They were announced as the most uncertain presidential elections in decades, but instead there was no head-to-head between Trump and Harris, but only the lead of Donald Trump, who managed to regain the White House eight years after the 2016 victory. In American history, before Trump there had only been one president elected to two non-consecutive terms. He was Democrat Grover Cleveland, 22nd president from 1885 to 1889 and 24th president from 1893 to 1897.
Trump celebrated the victory even before the final vote count. The friendly television network Fox News declared him the winner well in advance, while CNN and the New York Times waited for the official confirmation, which arrived when it was just after 11.30 in Italy.
Trump’s victory appeared clear after winning Georgia (which he had lost to Biden in 2020), North Carolina and Pennsylvania. They were three of the so-called “swing states”, decisive in assigning victory to one of the two candidates for the White House.
The former president, who takes office on January 20, 2025, addressed supporters in Florida in the early hours of Wednesday morning and thanked the American people for their support. “We have a country that needs help and it needs it badly. We’re going to fix our borders and we’re going to fix everything about our country,” Trump said, promising Americans that “every single day I will fight for you” and saying he will usher in “America’s golden age.” Trump also made a promise: “I will not start wars, but I will stop them.” Trump also praised Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who in recent months had made his support for the Republican candidate increasingly explicit. Next to Trump were vice-presidential candidate JD Vance and his wife Melania, with whom Trump exchanged a kiss.
Instead, silence fell in Kamala Harris’ camp. Her supporters, gathered at Howard University in Washington (where Harris had studied) returned home dejectedly when it was announced that the vice president would only speak in the next few hours. No comment, for now, even from President Biden.
Trump, at 78, becomes the oldest president to take office in the White House, and is also the first with a criminal conviction against him. His revenge has something miraculous if you consider that after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump seemed like a finished political leader, abandoned even by his party, which he instead managed to reconquer.
“Voters chose Trump as the strongest leader for uncertain times and as a proven economic champion. They looked beyond his 34 criminal convictions, his role as the instigator of an assault on the Capitol and his indictments on charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 election and of retaining classified documents,” writes the New York Times.
Trump’s victory is strengthened by the Republicans regaining the majority in the Senate. This gives the Republican Party a major center of power in Washington and a leading role in confirming the next president’s Cabinet, as well as any Supreme Court justice should a vacancy arise. The Republicans are also in the lead in the Chamber of Deputies, but dozens of seats still remain to be assigned.
Congratulatory messages to Trump are pouring in from all over the world. Meloni, Macron, Starmer, Orban and Netanyahu wrote to him, among others. Ukrainian President Zelensky also complimented him.
“I remember our nice meeting with President Trump in September, when we talked in detail about the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States, the plan for victory, and ways to end Russian aggression against Ukraine,” he writes Zelensky in a long post on practice together.”
