Back in 2020 he was a supposed frontrunner struggling to look like one, fresh off a sluggish performance in the 2020 Iowa caucuses. He asked New Hampshire voters to help him flip the narrative and deliver him a comeback. He snarked back at critics, belittled a younger challenger and called one woman “a lying, dog-faced pony soldier” at a campaign event.

Then he skipped his own campaign party, headed to South Carolina, and finished a distant fifth in New Hampshire’s primary, faring worse than the former mayor of a midsized Midwestern city.