gotchanewsdaily.com 
Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, fulfilling his promise to shatter America’s political status quo after he refused to accept his loss to President Biden four years ago and inspired a mob of supporters to violently storm the U.S. Capitol.
The Republican president-elect’s victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, after an extraordinary campaign in which he was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts, was decisive: he trounced Harris in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and maintained leads in Arizona and Nevada, although those races were not called.
As Trump secured 292 electoral votes to Harris’ 224, Democrats could not take comfort, as they did in 2016, from winning the popular vote. With more than 138 million ballots counted, Trump was on track to gain 4.8 million more votes than Harris.
“This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country,” Trump told a crowd at around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday from a stage adorned with star-spangled banners at his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Trump said the election represented a “historic realignment” of American interests and was a “massive victory for democracy and for freedom.”
“I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve,” he added. “This will truly be the golden age of America.”
Harris conceded to Trump on Wednesday in a phone call before she addressed the American people. A senior Harris aide said the vice president called Trump to congratulate him on his victory and discuss the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans.
There was a significant gender gap in the results, with exit polls indicating the majority of women backed Harris and the majority of men backed Trump.
Trump made particularly significant gains with Latino men, winning their vote by 8 percentage points, according to CNN exit polls, four years after he lost them by 23 points. He also won over Black men in key battlegrounds, more than doubling his 2020 support from that cohort in North Carolina. The only bright spot for Harris was college-educated women.
Trump built his third campaign for the White House on the issues of immigration and economy, appealing to Americans who were weary of liberal elites and the status quo. He promised to secure the southern border and deport millions of people living in the country illegally, impose tariffs that would revive the economy and restore American manufacturing, and withdraw the nation from the international stage.
Throughout his campaign, Trump drew criticism for spreading falsehoods. He claimed, without evidence, that immigrants were “eating the dogs” in Springfield, Ohio, and that crime had gone “through the roof” when violent crime rates fell sharply under President Biden.
In the final weeks, the former president held an incendiary rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, featuring speakers who called Harris “the Antichrist,” referred to “her pimp handlers” and called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”
Trump also threatened to deploy the U.S. military after the election against “radical-left lunatics,” including Democrats, whom he has dubbed the “enemy from within.”
The GOP candidate’s closing campaign slogan — “Kamala Broke It. Trump Will Fix It” — emphasized Harris’ role in the Biden administration and aimed to position him as the candidate of change.
Trump’s win represents a bitter defeat for Harris, who sought to make history not only as the first female president but also as the first Black and Asian American female president. Instead, she became the second female candidate in eight years to become the Democrats’ presidential nominee, only to fail to secure enough votes to win.
Harris painted her opponent as a “petty tyrant,” an “unhinged” and “racist and divisive” figure who would destroy democratic norms and roll back years of hard-won civil rights.
“We’re not going back!” she and her supporters chanted at rallies.
When asked last month if she believed Trump was a fascist, Harris replied: “Yes, I do.”
The Harris team has yet to comment on Trump’s win. Before noon, the White House said Harris was receiving briefs and holding meetings with staff and planned to address the American people from Howard University at 4 p.m. EST.
Before 11 p.m. EST Tuesday, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chair of Harris’ campaign, sent staff a memo noting it was a “razor thin race.”
“We feel good about what we’re seeing,” she wrote to staff, noting they had exceeded turnout expectations in Philadelphia. “Let’s finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep, and get ready to close out strong tomorrow.”
It turned out to be a devastating night for Democrats.
Trump flipped Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states Democrats won in 2020 — winning by clear margins of several percentage points. He kept hold of North Carolina. On Wednesday afternoon, he was ahead by five percentage points in Arizona and by four percentage points in Nevada.
Republicans also secured control of the Senate after Tim Sheehy in Montana, Deb Fischer in Nebraska, Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Jim Justice in West Virginia secured a number of contested seats.
The House remained up for grabs as election officials continued to count votes. Republicans hoped to hold their House majority. Early Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Rep. Mike Lawler, who holds a suburban New York seat, managed to eke out a second term.
On abortion — a key issue after Trump appointed Supreme Court justices who in 2022 helped overturn the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision — there were some bright spots for Democrats. Seven of 10 states, including Arizona, passed measures to protect abortion rights, according to the Associated Press. Abortion restrictions will remain in place in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.
✓ Winner
Early Wednesday, morning cable TV shows and social media offered dueling interpretations of Trump’s victory: Liberals — including many in California — argued the American people had delivered a death blow to democracy while conservatives celebrated Trump’s victory as the people’s revolt against technocratic elites.
“California will fight to protect our democracy, our freedoms & the basic dignity of all people,” Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said on X. “California won’t roll over for fascism.”
Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, described Trump’s win as “a dark and scary moment” for American democracy.
A few moderate Democrats were quick to critique the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign.
Democratic strategist Josh Lafazan, a former New York legislator, said the Democratic Party’s failure to hold an open primary opened Harris up to GOP criticism that the process was undemocratic and that Harris had not won a single primary vote.
But Lafazan went further, arguing Harris wasn’t a strong Democratic candidate and failed to make a robust case that the Biden-Harris administration had delivered important policy wins, such as passing the Inflation Reduction Act that had created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
When asked by a major network what she would do differently from Biden, Lafazan noted, Harris had no answer.
“That was political malpractice,” Lafazan said.
On “Fox & Friends,” there was much gloating as commentators argued the liberal establishment — a group that they say includes not just politicians, but news outlets — had misread the will of the American people.
“This is the end of the legacy media,” said Ainsley Earhardt, one of the show’s hosts.
Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called Trump’s win “a deadly threat to the democratic values of liberty and equality, the rule of law, and reproductive health, rights and justice in the United States and around the globe.”
The second Trump administration, Northup warned, would likely work to stop the provision of medication abortion by mail, push a national abortion ban, and embolden conservative states to lead more prosecutions and investigations against providers and patients who sought to cross state lines.
“The Center for Reproductive Rights is ready for this next fight,” she said. “We will vigorously oppose any and all attempts to roll back progress.”
Conservatives pushed back against liberal commentators and activists’ narrative of a dark, vengeful Trump presidency.
Scott Jennings, a conservative political strategist, said on CNN he saw the results as a “revenge of just the regular old working class American, the anonymous American who has been crushed, insulted, condescended.”
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, there’s more to being president than simply not being Donald Trump, in the eyes of the American people.”
Some political observers urged Democrats to examine closely the failure of Harris’ campaign.
“It’s time for the Democrats to take a good, long hard look at how this happened,” said Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as he opened up the show. “And if they just say ‘Trump bad, Democrats virtuous,’ they’re going to keep losing.”
