Is Donald Trump now a 'lion' or is he just lyin'?

No one has ever said that Donald Trump doesn’t know a good story when he hears one.Trump is a master of narrative. Not always true narrative, and not always rational narrative. But the man knows dramatic narrative.The former president lived through one of the most harrowing episodes in American history, and, thank God, survived it. And for his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, he recounted it — to maximum primal and dark effect — before a spellbound audience in a subdued tone with a messianic vibe, as Melania, in a bright red suit, and other family members looked on from a VIP box. (Barron, who was very upset by what happened to his father, according to Trump aides, was nowhere to be seen.)“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump told the crowd at Fiserv Forum, after walking out on a stage with a campy giant “TRUMP” in blazing white lights and a display of the White House portico.“Yes, you are!” the MAGA crowd roared back at him.“Thank you, but I’m not,” he said. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.” medium111868729He then unfurled the story of “that terrible evening,” a story he said was “too painful to tell” more than once, that began as he was looking at an immigration chart at a sunset rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.“In order to see the chart,” he said, “I started to turn to the right, and was ready to begin a further turn, which I’m lucky I didn’t, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me, really hard, on my right ear. I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet,’ and moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down. My hand was covered with blood, just absolutely blood all over the place.”Despite the blood pouring down, he said, “in a certain way, I felt very safe because I had God on my side.”He told the jubilant crowd, “Bullets were flying over us, yet I felt serene.”He added that, had he not moved his head “at the very last instant,” the bullet would have “hit its mark.” He loved that his followers at the rally stayed put, saying “tens of thousands of people stood by and didn’t move an inch.”He said he raised his right arm to let the crowd know he was OK, and started shouting “Fight, fight, fight!” medium111881240The firefighting uniform of Corey Comperatore, who was fatally shot while attending the Butler rally, was on the convention stage. Trump kissed the helmet.Trump has spent years on a self-mythologizing hero’s journey, and finally that journey had a story to go with it, sealed with a kiss. A convention video introducing him Thursday night called him “a folk hero,” and his convention organizers wanted to reintroduce him to the country as a heroic unifier. But Trump couldn’t slay his own ego.He had originally written a speech that was “a humdinger,” he said. His son Don Jr. called it “fire.” But, after the assassination attempt, the former president tore it up and rewrote it, right up to the last minute, at first taking out any mention of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.He started out on the unity theme, noting gently that “the discord and division in our society must be healed,” and saying: “We rise together. Or we fall apart.”But he soon strayed from the teleprompter and the unity theme, going back to the stream of consciousness he prefers, talking about Hannibal Lecter — “He’d love to have you for dinner” — and slamming “Crazy Nancy Pelosi,” praising Viktor Orban and blasting the “green new scam.”He told Democrats to “drop these witch hunts” against him if they wanted unity.He promised many things. But he couldn’t even keep his promise to leave the president’s name out of his speech. He trashed Biden as an “unthinkable” disaster, noting, “I’m only going to say his name once.” mediumhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bru-YvIcnU0Trump got to be president by sowing discord and division, so it was unlikely he was suddenly going to have a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion.All week, we were held in suspense.Would Donald Trump come into the arena a changed man after his brush with death, more spiritual and generous, less petty and cruel, his white bandage covering his red badge of courage?Or would Trump still be Trump, the same old amoral, demonic showman, preaching unity for one night while continuing to nurse plans for retribution, government evisceration and a vicious smackdown of whichever Democratic nominee he ends up running against?Is Donald Trump a man of destiny, as some conservatives are now claiming, or a con man of destiny? (“Napoleon in a golf cart,” The Free Press called him.)And can we even divine any of that on Trump’s big night, given that the Republican ticket features two master shape-shifters?Every night the look on the former president’s face in his VIP box was hard to decipher as the unmanageable candidate watched his well-managed convention unfold. He did not seem engulfed in the kind of euphoria that often follows a near-death experience. He did not seem gleeful. He seemed pensive, as if he were still absorbing the enormity of what happened to him. Every time he looked at a TV screen, he saw the terrifying, totemic moment, and he watched it over and over again in fascination.He was no doubt trying to fathom his surreal lucky streak, not only with the botched assassination but also court decisions and the remarkable split screen this week. His stunning triumphs contrasted with Biden’s stunning meltdown. medium111679332Trump had undermined democracy and encouraged the violence on Jan. 6. During the 2016 race, he told me he didn’t mind violence at his rallies. He thought it added a frisson of excitement to the proceedings.Yet despite his bullying, dishonest ways, he is winning. And winning some more.“This is going to sound extraordinarily cocky, and I don’t mean it to sound that way, or overconfident, but literally we stopped counting at 25 different paths to 270,” Tony Fabrizio, one of Trump’s pollsters, told reporters at an event Wednesday hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.As long as Biden remained in denial, he said, they were golden. And the only thing voters seemed to know about Kamala, he added, was her laugh — whether or not they liked her.Since he escaped assassination, Trump has been getting deluged with the sort of positive attention from elites that he has always craved yet has rarely gotten. