Associated Press
Donald Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States, an extraordinary comeback for a former President who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.
With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency.
The victory validates his bare-knuckle approach to politics. He attacked his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in deeply personal – often misogynistic and racist – terms as he pushed an apocalyptic picture of a country overrun by violent migrants. The coarse rhetoric, paired with an image of hypermasculinity, resonated with angry voters – particularly men – in a deeply polarized nation.
“We’ve been through so much together, and today you showed up in record numbers to deliver a victory,” Trump told throngs of his cheering supporters in Florida. “This was something special and we’re going to pay you back.”
As President, he’s vowed to pursue an agenda centered on dramatically reshaping the federal government and pursuing retribution against his perceived enemies. Speaking to his supporters Wednesday morning, Trump claimed he had won “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
The results cap a historically tumultuous and competitive election season that included two assassination attempts targeting Trump and a shift to a new Democratic nominee just a month before the party’s convention. Trump will inherit a range of challenges when he assumes office on Jan. 20, including heightened political polarization and global crises that are testing America’s influence abroad.
His win against Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female rival in a general election. Harris, the current vice president, rose to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden exited the race amid alarm about his advanced age. Despite an initial surge of energy around her campaign, she struggled during a compressed timeline to convince disillusioned voters that she represented a break from an unpopular administration.
Harris has not publicly spoken since the race was called. Her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, said she would speak Wednesday. “You will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow.”
Trump is the first former President to return to power since Grover Cleveland regained the White House in the 1892 election. He is the first person convicted of a felony to be elected president and, at 78, is the oldest person elected to the office. His vice president, 40-year-old Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will become the highest-ranking member of the millennial generation in the U.S. government.
Congratulations started pouring in from world leaders even before Trump’s victory was announced.
There will be far fewer checks on Trump when he returns to the White House. He has plans to swiftly enact a sweeping agenda that would transform nearly every aspect of American government. His GOP critics in Congress have largely been defeated or retired. Federal courts are now filled with judges he appointed. The U.S. Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, issued a ruling earlier this year affording presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
Trump’s language and behavior during the campaign sparked growing warnings from Democrats and some Republicans about shocks to democracy that his return to power would bring. He repeatedly praised strongman leaders, warned that he would deploy the military to target political opponents he labeled the “enemy from within,” threatened to take action against news organizations for unfavorable coverage and suggested suspending the Constitution.
Some who served in his first White House, including Vice President Mike Pence and John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, either declined to endorse him or issued dire public warnings about his return to the presidency.
While Harris focused much of her initial message around themes of joy, Trump channeled a powerful sense of anger and resentment among voters.
He seized on frustrations over high prices and fears about crime and migrants who illegally entered the country on Biden’s watch. He also highlighted wars in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to cast Democrats as presiding over – and encouraging – a world in chaos.
It was a formula Trump perfected in 2016, when he cast himself as the only person who could fix the country’s problems, often borrowing language from dictators.
“In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he said in March 2023.
This campaign often veered into the absurd, with Trump amplifying bizarre and disproven rumors that migrants were stealing and eating pet cats and dogs in an Ohio town. At one point, he kicked off a rally with a detailed story about the legendary golfer Arnold Palmer in which he praised his genitalia.
But perhaps the defining moment came in July when a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A bullet grazed Trump’s ear and killed one of his supporters. His face streaked with blood, Trump stood and raised his fist in the air, shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Weeks later, a second assassination attempt was thwarted after a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a gun poking through the greenery while Trump was playing golf.
Trump’s return to the White House seemed unlikely when he left Washington in early 2021 as a diminished figure whose lies about his defeat sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He was so isolated at the time that few outside of his family bothered to attend the send-off he organized for himself at Andrews Air Force Base, complete with a 21-gun salute.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
36 comments
Garbage Won
November 6, 2024 at 6:59 am
The Biden administration was rejected last night. Kammy was a bad pick in the beginning by coup leader Pelosi. Americans simply did not want the most liberal Senator in the US running the country.
PeterH
November 6, 2024 at 7:46 am
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H.L. Mencken
Kammy’s Toast
November 6, 2024 at 7:04 am
Rough night for Rick Whitaker. 🤣
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 7:55 am
Someone should check on Rick. He big mad!
Kammy Is Toast
November 6, 2024 at 7:05 am
I hear Cardi B is going to work for the Weather Channel and become a hurricane predictor.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 7:31 am
I can’t wait for the Inauguration Day speech!
It’ll start 2 to 6 hours late, however long the Rexulti takes to kick in, and then it’ll be a sway party!
