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.
18 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.
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.
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.
Ocean Joe
November 6, 2024 at 8:52 am
Ouch! And congratulations to all the red folks out there.