By Goodluck Ikiebe With Agency Reports
Donald Trump will be America’s 47th President after mounting the most momentous comeback in political history that will hand him massive, disruptive power at home and will send shockwaves around the world.
Four years after leaving Washington, following his attempt to overturn the 2020 election to stay in office, Trump’s victory defied two assassination attempts, two presidential impeachments, his criminal conviction and many other criminal charges.
Trump vowed at his Mar-a-Lago resort early Wednesday to “heal” the nation, to fix its borders and to deliver a strong and prosperous economy after millions of his voters turned to him amid frustration over high prices for food and housing and embraced his plans for a crackdown on undocumented migrants.
“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47thpresident and your 45th president,” said Trump, only the second president to win a non-consecutive term. “This will truly be the golden age of America.”
But Trump’s new mandate will raise fresh fears that he plans to follow through on his belief that presidents enjoy almost unlimited authority.
He vowed on the campaign trail to use a new White House term to enact “retribution” and has openly talked about using America’s governing institutions, and even the military, to punish his foes. He has pledged to launch a mass deportation of undocumented, and even some legal, migrants that could set off a showdown with the courts.
CNN projected Trump’s victory after the state of Wisconsin put him over the top and he secured the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. His win ended the Democrats’ desperate attempt to thwart his return to power, which saw Vice President Kamala Harris hurriedly elevated to the party nomination after already unpopular President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance at the CNN debate against Trump in June.
The former President outpaced his own performance in a losing cause four years ago, putting the states of Georgia and Pennsylvania back into the GOP column and retaining North Carolina for his party – all of which Democrats had targeted as part of the Vice President’s path to the White House.
He has promised to create the greatest economy in the world and to make life more affordable for working Americans, who form the populist base of the Republican Party that he transformed.
After years highlighting Biden’s age, Trump, at 78, is now the oldest man to be elected president and his every act and utterance as commander-in-chief is likely to be scrutinized for signs of age-related slowing down or cognitive issues.
Given the extreme nature of his campaign, his election may also augur a period of national and international turmoil. Trump has vowed to use his second term to seek “retribution” against his political adversaries and mused aloud about using the military against “the enemy from within.” Overseas, US allies are bracing for the return of the wild unpredictability in US foreign policy that Trump whipped up in his first term. There are also concerns about his willingness to enforce NATO’s bedrock principle of mutual defense.
But the billionaire real estate tycoon and former reality star’s win, based on a peerless grip on the GOP, also undeniably turns Trump into one of the most significant political figures in the history of the United States. It underlines that his victory in 2016 was not an aberration but heralded a major realignment in domestic politics and the US role in the world. It also means that Biden’s legacy will no longer be defined by his success in ejecting Trump from power in 2020 but by his hubris in seeking a second term that would have ended when he was 86, which opened the door to his rival again.
And Trump’s success means that he has for the second time defied the aspirations of millions of Americans for a female president, since his vanquishing of Harris follows his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton, again preventing the shattering of what she called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling” in US politics.
The promises that Trump made on the campaign trail leave many Americans braced for one of the most disruptive and divisive periods in the country’s modern memory.
Trump has promised to immediately launch the biggest deportation operation in history on Day 1 — targeting undocumented migrants and legal Haitian refugees whom he falsely accused of eating the pets of Ohio residents. The President-elect has also pledged a fundamental overhaul of the US economic system and plans to introduce sweeping tariffs on foreign imports — with especially punitive hikes on Chinese goods — that will cause global shockwaves.
Republicans have already won back the Senate, meaning that the president-elect will have huge latitude to complete his bid to transform the judiciary to ensure conservative legal dominance continues for decades. The race for the House of Representatives is still in the balance, but if Republicans can retain their narrow majority, Trump will face few challenges to his rule in Washington.
His plans will almost certainly cause a showdown over the extent of presidential powers between the White House and the courts. And any efforts to use the instruments of government to push his own personal and political agendas and to punish his enemies could severely test the rule of law. But Trump has made no secret that he plans to fully exploit this summer’s Supreme Court ruling that granted commanders in chief substantial immunity for White House official acts and bolstered his already questionable claims that the President enjoys unchecked power.
Trump’s return to power is also certain to end the federal prosecutions that resulted from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s new attorney general will be able to end the case being brought by Smith on election interference and his appeal to revive a trial over Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The status of a state prosecution in Georgia over Trump’s bid to overturn Biden’s victory there is more uncertain but is likely to result in a legal tussle over the capacity of a state to put a sitting President on trial. Trump has, meanwhile, made clear that he is open to pardoning supporters convicted and sent to prison for their role in the Capitol insurrection.
Abroad, Trump is likely to again turn the United States into the one of the world’s greatest sources of unpredictability. A mercurial foreign policy that mirrors his volcanic character is expected to further erode Washington’s position as the head of a rules-based, Western democratic world order. He has pledged to end the war in Ukraine shortly after taking power. His affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he referred to as a “genius” on the campaign trail, risks a resolution that validates the Kremlin’s illegal and bloody assault on a sovereign democratic nation. Such a strategy would raise questions about America’s potential appeasement of foreign autocrats and its traditional support for upholding the territorial integrity of its allies in Europe and the Pacific, including NATO partners and Taiwan.
A new test for a rattled national psyche
Trump, if he completes his four-year second term, will become the oldest sitting president in history, a milestone that will be rich in irony since his relentless attacks on Biden’s age and mental faculties paved the way for his successor’s exit from the political stage.
His supporters will be waiting with high anticipation – while millions of other Americans will be watching with dread – for the second iteration of his “American carnage” inaugural address from 2017, when he raises his hand to pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, in January.