Donald Trump Soars to Decisive Victory in Presidential Election

Meir Kass

Former president Donald Trump on Tuesday was elected the 47th president of the United States, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris. The victory sealed a remarkable return to the White House and brought to a close an unprecedented election season.

Trump surpassed the magical threshold of 270 electoral votes shortly after 5:30 a.m., according to the Associated Press, when Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes were awarded to him. He will become the first president in 127 years to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office, joining Grover Cleveland.

Trump also appeared Wednesday morning to be comfortably on track to win the popular vote, becoming the first Republican since George W. Bush in 2004 to achieve this feat.

“This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again,” Trump told his supporters while flanked by his family and political allies at his victory night party.

While political pundits had anticipated a repeat of 2020, when the result was not known for several days, in actuality, Trump cruised to victory. He quickly won the battleground state North Carolina and shortly after flipped Georgia, which had turned blue in 2020. When Pennsylvania—the biggest prize of them all—turned red shortly after 1 a.m., it signaled the end for Harris’s slim hopes.

A dejected Harris camp saw the writing on the wall earlier in the night, telling supporters who had gathered for a watch party at her alma mater Howard University in Washington, DC, to go home. The move to send out co-chairman Cedric Richmond echoed that of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s doomed campaign in 2016, when she also didn’t address supporters on election night. As of Wednesday morning, Trump had not received a congratulatory phone call from either Harris or Joe Biden.

Also as of Wednesday morning, Trump had secured 286 Electoral College votes and appeared poised to win Michigan and Arizona, which had not yet finished counting all their votes. This would give him a clean sweep of the seven primary swing states and push his Electoral College count to 312—a veritable landslide.

A campaign like no other

Trump won a second term in the White House after a tumultuous campaign, which saw him face multiple legal charges, survive two assassination attempts, and see his original Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, suspend his campaign after a disastrous debate performance in June. Harris secured the Democratic nomination the following month.

The battle against Harris proved arduous as the vice president energized the Democratic base that was dead in the water with Biden at the helm. She raised record amounts of money and deployed an extensive ground-game strategy. But Trump proved once again that more money doesn’t equate electoral success. Clinton also outraised Trump in 2016 and still lost.

Trump spent much of the campaign trail attacking Harris over the economy, immigration, and her record as Biden’s vice president. The GOP often pushed for Trump to stick to hammering Harris over policy and moving away from the personal attacks on her intelligence and race.

The campaign will be remembered for two dramatic moments in modern history. First, Trump survived an assassination attempt during a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, two days before the start of the Republican National Convention. A bloodied Trump rose from the ground, fist clenched, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight.” The former president would blame Biden and Harris’s rhetoric for helping lead to a second attempt on his life at the Trump National Golf Club in Florida in September. Unlike the summer shooting, the Secret Service stopped the would-be sniper before he could get a shot off at Trump.

Second, Trump contended with a historic swap of his Democratic opponent in the final months of the campaign. Biden, facing overwhelming pressure from within his party to drop out of the race, acquiesced a week after the Butler rally, paving the way for a quick-fire Harris campaign.

Harris and Trump faced off on the debate stage just once during the election cycle, in September. The ABC News-hosted matchup in Philadelphia saw Harris prosecute her case against Trump and provoke him to anger. Trump declared afterward that he would no longer participate in any debates.

Trump’s victory is all the more remarkable given the multitude of legal entanglements in his way following the 2020 election. He is now the first American president in history to have been indicted and won the White House afterward.

The former president alluded to those matters during his victory speech. “We made history for a reason tonight,” Trump declared. “We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible.”

At 78 years old, Trump will be the oldest person inaugurated on January 20, 2025. Yet Trump’s agility on the campaign trail proved much stronger than Biden’s, who is 81 and whose mental acuity paved the way for the Democratic Party to call on him to step aside.

Looking ahead to his second administration, Trump pledged to usher in a new era after four years of Biden.

“I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day, I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body,” Trump said. “I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America.”

Trump to legal troubles: goodbye

Donald Trump didn’t just beat Kamala Harris. He beat the system that tried to put him in jail. He was already the first former president to be charged with and convicted of felonies. Now he has become the first convicted felon to win a presidential election. And his victory virtually guarantees that he will never face serious legal accountability for an avalanche of wrongdoing Democrats claim he is guilty of.

