Donald J. Trump flew to Washington last summer in misery. He was there to face criminal charges and told associates afterward that the city was awful. He sensed hostility in Washington, aides said.
Now he has returned to the capital under very different circumstances: to assert his superiority over the political and business establishments that have been forced to compromise with him.
Former President Trump is now the leading contender to challenge President Biden for the GOP presidential nomination after defeating several rivals in the primary, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in recent months and garnering broad Republican support by denouncing his recent Manhattan conviction as evidence of a weaponized justice system.
Trump's planned meetings with lawmakers, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who denounced Trump on the Senate floor weeks after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are the starkest example of how an establishment that still loathes Trump is embracing the possibility of him returning to the presidency. After years of hoping that someone else would step up to lead the party, that establishment is slowly surrendering to the reality of the 2024 presidential election.
“There's great expectations and great excitement here,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday ahead of Trump's visit.
The former president's morning will begin with an early morning meeting with a group of House members, followed by visits with dozens of chief executives from the prestigious Business Roundtable. In the afternoon, he will meet with senators at a gathering hosted by Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a close ally of Trump who in January became the highest-ranking senator to endorse Trump for president.
The agenda for the meeting is not entirely clear. Campaign officials said the meeting with lawmakers will focus on policy issues, including the immigration crisis. One lawmaker who is scheduled to attend but was not authorized to discuss the meeting said he saw no agenda other than Trump trying to drum up enthusiasm.
Republican members of the House of Representatives have long been Trump's staunchest supporters in Washington, and their support has helped shape the makeup of the Republican convention and given Trump-aligned candidates an advance in primaries.
But the meeting with senators, who have generally been less responsive to Trump's demands, will be the first time Trump has sat in the same room as McConnell since 2020, when Trump sought to enlist lawmakers' cooperation to help him seek reelection and ultimately remain in power.
Trump has repeatedly alleged widespread voter fraud in battleground states such as Georgia, which is widely seen as contributing to low voter turnout in the two Senate runoff elections and causing Republicans to lose their majorities.
The day after the runoff election, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a deadly siege in an attempt to halt the certification of Biden's Electoral College victory. McConnell condemned Trump's actions and declared him responsible.
But McConnell did not vote to convict Trump in his subsequent impeachment trial, which would have been a second impeachment trial for an outgoing president, saying it was inappropriate for a president in office. McConnell and other Senate Republicans voted acquittal, which ultimately set up Trump's unlikely comeback; a conviction would have barred him from holding office.
“We have a criminal justice system,” McConnell said in a speech after the Senate hearing, “and we also have civil lawsuits, and former presidents cannot escape accountability on both sides. I think the Senate was right not to take powers that the Constitution does not give them.”
Trump has since been indicted four times and convicted in the only trial held before Election Day, but McConnell, whose top priority is regaining control of the Senate, said he would support his party's nominee even if it was Trump long before Trump ran for a third term.
Contrary to McConnell and many others' expectations, Trump never disappeared. He turned his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida into a Republican mecca, a must-visit place for aspiring candidates to canvass for support. He crushed many to see him as a successor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, won nearly every primary and caucus he ran in and thrived in the polls in the post-indictment Republican primary.
The indictments have largely served Trump politically: They have prompted condemnation of a dual justice system by his allies, including some members of Congress who say Republicans need to use the tools of the criminal justice system to prosecute Trump's prosecutors and a broad range of Democrats.
Between the House and Senate sessions, Trump is scheduled to appear before the Business Roundtable, whose members include CEOs Tim Cook of Apple and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.
Most U.S. companies had turned their backs on Trump after the Jan. 6 riot. But with his approval rating on the rise, many business leaders disillusioned with Biden and Trump tax cuts set to expire in 2025, many are backing him or heeding his pleas for a second term.
Trump and his campaign have been eager to recruit them as donors, and many business leaders have privately signaled their support in recent weeks.