And it is impossible to recount the former president’s wild ride to polling day without the moment that produced another iconic image and almost ended the contest altogether.
When Trump was shot by a would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, it shook this race and this nation profoundly. As he was helped to his feet by Secret Service agents, blood pouring from his ear, he raised his fist in the air and urged his supporters to fight.
When he appeared just 48 hours later at his party’s convention in Milwaukee with gauze over his ear, some in the crowd were weeping. I could see tears rolling down the face of one delegate standing near to me. It was Tina Ioane, who’d travelled from American Samoa.
“He is the anointed,” she told me. “He was called to lead our nation.”
At that stage in the summer, electorally, Trump looked unassailable.
On the other side, Democrats were becoming increasingly depressed about their own prospects. Deeply anxious that their candidate, Joe Biden, was too old to win re-election.
I was in the press room watching his shambolic debate against Trump in late June. There was stunned silence as we watched Biden’s 50-year career in politics essentially come to an end in front of our eyes.
But even then, many who publicly suggested he should step aside were dismissed. The Biden campaign even hit out at the “bedwetting brigade” who were calling for him to go.
It would, of course, be a matter of time.
Just days after that jubilant Republican convention in July, when Trump looked like he could not lose, Biden announced he was giving up his re-election bid. The mood among Democratic supporters soon swung from anxious pessimism to excited anticipation.
Any reservations they had about whether Kamala Harris was their best candidate were erased at a joyful convention in Chicago a few weeks later. People who had been resigned to defeat were now swept away on a tide of enthusiasm.
This election represented a chance to “move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past”, she said to loud cheers.
But this burst of excitement did not last. After an initial bump in the polls, Harris struggled to maintain the momentum. It appears she quickly won back traditional Democrats who were not backing Biden but found it harder to win over crucial undecided voters.
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