They’re EEEEEEEE Ting The Dogs
They’re EEEEEEEE Ting The Daw Awwwwgs
It’s raining men HALLELUJAH It’s raining men
and they’re eating the daw awwwwgs
Sway sway sway sway
Sway sway sway sway sway sway
Sway sway sway sway sway
Sway sway sway sway
God help us all. What
have wehas the dumber half of us done, once again?Kammy Is Toast
November 6, 2024 at 7:33 am
The dumber half saved you from the dumbest candidate to ever run. Part of the worst administration in a lifetime. Biden’s legacy has been set. Jimmy Carter is off the hook now.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 7:44 am
Just kidding, KITT. Trump will be so late to his inauguration speech because he’ll have to let himself of jail around 11AM that morning. Gosh I hope he isn’t put in “the population” between now and then.
White Spiteful Devil Rapist Trump
November 6, 2024 at 2:20 pm
Jimmy Carter did more for humanity,after he was President,than Trump did as President,tell the millions that died from COVID-19 do to negligence of Trump administration to address it beginning Google Jimmy Carter Guinea Worm
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 7:54 am
You lost the popular vote and the senate too.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 7:58 am
Meaning the next impeachment will come from the party that also holds the Senate and will finish the job their House started.
Kammy Is Toast
November 6, 2024 at 8:07 am
Ha! Ha! Where is the coup leader Pelosi today? Passed out vodka drunk?
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 9:15 am
He’s at Maga Lardo awaiting sentencing.
The man claimed without merit or evident that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Based on believing that, people voted for him in 2024. He won.
Will these folks actually admit 2020 was not stolen now, please? What more evidence can you possibly be given than a 2024 win that he lied to you about 2020?
The person who got enough votes to get the electoral college has won every time since the SCOTUS picked when Florida was ruled indeterminate due to punch ballots.
Based on lies about 2020 that are now 100% undeniably nonsense, a big fat liar won the vote in 2024.
And yet, the folks he lied to, they are happy about it. The same folks where lying to them garnered 34 felonies. He kept on lying and how he’s going to be President. Once again.
Dummies.
Can you finally admit the 2020 election was free and fair? It was close but it swung the other way. This time it swung your way, but close-or-not TBD.
Can you all finally admit you were lied to about 2020? And that your vote in 2024 was based, at least in part, on that lie? Your liar won by proving himself a liar. Congrats.
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 12:48 pm
Not possible. I was told he was a fascist so he will do away with the senate. They never lie, remember? You should leave the country or end up in a concentration camp! Silly liberal.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 1:26 pm
What’s the point in doing away with the Senate when it’s controlled by your own side for the next two years?
Trump would be a whole lot smoover to wait till Senate potentially presents some issue with a pending election.
Right now he’ll just lay some groundwork and weaken the Senate somewhat. He’ll also weaken 2A. He’s a shooting victim, you know. People don’t forget getting shot. Getting shot tends to change the minds that it doesn’t completely obliterate. And folks not having guns, that would be very helpful if he decided he wasn’t going to run again in 2028 (as promised) but it’s because maybe he’ll just stay put.
If he follows Netenyahu’s playbook, some bad shit gonna happen here in 2027 and it’ll be “too risky to change Presidents” in January 2029, “so I will have to stay in power, but of course only until this [whatever manufactured issue] is resolved, and then we’ll hold an election just like always”
White Spiteful Devil Rapist Trump
November 6, 2024 at 2:22 pm
He worthless POS that has to go before a judge for whoring around on his wife
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 4:16 pm
You can’t prosecute a sitting presidential, stupid. That is against the law.
Fred S
November 6, 2024 at 8:34 am
Please immediately seek psychiatric help.
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 7:53 am
The coconut has fallen.
Kammy Is Toast
November 6, 2024 at 7:59 am
I’m recording The View today. Should be a barrel of laughs.
Kamala is went-ala
November 6, 2024 at 8:37 am
On MSNBC this morning the question was what each commentator’s final thought was, and one had the courage to say simply and plainly, “Progressivism is dead.”
He was talking about you, “Don’t Say” and “Peter H” and Whitaker and whiny b–ches like you from sea to shining sea. Yes, there will be a woman elected president someday soon. She will be either a Republican or a Democrat, but she won’t be woke. For sure.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 9:20 am
If they smart, they’ll talk about how Turnip J Truck’s victory in 2024 proved beyond any shadow of anyone’s doubt that our elections are free and fair and that he just plain lost in 2020 and he’s lied about it ever since. His 2024 win proves he lied about 2020. People voted for him based on his lies, and ironically enough, his victory proves his biggest lie to have been a lie the whole time. The View should offer their congrats on people getting duped by the liar. Again. And he just proved it himself. He has proven himself a liar about 2020 win this win.
Kammy Is Toast
November 6, 2024 at 9:31 am
Sour grapes Don’t Say. One of the biggest mistakes Kammy made was not choosing Josh Shapiro, PA, as her running mate. She is also not likable. I give you her run in the Demo primary 2020 as exhibit A.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 9:57 am
Sour grapes? Did I say the Presidency tastes bad and I didn’t want it anyways? And did I say that because I failed to get it? No!
What I said was, Donald’s 2024 victory in a free and fair election proved him a liar about 2020. Period.