Trump’s imminent return to the White House shatters years of work by special counsel Jack Smith to convict Trump for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election and for the stockpile of classified documents he kept at his Florida estate. It halts the prosecution he is facing in Georgia for his 2020 election plot as well. And it almost certainly allows Trump to postpone any sentence on his New York conviction for covering up a hush money scheme in 2016.

In short, the president-elect is now his own judge and jury, insulated from the criminal consequences he might have faced without the legal force field of the Oval Office.

Even the civil cases against him will now face new obstacles. Presidents can, in some circumstances, be subject to civil penalties from private lawsuits, but Trump will surely try to use the cloak of the presidency to avoid paying the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes in judgments for defamation, corporate fraud, and other offenses.

GOP takes Senate control, makes gains in House

Republicans on Tuesday also captured the Senate, ending their painful four-year stretch in the minority. The victories come as a welcome relief to Republican senators after two disappointing election cycles. They lost two runoff elections in Georgia, and thus their majority, in 2020 and failed to win back the majority in 2022 despite early projections.

As of Wednesday morning, Republicans had captured at least three seats held by Democrats: Bernie Moreno knocked off Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jim Justice won the West Virginia seat held by retiring Senator Joe Manchin, and Tim Sheehy defeated Senator Jon Tester of Montana. Battleground races in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin remained uncalled.

With these victories, Republicans will control no smaller than a 52-seat Senate majority next year.

Republicans entered the election cycle as favorites to recapture the Senate, as Democrats had to defend 23 seats—including four rated “toss-ups” and one rated “lean Republican”—while Republicans only had to worry about 11 seats, all in states that supported Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Except for Montana, where Tester had trailed his opponent in the polls by a significant margin since mid-August, Democratic incumbents had mostly run ahead of their Republican challengers, outpacing Biden and later Vice President Harris. But the polls began to tighten in late October as Senator Bob Casey and Senator Tammy Baldwin saw their leads shrink in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Brown fell behind Moreno in the final days of the Ohio race.

Meanwhile, the Republican senators running to succeed Mitch McConnell as Senate GOP leader pledged early Wednesday to work closely with Trump to pass his agenda through Congress.

Senate Republican whip John Thune, who is running for GOP leader, issued a statement early Wednesday morning declaring his optimism that the new Senate Republican majority would work closely with Trump. “I am optimistic that President Trump will be successful, our majority will grow stronger, and we can continue our work together to create a safer and more secure country for every American,” he said.

Senator John Cornyn, his main competition for the top leadership job, issued his own statement proclaiming his enthusiasm to collaborate with Trump. “As I’ve said, this election is not about us but rather what is best for the conference and the nation. I look forward to working with President Trump and our new conservative majority to make America great again by making the Senate work again,” he said in a statement.

In the House of Representatives, the fight for the majority was still too close to call as of printing time, and it was likely to take days or even weeks until Trump knows if he’ll have powerful allies atop the House, due in part to close races in states that take longer to count ballots, like California and Arizona. For months, neither party has held a significant edge, and both sides predicted modest gains if they get control of the House.

With the Senate in Republican hands, Trump could get the sought-after trifecta if House Republicans win, paving the way for Republican legislative priorities on tax cuts and more. But if Democrats manage to flip the chamber, a split Congress could mean Trump faces the same partisan fights over spending and the debt ceiling that have plagued lawmakers over the last two years.

Speaker Mike Johnson vowed that “House Republicans stand ready and prepared to immediately act on Trump’s America First agenda to improve the lives of every family, regardless of race, religion, color, or creed, and make America great again” if the GOP keeps the majority.

As of Wednesday morning, Republicans had secured 206 House seats compared to the Democrats’ 191, with many races still uncalled. With 218 seats needed for a majority in the chamber, Decision Desk HQ was giving the GOP a 78.9% chance of staying in control of the House and forecasted it to win a total of 221 seats when the dust settles.

How did Jews vote in the election?

In Tuesday’s election, exit polls suggested that the majority of Jewish voters in the US continued their traditional support for Democratic candidates, with 79% casting their votes for Kamala Harris, compared to 21% for Donald Trump, according to data from the National Election Pool.

Historically, Jewish Americans have leaned heavily Democratic in national elections, with only 20%–30% of the Jewish vote typically supporting Republicans. The GOP’s high-water mark came in 1980, when Ronald Reagan captured approximately 40% of the Jewish vote. However, in recent years, Jewish support for Republicans has remained modest, even as many Jewish voters expressed frustration with the Democratic Party over issues like anti-Semitism and a lack of support for Israel.

