Donald Trump is the first mythic hero of the twenty-first century.
That many recoil at this statement does not deny its obvious truth. Heroism isn’t about winning a popularity contest. The modern usage of the term hero has stripped the concept of its former glory. A man who runs into a burning building to rescue strangers may indeed act selflessly and heroically, but his name will not be remembered in years to come.
In the classic definition, the archetypal hero is known by his contemporaries and through the ages. A hero isn’t created by one act of mercy, strength, or sacrifice. Rather, a hero is made over time, despite failures, and through real and symbolic victories. To legitimately claim the status of hero, one must prove himself by completing a long rite of passage, a journey marked by suffering.
In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the late Joseph Campbell describes three phases in the formation of a mythic hero: departure, initiation, and return.
First, the aspiring hero encounters a call to leave his familiar world. While he often initially rejects that call, he eventually embarks on a quest that will transform who he is – and, ultimately, transform the world he inhabits.
Next, he faces hardships and tests along the path of his quest, difficulties that refine his character and that create someone capable of achieving his mythic task.
Finally, the third stage is the hero’s return (often reluctant) to the world he left in possession of the prize that he won. This encounter seals his status as hero, not merely because he shows himself to be the one capable of winning the prize, but because bringing that prize into the social world transforms the lives of others.
Trump’s life follows this trajectory.
The “departure” phase of his heroic arc didn’t begin when Trump descended his golden escalator in 2015. Instead, it started when he decided to pivot from his life as a billionaire celebrity, and to heed the call to embark on a political quest. He had run for political office as early as 2000, but, as with so many heroes, these initial forays showed a lack of commitment.
His bid to be the Reform Party’s candidate for president ended after 3 months when Trump withdrew from the race. He considered but then rejected the idea of running against Barack Obama in 2012. In the years prior to his 2016 campaign, Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, encouraged him to run for president. Trump’s reluctance to respond to these early calls shows that his “departure” didn’t begin with his famous ride down the escalator at Trump Tower; it ended with it. Having fully committed himself to the quest, his initiation began.
Trump was an outsider in the new political world that he transversed. This ensured that he would suffer on the path to the presidency (and beyond). Like all heroes, he faced myriad trials and tests along the way, including the Russian collusion hoax, the “very fine people” hoax, the Access Hollywood tape, the first impeachment, the second impeachment. The list goes on and on.
Trump was ill-prepared to meet these challenges, but the hero is forged by defeats, and matures through his mistakes. Many were disappointed with the cumulative toll these roadblocks exacted on his agenda in the first term. By the time Covid-19 arrived, Trump looked completely out of his depth. Then came what seemed to be the ultimate defeat: a loss in the 2020 election – a contest that many Americans still (rightly) believe was influenced by manipulation and fraud. After the events of January 6th, it was inconceivable that Trump would regain the White House.
But Trump wasn’t done. In announcing his 2024 candidacy, he declared that he was defeated but not destroyed. The trials began anew. States sought to remove Trump’s name from ballots. He was arrested, charged with nearly a hundred crimes, and convicted in New York of dozens of felonies. But Trump had learned from his earlier tests. He handled these roadblocks with skill and cunning in a way he couldn’t have in his first term.
By the summer of 2024, it seemed that Trump’s opposition had exhausted their arsenal. Failing that, an assassination attempt wasn’t surprising. A year after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which Trump narrowly escaped death, many questions remain. Why were there so many security failures? Who was the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and why (in contrast to the perpetrators of every other high-profile shooting) do we still know nothing about him? In the chaotic moments after the shooting, Trump stood, surrounded by Secret Service agents, with American flags flying in the background and his face bloodied, raised a fist and yelled “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The election was still months away, but Trump won it on July 13, 2024, in Butler.
Today, his journey continues.
The presidency is not just the highest political office but the “breeding ground of indestructible myth,” according to political scientist Clinton Rossiter. We name our cities and counties after presidents. We make pilgrimages to their homes and birthplaces, print their faces on money and, for the very best, carve their faces into mountains.
Too often, however, they fail to achieve all that they (or we) envision. Bill Clinton sullied the Oval Office by his affair with an intern, and then lied to the public. The terror of 9/11 became a pretext for George W. Bush to launch a rambling and indecisive war. The identity of Barack Obama proved more extraordinary than his political ideas or his actions in office. And we may never know who, during the vacant presidency of Joe Biden, actually ran the government or managed foreign relations.
Through a string of flawed or failed presidencies, Americans have been deprived of the example of a heroic leader. Not a moral leader or a charismatic leader, but a leader who demonstrates courage and resilience, who perseveres through adversity to make the state spectacular.
Whatever the future holds, Donald Trump has become a name for the ages. Like heroes before him, the quest not only transformed his character—it is transforming society before our eyes.
Adam Ellwanger is a professor at University of Houston–Downtown (@1HereticalTruth). John J. Waters, a lawyer, was a deputy assistant secretary of Homeland Security from 2020–21 (@JohnJWaters1).
