In the weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris claimed the Democratic nomination, Donald Trump's allies and advisers have advised him to stick to his message.
Surveys have shown that Americans trust Trump more than Harris when it comes to the economy and immigration. All he had to do, in their view, was to focus on those issues.
He didn't do it.
In the final months of the presidential campaign, Trump did everything in his own way: he deviated from prepared speeches, resorted to personal attacks, poured anti-immigrant rhetoric, threatened revenge against rivals and ignored the advice of allies to focus on key issues, writes Reuters citing interviews. with his associates and officials.
Trump's victory in the presidential election, with 294 electoral votes compared to 223 for Harris, is not only his political success. It is also a triumph of chaotic, Trumpian scorched-earth politics.
This time there were fewer leaks, fewer infighting within the campaign and more deliberate strategies shaped by seasoned professionals than in Trump's previous campaigns. Yet his third bid for the White House ultimately drew strength from the candidate himself.
Trump, as the "New York Times" writes, showed during the campaign that he is a communication expert masterfully combining comedy, anger, incendiary rhetoric and cynicism in order to win new supporters and keep old ones. According to the newspaper, he managed to connect with the most diverse people in the most diverse places. "With suburban moms in Washington, military members in Detroit, evangelicals in South Florida, bitcoin fans in Nashville, football fans in Alabama, firefighters in Lower Manhattan". People dismissed or rationalized any controversy that surrounded him at any given moment.
"They saw in him what they wanted to see. They believed that, after so many years, they knew him, and that he knew them," writes the Times.
During the campaign, Trump showed that he is an expert in communication, masterfully combining comedy, anger, inflammatory rhetoric and cynicism to win new supporters and retain old ones.
In the end, Trump managed to make a spectacular comeback and became the first former president in more than a century to win a second term after leaving the White House.
He made key alliances, including with tech billionaire Elon Musk, who spent at least $119 million on the Trump campaign in seven key states.
He also resisted calls to fire senior members of the campaign, choosing to retain a team that had managed to avoid the internal chaos of Trump's previous bids. And he has kept his focus on immigration, rather than abortion, where Democrats have an edge among voters.
Scott Bessant, a Trump donor and economic adviser, recalled a meeting with Trump's speechwriters in August, when he was pitching ideas for what the campaign billed as a major economic speech in North Carolina. However, when Trump took the stage, he practically tore apart the prepared speech, leaving out some economic items and instead addressing the border and crime — and attacking Harris on a personal level.
Bessent told Reuters that he was initially taken aback by Trump's speech. But the audience seemed to absorb it. After hearing enthusiastic comments from working class members later that day, Bessent said he saw the power of Trump's political instincts.
"I have to do it my way," Trump told reporters a day after the event in North Carolina, dismissing suggestions he was changing his approach.
Trump was ahead thanks to events beyond his control. Harris' shortened campaign reduced the time she had to make her case to voters and launch an offensive campaign against Trump. Musk's ownership of Twitter - now known as X - has provided a powerful platform for spreading misinformation, including lies about migrant crime that resonated with many voters.
And, crucially, Trump was able to capitalize on voters' resentment of the economy, which made them want leadership changes.
Stubbornly high prices burdened voters, which Trump successfully attributed to Democrats. Inflation fell this year, but the relief came too late for Harris.
"A major factor in Trump's victory is that many people remember Trump's pre-pandemic economy as better for them than the economy of Biden and Harris," said Republican poll analyst Whit Ayers.
Trump's hard-line rhetoric on immigration and other issues, which many Americans find disturbing, has inflamed some of his supporters. Those Americans, especially white working-class voters in economic trouble, once again saw Trump as someone who fights the establishment and understands their grievances. However, he managed to connect with blacks and Latin Americans, the "New York Times" points out and reminds that at a rally in the Bronx in May, the residents of the poorest congressional district in the country found inspiration in his words about all the successes, and they believed him when said he wanted some of that success to spill over to them.
"Think of the future, not the past, but learn from the past," he told them. "Wherever I go, I know that if I could build a skyscraper in Manhattan, I can do anything." Hispanic and African-Americans applauded enthusiastically when he said, "It doesn't matter if you're black, brown, white, or any color—it doesn't matter. We're all Americans, and we're going to fight together as Americans. We all want better opportunities."
Confident, then angry
Until the summer, Trump's campaign was largely going without a hitch.
Trump refused to participate in debates with his Republican rivals during the caucuses, but still easily won the party's nomination. In May, when he became the first former US president to be convicted of a felony, opinion polls barely budged, mostly showing him ahead of Biden in key states.
On June 27, Trump experienced a huge reversal when Biden performed disastrously in their first debate. Trump's allies suddenly started talking about winning in safe Democratic states like Virginia and New Hampshire.
Trump's connection with voters deepened after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, said that the way Trump stood up and shouted "Fight!" was "one of the most impressive moves" he had ever seen - and many seemed to agree. It was an interesting twist, writes "The Times". Before that moment, Trump had only played the tough guy on television, hanging out with wrestlers and practicing his "Clintwood" look. Now he acted undeniably tough in front of the cameras. People across the country began to see him as a combination of Rambo and John Gotti. They set up mimes and wore T-shirts with his police portrait or bloody face. Americans love their anti-heroes and action movies, the newspaper writes.
Musk, CEO of Tesla, endorsed him on the same day.
The Republican National Convention a few days later had a triumphant tone.
That Sunday, Trump announced that his running mate would be Sen. JD Vance, author of the 2016 bestseller "Hillbilly Elegy" and a young advocate of isolationism, trade restrictions and strict abortion restrictions. This election attracted some new voters to Trump's camp, strengthening his confidence and belief in victory, writes Reuters.
