder.
15:11When you talk to real estate moguls in New York, to this day, they disdain Donald Trump.
15:18They thought he was a guy interested in self-exposure.
15:23And lacked humility and modesty.
15:28He was considered loud and obnoxious and too self-centered and not someone who fit in.
15:36This is where Donald's resentment of the elite comes from.
15:41Trump was determined to overcome the ridicule.
15:51To prove the elites wrong.
15:54He realized that it didn't matter if the other rich folks rejected him.
16:00What mattered was persuading the larger public that Trump was the height of luxury.
16:07Put Trump out there as this impossibly rich playboy who had the ability to buy up anything and be this giant figure.
16:19It would become part of the Trump playbook. Go big.
16:23Donald Trump just doesn't know the word small or the meaning of the word small.
16:27His real estate holdings are enormous.
16:29A prince of New York, he's Donald Trump, the man who has everything.
16:33Trump had an intuitive understanding that as long as his footprint was getting larger in the city, that he could eventually overcome what any establishment would think.
16:48And that they were going to become fossilized and he would rise.
16:52He puts his name on almost everything he builds, says it's a symbol of quality.
17:01It did seem out of control. Casino after casino after casino after casino.
17:09Hotels, yacht. Everywhere he turned. Another big piece of real estate here, another big piece of real estate there.
17:16It's all about Donald. That's all he cares about. He didn't talk about building a great company. He talked about building Donald.
17:28Alan Marcus would become Trump's longtime public relations advisor.
17:33Everybody puts complexity behind Donald. There is no complexity. It's all simplicity. It's all about Donald.
17:40It's total narcissism.
17:44But behind the scenes, Trump's empire was in trouble.
17:48The swashbuckling real estate mogul is in a cash crunch.
17:53The businesses never really did that well.
17:56He was a failure again and again and again, whether it was with his casino hotels in New Jersey, whether it was with the Plaza Hotel in New York.
18:08One project after another would end in failure.
18:12Trump's casino business will file for bankruptcy next month.
18:15Midas had lost his touch.
18:16Six bankruptcies.
18:19Stiffing contractors left and right.
18:23Vendors suing him again and again.
18:26It is a litany of failure.
18:29Trump was being portrayed as a loser.
18:32I think he was scared.
18:37I think he was in a very bad shape for a long time.
18:42But stubborn and resilient and demanding and self-confident all at the same time.
18:51I mean, he never really weakened. You never saw a weakened Donald.
18:57With all your financial problems, do you think you will survive?
18:59Why do you say they're problems?
19:01Are you not having problems?
19:02Don't believe the press. Don't believe everything you read.
19:05Is everything financially okay?
19:07Don't believe everything you read. I'll tell you.
19:10I don't think he really believed that it was over for him for one minute.
19:20The minute he thinks that way, it's over.
19:22If I start to not think of myself as a winner, then what am I?
19:29I'm a loser.
19:31That essentially means I don't exist.
19:35I'm nothing.
19:37It was the strategy he'd learned from his father and from Roy Cohn.
19:42Never admit defeat.
19:43Now, a guy who has that kind of chutzpah is genuinely unique.
19:52I think his most revealing book is The Art of the Comeback.
19:56The opening page, he says, this is the moment where you either get depressed or you start planning the comeback.
20:01And this is the story of the comeback.
20:07To fuel that early business comeback, he turned to the key asset he had left, his name.
20:14It really dawned on Trump that he could make a huge business empire out of putting his name everywhere.
20:22God, I don't have to kill myself trying to buy up land and deal with zoning boards and, you know, go crazy, and half the time it doesn't work anyway.
20:34Why don't I just sell my name?
20:37For Trump, real estate was now a side business, marketing his own name, a full-time job.
20:44It's amazing.
20:46A big and tasty for just a dollar?
20:48How do you do it? What's your secret?
20:49He used his celebrity to sell everything from computers to hamburgers.
20:54Got a buck? You're in luck.
20:57Together, Grimace, we could own this town.
21:00He's seen that it's a consumer country.
21:05We're all consumers. We're trained to be consumers.
21:08We're used to being sold to. He's a really good salesman.
21:12Cold Steve Austin. What's going on over here?
21:14He was willing to do almost anything.
21:16Hey, look at this! Donald Trump!
21:20Donald Trump!
21:22Oh, my God!
21:24He was seen for quite a long time as a punchline to jokes about the excesses and the failures of the 1980s.
21:30And he'd become, you know, a human shingle and a punchline.