This year, some political observers speculated that Donald Trump might see an unusual surge in Jewish support given the Biden-Harris administration’s stance on the abovementioned issues. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent a record-breaking $15 million to bolster Trump’s appeal among Jewish voters, confident that these issues would drive a larger-than-usual percentage toward the GOP.

However, the numbers indicate a different reality. NBC News’ exit poll on Tuesday night reflected the same results, with 79% of Jewish voters supporting Harris and 21% backing Trump. In comparison, Trump earned 30% of the Jewish vote in 2020 and 24% in 2016, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

However, in areas with large numbers of Orthodox Jewish residents, the breakdown was a lot closer. A Fox News poll in New York indicated a narrower gap, with 56% of New York’s Jewish voters supporting Harris and 43% supporting Trump, suggesting that Trump’s support among Jewish voters may have increased in areas with large frum populations, if not nationwide.

Here in Lakewood, perhaps the capital of Orthodox Jewish life in the US, it wasn’t even close. Out of 38,813 votes that had been counted as of Wednesday morning (additional provisional and mail-in ballots were expected), 34,173 (88%) were for Donald Trump, while just 4,640 (11.9%) went to Kamala Harris.

World leaders congratulate Trump

World leaders and top officials began reacting to the unfolding results of the 2024 presidential election as the contest drew to a conclusion late Tuesday night.

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump and his wife, Melania. “Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback,” Netanyahu wrote on X. “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America… This is a huge victory.”

Israeli president Yitzchak Herzog, newly appointed defense minister Yisrael Katz, and foreign minister Gideon Saar also offered their congratulations.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas congratulated Trump and wished him success in a statement, saying, “We will remain steadfast in our commitment to peace, and we are confident that the United States will support, under your leadership, the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said during a press conference that his country is “not too worried about Trump being elected” because “there was not much difference between” the two candidates.

“From our point of view, it does not make any difference, and the budget that has been considered and the measures that were foreseen for the economic security of the country, the necessary forecasts have been made and there is no reason to worry,” Mohajerani added. “Sanctions have greatly strengthened our internal strength, and we have the ability to deal with them.”

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman wished Trump and the American people “progress and prosperity,” according to a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky lauded what he called Trump’s “impressive election victory.” He wrote in a social media post that leaders in Kyiv “look forward to an era of a strong United States of America under President Trump’s decisive leadership. We rely on continued strong bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States.”

“I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs,” Zelensky added. “This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer. I am hopeful that we will put it into action together.”

What to expect from a second Trump administration

Donald Trump has promised a bold and transformative agenda for his upcoming term, pledging the largest deportation of immigrants in American history, steep new tariffs on imports, a freeze on climate regulations, significant reforms within federal health agencies, major ideological shifts in the education system, and much stronger backing for Israel. Trump’s team believes he’ll be able to move even faster than during his first term, capitalizing on lessons learned from his initial experience with Washington’s bureaucratic landscape.

While Trump achieved substantial policy shifts and wins in his first term, his most ambitious plans were often slowed by government red tape and institutional resistance. Armed with this experience, his advisers say the new administration will be better prepared to navigate complex agency processes, clearing the way for a faster and more ambitious policy rollout.

Many of Trump’s objectives—including a broad reshaping of immigration enforcement, the imposition of new tariffs, health regulations reform, education policy changes, and foreign policy maneuvers—can be implemented without needing congressional approval. Some key priorities, however, like tax cuts and changes to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), will still require backing from Congress.

In a move to streamline his policy goals, Trump has pledged to appoint as many as 50,000 civil servants, effectively transforming traditionally career-protected roles into political positions. This approach is expected to ensure a loyal administration team committed to Trump’s objectives, reducing resistance to his policies within federal agencies.

Additionally, Trump supporter and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has announced that he would be willing to join the administration in a proposed Department of Government Efficiency, where he aims to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Musk’s involvement signals Trump’s intention to address budgetary reform and waste reduction as key parts of his agenda. With the national debt standing at nearly $36 trillion, such reform should be welcome news to all Americans—if it happens.

Trump’s second term promises to go beyond simply reversing Biden administration policies; instead, he aims to reshape the underlying structures of federal agencies and redefine the core of policy making processes. The upcoming administration is set to push through major reforms that could fundamentally alter the federal government’s approach to policy issues in the years to come.