Trump wins election in historic political comeback victory
Former President Donald Trump is projected to win the U.S. presidential election, making him the first person to serve two nonconsecutive terms as president since Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.
Around 1:15 a.m. Eastern time, Fox News called Pennsylvania, a key swing state worth 19 Electoral College points, for Trump, pushing his total up to 267 while Harris remained at 214.
A little before 2 a.m., after calling Wisconsin for Trump, Fox News projected the Republican nominee as the winner of the election.
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"The greatest comeback in political history," tweeted popular Republican political activist and podcaster Brilyn Hollyhand. "He’s been impeached, beat, raided, indicted, arrested, and shot. This morning he won."
Cedric Richmond, co-chair of the Harris campaign, told those gathered at her watch party at Howard University that she would not address supporters on Tuesday evening.
This year has seen one of the more atypical presidential election cycles, with Trump running after being convicted of multiple felonies while Harris was installed as the Democratic Party's nominee after President Joe Biden quit the race.
Trump secured the GOP nomination in March, having easily won several state-level primaries and besting early favorites, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
The nomination was clenched even as Trump continued to face several legal battles pertaining to both his alleged attempts to override the results of the 2020 election and also allegations of sexual assault.
In May, before he officially accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention, Trump was found guilty on 34 charges by a New York jury in the “hush money” case.
The felony counts were tied to falsifying business records stemming from an allegation that Trump paid porn star Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford) $130,000 back in 2016 to conceal an alleged extramarital affair from 2006 while he ran for president.
For his part, Trump has denied the allegations, claiming that the prosecution was politically motivated, and has appealed the ruling.
During the Democratic Party's primary season, Biden easily won enough delegates to secure his party's nomination. He was initially set for a rematch against Trump, whom he had defeated in 2020.
However, growing questions over the 81-year-old’s mental fitness, especially following a widely panned debate performance against Trump in June, prompted many to call for his resignation.
On July 13, at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed on top of a building and opened fire and attempted to assassinate Trump. He hit the upper part of Trump's right ear while he was speaking and killed one rallygoer and severely injured two others. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper soon after.
Eight days after the attempted assassination, Biden posted a statement to his X account announcing that he was dropping out of the race and would instead “focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Biden endorsed Harris for the nomination, with many party officials and Democrat politicians backing the vice president, which led to her being installed as the new presidential hopeful.
The decision to replace Biden with Harris was not without controversy, as groups like Black Lives Matter argued that allowing her to get the nomination without a “public voting process” made the DNC “a party of hypocrites.”
In September, Trump survived a second assassination attempt when an armed 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh got as close as 300 yards from Trump when he was at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
A Secret Service agent spotted Routh, however, and opened fire. Routh fled the golf course but was eventually apprehended by authorities soon after the incident.
As Election Day drew near, numerous polls had either Trump and Harris holding a slim lead over their opponent nationwide, with many political experts disagreeing on a likely outcome.
Trump is the first person to serve two non-consecutive terms as president since Democrat President Grover Cleveland, who was first elected president in 1885, lost reelection to Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888, but then won the rematch against Harrison in 1892.