21:35And The Apprentice turned all of that on its head.
21:42My name's Donald Trump, and I'm the largest real estate developer in New York.
21:47Can you imagine you're Donald Trump and you've been creating yourself as the people's billionaire for 20 or 30 years?
21:55And someone comes along and says, I want you to play that role on TV once a week.
22:02This was a dream come true. I think Donald would have paid to get that gig.
22:08And who will be The Apprentice?
22:10Trump had come back big from the financial abyss.
22:15For 14 seasons, he is viewed in a perfect light.
22:21Okay, folks, I'm really busy today, so we're gonna go quickly.
22:25He's perfectly made up. He's perfectly coiffed. He's perfectly lit.
22:30He's in the high back chair making tough decisions. What does he look like?
22:35He looks like a president.
22:38No longer with us. You're fired. I have to say you're fired.
22:41You're not gonna be thrown out, okay?
22:43Thank you. Thank you very much.
22:44On a script, sure, everybody's a genius.
22:46Try to interrupt you.
22:47Jason, Jason, this is a tough one. You're fired.
22:51People looked and said, wow, what a businessman. What a great manager.
22:56It's all a fantasy.
23:01It was all fiction.
23:04But people think it's real.
23:09The Apprentice allowed him to tell his story on his own terms.
23:13I am a big, successful, huge developer. I'm a billionaire.
23:19He got to sell that image to America, and they bought it.
23:22Donald Trump Emmy nomination.
23:23They loved it, and they couldn't get enough of it.
23:27His popularity was never higher, and he could do no wrong at that stage.
23:32And I think that he realized, wow, if I've hit the high, let's take it to the, where can you go from there?
23:43I want to be president.
23:44I want to be president.
23:47It was only after The Apprentice that he saw that he could take that fame nationwide.
23:55And if he could take that fame nationwide, what bigger stage was there to play on than the presidency?
24:03The next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
24:08Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
24:11We love you!
24:13How does my hair look? Is it okay?
24:14He recognized that entertainment is now a central part of American politics.
24:21You confuse everything that he had learned about celebrity and entertainment and ratings from having been on The Apprentice into a presidential campaign.
24:32We're tired of what's happening. We're going to take our country back. We're going to take it back. We're going to take it back.
24:41He had this way of connecting with people where they felt, and probably, that their voice in politics was a total political novice who, like them, is an outsider to the system.
24:55They felt that he was, Donald Trump was clasping hands with them on the outside of the glass, pressing their nose, looking in and saying, when is it my turn? What's in it for me?
25:04Donald Trump!
25:08This campaign is about giving a voice to those who don't have one. I am your voice. I am your voice.
25:22This movement's been there, and it was looking for the right leader to say, we matter.
25:28The wood was out there drying and drying and drying. It was just waiting for the right person to throw the match in.
25:33And then lead the fire in the right direction. And that's what Donald Trump did.
25:37He speaks for the people. Things he's saying, I've been saying for years. When he wins, we all win.
25:44Trump was willing to go where other politicians wouldn't.
25:48Donald says, people love to hate. And so I'm going to build hatred for immigration.
25:55Build a wall. Build a wall.
25:59And says, you know, these people are rapists.
26:01When Mexico sends its people, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
26:10Establishment types recoiled in horror. But this other segment of the population, which had been ignored for so long, saw, that's our fighter. That's our guy. He's not with them.
26:22I am with you. I will fight for you. And I will win for you.
26:31Finally, someone who doesn't care if he's part of their club or not.
26:37Which makes him part of our club.
26:45But then, just before the 2016 election, a crisis that threatened to end it all.
26:51What happened on October 7th is we were in a conference room in Trump Tower.
26:57And Hope Hicks was out in the atrium and is signaling to me. So I went out. And she said, I don't know what to make of this. It's just an email.
27:08She's got this transcript. And she's, like, about to cry. She goes, oh, this is terrible. I said, what are you so upset about? What is this?
27:17And I said, The Washington Post is going to publish this story in an hour. And I go, what's so bad about it? And she goes, well, look at it. She says, I'm grabbing by the .
27:24And I go, oh, maybe I haven't focused on that. So look down. I go, oh, okay, okay.
27:28You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
27:36Whatever you want. Grab them by the . I can do anything.
27:45One hundred percent, I thought it was over for Trump. I didn't think he was going to withdraw after Access Hollywood, but I certainly thought he had no chance of winning.
