Why Biden's 2020 win ultimately helped Trump

While on a long drive home with my wife the day after the election, I started to list for her the reasons why Joe Biden becoming president in 2020 was ultimately the best possible outcome for Donald Trump, our nation — and even the world.

Upon returning home, my wife turned on Fox News. Lara Trump was on “Hannity” alluding to the same point.

As an aside, those who hoped and prayed for a Trump victory should know that Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump and chairman Michael Whatley are two of the unsung heroes of this election. The RNC was in shambles when they took it over — morale was shot and the mood was bleak. They transformed it into a shining star of the Trump campaign.

Jessica Tarlov, an experienced strategist for the Democratic Party and a co-host of “The Five,” repeatedly stressed days before the election that Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign was “knocking on 2,000 doors a minute.”

Great for them, but so what? You can knock on a million doors a minute, but if a majority of Americans believe the product you are selling is the political equivalent of snake-oil, you aren’t going to get many buyers. American voters knew that in Harris, the Democratic National Committee was peddling a candidate whose entire campaign was predicated upon saying nothing, doing nothing and being accountable for nothing.

With Trump, on the other hand, Lara Trump and Whatley knew they had a candidate bursting at the seams with solutions for the problems plaguing America after almost four years of the Biden-Harris administration. Because of that, they built a nationwide campaign best suited to reflect the energy, experience and confidence of that candidate. Obviously, they succeeded.

But in doing so, Lara Trump was also able to take the pulse of the American people and come to what I believe is a correct conclusion. While on with Hannity the day after the election, she said, in part: “In 2016, this country definitely needed Donald Trump. But I don’t think it has needed him more than we need him right now and I think the American people, having had a break from him for four years, seeing how bad it could get, fully understood that and I believe that’s why they came out the way that they did and overwhelmingly showed their support for him.”

I have long believed that the greatest political victory of all time was Trump winning the presidency in 2016. Against all odds; against the entrenched establishments; against an often hate-filled media; and with virtually no campaign, he almost single-handedly willed himself to become president.

But he did so as a nonpolitician who did not fully understand the ways — and ruthlessness — of Washington, D.C. And because he did not, his administration paid a severe price via disloyalty, backstabbing and sabotage.

After Biden took office, Trump had four years to reevaluate the hiring process in the White House and how best to fill roughly 4,000 political appointments across various agencies; take the temperature of the American people; build a more tight-knit and buttoned-down campaign; and observe the ebbs and flows of a world on fire. More than that, losing the election gave Trump time to watch how Biden navigated the turbulent waters of his own administration.

To that point, we come to the absolute gift of the Biden-Harris administration. Trump certainly believed that, more often than not, the Biden-Harris administration was crashing upon the rocks. And guess who was paying attention along with Trump? The American voter.

The Democrats — and Harris in particular — have long underestimated the intelligence of the American voter, most especially the disenfranchised and those living paycheck-to-paycheck. But those voters are intelligent, they have common sense and they started to “believe their lying eyes” and realized that their lives were dramatically better four years ago during the Trump administration than now.

Hopefully, some of the left-leaning leaders among our allies around the world are also learning the lessons from a failed Biden-Harris administration and the pressures it put upon their own nations. Many believe that, had Trump been president, Putin and Russia would have never gone into Ukraine and that Hamas would not have invaded Israel and turned that part of the world upside-down.

Because Biden did become president — and there was that four-year gap to reflect and reevaluate — I believe that Trump is now in a much stronger position to advance the policies he believes are the most critical to turn this nation around. More than that, many believe he will quickly deescalate the wars now threatening to trigger World War III.

Four years of multiple Biden-Harris failures opened the eyes of the American people and leaders around the world that they missed and needed the successful policies of Trump for their own wellbeing. During that same time period, Trump undoubtedly focused on the pros and cons of his own administration and will now fine tune everything.

Reflection is often a very productive pastime.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.