MAUREEN CALLAHAN: wAmerica faces a presidential plot twist

We did it. We survived what may have been the wildest week in American political history.

Days after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt, former President Trump made a triumphant return to the stage Thursday night, accepting his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention.

He stood tall against that instantly iconic image of his bloodied face, his fist in the air.

Quite the contrast to doddering old Joe Biden, filmed struggling to climb down the short rear steps of Air Force One the night before. The president, newly diagnosed with COVID and taking yet another break at his beach house, didn’t just look lost and confused.

He looked helpless.

Contrast Biden’s physical and political posture with a defiant Trump, having literally dodged a bullet, yelling at his supporters to ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’

That’s Trump’s best campaign ad, right there. Make it a split screen, a meme, an inescapable image.

Who represents American power and supremacy? Megadonors, party elders, and George Clooney all admit: It ain’t Joe Biden.

But Democrats are discovering that dumping him isn’t all that easy.

Alas, they are saddled with the real Joe, a bitter old man with an eternal chip on his shoulder, and an inglorious immediate family clinging, with all their might, to the Oval Office drapes.

On Friday, Biden released a statement saying that he looks ‘forward to getting back on the campaign [trail] next week’.

Now who’s the president who will never leave? Now who’s the real threat to democracy?

Trauma can be clarifying. Perhaps that’s why we saw a self-possessed Trump before that electrified crowd on Thursday night, bandage on his right ear, opening his speech with ‘a message of confidence, strength, and hope’.

It was quite the contrast to the ‘American carnage’ Trump of his 2016 inauguration speech, a moment so dark that former President George W. Bush reportedly called it ‘some weird s***’.

To be sure, there was plenty of weird s*** Thursday night:

Hulk Hogan, the living avatar for Trump’s inner pro wrestler, tearing his shirt in two and yelling ‘Let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother!’

Old people trying to dance to a lip-synching Kid Rock. Fake white bandages on ears in solidarity. Lots of ‘God’ talk about a formerly godless billionaire.

Melania Trump, entering the venue solo to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the effect bizarrely melodramatic.

And Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, delivering a speech that felt more like a primal scream than political coronation.

Finally, out walked Trump against his name in lights, like a late-stage Elvis in Vegas.

Even the night’s most solemn moment, the memoriam to Corey Comperatore, who was shot to death at the Trump rally last Saturday, was not without weirdness.

Comperatore’s firefighter jacket and helmet had been fitted on a mannequin that stood at least a foot shorter than Trump. It all had the passing effect of shrinking this hero down to size, but no matter: When Trump bent down to kiss the helmet, the crowd was visibly moved.

Call it camp, call it high political theater, but it was undeniably a brilliant bookend to a week that could have otherwise torn America apart.

One senses Trump knows and understands this: He expressed not rage or bitterness at his near-assassination but a rare humility and calm.

He called for unity and offered ‘gratitude to the American people for their outpouring of love and support’.

Except, you know, for those on the left who found it funny: Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, cracking tasteless jokes on their podcast; or Jack Black’s Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass, whose on-stage wish — ‘Don’t miss Trump next time’ — resulted in the cancellation of their tour; or MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who still has her job despite fueling conspiracies that Trump wasn’t actually hit ‘by a bullet’.

So much for that moral high ground liberals love to claim.

As for those repeated assertions by Dems that a second Trump presidency is a grave threat to our democracy — well, Ezra Klein of The New York Times has just disabused us of that.

‘Top Democrats,’ Klein said Tuesday, have told him privately that if Trump wins, everything will be fine.

‘I’ve had top Democrats say to me… ‘I don’t know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are’. They’re more resigned […] to a Trump presidency than their public-facing rhetoric would suggest.’

Wow. So not only have Dem voters been lied to about Biden’s health and fitness — many of their own leaders admit this ‘looming dictatorship’ stuff is just red meat for their base.

Meanwhile, nothing has united Republicans like last Saturday’s atrocity, which left one dead and two others critically injured. Not the lawfare, not the attempts to bankrupt Trump — nothing.

And rather than use this support for self-aggrandizement, Trump, yet again, met the moment.

Never before have we seen a vulnerable Donald Trump. On Thursday night, as he gave a riveting tick-tock of nearly losing his life, we did.

‘I will tell you exactly what happened,’ he said, ‘and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.’

He spoke of the beautiful weather that day, the palpable joy of the crowd and feeding off their energy until he felt a whizzing and realized he had been shot. He talked about luck, fate, God — whatever you want to call it.

‘If I had not moved my head at that very last instant,’ Trump said, ‘the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark and I would not be here tonight… I’m not supposed to be here.’

The crowd erupted, chanting: ‘Yes, you are!’

Compare that genuine, spontaneous support to the intra-party angst over Joe Biden, who has reportedly been told by everyone from Chuck Schumer to Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama himself that it’s time to go, here’s the door — you’re not supposed to be here, Joe, leading this party or this ticket, anymore.

And still — he digs in!

The Republicans now have a bona fide political martyr, one whose character arc has taken a most unexpected turn.

Trump has held back his worst impulses and made this shooting not about him but about his followers and, to adopt a phrase so cynically used by Joe Biden, the soul of America.

The other party now has a bona fide liability whose ego, vanity and megalomania come well before duty to party or country.

What a plot twist. What a week. And we’re not nearly at the end — only the beginning of this thrilling, dangerous and most unpredictable ride.