27:53That was unlike anything we'd ever seen before. That's sort of a tape with that kind of language.
28:00The Trump camp has swiftly launched into disaster mode.
28:04This is a political disaster.
28:06A big, big development in this campaign as it comes.
28:10Reince had pretty much told the RNC, this thing's over. Exit stage left, get out of the building.
28:17And there started to be this mass exodus.
28:19Now we've got a full revolt. Pence is nowhere to be found.
28:24He's not out there saying great. He gives him, you know, we get a letter from him.
28:28Paul Ryan's out of the campaign. McConnell's out.
28:30Because they thought they're going to lose the Republican Party.
28:32They thought every woman in America will never vote for a Republican again, right?
28:35Because this guy's a barbarian.
28:38Over the years, several women had accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
28:43And now, more would come forward.
28:47After the now infamous tape came out, so have more allegations of unwanted sexual advances
28:52from incidents that allegedly happened years ago.
28:55Two more women have come forward claiming he groped them,
28:58including a former contestant on Trump's reality show, The Apprentice.
29:02It looked like his past was catching up to him.
29:04Women accusing him of groping and sexually assaulting them over the years.
29:08At least seven of them now. Two more women came...
29:11But he defended himself, denied the allegations of sexual misconduct,
29:16and was undeterred.
29:18He had this belief, going back to his time with The Apprentice,
29:22going back to his long years in New York, that this country,
29:25the people who could elect him president of the United States,
29:28saw things much more like he did, which is a shrug,
29:32that this is just Trump being Trump.
29:34Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
29:37You're all the way up on the 25th floor at Trump Tower.
29:40You can hear, on the streets, Trump goes,
29:43What's that? And you look down.
29:45Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
29:47There's literally this mob down there.
29:51He just goes, These are my people. I gotta go talk to my people.
29:54Trump just walks out there.
29:56Here he is, Donald! Donald!
29:59Woo-hoo! Donald!
30:01Nothing humiliates Donald Trump.
30:03He walked down onto the street. People cheered him. He said,
30:07It's over. It's good. And he was right.
30:09People didn't care.
30:11And his people were still there. They still followed him.
30:16They say, I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that?
30:19Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,
30:22and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible.
30:26From the Fifth Avenue comment to the Access Hollywood moment,
30:32every time people try to hold him to account,
30:36every time people try to impose consequences on him,
30:41that deepens the support that he gets from his base.
30:46Because it says to the public, this guy is taking the arrows for you,
30:52and when he stands up for himself, he's fighting for you.
30:56Donald Trump goes from being the candidate to the leader.
31:07A textbook case of disruption coming to Washington.
31:11Donald Trump had come back from scandal once again to win the presidency.
31:17He looks at the presidency as a show.
31:19Remember, he was the host of a reality show for 14 years.
31:22He even says that to his aides.
31:24Think of every day as another half-hour episode in this show.
31:29So how do we get attention?
31:31Now arrives the hour of action.
31:37Chaos, confusion, and anger growing in the wake of President Trump's immigration ban.
31:42Stops all entry from some predominantly Muslim nations.
31:46We want our country to be a sanctuary for law-abiding Americans, not criminal aliens.
31:53The growing outrage over families being separated at the border.
31:56Showcasing unbelievable cruelty on the part of the U.S. government.
32:00We'd never had a president like that.
32:02How am I doing? Am I doing? Okay, I'm president. Hey, I'm president.
32:06Can you believe it, right?
32:08Trump does enjoy being the center of attention.
32:11When Trump is on the national scene, you think about him all the time,
32:14because attention is his oxygen.
32:17Russian collusion. Give me a break.
32:20You see the same tools that he's always used to defend himself.
32:25I'm not concerned about anything with the Russian investigation because it's a hoax.
32:30That's enough. Put down the mic.
32:32Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down?
32:34Which is, go on the attack. Attack the investigators.
32:37President Trump now facing outrage after firing Comey.
32:40I did you a great favor when I fired this guy.
32:43It's very much the Roy Cohen message. Just counterpunch no matter what.
32:48I mean, and from the start, he just, you know, he always hits as hard as he possibly can,
32:53and harder than he's been hit if he can.
32:55Jews will not destroy Charlotte!
32:58Mayhem in Charlottesville.
32:59President Trump under fire after Charlottesville saying that there were, quote,
33:03very fine people on both sides.
33:06Controversy after controversy, Trump would come out on top.
33:12I see Charlottesville as a way of using race to cement his relationship with his base.
