Donald Trump's long and winding road to a 3rd presidential nomination

At Donald Trump’s raucous campaign rallies, many of his followers are proud to say they’ve supported him since the “very beginning.”

They mean the moment he famously rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce he was running for president -- the first time.

Ever since, Trump has experienced many ups and downs on the way to Milwaukee – from his surprise victory over Hillary Clinton in November 2016 to his first impeachment in 2019, to the infamous mugshot taken at Georgia's Fulton County Jail after his indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

His extraordinary political career reached a peak on Saturday night at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, with the image of him defiantly pumping his fist, blood streaming down his face from his injured ear after surviving an assassination attempt.

Just two days later, the businessman-turned-politician brought his party together for a slick and orderly 2024 Republican National Convention.

But the road on Trump’s 10-year political journey has been anything but smooth.

In fact, when he kicked off his first presidential bid in 2015, the "Apprentice" star and real estate mogul was considered an outsider and an underdog, competing against some of the biggest names in the Republican establishment – former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz -- who already had backing by a slew of major GOP figures and well-funded super PACs.

Trump quickly attracted Republican votes once he officially became the nominee summer 2016, but still, his victory in November 2016 against Democratic rival was a surprise to those paying attention to election forecasts of a Hillary Clinton victory.

His presidency got off to a rough start as well – special counsel Robert Mueller within months of Trump taking office launching an investigation into his and his campaign’s possible role in Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

After a two-year probe, Mueller and his team made no conclusion on possible obstruction of justice by Trump, but during the course of the investigation indicted 34 individuals and three Russian businesses on charges ranging from computer hacking to conspiracy and financial crimes and brought seven guilty pleas and five prison sentences for some top Trump lieutenants.

And before the Mueller investigation even concluded, a phone call between Trump and then newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy -- during which Trump allegedly pressured the Ukrainian leader to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Trump’s then possible 2020 rival Joe Biden – opened another floodgate of congressional investigations, eventually leading to Trump becoming only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

The Democratic-majority House voted 230-197 to remove him from office, only for the Republican-majority Senate to acquit him.

Then, two years later – just days before he was set to leave the White House after serving as president for four years – he became the first U.S. president to be impeached a second time -- for his alleged role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

It was a culmination of Trump and his allies’ months-long attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, from allegedly making false and baseless claims about election fraud and filing dozens of lawsuits to challenge the results, to allegations of pressuring other Republican officials at federal and state levels like then-Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger to overturn the results.

For Trump, Jan. 6 resulted in a mass exodus of major Republican donors, and his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results also eventually led to two criminal indictments in the midst of his 2024 campaign – one federal case brought forth by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, D.C., and a Georgia state case brought forth by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

With his 2024 presidential bid was already off to a rough start, Trump becoming the first U.S. president to be indicted in the New York hush money payment case just months after he announced his reelection campaign.

Then, just six months before Election Day, he become the first U.S. president to become a convicted felon, found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case.

Some Republican voters and swing voters view Trump’s legal battles and chaos as a baggage -- but for most Trump supporters, they’ve served as a boost for their loyalty, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee even claiming to have raised $53 million in just 24 hours after his conviction in the hush money payment case.

While battling four criminal indictments and other legal challenges, a seemingly invincible Trump easily defeated a slew of GOP primary challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, becoming the party’s presumptive nominee soon after Super Tuesday.

After months of divisive campaign rallies and calls for retribution, as he prepared to deliver his formal acceptance speech as the GOP's presidential nominee, Trump, saying the assassination attempt had changed him, said he would seek to bring the country together through a message of unity , as the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party’s disarray deepened.