The last time Donald Trump won the presidency was in 2016, in unnervingly similar circumstances to 2024. He was an insurgent candidate then, who was regarded by voters as a celebrity entertainer and property mogul, not a politician. The scenes inside a Manhattan courtroom, with exotic appearances by Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly received $130,000 in covert hush money from Trump, and fixer Michael Cohen, the “rat” who flipped on his boss, could not have been better designed to recapture that upstart, outsider energy.