What I will add to that is congrats to everyone who wanted a President who has a perfect record of beating women and a perfect record of losing to men.
Donald J Trump is the USA’s first President who could only beat women. Let’s hope that his biggest statement made in history.
Ocean Joe
November 6, 2024 at 8:52 am
Ouch! And congratulations to all the red folks out there.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 9:27 am
2nd that. Congrats to folks who wanted Trump again even though his victory paradoxically just proved him to be the liar about “Stop the Steal” in 2020 that 49.9% of folks said he was.
It’ll soon time for a personal media blackout for the next 3.5 years so it really doesn’t affect me. Presidents have almost zero direct effect on regular folks like us. It’s just the media butterfly effect that gets folks acting all silly. Shut off the media, new, old, to-come, and you probably barely even know who is President like your typical 19 year old barely knows yet somehow still gets by, and in a much better mood than rabid consumers of media.
And who knows, maybe nobody will have to vote anymore because Trump will take care of it like he promised. Silver lining there is I won’t have to worry about elections or voting anymore. Yay.
I have no further need to frustrate myself asking folks “could you explain why you think/feel that,” informing folks about how influence works, yet only getting called names in response. Yay for me. I won.
Kammy Is Toast
November 6, 2024 at 9:32 am
Class by Ocean. I would have said the same if Kammy won.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 10:01 am
You’d have said congratulations to al the red folks out there? On a Kammy win? Oh right- because that’s what they wanted.
They wanted another so-called “Steal” that would support what they believe happened in 2020.
Therefore, since Trump did not get the loss he and his voters wanted, I extend my sympathies, condolences, thoughts and prayers to all red folks out there on Trump’s 2024 victory.
Sorry y’all. No Civil War this time. Turns out our elections are free and fair after all. Well they are held fairly, but nobody can even pretend they’re really fair with the countless amounts of money poured into them resulting in the bigger shill usually coming out ahead due to cash spent. But not this time!
This time it was important to the USA that we prove 2020’s “Stop the Steal” claims were utter nonsense. And the STS claims were indeed utter nonsense. We just proved it.
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 12:55 pm
Cope harder. What you’re doing is not normal.
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 1:20 pm
“Stop the Steal” is what wasn’t normal.
CanWill you finally admit 2020 was not stolen?Please write that on here. 2020 was not stolen. U.S. elections are free and fair. Trump lost one of the three times he claimed “it’s rigged” going in, and he won two of the times he claimed “it’s rigged” going in.
The two times he won, “it’s rigged” ceased to matter. The time he lost, he kept lying for 4 more years.
Admit it! 2020 was not stolen! Trump and his voters just proved it.
You just proved your foundational political belief was utter nonsense. And now you know what we all knew. The man is a liar and a cheater. But you had to elect him President again to believe it! What is WRONG with y’all? And i bet you’ll still say 2020 was stolen despite who is President-Elect today.
Was 2020 stolen? Please just answer that one, simple question. It’s a yes/no question, only 3 words long. You can do it!
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 2:05 pm
Again, Cope harder. What you’re doing is not normal.
Andrew Finn
November 6, 2024 at 9:34 am
Hooo Haaa !!!!!! AS the old song said “Oh What A Night”‘ Now that Donald Trump has won (and won “bigly”) with both the electoral and popular vote, we can make America great again. Trump is the
“candidate elect” and Harris is the “candidate reject”. That delightful grunting and gurgling sound you hear is millions of liberals puking and/or drowning in their tears. (Hey Bobby DeNiro – how are you liking this ?) That huge victory (Grover Cleveland style) along with taking the Senate should get this country back on track and reverse the last four years of disaster. Congratulations President Trump — make those liberals whine !!!!!!!!!!!!
Dont Say FLA
November 6, 2024 at 12:53 pm
Your guy won, but that came with a heavy price. It proves elections in USA are free and fair.
How do you like being proven wrong by Trump and your own vote and the votes of all the other folks in your camp who believed 2020 way stolen, about the claimed “Steal” in 2020?
Liberals might whine, but they’ll never whine more than Trump did with is “Stop the Steal” nonsense, now proven to have been a lie by you, to you.
Will you finally believe it? Now that you told yourself? 2020 was never stolen. He just plain lost! C’mon. You can finally admit it now that he beat another woman.
Andrew Finn
November 6, 2024 at 2:00 pm
Yes my guy won (and apparently a bazillion other people’s guy) in a spectacular way. Who cares about 2020 ? Old news. New news – Donald Trump will start the restoration in 2025/ That’s all that counts !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Billy Rotberg
November 6, 2024 at 2:49 pm
They said they would leave the country if trump won yet they are still here. I’m starting to think they lied. What a shock! Here I am, supposed to believe everything they say. What a huge let down.
Veronica Specyalski
November 6, 2024 at 2:39 pm
Trump deserved to win.Kamala wasn’t a good speech giver and her ideas were abit off .The government is run by many not just one.
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