WEST PALM BEACH, Florida — Former President Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, sealing a remarkable return to the White House, and bringing to a close an unprecedented election season.
Trump surpassed the magical threshold of 270 electoral votes shortly after 5:30 a.m., according to the Associated Press, when Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes were awarded to him. He will become the first president in 127 years to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office, joining Grover Cleveland as the only man to return to the White House in such a manner.
Trump also appears to be comfortably on track to win the popular vote, becoming the first Republican since George W. Bush in 2004 to achieve this feat.
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“This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again,” Trump told his supporters while flanked by his family at his victory night party.
While political pundits anticipated a repeat of 2020, when the result was not known for several days, in actuality, Trump cruised to victory. He won North Carolina and, shortly after, flipped Georgia, which had turned blue in 2020. When the battleground state of Pennsylvania turned red, it signaled the end for Harris’s slim hopes. A dejected Harris camp saw the writing on the wall earlier in the night, telling supporters who had gathered for a watch party at Howard University in Washington, D.C., to go home. The move to send out co-chairman Cedric Richmond echoed that of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s doomed campaign in 2016.
“Against all odds, Donald Trump has not only pulled off the greatest comeback in political history but may be one of the greatest comebacks in American history,” Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist, told the Washington Examiner early Wednesday morning.
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The former president won a second term in the White House after a tumultuous campaign that saw him face multiple legal charges, survive two assassination attempts, and see his original Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, suspend his campaign after a disastrous debate performance in June. Harris secured the Democratic nomination the following month.
The battle against Harris proved arduous as the vice president energized the Democratic base that was dead in the water with Biden at the helm. She raised record amounts of money and deployed an extensive ground-game strategy. But Trump proved once again that more money doesn’t equate to electoral success. Clinton also outraised Trump in 2016 and still lost.
Trump spent much of the campaign trail attacking Harris over the economy, immigration, and her record as Biden’s vice president. The GOP often pushed for Trump to stick to hammering Harris over policy and moving away from the personal attacks on her intelligence and race.
The campaign will be remembered for two dramatic moments in modern history. Firstly, Trump survived an assassination attempt during a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, two days before the start of the Republican National Convention. A bloodied Trump rose from the ground, fist clenched, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight.” The former president would blame Biden and Harris’s “rhetoric” for helping lead to a second attempt on his life at the Trump National Golf Club in Florida in September. Unlike the summer shooting, the Secret Service stopped the would-be sniper before he could get a shot off at Trump.
Secondly, Trump contended with a historic swap of his Democratic opponent in the final months of the campaign after Biden had a disastrous debate against the former president in July. Biden, facing overwhelming pressure from within his party to drop out of the race, acquiesced a week after the Butler rally, paving the way for a quick-fire Harris campaign.
Harris and Trump faced off on the debate stage just once during the election cycle in September. The ABC News-hosted matchup in Philadelphia saw Harris prosecute her case against Trump and provoke him to anger. Trump declared afterward that he would no longer participate in any more debates.
Trump’s victory is all the more remarkable given the multitude of legal entanglements in his way following the 2020 election. He is now the first American president in history to have been indicted and then won the White House afterward.
The former president alluded to those matters during his victory speech. “We made history for a reason tonight,” Trump declared. “We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible.”
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In 2023, Trump faced four criminal cases that will likely remain in legal jeopardy now that Trump is the president-elect. Two of the cases, a federal grand jury and a Georgia grand jury, are related to Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 elections. He also faced an indictment over his mishandling of sensitive national security documents once out of the White House, but a Florida federal judge tossed out that case in July.
Trump was indicted and convicted of 34 felony counts in May after a jury in New York found him guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, and the former president was found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll in May 2023. Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $83.3 million.
Trump was also ordered to pay $454 million in penalties after New York Attorney General Letitia James brought a civil fraud case against the former president’s Trump Organization.
The multiple legal dramas led to rising poll numbers for the former president during the primary and helped Trump raise massive amounts, with the release of his mug shot after surrendering to Fulton County, Georgia, authorities in August 2023 leading to a banner day for fundraising.
Despite the divisive legal problems he faced, Trump claimed, “We’re going to help our country heal” when he begins his second term as the 47th president.
Trump’s path to the White House began just mere weeks after the November 2022 midterm elections and nearly two years after the chaotic Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot that saw Congress impeach Trump a second time.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
However, at least 13 other Republican lawmakers launched their presidential campaigns in defiance of Trump, starting with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in February 2023.
Trump refused to participate in any primary debate, often scheduling competing events at the same time, and would later trounce all his GOP primary competitors, including Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who was once seen as the MAGA successor to Trump’s empire.
After a decisive showing during Super Tuesday this year, Haley became the last Trump rival to drop out of the race, making Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.
Republicans who had held out on endorsing Trump, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), quickly fell into line.
At 78 years old, Trump will be the oldest person inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025. Yet Trump’s agility on the campaign trail proved much stronger than Biden, 81, whose mental acuity paved the way for the Democratic Party to call on him to step aside.
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Looking ahead to his second administration, Trump pledged to usher in a new era after four years of Biden.
“I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day, I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body,” Trump said. “I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America.”
