How Trump pulled off an incredible comeback

This is surely the most dramatic comeback in US political history.

Four years after leaving the White House, Donald Trump is set to move back in, after millions of Americans voted to give him a second chance.

The election campaign was one for the history books: he survived two assassination attempts and his original opponent President Joe Biden dropped out just months before election day.

Although final votes are still being counted, the majority of Americans in key battleground states chose to vote for him, with many citing the economy and immigration as a chief concern.

His triumph comes after a spectacular fall. He refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, and his role in trying to overturn the election results to stay in office is still being scrutinised today.

He faces charges for allegedly inciting the violent attack on the US Capitol on the 6 January 2021. And he will also make history as the first sitting president to have been convicted of a felony, after being found guilty of falsifying business records.

It’s not hard to see why he is a deeply polarising figure.

Throughout the campaign, Trump used incendiary rhetoric – making crass jokes and threatening vengeance against his political enemies.

Few people have a middle ground when it comes to Trump. Most of the voters I spoke to during the course of this campaign said they wished he would “shut his potty mouth” – but they were able to look past it.

Instead, they focused on the question he asked at every rally. “Are you better off now than you were two years ago?”

So many people who voted for Donald Trump told me again and again that they felt the economy was much better when he was in office and they were sick of trying to make ends meet. Although much of the cause of inflation was due to outside forces such as the Covid-19 pandemic, they blamed the outgoing administration.

Voters were also deeply concerned about illegal immigration which had reached record levels under Biden. They usually didn’t express racist views or believe that migrants were eating people’s pets, as Trump and his supporters had claimed. They just wanted much stronger border enforcement.

“America first” was another one of Trump’s slogans that really seemed to strike a chord with voters. All over the country I heard people – on the left and right – complaining about billions of dollars being spent on supporting Ukraine when they thought that money would be much better spent at home.

In the end, they just couldn’t vote for Harris, who served as Biden’s vice-president for four years. They believed it would be more of the same, and they wanted change.

It is perhaps one of the ironies of this election that the candidate who most represented change was himself in power just four years ago. But there are several differences between then and now.

When he first came into power in 2016, he was a political outsider, and, at least for a while, he surrounded himself with veteran political advisers and staff who showed him the ropes and constrained his actions. Now he doesn’t seem that interested in playing by the rules of the game.

Many of these same advisers and staff have spoken out – calling him a “liar”, a “fascist” and “unfit”. They have cautioned that if he surrounds himself with loyalists, which he is expected to do, that there will be no one to restrain him from his more extreme ideas.

When he left office, he faced a litany of criminal charges related to his role in the Capitol riots, how he handled documents pertaining to national security, and hush money payments to a porn star.

But since the Supreme Court ruled that the president has total immunity from prosecution for official acts in office, it will be an uphill battle for any prosecutor to charge him during the next administration.

And as president, he could instruct his justice department to drop the federal charges against him relating to the 6 January riots so he doesn’t have to worry about a jail sentence. At the same time, he could pardon hundreds of people sentenced to prison for their part in the Capitol Riots.

In the end, voters were presented with two versions of America.

Donald Trump told them that their country was a failing nation that only he could Make Great Again.

Meanwhile, Harris cautioned that if Trump was elected, American democracy itself would face an existential threat. That remains to be seen. But what Trump said himself during the campaign has not exactly assuaged people’s fears.

He has heaped praise on authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, whom he said were “at the top of their game, whether you like it or not”.

He has talked about trying to silence critics in the press. Just days before the election, he also made comments that implied he wouldn’t mind if members of the media were killed.

And he has continued to amplify conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of election fraud – even though the election ultimately led to his victory.

Now, voters will find how much of what he said during the campaign was just loose talk – “Trump being Trump”. And remember: it’s not just Americans who have to confront the reality of a second Trump term.

The rest of the world will now discover what “America First” really means. From the global economic consequences of 20% tariffs that he has proposed on US imports to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that he has vowed to end – regardless of which side wins.

Donald Trump did not manage to implement all of his plans in his first term. Now with a second mandate and significantly less encumbered, America, and the world, will see what he can really do.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.