It’s almost difficult to remember now, but in 2021, Donald Trump left his first term as one of the least popular presidents in American history. Weeks before he left office, not entirely willingly, his supporters stormed the US Capitol, and much of the democratic world recognised in him and his movement an existential threat.

He lay dormant for a while but then re-emerged like a growing storm. Much of his second rise was fuelled by his fall, a kind of political trampoline act that left observers scratching their heads and historians of populist putsches clanging the alarm bells.

Donald Trump had a long-running friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.Credit: AP

Donald Trump had successfully positioned himself as a victim of a “deep state”, a political system bent on excluding his supporters. He was merely their token, their icon. And after an assassination attempt, he became the closest thing to a holy martyr that still walks the earth.

Some of this centred around the “Epstein files” – Department of Justice documents relating to investigations into Jeffrey Epstein that Trump had promised to release if elected.

A few years prior, Epstein had been outed as a notorious sex trafficker, a case made all the more scandalous by his connections to the rich and powerful around the world. The revelations around his plane and island, and his alleged book of clients,........

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