India, April 27 -- On the night of April 30, 2011, Donald Trump sat in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton as the butt of the most consequential set of jokes in modern American political history. Fifteen years later, almost to the week, he returned to the same hotel - this time as a sitting US president - and was rushed from the building amid gunfire.

The arc between those two nights tells much of the story of Trump, the realty businessman and reality TV star who went on to become arguably the most powerful person in the world.

Trump attended the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association dinner as a guest of The Washington Post, invited by then editor Lally Weymouth. He had spent weeks inflaming the "birther" movement - publicly de...