Trump Wins. And Reality Bites.

 Donald Trump has gone from convict to the 47th president of the United States. It’s a comeback unlike any other in American history. How did it happen?

(I wonder - What will happen with the lawfare trials now?)

We’re sitting down to write this at 2 a.m., and by now it’s clear: Donald Trump is set to be the 47th president of the United States, and on track to win the electoral college and the popular vote. It is a stunning comeback.

The red wave that wasn’t in 2022 came crashing down tonight. Republicans have retaken control of the Senate. Control of Congress is still in the balance.

Going into tonight, Nate Silver ran 80,000 simulations of what could happen. In 40,012 of them, Kamala Harris won. Every pollster and pundit said the same: It was gonna be a squeaker. Too close to call. We wouldn’t know for days, maybe even weeks!

That’s not how it went down. Not at all.

Trump had won Pennsylvania before the night was out. And by 2:30 in the morning, he was onstage, surrounded by his family and Dana White, delivering his victory speech in West Palm Beach. 

Tonight at our election party, the British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore said he hadn’t seen a comeback like this since Charles de Gaulle. But perhaps the only American echo of tonight is Richard Nixon. As Commentary editor John Podhoretz wrote on Twitter: “This is the most staggering political comeback in American history. Period. Nixon has held the comeback trophy for nearly 60 years. No longer.”

Why Trump won so convincingly—and why Kamala lost so fully—are themes we’ll cover over the coming weeks. But for now, enough from us. 

Somehow, after livestreaming for six hours, we have a packed Front Page on this historic day beginning with our Eli Lake on How Trump Won. 

Here’s Eli:

Donald Trump ended his first term in disgrace, hit with a second impeachment after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The 2022 midterm candidates he endorsed—Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake—all went down in flames. In 2023, he was declared guilty of sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll in a civil case. This past May, he was convicted in a Manhattan court on 34 felony counts for improperly reporting hush money payments. Overall, he has faced 116 indictments. Even now, the New York State attorney general is trying to punish the Trump Organization with nearly $500 million in fines, claiming that he unlawfully inflated the value of his properties. 

And yet here he is: America’s 47th president. 

How did he do it? 

Read Eli Lake: “How Trump Won.” 

“We Blew It, Joe” 

This race was the Democrats’ to lose. And they blew it. Badly. As of 2 a.m., there wasn’t a single state in the country in which Harris outperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers. What went wrong? Peter Savodnik has some ideas. 

“They didn’t lose because they didn’t spend enough money,” writes Peter. “They didn’t lose because they failed to trot out enough celebrity influencers. They lost because they were consumed by their own self-flattery, their own sense of self-importance.” 

And above all else, they lost because they lied. “They seemed to think that Americans wouldn’t mind that they had pretended Joe Biden was ‘sharp as a tack,’ that they actually orchestrated a behind-the-scenes switcheroo, that the party that portrayed itself as the nation’s answer to fascism nominated its standard-bearer without consulting a single voter.” 

Last night, the truth caught up with them. 

Read Peter Savodnik: “We Blew It, Joe!”

We’re Going to Be Okay

Deep breath. In the run-up to last night, we heard a lot about how this was going to be the last American election—from both sides. Oprah Winfrey, speaking Monday evening at Kamala’s last rally in Philadelphia, said: “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to cast a ballot again.” Elon Musk tweeted to his more than 200 million followers: “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election.”

We call bullshit.

America is going to be okay. 

Read our editorial: “Repeat After Us: This Is Not the Last Election.”

The presidential race was only one of last night’s shocking stories. Here are some of the others: 

• After four years in the minority, Republicans have regained control of the Senate—as many expected ahead of the election. Their new majority was solidified as Republican Jim Justice won Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia, political outsider and MAGA whisperer Bernie Moreno defeated incumbent Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Ted Cruz won in his third competitive race for reelection, and Deb Fischer secured reelection in an unexpectedly close Nebraska race.
• The battle for the House may not be settled for days, but it’s possible the Republicans could cling to control, setting the stage for a unified GOP in Washington. Here’s a smattering of the closest races that may hand the House to the Republicans: In Iowa, Rep. Zach Nunn held on to his seat in a race Democrats viewed as flippable; and in the increasingly red suburbs of NYC, New York Rep. Mike Lawler staved off a challenge from progressive Democrat Mondaire Jones. 

• In a scene reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s distraught voters in 2016, Harris’s supporters left her increasingly dour election night watch party in tears as the candidate delayed her address until Wednesday afternoon. Biden did not attend the party, according to White House officials, in yet another indication of the distance placed between the incumbent and his vice president: “Tonight, the president and First Lady will watch election results in the White House residence with longtime aides and senior White House staff.” 

• Florida’s abortion amendment failed, leaving the state’s six-week ban in place. The current law, supported by Republican governor Ron DeSantis, has exceptions for rape, incest, human trafficking, and the life of the mother. The amendment would have enshrined a right to an abortion any time before viability—roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy—and any time after when recommended by a healthcare provider. Abortion advocates outspent their opponents 8 to 1. But they needed 60 percent of the vote. In the end they got 57 percent, with 43 voting against. (ICYMI: Read Olivia Reingold on “How Abortion Became ‘the Defund the Police of the GOP.’ ”) A separate amendment to legalize marijuana also failed in the Sunshine State.