However, just three days after the convention, Biden announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for a second term. Harris quickly became an alternative, raising $100 million in just two days — about as much as Trump has spent in the entire campaign so far — and unified the Democratic Party almost overnight.
The Trump campaign seemed taken aback. His team did not issue a statement for several hours after Biden's withdrawal.
"They weren't ready," one Republican operative close to the campaign told Reuters. They were surprised by the speed of Harris' ascent, aides said. Consultants, for example, spent valuable time running advertisements through focus groups to assess their effectiveness. "While they were mixing paint in the back room, the Democrats were already painting," said Jason Cable Roe, a Republican strategist with contacts in the Trump campaign.
As Harris's popularity grew, Trump privately complained about spending hundreds of millions to defeat a man who was no longer in the race, two aides with whom he spoke frequently told Reuters. At one point, when he was presented with polling data showing Harris advancing, he threw the papers in a rage.
"Naive as a fox"
As Harris maintained a slim lead in some polls in September, Trump increasingly used inflammatory rhetoric about migrants. Some donors and advisers feared at the time that this tactic would destroy his campaign because it could alienate independent voters. Nevertheless, the focus of the rhetoric remained immigration, an issue that, according to polls, suited Trump better than Harris.
In the Sept. 10 debate, their only head-to-head meeting, Trump repeated false claims that Venezuelan gangs had taken over parts of a Colorado town. He also promoted a false rumor that Haitians in Ohio were stealing and eating their neighbors' pets. "They eat dogs!" Trump shouted. "They eat cats!"
When these words went viral, donors advised the campaign to focus on other issues.
But Trump only intensified the rhetoric.
After the debate, screens at his rallies showed large slides of what appeared to be computer-generated images of Venezuelans in buildings in Colorado. "Migrant crime" has become a trademark of the Trump campaign, although academic studies show that immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than American citizens. Trump has often called attention to young white women who were allegedly killed by migrants who were in the country illegally.
The extreme rhetoric, while divisive, diverted attention from issues where Trump was vulnerable, such as abortion or the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. While immigration has long been a contentious social issue in the US, Trump has presented the issue as an urgent existential threat, mostly based on baseless conspiracy theories. As voters reacted — some with support, others with sharp criticism — Trump managed to embed immigration even deeper in the race.
"I think as clumsy and weird as this story about animals eating animals is, it's really put a spotlight on what's going on in some communities that are overstretched," said Rowe, the Republican strategist.
One advisor put it even more directly: "Trump is as naive as a fox".
New allies: Mask and RFK Jr
As Trump's poll numbers stabilized in October, his supporters worked behind the scenes to build alliances that helped him consolidate support in key states, particularly among young men who don't regularly vote.
Trump donor and financier Omed Malik helped secure the endorsement of former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after Kennedy dropped out of the race in August. Malik, a former Democrat, is part of a group of wealthy tech investors who have turned right and embraced Trump in recent years. Embracing Kennedy "helped build alliances the likes of which we have not seen in contemporary American politics," Malik told Reuters.
But no figure has done more to bolster Trump's campaign than Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world's richest man. Over the summer, Musk's super PAC, a group that raises unrestricted campaign funds, emerged to help Trump get in front of voters.
Musk poured at least $119 million into Trump's door-to-door campaign, official figures showed.
Like many other parts of the campaign, Musk's operation was aimed at motivating moderate Trump voters to get out and vote — not convincing undecided voters.
It also helped that Mask owns the Ik platform. The billionaire regularly posted support for Trump and spread misinformation about the vote to his more than 203 million followers. Musk and Trump also spoke regularly, according to a source familiar with those conversations. Trump has publicly promised that Musk will head the Commission on Government Efficiency, if elected.
The ending
By the end of the campaign, Trump's rhetoric had become increasingly inflammatory and apocalyptic. He has often warned of the possibility of global nuclear war if he loses. With the race looking extremely uncertain, he didn't hold back. He repeatedly warned of an "enemy within" when referring to political opponents, words that Democrats condemned as dangerous and said resembled fascist rhetoric.
His speeches began to turn to more and more strange topics. In late October in Pennsylvania, Trump talked about the alleged penis size of the late golfer Arnold Palmer. Speaking to celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan a few days later, he pondered life on Mars and said he'd like to be a "whale psychiatrist" while talking about wind energy.
Trump aides said he dictated the pace of events and spoke as much as he wanted, often without a script in a style he called "weaving."
At a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden, nine days before the election, the comedian and Trump supporter declared that Puerto Rico was a "floating island of garbage" — an immediate backlash that could turn off key Puerto Rican voters in swing states.
Two days later, a week before the election, Trump got his chance - and he took it. Reacting to the comedian's insult, Biden seemingly called Trump supporters "trash." Trump's instincts kicked in. Trying to draw attention to Biden's mistake, he donned an orange safety vest and climbed into a garbage truck in front of a sea of cameras in Wisconsin. The sight flooded social media, perhaps distracting some voters from his vulnerable issues.
Yet aside from these chaotic moments in recent days, Trump has regularly asked his supporters whether they had a better life during his presidential era or the current Biden-Harris administration.
In the end, a critical mass of American voters fell into one of two groups. Either they accepted Trump's dark vision, or they were ready to ignore it.
Republican consultant John Fleishman claims that it was the economy that swayed undecided voters to support Trump in the final hours.
"Voters looked back and asked the question: Am I better off now than I was four years ago? And I think the majority of key voters answered: No."
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