Impeached, convicted and shot at. Will anything stop Donald Trump?

On the floor of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, a man in a red Make America Great Again cap is holding up a glossy banner with the iconic fist-pumping image that made Donald Trump the embodiment of defiance.

“MAGA Movement Can’t Be Stopped,” it reads in large, white capital letters.

A few metres away, a woman in a red cowboy hat is sporting a custom-made black T-shirt featuring the former president’s smiling face, emblazoned with the words: “I’m voting for the convicted felon.”

Donald Trump, running to return to the US presidency, arrives to the final day of the Republican National Convention.Credit: Bloomberg

And on the stage a few moments later, former housing secretary Ben Carson is reciting a line from the Bible’s Book of Isaiah as he recounts Trump’s near-death experience: No weapons formed against you may prosper.

“Let me tell you the weapons that they use,” Carson says to the raucous crowd as Trump watches from his private box on the other side of the room.

“First they tried to ruin his reputation, and he’s more popular now than ever. Then they tried to bankrupt him, and he’s got more money now than he had before.

“And then they tried to put him in prison, and he’s free – and others are free with him. And last week they tried to kill him, and he’s over there – alive and well!”

Since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, the party of Lincoln and Reagan has grappled with its identity.

Members battled over his bombastic persona and his incendiary rhetoric. They quietly lamented his more extreme policies and constant legal battles.

A supporter, donning an ear bandage in solidarity with former president Donald Trump.Credit: AP

And they questioned his ability to win another election, after Republicans not only lost the White House to Joe Biden in 2020, but also lost the House to Democrats in 2018 midterm elections and barely managed to keep their majority in the chamber in 2022.

But in the aftermath of last weekend’s shooting, party members say they are more united than ever before, galvanised by a failed assassination and a shambolic Democratic Party under a weakened president.

Even Trump’s fiercest Republican rival, Nikki Haley, returned to the fold this week, four months after warning countless Americans that Trump was unhinged, chaotic and unfit for office.

“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear,” the former United Nations ambassador told the initially sceptical crowd on Wednesday night.

“Donald Trump has my full endorsement. Period.”

It’s an astonishing political comeback when you cast your mind back to 20 months ago.

Back then, some Republicans had urged Trump not to run again after a much-expected Republican “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections failed to materialise, thanks in part to Trump’s hand-picked coterie of extremist candidates.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former political rival, endorses him for the presidency on day two of the Republican National Convention.Credit: AP

Mega donors, such as Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman and billionaire hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, began defecting from Trump’s camp, conservative allies criticised him openly on social media, and cable news pointed to his political brand as the common thread of three consecutive election losses.

One front page of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post even depicted the former president as “Trumpty Dumpty” with an accompanying story referring to him as “perhaps the most profound vote repellent in modern American history”, while in the respected New York Times, columnist Bret Stephens published a damning piece titled “Donald Trump is Finally Finished”.

Fast-forward to this week in Milwaukee, and Trump is anything but finished. He has been impeached twice, indicted four times, criminally convicted for falsifying business records, found liable for sexual assault and civil fraud, and his refusal to transfer power at the last election led to a deadly attempted coup at the US Capitol – and yet nothing seems to stick.

Days after almost losing his life, the 78-year-old is now the official Republican candidate for the White House, running on a ticket with 39-year-old Ohio senator J.D. Vance, a man who once described Trump as “America’s Hitler”.

Delegates during the national anthem at the Republican National Convention.Credit: Bloomberg

Three weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate, the latest RealClearPolitics poll of averages has Trump ahead of the embattled president, nationally and in the three key battleground states that will ultimately determine his election: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

What’s more, the Trump campaign is as disciplined as it has ever been – evidenced, for example, in Trump’s tempered appearance during the debate and his low-key profile in its aftermath as the Democrats went into full-blown panic mode.

This raises the question, is Donald Trump unstoppable?

Veteran political analyst Larry Sabato says that, while Trump is clearly the favourite, “there is still a giant question mark” over who will win the White House.

With Biden seemingly incapable of stemming the defections in his ranks, Sabato, the founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Centre for Politics, suspects it’s only a matter of time before he stands down.

