What a year it was! My first column of 2024 declared it “The Year of Trump,” and there was never a dull moment as Donald Trump aimed not just to take back the White House, but to stay out of prison and ultimately to stay alive.

Now that the election is over, it’s time to look in the rear-view mirror and contemplate why Trump is not just the greatest political comeback in history, but the greatest showman in the world.

So let’s consider Trump’s Top 10 best moves in the most consequential election of our lifetimes. It could easily be the Top 100, but that would be bragging.

No. 10: If we think of 2024 as an election season rather than a calendar year, then the first big move by Trump was skipping the Republican candidate debates starting in August 2023 and thus reducing his opponents to desperate Lilliputians in search of a Gulliver. Without Trump, the public soon lost interest in Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Mike Pence (remember him?), and Asa Hutchinson. Even Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy barely peaked out of single digits and were soon vanquished. The August debate on Fox News was the high point with 13 million sets of eyeballs, with each subsequent debate shedding viewers, until the CNN debate before the Iowa caucuses could barely muster 2.5 million bored spectators.

No. 9: After cementing his hold on the Republican Party’s base with his commanding primary performance, Trump moved to change the leadership of the party as well. On Feb. 12, he announced his desire to see GOP chair Ronna McDaniel replaced by North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley, with Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump serving as co-chair. McDaniel had always had an arms-length relationship with Trump’s MAGA movement, and she was blamed by many in the party for not doing enough to ensure Trump’s victory in 2020, both before and after the Nov. 3 election, including her lackluster support for the president’s claims that the election was rigged.

No. 8: From the time he was indicted in the so-called hush-money trial in March of 2023, Trump realized that his popularity increased every time his enemies tried to put him in prison. Rather than resign from his campaign and concentrate on his legal woes, Trump wore each new indictment like a badge of honor. And he fought against the judges and district attorneys arrayed against him from his Truth Social page, calling them unhinged, corrupt, or simply Trump haters. Meanwhile, his attorneys battled in multiple courtrooms to prove not just his innocence, but ultimately his victimhood. When they argued before the Supreme Court that the president was entitled to immunity for actions........

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