A Party Now Molded in Trump’s Image Prepares for a Coronation

Exactly seven weeks ago, Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in Manhattan, an unprecedented conviction of a former president that looked like a political rock bottom.

Since then, the Supreme Court handed him a critical legal victory that threw those felony convictions and more cases into limbo. President Biden’s disastrous debate plunged the Democratic Party into a rolling crisis. Two days before the opening of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt that shocked the nation and quieted Democrats’ criticism and any remaining Republican grumbling.

And hours before Mr. Trump formally received his party’s nomination on Monday, the judge overseeing another of the criminal cases against him — the one involving accusations that he had mishandled classified documents — threw out all of the charges.

Thursday night, when Mr. Trump accepts the Republican presidential nomination for the third time, will be the culmination of an extraordinary run of good fortune and a testament to his political instincts. His address will also in many ways serve as the Republican Party’s coronation of a leader who went from rattling the conservative establishment to refashioning it entirely in his image.

“Eight years ago, Donald Trump shocked the system and defied the doubters,” Kellyanne Conway, the adviser who brought his campaign to the finish line then, said on Wednesday night.

This week, the doubters in his own party proved hard to find. Over the first three days, Republicans of all stripes — elected officials, regular Americans, his family — have taken turns seeking to reintroduce Donald Trump: not the chaotic president from news headlines, but a softer, kinder leader, yet unafraid to fight. With a bandage on his right ear, where the would-be assassin’s bullet went through, he has basked in a hero’s welcome every night.