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Trump elected as US president after victory in Wisconsin

06 Nov 2024 6 minute read
President of the United States Donald Trump. Image: Gage Skidmore

Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States.

The victory marks an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the US Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.

With a win in Wisconsin, Mr 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 polarised nation.

Vow

As president, he has vowed to pursue an agenda centred on dramatically reshaping the federal government and pursuing retribution against his perceived enemies.

Speaking to his supporters on Wednesday morning, Mr 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 Mr Trump and a shift to a new Democratic nominee just a month before the party’s convention.

Mr Trump will inherit a range of challenges when he assumes office on January 20, including heightened political polarisation and global crises that are testing America’s influence abroad.

His win against Ms Harris, the first woman of colour to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female rival in a presidential election.

Ms 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.

Mr 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.

Sweeping agenda

His vice president, 40-year-old Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will become the highest-ranking member of the millennial generation in the US government.

There will be far fewer checks on Mr 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 Republican critics in Congress have largely been defeated or retired. Federal courts are now filled with judges he appointed. The US Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, issued a ruling earlier this year affording presidents broad immunity from prosecution.

The fate of democracy appeared to be a primary driver for Ms Harris’s supporters, a sign that the Democratic nominee’s persistent messaging in her campaign’s closing days accusing Mr Trump of being a fascist may have broken through, according to the expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

Donald Trump after being shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Photo PA Images

It also found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change. Mr Trump’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation – two issues that the former Republican president has been hammering since the start of his campaign.

Mr Trump’s language and behaviour 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 labelled the “enemy from within”, threatened to take action against news organisations for unfavourable coverage and suggested suspending the Constitution.

Some who served in his first White House, including former vice president Mike Pence and John Kelly, Mr Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, either declined to endorse him or issued dire public warnings about his return to the presidency.

While Ms Harris focused much of her initial message around themes of joy, Mr Trump channelled 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 Mr 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 Mr 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.

Absurdity

This campaign often veered into the absurd, with Mr Trump amplifying bizarre and disproven rumours 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 Mr Trump’s ear and killed one of his supporters. His face streaked with blood, he stood and raised his fist in the air.

Weeks later, a second assassination attempt was thwarted after a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a gun poking through the greenery while Mr Trump was playing golf.

Donald Trump. Photo Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Mr 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 US Capitol.

He was so isolated at the time that few outside of his family bothered to attend the send-off he organised for himself at Andrews Air Force Base, complete with a 21-gun salute.

Democrats who controlled the US House quickly impeached him for his role in the insurrection, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He was acquitted by the US Senate, where many Republicans argued that he no longer posed a threat because he had left office.

But from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Mr Trump – aided by some elected Republicans – worked to maintain his political relevance.

Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who at the time led his party in the US House, visited Mr Trump soon after he left office, essentially validating his continued role in the party.


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Jeff
Jeff
1 month ago

Baddenoch so far up Trump at PMQ Farage had to get out the way.

S Duggan
S Duggan
1 month ago

Hold onto your hats everyone – 4 years at least of terror to come….

Rob
Rob
1 month ago

Trump should have been disqualified after January 6th. What a complete and utter farce. Its time for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to stop pussyfooting the populist right before its too late.

Last edited 1 month ago by Rob
Jack
Jack
1 month ago

It’s called democracy. Get over it. You may not like the result, but democracy has delivered.

Algie
Algie
1 month ago
Reply to  Jack

Like Trumps mob did last time! Do you mean?

Ernie The Smallholder
Ernie The Smallholder
1 month ago
Reply to  Jack

What the elections has delivered the USA in 2024 seems to be the same as what the 1933 election in Deutschland.
History repeats itself when you do not learn from it.

Y Cymro
Y Cymro
1 month ago
Reply to  Jack

It’s called democracy lol. We have a right one here. What planet are you living on? Do normal democracies reelect rapists with multiple felonies who paid off a pornstar that he had sex with only to threaten her life with his thugs then attack her pet horse when she revealed what they did? I’ll answer for you. No! This is a cowardly man responsible for inciting his supporters to attack that very seat of democracy you mentioned resulting in five families having to bury their dead only to watch the carnage on TV in the Oval Office. You do know… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Y Cymro
Rob
Rob
1 month ago
Reply to  Jack

Just because its democracy doesn’t mean that we have to agree with it. Do you by any chance remember January 6th 2021?

Jeff
Jeff
1 month ago
Reply to  Jack

Yeah, we shall see. Interesting the way it went. I would get the popcorn out but the effects of Trump will impact us and millions world wide. Very much depending on his team but a Kennedy is slated to be involved with health and he is off his rocker (vaccines are team work world wide and he will impact that), Musk may have a post, and he is not the genius his fans think he is. Buckle up kiddo. (not forgetting Trump is already incoherent at many events, they could pull the 25th on him, that will be interesting cos… Read more »

Y Cymro
Y Cymro
1 month ago

This result is the equivalent of Turkeys voting to be stuffed for Christmas? Who would have thought it. Americans reelecting a misogynist rapist felon egotist responsible for inciting the Capitol Hill riots that killed 5 and injured dozens. Apparently he loves the uneducated. We have indeed entered the Twilight Zone. 🤪🤏
#MAGA

Ernie The Smallholder
Ernie The Smallholder
1 month ago

Complacency is always a danger. History when not properly learnt has a danger to repeat itself. 1929 – The Wall Street crash causing recession & austerity throughout = The rise of Hitler. 2008 – A financial crash causing recession & austerity throughout = The rise of Trump. In both cases the populus tended to be poorly education in basic economics; choosing dictators promising seemerly easy solutions which never work. Fascism never works ! The election of Trump could mean the end of the USA having any sort of democracy, if it even had it before. The USA has voted against… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Ernie The Smallholder
Padi Phillips
Padi Phillips
1 month ago

No doubt that it tends to be the poor and poorly educated whop vote for people like Trump, but that’s not the end of the story. While those people may not understand macroeconomics (or really even care that much about them) and certainly don’t have the luxury of being able to take the ling view, they do certainly know when they’ve been continually shafted by the centre and the left and will tend to react accordingly when a demagogue appears offering them salvation. That’s effectively what has happened over the past half century, which is why areas like the Rust… Read more »

Rob
Rob
1 month ago

Do anyone remember a show on BBC by Russell T Davies called ‘Years and Years’ from 2019? My god some of the predictions it had for the 2020s has became scarily accurate. Russia invading Ukraine in 2022, a second Trump Presidency, the overturning of Roe v Wade, the US becoming a rogue state resulting in a global economic collapse, and a right wing populist (Vivienne Rook) becoming Prime Minister (not happened yet, but a real possibility).
This decade so far is a literal dystopian nightmare.

Last edited 1 month ago by Rob

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