33:20I think there's blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either.
33:26It happens over and over again where people say, oh my gosh, this is it.
33:31No president can survive this. Quite the opposite.
33:35Donald Trump will prove at this moment and many others to come that nothing defeats him.
33:41Dramatic end to a nearly five-month war with Democrats.
33:48President Trump has been acquitted in his impeachment trial.
33:51Impeachment is finally over.
33:53President Trump acquitted by U.S. Senate.
33:56Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
33:58Thank you very much.
34:00It was a presidency marked by constant fighting.
34:04To control the Republican Party.
34:07Transform the Supreme Court.
34:10Avoid legal and political challenges.
34:13And win re-election.
34:16By February of 2020, you see Trump's popularity skyrocket.
34:21We come into a poll, I show him the oval, and he was winning in a landslide.
34:27He had a battle map that no one had seen since Reagan.
34:33That is February of 2020.
34:38And I remember going home that night and seeing the pictures coming out of China and Italy and other places of COVID.
34:45The growing worries and response to the deadly coronavirus.
34:48Wuhan, China, that's the epicenter of this.
34:51Three cities now under lockdown in China.
34:54And I, I started scratching my head, and I was like, this thing could take all of this down.
35:02Trump would fight COVID the Trump way.
35:06He immediately turned to what he knew best, which is the rules of Trump, the way he's always done business.
35:12So he puts himself at the center.
35:14President Trump taking to the White House briefing room, surrounded by his-
35:17Daily briefings.
35:19We're ready for it.
35:20It is what it is.
35:21We're ready for it.
35:22You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.
35:28What he learned in terms of coping with his parents, what he learned in New York real estate,
35:33what he learned from Roy Cohn is, I can manufacture and get a very large people to believe my truth.
35:41We have done an incredible job.
35:43We're going to continue.
35:45It's going to disappear.
35:47One day, it's like a miracle.
35:48It will disappear.
35:49Yes.
35:50And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it, and it will go away.
35:54Just stay calm.
35:55And again, this is going away.
35:57This is going away.
35:59But this is a crisis that his 45, 50-year skill set, the Roy Cohn playbook, doesn't work with
36:08this crisis because it's scientific.
36:10It's fact-based science.
36:13His reaction to COVID totally fits his playbook for all the other crises that he not only waged
36:21and waded through, but triumphed over.
36:24Empty streets lead to packed emergency rooms across New York City.
36:28It's just that this one is so undeniable.
36:32People are dying.
36:33Paralysis in this typically vibrant city in just a matter of weeks.
36:37Pima sent 85 refrigerated trucks to New York City to hold the people who've perished.
36:43I knew it was really bad.
36:47Within a few months, his polling was in the bucket.
36:50I tried to kind of have an intervention.
36:54My last throw myself onto the hot coals was, we're losing, and we're losing because of how
37:00we're handling COVID.
37:02We were wrong on our framing of what we were doing on COVID.
37:05The onstage presentations from Trump were being wrong.
37:10And if the election was held today, we'd lose.
37:13And he didn't like hearing that.
37:15He got very upset with me.
37:17That was the last time I ever was in the Oval Office.
37:21Trump once again found himself on the ropes.
37:28The Fox News decision desk can now project that former Vice President Joe Biden will win
37:35Pennsylvania and Nevada.
37:37He is president-elect Joseph Robinette Biden.
37:42He'd lost, but he'd now do what he'd always done.
37:47One of Donald Trump's great strengths and also one of his great weaknesses is that he lives
37:52in a reality distortion field.
37:54Any time he encounters a setback, he just rewrites it in a way that comports with his own need
38:03to see himself as a winner, a survivor.
38:06And he'll resort to any narrative he needs to make that tangible to himself.
38:11He would go on the attack.
38:14I won the election.
38:16Trump cannot see himself through the prism of loser, which has been an enormous boon
38:24to him his entire life, but not in that particular circumstance.
38:29Most fraudulent election in history.
38:32This election was a total fraud.
38:35And they did these massive dumps of votes.
38:38And all of a sudden, I went from winning by a lot to losing by a little.
38:42We could see Donald Trump continuing to push the lies and misinformation in public about the election.
38:49You will find tens of thousands of false ballots, forged ballots.
38:55You'll see it.
38:56He was making videos.
38:57You could press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden.
39:02What kind of a system is this?
39:04But he was also literally working the phones.
39:07Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers described at least two phone calls from the former president.
39:12Pressuring state election officials in Arizona.
