BUTLER, Pennsylvania — On Oct. 4, several weeks after being shot at the Butler Farm Show Complex here in Western Pennsylvania, then-candidate Donald Trump came back to the very spot he stood when disturbed loner Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several shots at him, almost ending Trump’s life and taking the life of a Western Pennsylvania father.

For anyone paying attention that day, it was clear the race was over. If we are all being honest, it was likely over even before the first rally began on July 13. I’ve argued in my reporting that Trump’s inevitability began 18 months earlier, when he showed up 42 miles from here in East Palestine, Ohio, when nobody in the White House could be bothered.