[Introduction: I made this as a special gift for Christmas or the holidays because I wanted to do something more than just a regular podcast to say thank you for your support, your friendship, your letters (yes I read them) and just for being great people. I hope that you will get something out of it. I tried to keep it short but it’s too long. Either way, it’s a learning curve! The transcript with most of the video references is below).

Every so often, I say out loud, “Trump won.” I repeat it in my head a few times because even now, I barely believe it. Eight long years of conflict, madness, division, corruption - there have been convictions, jail time, even suicides among Jan 6ers whose lives were destroyed because they were faithful enough to Trump to have his back when the chips were down.

What our government, our media, and the ruling class wanted was to terrorize Trump supporters out of their loyalty to him. “It’s a cult,” they continue to insist. But even after all of that, Trump won. He won the Electoral College and the popular vote.

There has never been a story like this one in all of American history, and even the Good People of the Left know that. But there have been stories like this in all the most beloved films and books. This story is one we all know. It’s called The Hero’s Journey, and any honest person knows that we just watched Trump live out his.

By the end of it, he has people like me wandering around saying “Trump won.” His victory meant more than just winning an election. It meant the return of reality and normalcy somehow, I know it sounds crazy to say that but it’s true.

Trump refused to stand down, no matter what they threw at him. He refused to cower in the face of an assassin’s bullet. He soldiered on, as the best heroes do, passing every test, humiliating his rivals, and even those who hated Trump can’t help but be impressed.

One only needs to look at the two covers of TIME Magazine, which feature Trump as Man of the Year, to see how it started and how it’s going.

Trump didn’t write this story; his enemies did, and in so doing, they sealed their fate to become but a footnote in the unforgettable story of the greatest political comeback in American history.

Says Victor Davis Hanson:

So, how did we get here? What is the Hero’s Journey, and how does Trump’s story fit so well?

Trump’s Hero’s Journey

We could leave it at that, but I’d like to go through the stages one by one.

Part One - The Ordinary World

To massive ratings success, millions of Americans welcomed Trump into their ordinary world every week. He was already a star. People tuned in to hear him say “You’re fired.” But they also tuned in to hear him say what was true but couldn’t be said out loud. They knew him, and they loved him. Reality TV was about to become actual reality.

In 2016, America could be divided into two groups: those who watched The Apprentice and those who did not. If you knew Trump from that ordinary world, nothing he said would shock you. But if you were like me, already insulated in a protective cocoon of extreme political correctness, a utopia where offensive language is not to be tolerated, and a class of people who would not be caught dead watching The Apprentice, his words would be paralyzing, enough to cause fits of mass hysteria that would last for years.

Trump has been a fixture in American culture since the 1980s. He mocked himself and was always in on the joke. Just one year before the Left decided he was Hitler, he hosted Saturday Night Live.

Despite Trump’s wealth and the Left’s attempts to portray him as an out-of-touch billionaire, he speaks the language of ordinary working-class Americans somehow.

Trump is the guy who eats at McDonald’s. He’s the guy who talks to the golfer and the caddy. But to make him into Hitler, it took a village of liars who had no intention of handing over power to Trump or any of the Americans who voted for him.

But Trump’s ordinary world was not politics. He was an outsider, the perfect hero to be plucked from one world and thrust into the special world, one he did not fully understand.

Part Two - The Call to Adventure (refusing the call)

The Hero is always reluctant to answer the call. Trump was asked again and again if he’d consider getting into politics. The answer was always no.

Running for president seemed to be the last thing Trump had left to do and he knew that. He was right, in those early days, to say that America wasn’t ready for people who tell it like it is.

Part Three - Accepting the Call

Trump, like so many others born outside of Manhattan, maintained a chip on his shoulder that drove him to not just become one of the Manhattan elites but to earn their respect.

So it stung when Obama called him out and humiliated him in a room full of people who thought they were superior to Trump in every way.

