Trump won the White House to become the 47th president of the United States.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, fomented a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted on criminal charges and survived two assassination attempts.
With his win in Wisconsin, Trump secured the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
The win underscores his tough-talking approach to politics. He has attacked his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in deeply personal terms — often misogynistic and racist — while pushing a disastrous image of a country overrun by violent immigrants. The blunt rhetoric, coupled with an image of hyper-masculinity, has resonated with angry voters — particularly men — in a deeply polarized nation.
As president, he has vowed to pursue an agenda focused on dramatically reshaping the federal government and seeking revenge on his perceived enemies. Speaking to supporters Wednesday morning, Trump claimed he had won an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
The results cap a turbulent and historically competitive election season that included two assassination attempts on Trump and a shift to a new Democratic nominee just a month before the party’s convention. Trump will inherit a host of challenges when he takes office on Jan. 20, including deepening political polarization and global crises testing America’s influence abroad.
His victory over Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, marks only the second time he has defeated a female challenger in a general election. Harris, the current vice president, rose to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age. Despite the initial energy around her campaign, she has struggled through a compressed timetable to convince disillusioned voters that she represents a break from an unpopular administration.
Trump is the first former president to return to power since Grover Cleveland reclaimed the White House in 1892. He is the first person convicted of a felony to be elected president, and at 78, he is the oldest person ever elected to the office. His running mate, 40-year-old Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, will become the highest-ranking millennial in the U.S. government.
When he returns to the White House, there will be far fewer checks on Trump. He plans to quickly enact a sweeping agenda that would transform nearly every aspect of the U.S. government. His Republican critics in Congress have largely been defeated or retired. The federal courts are now filled with the judges he appointed. The U.S. Supreme Court, which has three Trump appointees, ruled earlier this year that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
Trump’s rhetoric and behavior during the campaign have raised growing warnings from Democrats and some Republicans about the shocks his return to power could bring to democracy. He has repeatedly praised strongmen, warned that he would deploy the military to target political opponents he has called the “enemy 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, have declined to endorse him or issued dire public warnings about his return to the presidency.
While Harris focused much of her initial message on themes of joy, Trump has channeled a strong anger and resentment among voters.
He has tapped into frustrations over rising prices, concerns about crime, and immigrants entering the country illegally under Biden. He has also highlighted wars in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to portray Democrats as presiding over — and encouraging — a world in chaos.
It was a formula Trump perfected in 2016 when he portrayed himself as the only person capable of fixing the country’s problems, often borrowing language from dictators.
“In 2016, I declared that I was your voice,” he said in March 2023. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And I am your vengeance for those wronged and cheated.”
That campaign often veered into the absurd, with Trump amplifying bizarre but proven rumors that immigrants were stealing and eating pet cats and dogs in an Ohio town. At one point, he began a rally with an elaborate story about legendary golfer Arnold Palmer, whose genitals he praised.
But perhaps the defining moment came in July when a gunman opened fire on a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In 2021, a gunman opened fire on Trump, killing one of his supporters. His face covered in blood, Trump stood up and raised his fist in the air, shouting, “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!” Weeks later, a second assassination attempt was foiled after a Secret Service agent spotted the muzzle of a gun poking through the greens as Trump played golf.
Trump’s return to the White House seemed unlikely when he left Washington in early 2021 as a diminutive 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 his family bothered to attend the farewell he organized for himself at Andrews Air Force Base, complete with a 21-gun salute.
Democrats who controlled the U.S. House of Representatives quickly impeached him for his role in the insurrection, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He was acquitted by the U.S. Senate, with many Republicans arguing that he no longer posed a threat because he had left office.
However, from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump — with the help of some elected Republicans — has worked to maintain his political relevance. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Texas, California’s Wray, who led his party in the U.S. House of Representatives, then visited Trump shortly after he left office, affirming his continued role in the party.
As the 2022 midterm elections approached, Trump used the power of his endorsement to assert himself as the party’s undisputed leader. His favored candidates almost always won primaries, but some were defeated in elections that Republicans saw as within their grasp. Those disappointing results were driven in part by the backlash over the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, a decision that Trump-appointed justices helped secure. The midterm elections raised questions within the Republican Party about whether Trump should remain the party’s leader.
But if Trump’s future was in doubt, that changed in 2023 when he faced a wave of state and federal impeachment charges for his role in the insurrection, his handling of classified information, and his election interference. He has used the charges to portray himself as a victim of an overreaching government, an argument that has resonated with a Republican base that has been increasingly skeptical of — if not outright hostile to — existing institutions and power structures.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the Republican nomination, lamented that the charges “sucked all the oxygen” out of this year’s Republican primary. Trump easily captured his party’s nomination without even participating in a debate against DeSantis or other GOP candidates.
As he prepares to return to the White House, Trump has pledged to quickly implement a radical agenda that would transform nearly every aspect of the U.S. government. That includes plans to launch the largest deportation campaign in the nation’s history, use the Justice Department to punish his enemies, dramatically expand the use of tariffs, and once again pursue a zero-sum approach to foreign policy that threatens to upend longstanding foreign alliances, including NATO.
When he arrived in Washington in 2017, Trump knew little about the levers of federal power. His agenda has been stymied by Congress, the courts, and senior staffers who have taken it upon themselves to act as safety nets.
This time, Trump has said he will surround himself with loyalists who carry out his agenda without questions and will arrive with hundreds of draft executive orders, legislative proposals, and in-depth policy papers.
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