The question then becomes: will Vice President Kamala Harris replace him, or will it be someone else? And if it does end up being Harris, who would she pick as her running mate, and how would the new Democratic ticket appeal to voters?

President Joe Biden walks down the steps of Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Wednesday.Credit: AP

“For those saying it’s over, you never make that mistake,” says Sabato, citing the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton was expected to win, or the 2022 midterm “red wave” that ended up being more of a trickle. “It’s never over ’til it’s over.”

Former Republican congressman and lobbyist Scott Klug shares a similar view, noting that there are still 3½ months until the election.

“We’re sort of 22 minutes into a soccer match. There’s a long way to go and a lot can change,” says Klug, who is now a director at the law firm Foley & Lardner.

“I think there’s a lot to be determined and, as we saw last weekend in Pennsylvania, external affairs can have a lot to do with it.”

It’s a different vibe inside Fiserv Forum, the downtown Milwaukee arena where the Republican jamboree was held this week. The area surrounding the convention has been fortified by kilometres of steel fencing and concrete barriers, with scores of law enforcement officers lining the streets and magnetometers at every entrance.

Inside, though, it’s a carnival of stars and stripes, Trump-Vance placards and jubilant delegates. Some wear bandages on their right ears in solidarity with the former president; others dance in the aisles as a band plays between speeches.

“I’ve been to five different conventions, and this is the most unified we’ve ever been,” says Becky Berger, a Kentucky delegate as she holds up a large Make America Great Again flag with her friend Shelley Fromeyer.

Trump stands on stage with wife Melania, and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance.Credit: AP

“It’s a mountaintop experience, like no other,” says Danna Severs from Nebraska, a reference to a moment of spiritual intimacy with God.

“I have to confess that, when he came out, walking through the people [in his first appearance on Monday night], I freaked out! I thought: ‘Oh my god, he’s gonna walk through the people so soon after the assassination attempt?’ And then I thought: ‘Of course he’s gonna walk through the people! He doesn’t fear the people!’”

In the eyes of many Republicans, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump transformed him into a resurrected man who almost “took a bullet” while fighting for his country.

He’s still the victim of a political witch-hunt, they will tell you, but Saturday’s events have morphed him into something bigger, too: a martyr, a hero, and the second coming all at once.

“I’m really struck this week by the fact that we could be having a funeral,” says former acting director of national intelligence Rick Grenell, who is likely to be part of a second Trump administration should it come to pass.

“I believe that God intervened. I believe it was a total divine intervention. And for me, just personally, I believe that God isn’t finished with him. There’s more work to be done.”

There are some who argue, however, that the unity love fest surrounding Trump is partly smoke and mirrors to shroud from viewers the underlying divisions that still exist, particularly when it comes to Trump’s criminal convictions, the January 6 Capitol attack, and his scepticism when it comes to global alliances and funding for Ukraine.

Among those who were not at the convention, for instance, was former vice president Mike Pence, who refused to endorse Trump following the Capitol attack, and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was Trump’s most vocal critic during the presidential primaries.

Former Arkansas governor and presidential hopeful Asa Hutchinson did attend the event, but like Christie and Pence, has refused to endorse Trump, having said during the Republican debate that he would not endorse a convicted felon.

“Just because the convention is unified does not mean the party is totally unified,” Hutchinson told this masthead, hours before Trump was due to speak.

“We are unified in our opposition to the Democratic leadership under President Biden, and we need change but, beyond that, there’s people who are not at this convention – former vice president Mike Pence, many in the Bush administration and others – that don’t feel comfortable with the platform or the direction that Donald Trump is taking the party. I’m included in that group.”

Trump and his supporters are unlikely to be fazed. After all, the former president has had an incredible run over the past few weeks: the US Supreme Court granted him broad immunity from prosecution, his New York hush money sentence was delayed as a result, a judge later threw out his classified documents case – and he narrowly avoided death.

“This has been our best campaign, and then I got shot! How does that happen?” he told supporters at a private event on the sidelines of the convention on Wednesday night.

“But I got lucky. God was with me, I tell you.”

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