39:16In a series of calls after the election, Trump demanded Bowers throw out the electoral votes won by Joe Biden.
39:23And Georgia.
39:24I just want to find 11,780 votes.
39:31Fellas, I need 11,000 votes.
39:33Give me a break.
39:34He didn't care if he polluted the foundations of American democracy and brought down longstanding civic and civil norms about the transfer of power.
39:44Those things didn't comport with his understanding of who he was and how he wanted the world to perceive him.
39:50So he developed a different story.
39:54Trump kept pushing his story no matter what happened.
39:57In the courts where evidence gets scrutinized, authenticated and tested, they're getting hammered.
40:03More than 60 lawsuits were unsuccessful in court.
40:06All but now ending the president's attempt to reverse his election loss.
40:11Many of his senior staff told him the claims had no merit, including his handpicked attorney general.
40:18He was told time and time again that he did not win the election, not by Democrats, not by the media, but by his own people.
40:27Unwilling to accept defeat, Trump made one final attempt.
40:32People told him, you're going to have a second bite of the apple on January 6th.
40:37That was a date by which the Congress is going to vote to certify what the state electors did.
40:44Donald Trump issued a tweet saying, all of my supporters come to Washington for this rally on January 6th.
40:53Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election.
40:57Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there. We'll be wild.
41:03We'll be wild.
41:06He wanted a show of force to come to Washington and to try to block the certification of Congress.
41:13Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
41:16And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
41:22He wanted, in whatever way he could, to empower people to disrupt Congress.
41:29Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
41:33And if that resulted in violence, he obviously was prepared to let that happen.
41:37Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
41:41Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
41:43Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
41:48He watched these people sacking the U.S. Capitol, overrunning police, beating them with the American flag.
41:58To just sit there and watch it on television, just inexplicable.
42:06Fight for Trump!
42:09Eventually, police regained control of the Capitol.
42:13The Capitol grounds have been secure. Police had to use tear grafts.
42:16Troops are deployed around the Capitol perimeter to prevent any more violence.
42:21Donald Trump's election loss would stand.
42:25It was over, for now.
42:28I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear.
42:31Refusing to attend Biden's inauguration, he left Washington on Air Force One.
42:37Congratulations, Mr. President.
42:40There's a certain Napoleon element to Donald Trump's evacuation from Washington to his private club in Palm Beach.
42:51It's almost like he's returning to nurse his wounds and continue to live in that alternate reality.
43:01After January 6th, and what happened on the Capitol that day, it was universally terrible.
43:09There wasn't even the most ardent Trump fan defending it.
43:14It was an onslaught of negative coverage, understandably.
43:18And it went on for months. Months and months and months.
43:23To the point where he had been entirely ruled out, there was only a question about whether he might face criminal charges.
43:30A large group of FBI agents executing an unannounced raid on President Trump's home, Mar-a-Lago.
43:36The Justice Department has been investigating the removal of classified records that were taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.
43:43He lost multiple civil trials.
43:47Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll.
43:52That found him liable for sexual abuse, business fraud.
43:56His business was convicted in criminal court of tax and other financial crimes.
44:00A federal grand jury here has indicted former President Donald Trump on four counts.
44:05Indictment after indictment after indictment.
44:08He was charged with leading a criminal organization that worked to overturn the results.
44:17The day you're being arraigned and fingerprinted and mugshotted, for most people, that's a bad day.
44:25But for Donald Trump, it was an opportunity.
44:29I just want to thank you for your tremendous support.
44:31And here it is.
44:32If you want to go out and get it, you can go out and get it.
44:35Have fun with it.
44:37But people do like it, I must say.
44:39Thank you very much.
44:40Thank you very much.
44:41Thank you very much.
44:42Thank you very much.
44:43Woo!
44:44Donald Trump's next comeback was underway.
44:48What would have destroyed any other politician's career seemed to only strengthen him and embolden him.
44:55Rather than being tarnished, he turned the tables on his adversaries and made it out to be a political plus.
45:06And instead of a discredited, shamed loser, he becomes the apostle of comeback.
45:14Every time the radical-left Democrats, Marxists, Communists, and Fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of honor.
45:26Trying to go after one's political opponent with criminal charges, trying to put him in jail, was a bridge too far.
45:37As the cases started rolling on, the anger on the right and the middle, which is where most of my audiences, grew.
45:47And I saw it in my emails, in my comments, in the feedback I got from my audience.
45:52Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels Hush Money case.
45:59This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.
