WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump will get a second chance at the White House after clinching the win for the presidency, CBS News officially announced early Wednesday morning.
“Every single day. I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body,” Trump said as he declared victory in West Palm Beach.
Trump’s victory will return the Republican former president to the Oval Office – four years after he left it the day President Biden was inaugurated. Notably, Trump was the first president in 150 years to not attend his successor’s inauguration – a longstanding tradition that showcases America’s peaceful transition of power to the world.
The president-elect will get the next four years to push for his conservative agenda.
One of Trump’s big claims to fame from his first term was appointing three conservative justices to the Supreme Court – unbalancing the high court which now has six conservative justices and only three liberal justices. This, of course, led to the court tossing the historic Roe v. Wade decision which had protected abortion rights nationwide for nearly 50 years.
"This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before and frankly, this was I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in this country," Trump said Wednesday morning. "And now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal."
After a hard-fought election cycle, one that was wrought with political controversy and violence, the voters have spoken, delivering Trump an electoral victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris had aspired to become the first woman to ever serve as president of the United States, but Trump and his supporters dashed those dreams at the ballot box, at least for the moment. This isn’t the first time Trump has done that, either. In 2016, when it was widely believed America would see its first woman be elected president, Trump trounced those dreams as well delivering an upset victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Polling at the time showed Clinton was likely to win that race, but that’s not how history would unfold. In fact, Clinton was so certain that she’d win that she didn’t bother to prepare a concession speech. Still, that night she called Trump to concede and congratulate him on his victory.
While the country will again have to wait for the first woman to serve as president, it will have a different kind of first in a second Trump presidency ─ the first president to be a convicted felon. In May, the president-elect was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair in the days leading up to the 2016 election.
Trump was also infamously impeached twice by the House of Representatives during his first term in office, but in both cases, the Senate failed to convict him. When the House impeached Trump for the second time on Jan 13, 2021, it was a result of his actions just days earlier on Jan. 6 and the attack on the U.S. Capitol that followed. The House found that Trump incited the mob that led to a violent riot on Capitol Hill.
Violence also plagued this election as President-elect Trump was the victim of multiple assassination attempts as divisive political rhetoric flooded social media. The worst of which included Trump being struck by gunfire to his ear while on stage at a rally in Pennsylvania. The attack was a result of what a bipartisan House panel called “stunning security failures” by the U.S. Secret Service.
The 2024 election cycle was upended in July when President Biden announced he was dropping his bid for reelection after mounting political pressure to step aside following a disastrous presidential debate performance. In his announcement, Biden gave his full support to Vice President Harris, and the Democratic Party quickly fell in line behind her ─ a stunning turn of events after months of in-fighting within the Democratic Party surrounding whether Biden should seek a second term due to concerns about his age.
Although the concerns over Biden’s age permeated both parties through this election, on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump will become the oldest person ever sworn into office ─ an honor previously held by President Biden when he was sworn in in 2021. Biden, who will be 82 when he leaves office next year, is still the oldest president to ever serve.
As for a second Trump presidency, only time will tell what direction he’ll go.
Among the president-elect’s promises ─ a plan to deport 11 million people who are living in the country illegally ─ a plan that a CBS News analysis says would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and take more than four years to complete, if it could ever be completed.
Trump has also suggested that he will go after news outlets for coverage he doesn’t like, and he even said that he would bring the FCC, an independent federal agency, under White House control ─ essentially promising to give authority to whomever is president to control the fates of news organizations who speak out against them by pulling their license to broadcast.
Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, told NPR that, "While the FCC has authority to provide licenses for television and radio, it is pretty fundamental that we do not take them away because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes any kind of content or coverage.”
Further, Trump has outright threatened to jail journalists.
“While campaigning for Republican congressional candidates in 2022, Trump repeatedly pledged to jail reporters who don't identify confidential sources on stories he considered to have national security implications,” NPR reported. “He joked that the prospect of prison rape would loosen reporters' lips about their sources.”
Trump even threatened NBC News with charges of treason for its coverage of his criminal cases, all of which are still in progress in some form.
The president-elect said ABC News should have its license taken away for fact checking him during his debate with Vice President Harris over the summer. He suggested 60 Minutes should be taken off the air for its interview with Harris. The list goes on and on.
While the Republican Party has largely embraced Trump and what he stands for, many who served in his first administration have given stark warnings about Trump regaining power.
John Kelly, a retired Marine general and Trump’s former chief of staff, told The Atlantic that Trump said he wished military members showed him the same level of obedience Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the dictator during World War II.
Trump's victory will make him only the second U.S. president in history who will serve two non-consecutive terms ─ the other being President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat who served from 1885-1889 and again from 1893-1897.
President-elect Trump will be inaugurated in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2025, after the election is certified on Jan. 6. Vice President Harris will oversee that proceeding just like Vice President Mike Pence did in 2021 after he and Trump lost the 2020 election.