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, posted about Trump’s “tremendous grace and courage,” and Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Threads that he was “praying for a quick recovery for President Trump.” Rupert Murdoch was at the convention, out and about, even though Trump rejected his choice for veep (Doug Burgum).I’ve covered Trump since 1987, through all his iterations, including the first time he tentatively dipped his toe in the presidential waters with his maiden foreign policy speech to Cuban Americans in Miami in 1999. (He was counting the cameras, bragging about TV ratings and how “my women are more beautiful,” and making bitchy comments about other pols even back then.)I’ve covered him as a popular New York character and Democratic donor; a winning pol; a losing pol so determined to win that he was willing to overthrow the government he was running; a president more driven by flattery than principles; a scofflaw trying to stay out of jail; a martyr and self-styled Man on the Cross, tortured for our sins; a Bible and gold sneaker salesman. medium111711751At the convention, he had a new role: He played the Roman emperor, like a Julius Caesar who survived that “foul deed” and “bleeding piece of earth,” fist in the air, sitting high in the forum, gloating, as his vanquished foes bent the knee. Caesar had a cult of personality as well, the epitome of the strongman authoritarian politician.That Caesar was martyred. But before that he had already eroded republican rule and was on his way to emperor. (Some Trump supporters on the social platform X call Barron “Octavian.”)This week has been less a convention than a convocation, a MAGA congregation beatifying Trump, a man who delighted in breaking all Ten Commandments.The former president’s messiah complex was magnified by the assassination attempt; his habit of practicing what face he wants to use for a given occasion kicked in, leading him to instinctively create a bloodstained, defiant image for the ages. medium111854317The speeches were replete with references to Trump as a lion, a symbol of Jesus in Christianity and in C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia.” (Trump has a tawny mane but that’s where the similarities end.)Don Jr. said his father faced danger with “the heart of a lion.” Lara Trump quoted a proverb: “The wicked flee, though no one pursues. But the righteous are as bold as a lion,” adding, “He is a lion.” Tim Scott said: “On Saturday the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back up on his feet and he roared.”The message of Narnia was that good bested bad. But now it was a chronic liar and felon, a man also held liable for sexual abuse, who was getting cast as the sacred lion.When I covered Trump’s first campaign, it was Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, Michael Cohen, a few young men at computers and a lot of pictures of Trump on a floor beneath him at Trump Tower.Now he has the wise Susie Wiles and the cutting Chris LaCivita, famous for devising the “Swift Boat” strategy that smeared John Kerry, a war hero, as a war liar.With Trump, LaCivita is doing the reverse: exfoliating the former president’s criminality and autocratic schemes, including a Truth Social post about terminating the Constitution. I heard no prime-time mention at the convention of the rioters on Jan. 6, dubbed “patriots” by Trump; the day of infamy was wiped out, Lenin-style.Unlike Biden, Trump has avoided any talk of being a grandfather — or anything at all that is humanizing. He wants to be seen as a strong man. He didn’t want the intro video to be too schmaltzy; aides said he was able to deal with the very personal speech of his lovely 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai, because she is his golf buddy, the one who hangs out at Mar-a-Lago with him, practicing to turn pro. mediumhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM1Cz1gX000So the torrent of humanizing anecdotes, meant to soften his image with suburban women and moderates and puncture blue strongholds like Minnesota, was probably, for him and for us, “frow up.” That’s how Dorothy Parker described her reaction to sentimental scenes.JD Vance talked about how Trump kissed his sons good night on their cheeks. Kellyanne Conway talked about how he was amazing with working women — yes, the same president who appointed a bunch of religious fanatics to the Supreme Court, which took away women’s rights to control their own bodies. Alina Habba, one of his lawyers, talked about what great taste Trump has in music and how he once chose a song to play at Mar-a-Lago called “Hold On I’m Coming.”Lara talked about how her kids loved to hug their gramps. Kai, a daughter of Don Jr., said “Grandpa” gave them candy and soda when their parents weren’t looking; she also said he called her at school to talk about her expert golf game. He even sat with his 4-year-old granddaughter, Carolina, on his lap Thursday night, as she listened to her father, Eric, give a speech.Thursday night’s speakers were more in Trump’s wheelhouse. He is not that keen on going to war, but he has always loved playing the tough guy, even to the point of praising killers such as Al Capone, Vladimir Putin and Hannibal Lecter. He seemed more faux tough than tough. Now, years after being christened Cadet Bone Spurs, he has an actual battle wound and can brag on being, in that moment of horror, “one tough SOB,” as Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, said at the convention.Trump did not want too much softening, and he was eager to macho-up the convention. He entered the arena one night to the James Brown song “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” a version that featured Luciano Pavarotti. In the old days, before Trump brought isolationism to his party, Republican nominees used military imagery to show their toughness. But at his convention, Trump bragged: “We had no wars. I could stop wars with a telephone call.”Playing Caesar, Trump asked gladiators to speak before his speech: Dana White, the UFC chief, to introduce him, which seemed fitting since Trump always treated politics like a blood sport, and Hulk Hogan, the WWE star. Hogan ripped off his shirt to show his muscly arms and a red Trump-Vance T-shirt. He said he was “bleeding like a pig” the last time he saw Trump at a championship match at Trump Plaza.“I know tough guys,” Hogan said. “But let me tell you something, brother: Donald Trump is the toughest of them all.” medium111852291Trump blew Hogan a kiss.Trump’s convention tried to normalize the former president and gloss over his coup attempt and efforts to strip women of their rights, pushing the Heritage Foundation’s extreme Project 2025 to the side for the week.Trump’s brand of casual cruelty crept in at spots. In his introductory video, there was a shot of Biden falling on the stairs of Air Force One. (The video ended with the bloody fist pump, of course.)But luck and political success — and even surviving a shooting — are not the same as destiny.The notion of destiny confers an inevitability upon Trump’s rise. It wasn’t ever inevitable. His incredible rise was possible due to a coarsening of the culture, plagued by the nastiness on social media, and a decline in our society and our courts.Besides, it’s easier to rise if you are unscrupulous and you lie. That’s not part of a hero’s journey.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.