46:09His supporters that stay with him, they just know that that's not the America that they want their children to grow up in.
46:15That a government that is so weaponized against a former president, at some point, it's gone too far.
46:24All of these raids, all of these prosecutions, only fed his presentation of himself as a victim, as a martyr,
46:36as someone who was there to take these bullets on behalf of Americans.
46:41President Trump officially clinching the Republican nomination for president.
46:46Donald Trump securing the Republican nomination in commanding fashion.
46:51Then, a defining moment in his comeback.
46:56You want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.
47:08You never know when you're in combat and shot at, or shot, how you will react.
47:16The strength of your character and the fight within you is tested in moments like that.
47:28To watch that man stand up, raise his fist and look to the crowd and yell, fight, fight, fight.
47:34He was so defiant in that moment.
47:46I think a lot of people woke up to the fact that Donald Trump isn't just here to stay, but he's here to fight on their behalf.
47:53In that moment I said he just won the election.
47:58He just won the election.
48:23No matter what obstacle comes our way,
48:26we will not break, we will not bend,
48:29we will not back down,
48:30and I will never stop fighting for you,
48:32your family, and our magnificent country.
48:37Never.
48:45He had been shot at, indicted, convicted,
48:50and had to face a new historic opponent.
48:53I know Donald Trump's type.
48:57All eyes are now on Vice President Kamala Harris.
49:00Now Kamala Harris 49,
49:02Trump 44, nationally in our new poll.
49:05Armed with grievances,
49:07a promise to get even.
49:09November 5th will be your liberation day.
49:13November 5th.
49:14With your vote this election,
49:16they're lying, cheating, thieving,
49:18hoaxing, and plotting will come to an end.
49:20It's going to come to an end.
49:24His second presidential campaign was a revenge tour.
49:28I think he's angry at law enforcement
49:30for trying to corral him.
49:32He's angry at the media
49:34for trying to tell the truth about him.
49:36He's angry at Democrats running against him.
49:39He's mad at life
49:40for not seeing Donald Trump
49:42the way that Donald Trump sees himself.
49:44And he is going to want
49:47to exact a certain amount of vengeance
49:49on all of those camps.
49:51As the election approached,
49:53Trump rallied more and more supporters
49:55to his fight.
49:57That group, like, tear it down,
49:59the system doesn't work for me,
50:00is now no longer
50:01the more working class voters
50:03who have been left behind
50:04by industrialization and so on.
50:05Now it's young people
50:07under the age of 30
50:08who can't get a mortgage
50:10or feel like they can get married
50:13and have a kid
50:13because inflation's so high
50:15and they can't go
50:16to the grocery store anymore.
50:18There were a lot of people
50:20that didn't like his personality,
50:22didn't like his tweets,
50:23just weren't sure
50:24that they wanted another four years
50:27that ultimately went into the ballot box
50:29and voted for Donald Trump
50:31because of the strength,
50:33because of the fight,
50:35because they knew that
50:37at the end of the day
50:37he would do right by them.
50:40It was the ultimate comeback.
50:46A stunning political comeback.
50:49Former President Trump
50:50once again becomes
50:52President-elect Trump.
50:53State by state,
50:54President-elect Trump
50:55is on track to win
50:56every single swing state.
50:58President Trump's surprised
51:00across the country,
51:01across every demographic group.
51:04We've achieved
51:05the most incredible political thing.
51:08Look what happened.
51:09Is this crazy?
51:10This is a defeated president
51:14recapturing the White House
51:16four years after a pandemic
51:18that killed hundreds of thousands
51:20on his watch after an election
51:22that he tried to overturn
51:24after two impeachments,
51:26four indictments,
51:2734 felony crimes.
51:29Trump won the presidency
51:31and a get-out-of-jail-free card.
51:33He has now been gifted
51:35legal immunity.
51:36After winning an election,
51:37the federal cases all go away.
51:40In his hush money case,
51:41unconditional discharge
51:43covering all 34 counts.
51:45No prison time,
51:46no fine.
51:49Whether you like Donald Trump
51:50or don't like Donald Trump,
51:52you have to be struck
51:54by his ability
51:55to come back from this.
51:56for those who thought
51:58he might just be an aberration
51:59in American history,
52:01a fluke who won in 2016,
52:03he's proved them wrong.
52:05For more on this
52:24and other Frontline programs,
52:25visit our website
52:27at pbs.org slash Frontline.
52:35www.pbs.org
53:05www.pbs.org
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