Introduction

This special section of Fast Capitalism 22.1 pulls together an engaging mix of commentaries, critiques, and outright cris du coeur, which address various aspects of the remarkable return of Donald J. Trump as the President of the United States of America (POTUS-47).Amid the COVID pandemic during June 2020, Fast Capitalism published a set of critical studies about the Trump 1.0 administration as it evolved under the nation's 45 th president from 2017 up to the 2020 presidential race, which he lost to President Joe Biden despite his unflagging faith that the election was stolen from him.As insurance, believing it would be impossible to be defeated by former Vice President Joe Biden or any other candidate from the Democratic Party in 2020, President Trump spent his entire first term gaslighting the nation to perfect this pitch to the voters.It was simple.The only way Trump could lose to a Democrat would be through systematic deception of the voters and/or rigged elections in all the key swing states.His dogged repetition of this "big lie," as a political strategy, culminated in the January 6 uprising in the U.S. Capitol as well as his second impeachment before leaving office.The big lie also fueled the frantic efforts by Trump and his closest associates in 2020 to hold the White House by any means possible from teams of lawyers challenging the ballots in the swing states lost on Election Day, November 3, to cooking up wild stories about how all electronic voting systems were rigged against him.Hence, from November 7, 2020, when the election was deemed a Democratic victory through the weeks up to January 6, 2021, the Trump 1.0 White House fought to cling to power by any means.Entitled "This is Not Normal," Fast Capitalism 17, closely examined the erratic character of his administration from his defeat of Hilary Clinton in 2016 to nationwide protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a white police officer in late May 2020.In 2024, millions of American voters, beyond a tiny circle of die-hard "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) loyalists in the Republican party, genuinely believed Trump could never be elected president again.Their beliefs, however, proved wrong.From his ride down "the Golden Escalator" in the Trump Tower in New York City on June 16, 2015, he billed himself as a man of destiny, emerging from the whirlwinds of history to put "America First."In turn, his unilateralist nationalistic vision for the United States of America in the post-Obama era quickly enthralled the media, at home and abroad, for over a decade.Moreover, as the COVID epidemic abated, and as President Joe Biden often seemed out of focus after the 2022 mid-term elections, the "Never Trump" block of voters increasingly waned.Given his extraordinary hold on the global attention economy in both the legacy and new media through ten years of tumultuous change, Trump's comeback, on the one hand, underscores the wisdom of "never say never."On the other hand, it exposed how extremist American politics was becoming in the twenty-first century.The American electorate's frustrations with both the established Democratic and Republican parties was becoming outraged by "politics as usual" in Washington, DC.Despite Biden's victory in 2020, the "Trumpification" of national and world politics from 2017 to 2024 in many cities and counties across the country led more voters, reluctantly or willingly, to entertain accepting Trump's flamboyant "America First" rhetoric.Then, after the first and only 2024 debate between Biden and Trump on June 27, Biden's viability as a candidate entirely flamed out on national television.His bumbling performance quickly led to Democratic party strategists and representatives in the House calling on him to leave the race.At first, Biden invited them to contest his nomination at the Democratic