Donald Trump will be America’s 47th president, after mounting the most momentous comeback in political history that will hand him massive, disruptive power at home and will send shockwaves around the world.
Four years after leaving Washington as a pariah, following his attempt to overturn the 2020 election to stay in office, Trump’s victory defied two assassination attempts, two presidential impeachments, his criminal conviction and many other criminal charges.
Trump vowed at his Mar-a-Lago resort early Wednesday to “heal” the nation, to fix its borders and to deliver a strong and prosperous economy after millions of his voters turned to him amid frustration over high prices for food and housing and embraced his plans for a crackdown on undocumented migrants.
“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47thpresident and your 45th president,” said Trump, only the second president to win a non-consecutive term. “This will truly be the golden age of America.”
But Trump’s new mandate will raise fresh fears that he plans to follow through on his belief that presidents enjoy almost unlimited authority.
He vowed on the campaign trail to use a new White House term to enact “retribution” and has openly talked about using America’s governing institutions, and even the military, to punish his foes. He has pledged to launch a mass deportation of undocumented, and even some legal, migrants that could set off a showdown with the courts.
CNN projected Trump’s victory after the state of Wisconsin put him over the top and he secured the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
His win ended the Democrats’ desperate attempt to thwart his return to power, which saw Vice President Kamala Harris hurriedly elevated to the party nomination after already unpopular President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance at the CNN debate against Trump in June.
The former president outpaced his own performance in a losing cause four years ago, putting the states of Georgia and Pennsylvania back into the GOP column and retaining North Carolina for his party – all of which Democrats had targeted as part of the vice president’s path to the White House.
Trump campaigned on searing authoritarian-style rhetoric and false claims that the nation’s towns and cities were under “occupation” from foreign criminals and gangs.
But he also tapped into a palpable thirst for change among Americans still feeling the painful aftereffects of a now cooled run of high inflation. And he warned that only he could stop a slide to World War III as foreign crises rage.
He has promised to create the greatest economy in the world and to make life more affordable for working Americans who form the populist base of the Republican Party that he transformed.
Trump’s supporters see him as a unique figure whose blunt, sometimes vulgar and often racially suggestive rhetoric reveals him as a scourge of political correctness. But the spectacle of the final days of the campaign being dominated by debate over whether Trump is a “fascist” reflects the fresh challenges.
Trump’s victory is also certain to lead to the dismissal of special counsel Jack Smith and will mean that the president-elect paid no electoral price for his attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election, which culminated in his supporters’ mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Given the extreme nature of his campaign, his election may also augur a period of national and international turmoil. Trump has vowed to use his second term to seek “retribution” against his political adversaries and mused aloud about using the military against “the enemy from within.”
Overseas, US allies are bracing for the return of the wild unpredictability in US foreign policy that Trump whipped up in his first term. There are also concerns about his willingness to enforce NATO’s bedrock principle of mutual interest.
And Trump’s success means that he has for the second time defied the aspirations of millions of Americans for a female president, since his vanquishing of Harris follows his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton, again preventing the shattering of what she called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling” in US politics.
CNN/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma
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