• Prop 36, California’s tough-on-crime amendment, passed with overwhelming support. The ballot measure reverses Prop 47, a 2014 law that downgraded felonies like thefts of under $950 and drug violations to misdemeanors. Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón, a mastermind behind Prop 47, lost to law-and-order candidate Nathan Hochman.  

• Kentucky’s school choice amendment failed, with 65 percent of voters casting their ballots against the measure. The amendment would have revised the state constitution to permit taxpayer money to go toward nonpublic education. (ICYMI: Read Frannie Block, “School Choice Is Usually a Conservative Issue. Not in Kentucky.”) 

• New York passed Proposition 1, ostensibly a bill to enshrine abortion rights, but really a Trojan horse allowing biological males into female spaces. (ICYMI: Read Josh Code for The Free Press on what this anti-equality measure means for the Big Apple.)
• Massachusetts failed to pass a ballot measure that would have legalized psychedelics, including psilocybin (mushrooms) and DMT. If the ballot measure had passed, the state would have joined Oregon and Colorado as the third state in the nation to legalize the recreational use of psychedelics.

• Ann Selzer ate her words after she hung her reputation on an especially optimistic Iowa poll this weekend that showed Harris leading the state by three points. She told The Daily Beast: “I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened. And, I welcome what that process might teach me.”

If you missed our Free Press livestream—thanks to the hundreds of thousands of you who tuned in!—you can watch it here. There were a lot more people in the green room, and we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get them on the record on the burning issues. . . 

Who will win World War III? 

“America, baby.” —Coleman Hughes

“Trick question. There will be no World War III.” —Michael Shellenberger 

“Israel.” —Dasha Nekrasova 

“China.” —Jesse Singal 

“I’m hoping that Donald Trump becomes president, and we don’t find out, because I don’t think it will happen if he’s president for four years. But there’s one thing that the democracies have shown—that they’re very slow to recognize threats—but once they are mobilized, they win.” —Matt Continetti 

“Assuming we get India on our side, the Western world.”
—Brianna Wu

What have you changed your mind about since the last election? 

“I think Trump’s gotten creepier since 2020. I think he’s gotten more vengeful. I think he’s gotten angrier, even though I think he’s got more reason to be angry.” —Rikki Schlott

“Tech censorship and the danger it poses to democracy. I think in 2020 I was a little bit more accepting that the tech companies as private entities had the right to police discourse. But in the years since, I’ve seen that they wield an almost government-like power that I think needs to be held in check.” —Matt Continetti 

“In 2020 I was like, oh, the Democratic Party is just the party of the professional managerial elite, but Bidenism has been interesting economically.” —Sohrab Ahmari 

“I’ve decided not to panic over the possibility of a Donald Trump victory because I did that in 2016. I can’t really get there emotionally this time. I just feel dead inside.”
—Kat Rosenfield

 

On what the next president should do to unite America: 

“Chill the fuck out.” —Jesse Singal

“Make clear he doesn’t hate the other half of the country.”
—Coleman Hughes

“Focus on posterity instead of populism.” —Peter Meijer

“Promise to protect pet squirrels from government overreach.” —Kat Rosenfield

“Lower taxes.” —Adam Rubenstein

 

The biggest gaffe of the election? 

“Kamala Harris choosing Tim Walz instead of Josh Shapiro.” —Nellie Bowles

“Kamala lying about working at McDonald’s.” —Dasha Nekrasova

“Tony Hinchcliffe and Joe Biden had the biggest impact on this election—other than the names on the ticket—because by not bowing out gracefully sooner, he set her up in a position to look dishonest no matter what she said.” —Noam Dworman 

“The Biden campaign.” —Rikki Schlott

What do you make of our vice president–elect? 

“J.D. Vance is one of the most pernicious and pathetic figures in American politics and culture.” —Nick Gillespie 

“J.D. Vance is a thoughtful, conscientious, patriotic, decent person who learns, adapts, and course-corrects.” —Reihan Salam 

“J.D. Vance is disturbingly hot.” —Brianna Wu

“J.D. Vance is held back by his loyalty to Trump.” —Coleman Hughes 

“The only person at Yale worth knowing.” —Catherine Herridge

 

Why did Trump win? 

“The more you learn about Kamala, the less you like. Maybe she should have been hiding in the basement.”
—Catherine Herridge

“Immigration. He’s the strongest anti-immigration president we’ve had in decades. At the same time, we had the biggest immigration crisis we’ve had. So 2 + 2 = 4.”
—Coleman Hughes 

“Maybe because of the border. Maybe it’s because of Kamala’s personality. And she also did kind of a terrible job at being vice president.” —Josie Savodnik, age 9 

CORRECTION: A previous version of The Front Page incorrectly said there wasn’t a single county in the country in which Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump. In fact, there wasn’t a single state in the country in which Harris outperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers by 3 percent or more. This has been updated. The Free Press regrets the error.