WASHINGTON – Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, 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 crimes and survived two assassination attempts.
With a victory in Wisconsin, Trump eliminated the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Victory validates his bare-knuckle approach to politics. He attacked his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in deeply personal terms — often misogynistic and racist — while promoting an apocalyptic image of a country overrun by violent migrants. The crude rhetoric, combined with an image of hypermasculinity, resonated with angry voters — especially men — in a deeply polarized nation.

As president, he promised to pursue an agenda centered on dramatically reshaping the federal government and seeking revenge against his perceived enemies. Speaking to supporters Wednesday morning, Trump claimed he had won “a strong and unprecedented mandate.”

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The results cap a historically tumultuous and competitive election season that has included two assassination attempts against Trump and a switch to a new Democratic candidate just a month before the party’s convention. Trump will inherit a number of challenges when he takes office on January 20, including heightened political polarization and global crises that are testing America’s influence abroad.

His victory over Harris, the first black woman to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female challenger in a general election. Harris, the current vice president, rose to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race amid alarm over his advanced age. Despite an initial surge of energy around her campaign, she struggled on a compressed timeline to convince disillusioned voters that she represented a break from an unpopular administration.

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Trump is the first former president to return to power since Grover Cleveland won back the White House in 1892. He is the first person convicted of a felony to be elected president and, at 78, is the oldest person elected in function. His running mate, 40-year-old Ohio Senator JD Vance, will become the highest-ranking member of the millennial generation in the US government.

There will be far fewer checks on Trump when he returns to the White House. He plans to quickly implement a sweeping agenda that would transform nearly every aspect of American government. His GOP critics in Congress were mostly defeated or retired. The federal courts are now filled with judges appointed by him. The US Supreme Court, which includes three justices appointed by Trump, ruled earlier this year that gives presidents broad immunity from prosecution.

Trump’s language and behavior on the campaign trail have prompted growing warnings from Democrats and some Republicans about the shocks to democracy his return to power would bring. He has repeatedly praised strong leaders, warned he would deploy the military to target political opponents he labeled the “enemy within”, threatened to crack down on news organizations for unfavorable coverage and suggested suspending the Constitution .

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

While Harris focused much of his initial message on themes of joy, Trump channeled a strong sense of anger and resentment among voters.

He tapped into frustrations over high prices and fears about crime and migrants entering the country illegally under Biden’s watch. He also pointed to the wars in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to present Democrats as presidents — and encouraging — a world in chaos.

It was a formula that Trump perfected in 2016, when he declared himself the only person who could solve the country’s problems, often borrowing the language of dictators.

“In 2016, I declared that 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 punishment,” he said in March 2023.

This campaign often veered into the absurd, with Trump amplifying bizarre and disproved rumors that migrants were stealing and eating pet cats and dogs in an Ohio town. At one point, he started 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 pierced Trump’s ear and killed one of his supporters. His face streaked with blood, Trump stood up and raised his fist in the air, shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Weeks later, a second assassination attempt was foiled after a Secret Service agent saw the barrel of a gun poking through the green while Trump was playing golf.

Trump’s return to the White House seemed unlikely when he left Washington in early 2021, a diminutive figure whose lies about his defeat sparked a violent insurrection at the US Capitol. He was so isolated at the time that few outside his family bothered to attend the send-off he organized for himself at Andrews Air Force Base, complete with a 21-gun salute.

The 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 he was no longer a threat because he had left office.

But from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump — aided by some elected Republicans — has worked to maintain his political relevance. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who at the time led his party in the US House, visited Trump shortly after he left office, essentially validating his continued role in the party.

As the 2022 midterm elections approached, Trump used the strength of his endorsement to assert himself as the undisputed leader of the party. His favored candidates almost always won the primaries, but some went on to defeat them in elections that Republicans considered within their reach. Those disappointing results were driven in part by a backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that revoked a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, a decision that was aided by Trump-appointed justices. The midterm elections have raised questions within the GOP about whether Trump should remain the party’s leader.

But if Trump’s future was in doubt, that changed in 2023, when he faced a wave of state and federal charges for his role in the insurgency, his handling of classified information and election interference. He used the allegations to portray himself as the victim of outdated government, an argument that resonated with a GOP base that was increasingly skeptical — if not hostile — to established institutions and power structures.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the Republican nomination, lamented that the indictments have “taken all the oxygen” out of this year’s GOP primary. Trump easily captured his party’s nomination without ever participating in a debate against DeSantis or other GOP candidates.

As Trump dominates the Republican contest, a New York jury found him guilty of more than 34 felony counts in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said he the two had sex. He faces sentencing later this month, although his victory raises serious questions about whether he will ever be punished.

He was also found guilty in two other civil cases in New York: one for inflating his assets and another for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996.

Trump faces additional criminal charges in a Georgia election meddling case that has stalled. Federally, he was indicted for his role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and for mishandling classified material. When he becomes president on January 20, Trump could appoint an attorney general who would clear the federal charges.

As he prepares to return to the White House, Trump has vowed to quickly enact a sweeping agenda that would transform nearly every aspect of American government. This includes plans to launch the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, use the Justice Department to punish its enemies, dramatically expand the use of tariffs, and once again pursue a zero-sum approach to foreign policy that threatens to upend longstanding foreign alliances. , including the NATO pact.

When he arrived in Washington in 2017, Trump knew little about the levers of federal power. His agenda has been blocked by Congress and the courts, as well as senior staff members who have taken it upon themselves to serve as guardrails.

This time, Trump said he will surround himself with loyalists who will carry out his agenda without question and arrive with hundreds of draft executive orders, legislative proposals and in-depth policy documents in hand.

Colvin reported from West Palm Beach, Florida.

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