Trump wins the 2024 US presidential election

Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, fulfilling his promise to upend America’s political status quo after he refused to accept his loss to President Biden four years ago and inspired a crowd of supporters to violently take over to storm the US Capitol.

The former president’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris — after an extraordinary campaign in which he was convicted of a felony and survived two assassination attempts — was confirmed shortly after 5:30 a.m. (EDT) when he secured more than 270 electoral votes after his election. the key battleground states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country,” Trump told a crowd around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday from a stage decorated with star-spangled banners at his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The former president declared himself the winner before most news media had called the race.

Trump said the election, in which more than 137 million Americans voted, represented a “historic realignment” of American interests and a “tremendous victory for democracy and for freedom.”

“I will not rest until we deliver the strong, safe and prosperous America our children deserve,” he added. “This will truly be America’s golden age.”

Trump built his third campaign for the White House around the issues of immigration and the economy, appealing to Americans fed up with liberal elites and the status quo. He promised to secure the southern border deport millions of people living in the country illegally, imposing tariffs that will revive the economy and restore American manufacturing, and withdraw the nation from the international stage.

He also threatened to use the US military after the election against “radical left-wing lunatics”, including the Democrats, whom he has called the “enemy from within”.

His closing campaign slogan: ‘Kamala broke it. Trump Will Fix It” – highlighted Harris’ role in the Biden administration and positioned himself as the candidate for change.

Harris’ defeat marks the second time in eight years that a woman became the Democrats’ presidential nominee but failed to secure enough votes to win.

The Harris team has not yet commented on Trump’s victory. Before 11 p.m. Tuesday, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon sent staff a memo noting it was a “razor-thin race.”

“We feel good about what we are seeing,” she wrote to staff, noting that attendance expectations had been exceeded in Philadelphia. “Let’s finish what we have left tonight, get some sleep and get ready to finish strong tomorrow.”

It was a devastating evening for the Democrats.

Trump flipped Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin – states that Democrats won in 2020 – and won them by clear margins of several percentage points. He held Michigan and North Carolina. On Friday morning he had a several percentage point lead in Arizona and Nevada, but the races were not called.

Republicans also gained control of the Senate after Tim Sheehy in Montana, Deb Fischer in Nebraska, Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Jim Justice in West Virginia secured some contested seats.

The House of Representatives remains up for grabs as election officials continue counting votes. The Republicans hope to retain their majority in the House of Representatives. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Representative Mike Lawler, who holds a seat in suburban New York, has managed to win a second term.

Trump’s victory was greeted with dismay by a crowd of political pundits and campaigners.

“I barely have the words to express what a dark and frightening moment this is for American democracy,” Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, said on X. “May we have the strength and courage to definitely get through this. awaits us on the other side.”

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called Trump’s victory “a deadly threat to the democratic values ​​of freedom and equality, the rule of law, and reproductive health, rights, and justice in the United States and around the world .”

It wasn’t all bad news for abortion rights advocates. According to the Associated Press, seven out of 10 states, including Arizona, have passed measures to protect abortion rights. But abortion restrictions will remain in place in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.

The second Trump administration, Northup warned, would likely work to end the distribution of abortion drugs by mail, pass a national abortion ban and encourage conservative states to lead more prosecutions and investigations against health care providers and patients who wanted to cross state lines exceed.

“The Center for Reproductive Rights is ready for this next fight,” she said. “We will vigorously oppose any attempts to reverse progress.”

Conservatives are pushing back against liberal commentators and activists’ narrative of a dark, vengeful Trump presidency. Some claimed that liberals had misinterpreted the will of the American people.

Scott Jennings, a conservative political strategist, said on CNN that he saw the results as a “revenge from just the plain old American working class, the faceless American who has been crushed, offended and condescended to.”

The American political and media class, Jennings argued, had ignored the fundamentals of inflation and “people feeling like they were barely able to tread water.”

“The Democrats thought there were enough people who hated Trump or were willing to fear him to win the race,” Jennings said. “And it turns out that being president means more than simply not being Donald Trump, in the eyes of the American people.”