America Puts Coup-Attempting Convicted Criminal Back Into The White House

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. ― Donald Trump, who attempted a coup to remain in power the last time he had the job and is now also a convicted criminal, is now projected to return to the White House.

A sea of his supporters in the cavernous Palm Beach County Convention Center hall let out a roar when Fox News called the race for him at 1:47 a.m. Wednesday. Many wore the red “Make America Great Again” hats the campaign had handed out as they arrived early Tuesday evening.

“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” Trump said a half hour later from the stage. “Look what happened! Is this crazy?”

Trump, as he read from his teleprompter, hit standard victory speech themes of unity and healing. “I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. And every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future.”

Then, as he often does his in his rallies, he veered off topic ― describing at length the landing of a SpaceX rocket booster, for example ― which led his supporters to start streaming out the exit about halfway through his 25 minutes of remarks.

The former president will retake office on Jan. 20, allowing him to dismiss two outstanding federal indictments against him and almost certainly delaying both a Georgia state prosecution against him and any prison term he might receive at a sentencing later this month in a New York state case.

More ominously for supporters of American democracy, his return to the presidency gives him the tools to attack the foundational principles of the 236-year-old republic from within. He came to appreciate those tools only in the final weeks of his first term, when he tried to order officials at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to help him steal the election he had lost. He had months earlier seen top military officials state publicly that they would have no part in the coming elections and were loyal to the Constitution, not to the president personally.

This time, he comes into office with a deeper understanding of the scope of his near-absolute power over the executive branch of the federal government, especially as commander in chief of the armed forces, as well as the knowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave him complete immunity from prosecution for his actions as president.

What that means for the future of elections and the rule of law remains unclear.

Trump has essentially promised to rule as an autocrat: prosecuting his political opponents, using the military to put down protests in American cities and even using the military to go after people he has deemed to be “the enemy within.”

Some experts on authoritarianism worry that Trump, once sworn in and given control of the armed forces, will never willingly leave office. They cite his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt to remain in power even after he had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

But small majorities in enough of the seven swing states, as well as tens of millions of voters in the rest of the country, apparently did not share that concern. In fact, exit polls found that while a full 73% of voters said they believed democracy was under threat in America, they split their support evenly between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Many Republicans say that America’s institutions are too strong and the bureaucracy too unwieldy for Trump to be able to seize absolute power. They concede, though, that those institutions have never been tested as they are likely to be in a second Trump term.

Trump basically has been seeking his White House return the whole time he has been out of office, dropping his first big hint that he would run again at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, just two weeks after Senate Republican leaders decided not to convict him on his impeachment for inciting the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, which had capped off his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

He appeared to be at his political nadir following the 2022 midterm elections, when his insistence on pushing candidates who would spread his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him ended up undermining the “red wave” Republicans had been hoping for.

But his GOP rivals failed to take him head on, and when prosecutors started filing criminal charges against him in April 2023, Trump successfully used the legal actions to drive up his support among Republican primary voters. He cruised through the primaries easily, spending most of his time and money in those months running against President Joe Biden rather than his Republican rivals.

Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate against Trump led to his decision a month later to end his reelection bid and endorse his vice president, Kamala Harris. She received an immediate bump in the polls and overtook Trump for a few weeks after the Democratic National Convention in August and after having the better of Trump in their sole debate in September.

Her support in the polls began to slide by the end of that month, though, and Trump took the lead for good in October, although the margin appeared to be narrowing in the final weeks.

See full results from the presidential election here.