Obama was hitting back after the “birther conspiracy” most on the Left deemed “racist.” But really, he was playing his most powerful card — that he was accepted by the ruling class, and Trump was not.

This set up the epic battle between the two men for the next decade, one Trump would ultimately win.

Obama wasn’t just accepted by the ruling class. He was their symbol of virtue. As wealth concentrated on the Left, what they, we, needed was absolution from our sins of privilege. Obama provided that. He was the closest thing we had to religion.

By contrast, Trump represented our collective sins. If we could blot out the Sun, we could somehow deny those bad qualities in ourselves. That guy over there is the bad guy. We’re not like that.

But by 2015, Trump was finally ready.

The Hero is always unprepared for what this step actually means. They might start the journey almost as a lark. But once they accept that fateful call, there can be no turning back.

Trump famously vanquished his primary opponents, picking them off one by one as a country already addicted to reality shows watched this one. That’s what it looked like, anyway. Every great reality show needs a great villain. And there was no more entertaining villain than Donald Trump.

Who would dare talk to Jeb Bush like that?

And who would dare talk to Hillary Clinton like that?

Part Four - The Mentor and the Talisman

Trump had several key mentors, including Roy Cohn and his father. But the one who matters most in Trump’s Hero’s Journey is Steve Bannon, who was busy building a populist movement that needed a tough leader like Trump. Here, Bannon talks about their first meeting.

Bannon took the long view then and now. He’d read The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe and William Strauss. Ten years after the book was written, he lived through the 2008 financial crisis. Bannon made the movie Generation Zero about what was coming next. He has always had an eye on how America must land after the Fourth Turning - in the direction of populism, not globalism.

On October 7, 2016, the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped as an October surprise. As Bannon tells it, the wolves were at the door. Trump had a decision to make: a mea culpa with David Muir and ABC News or fight, fight, fight.

Bannon is the Yoda to Trump’s Luke Skywalker because he helped sculpt and guide the hero toward his ultimate goal. Though Trump pushed him out in his first term, Bannon remained loyal to Trump and even spent four months in Danbury prison. For Bannon, it’s never been about Trump specifically but about guiding the ship in the right direction. He needed Trump then, and he needs him now.

Part Five - Crossing the Threshold

For Trump, the 2016 election was the threshold between the ordinary world and the special world, a win that shocked even him.

Winning was supposed to mean that the American people accepted him as their president. He didn’t understand why they were protesting in the streets, as they were saying he was “illegitimate” and #notmypresident. He won, after all, so why weren’t they treating him that way?

In 2016, those of us on the Left decided that this country, its culture, its government, and its institutions all belonged to us. If we proclaimed Trump a racist, Nazi, fascist and thus, rendered him ineligible to serve, we had every right to treat him and his supporters as unwanted invaders in our country.

Part Six: Tests, Allies and Enemies

Being a Trump ally is not for the faint of heart. He is no walk in the park, especially not then. He’ll insult even those closest to him and spend much of his time in office antagonizing the press and the swamp creatures. But Trump’s role was not to be liked by any of them. It was to represent the people who voted for him, as is.

Nonetheless, the establishment government ate Trump alive in his first term because he wasn’t a lawyer or a politician. He had to hit the ground running, and was met with oppositional forces who sought to sabotage, discredit, and ultimately push him out of power. It was a slow-moving coup, and Trump was no match for the empire.

Nancy Pelosi ripped up the State of the Union. The Democrats took the House and impeached him two years into his first term, just as Steve Bannon had predicted. Trump’s agenda to drain the swamp and close the border had to be pushed aside as he fought for his own reputation and his presidency.

Part Seven - The Approach

For Trump, The Approach was the 2020 election. Trump could see what the powerful forces that opposed him were doing to rig the election. Even I could see it as a Biden voter. It was not hard. Nothing made sense.

What we would all find out much later is we didn’t imagine it. They bragged about it in TIME Magazine.

2020 was one of the hardest years for Trump. He was in ov