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.
- 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.
