Former President Donald Trump, considered a political outcast after losing the presidency in 2020 and an attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol, was elected to another term on Wednesday in a decisive and astounding victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
His win completes one of the most remarkable comebacks in political history, just four years after voters ejected him from the office.
Trump defeated Harris by capturing at least 270 of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency. His tally could increase as more votes are counted.
The former president captured battleground states that for weeks had been considered a tossup. The race was both improbable and historic. His return to the White House comes after he was impeached twice, survived two assassination attempts and was convicted of 34 felony counts.
He becomes the first president since Grover Cleveland 132 years ago to lose the office and win again four years later.
Trump’s triumph at the ballot box was a remarkable moment in a presidential contest unlike any other
While driven into near-exile after the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, Trump quickly began planning a comeback from his home base at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. He announced his 2024 candidacy in November 2022, shortly after congressional elections in which Republican candidates did worse than expected.
Trump’s victory over Harris puts the nation on a vastly different course than the one charted over the past four years by President Joe Biden, a Democrat who beat Trump in 2020 in a close race that Trump still falsely claims he won. Harris served as Biden’s vice president. During the campaign, Trump sought to tie her to what he said were the administration’s failures on the economy, immigration and other issues.
Trump vowed that, if given another term, he would begin the mass deportation of undocumented migrants, seek retribution against his perceived political enemies, send the military into Chicago and other cities coping with violence, and impose tariffs of as much as 10% on most foreign goods.
“Look what happened – is this crazy?” Trump told a screaming crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center early Wednesday morning.
Echoing comments he made on the campaign trail, Trump called his supporters “the greatest political movement of all time” and said his victory and GOP wins in Congress had provided “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” He promised to help the country heal after the divisive election, stressing that “we have to put our county first for at least a period of time.”
“We have to fix it,” he added.
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