In the end, it was not close. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Donald Trump declared as he claimed victory in the early hours of 6 November at his campaign headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida. It did not matter that most of the major networks had not yet called the race, or that his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, had not yet conceded defeat. With Republicans regaining control of the Senate and the former president on course to win the popular vote along with the electoral college, it was clear that Trump was on his way back to the White House in what his running mate, JD Vance, called the “greatest political comeback in the history of the United States”.
“God spared my life for a reason,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the assassination attempt that almost killed him in July, when a gunman opened fire on him during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing his ear. “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.” The crowd erupted in chants of, “USA! USA!” He invited Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and one of his most fervent supporters to say a few words. “This is karma,” White said. “This is what happens when the machine comes after you.”
It is important to understand the potent mix of fear, grievance and economic dislocation that has fuelled Trump’s return to power in a country where a majority of voters feel they are worse off now than they were four years ago. Just 7 per cent of voters in CNN’s exit poll said they were enthusiastic about the direction of the country. Seventy-two per cent said they were either dissatisfied or angry about where the country was heading. In an election that looks likely to deliver the largest gender and education divide in US history – some of Trump’s most loyal supporters are young men without a college degree – his vow to exact “retribution” and “take America back” has found an eager audience among a swathe of the population that has long felt looked down upon by the political elite.
While reporting at a Trump rally in Salem, Virginia, on 2 November, it was striking how many people were dressed in black plastic bin bags and high-visibility vests, a sartorial reference to Joe Biden’s comment in the closing days of this campaign when he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage”. For many, this echoed Hillary Clinton’s infamous description of Trump voters as a “basket of deplorables” in 2016. One supporter at the rally, 60-year-old Joe Jackson, told me, “All [Harris] is running on is Trump and the idea that all of us are deplorable garbage,” as he stood beside a white garbage truck with a life-sized cut-out of the former president and a sign that read: “Garbage deplorables for Trump”. Behind us, someone shouted proudly, “I’m trailer trash!” People queued up to take their photograph alongside Trump, fists raised in an imitation of his defiant gesture after the assassination attempt, repeating his mantra: “Fight, fight, fight.” “I love being garbage,” Jackson continued. I asked him if he genuinely believed Harris thought that about him. “Yes, she’s always felt like that,” he replied. “That’s just the way Democrats are.”
Standing nearby, Matt Barger, 33, who was attending the rally with his parents, said Trump represented “the working-class man”. He admired the fact that Trump had run his own businesses and believed he would deliver on his promise to lower the cost of living for families like his. “You know men want to feel like they can provide for the household and it’s insane how hard it is now, as a man, to support your family,” he told me. “It’s almost impossible to allow your wife to stay at home and raise kids, so it makes men feel small.” “Our economy is in the tank,” added his father, Larry Barger, who is 60 and a US military veteran. He said he had been hit hard by rising petrol prices and wanted a president who would take a hard line on immigration. “This city didn’t have hardly any crime when we moved here 11 years ago and they’ve been importing people, flying them in, and now they live literally across the street from us,” he said. “This is just what’s happening in a lot of small cities in America.”
Trump’s message that the survival of the country depended on the result of this election resonated among the crowd. People told me they were voting to save the US from an “invasion of illegals”; to stop the “country from falling apart” and to head off an otherwise inevitable descent into “socialism”. The stakes in this election were “immeasurable” said Sarah Whitmer, 33, who was dressed in a black bin bag on which she had written: “Jesus died for all sinners.” She did not believe that Trump himself was a Christian, she explained, “because of his life choices”, but she viewed his political positions as “more favourable for Christian living” and, as a mother of four young children, she said she was deeply concerned about securing the US border. “People are struggling and it’s just going to keep getting worse,” she said. “The more illegals you let in, there’s more of a strain. If you are doubling the population in a place that’s not prepared for it, that is a crime for everybody.”
Asked about the warnings from former senior Trump officials that he is a “fascist” who represents a grave danger to American democracy, the rally-goers were sanguine. “I can see where they’re coming from,” said 34-year-old Lawrence Demoret, as he held his two-year-old daughter’s hand. “He seems Hitler-esque to me.” I asked him what he meant by that, given that some of Trump’s defenders have tried to play down his reportedly admiring comments about Hitler and praise for other authoritarian leaders. “I mean in a bad way,” he clarified. “He’s dangerous.” Still, he could see no other alternative. “I’m keeping my eyes wide open,” he said. “But he’s the lesser of two evils.”
Americans know who Donald Trump is by now. They voted overwhelmingly to elect him anyway.
[See also: The spectre of American fascism]
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This article appears in the 07 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump takes America