How Donald Trump Made the Greatest Comeback in Political History

Donald J. Trump completed the greatest political comeback in modern U.S. history in the early hours of Wednesday, claiming enough electoral votes to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris and return to the White House for a second term.

The president-elect declared victory in a speech from Florida, saying he had masterminded the “greatest political movement of all time” and pledging to “help our country heal” after vowing during the campaign to exact “retribution” on his political enemies. It was a nearly unthinkable coda to what will can now be considered a four-year intermission the Trump era, which began with his refusal to concede defeat four years ago.

“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” he told a crowd of supporters at his campaign headquarters.

After thanking voters, he said he would not rest until he had delivered a “golden age of America.”

A violent attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters followed, which was then followed by four criminal indictments, a felony conviction on 91 charges, a $354 million judgment in a civil case against him and his business and another jury finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

“The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people,” Trump said earlier this year.

“He’s the toughest son of a gun I’ve ever seen,” Fox News’ Brit Hume said late on Tuesday, as the results began to break Trump’s way.

Not since Grover Cleveland in 1892 has a U.S. president been elected to two nonconsecutive terms in office. In the end, Trump was able to pull off the feat not with a strategy of simply rallying his base, but by actually expanding the Republican electoral map.

His campaign’s strategy mostly eschewed the mainstream press, focusing instead on appealing to young men and disaffected minority voters with high-profile appearances on popular podcasts, bolstered by influencers that have displaced the traditional media among those voters.

As Tuesday evening turned to night, it became clear that high-risk strategy was paying off. Trump overperformed his 2020 results across the map, while Harris underperformed against Biden in key counties and among key voting blocs, Latinos and white men among them.

Through sheer force, Trump overcame a challenger who spent $1 billion to defeat him, with a ground game behind her that was thought be the best in politics.

“The former president of the United States given up for dead after January 6, 2021, is running stronger now than he did in the last campaign,” John King said on CNN, noting Trump was running ahead of his 2020 performance by 3 points nationally.

“Trump defied history and created a new, diverse coalition,” the political scientist Steve Schier told Newsweek. “His is an extraordinary achievement in presidential history.”

The president-elect will take office with the wind at his back. Republicans also retook the Senate, meaning his cabinet and judicial appointments will likely face minimal pushback (control of the House remained up in the air as of early Wednesday, and was likely to stay that way for days until all the California races were called).

After a period of post-pandemic inflation, the economy is firing on all cylinders, with the Federal Reserve likely to cut interest rates again when it meets later this week. And the pending legal cases against him are now either dead on arrival or severely disrupted.

Now, instead of ending his career on a losing note—as a twice-impeached, one-term president and convicted felon—Trump will have four more years to reshape the government, and a chance to further cement his legacy as the most consequential Republican president since Ronald Reagan.

But unlike Reagan’s landslide victory 40 years ago, Trump may not reenter the White House with a sweeping governing mandate. Whether he sees his victory as a mandate, however, is another story.

In that, Joe Biden provides a warning. The 46th president came to office promising to be a “bridge” to a “new generation of leaders,” before proceeded in an attempt to govern in the mold of FDR. Despite cratering poll numbers, Biden chose to run for reelection even as vast swaths of the electorate, including those in his own party, repeatedly signaled that they thought he was too old.

As for Harris, she will be tasked as vice president with the role of presiding over Congress’ certification of Trump’s victory on January 6 of next year—four years to the day since the riot at the Capitol that seemed, at the time, destined to send her opponent to the dustbin of history.