This was the moment he had dreamed of for four years. At 2:24 AM on November 6, Donald Trump swaggered onto the stage of a banquet hall in Florida, surrounded by advisors, party leaders, family, and friends. The Associated Press had yet to call the election, but it was already clear that voters had pushed him back to the center of power. Trump gazed at a group of supporters wearing red MAGA hats, absorbed in his almost certain victory. 'We achieved the most incredible political achievement,' Trump said. 'America has granted us unprecedented power.'
How 78-year-old Trump wins re-election will become history, and America's choices can be traced back to some key decisions. For Trump's senior aides, the campaign's theme could be summed up in a simple slogan: 'Maximize Male Engagement, Control Female Engagement.' This meant emphasizing economic and immigration issues, which Trump persistently did. It meant diverting attention from the chaos of his first term, the abortion bans he introduced, and the attacks on American democracy four years prior. This campaign capitalized on the frustrations of disillusioned voters and exploited cultural divides and tribal politics that Trump had long utilized.
Most importantly, this outcome can be attributed to an extraordinary figure whose political trajectory back to the White House is unprecedented in 250 years of American history. When Trump left office in 2021, he incited a mob of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election defeat, resulting in widespread condemnation. Three years later, he orchestrated an unprecedented political comeback. Trump effortlessly defeated his Republican opponents, forced President Joe Biden out of the race, and overwhelmingly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, exceeding nearly everyone's expectations. In the process, Trump escaped 34 felony convictions and a series of other criminal charges.
His success was shocking. Trump secured North Carolina, pulled Georgia back into his camp, and broke the blue wall. His campaign exceeded expectations in rallying support from male voters and winning over female voters. Exit polls showed Trump gained significant support from Latino male voters in key battleground states, with support in Pennsylvania rising from 27% to 42% for this group. Nationwide, Trump's approval among Latino males surged from 36% to 54%. Trump also increased his share among non-college-educated voters, gaining support from Black voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while solidifying support among White women nationally, shocking Democrats who had expected an uprising after the Dobbs decision. Among first-time voters, Trump's support rose from 32% four years ago to 54%.
He has made significant breakthroughs. When Trump launched his campaign after facing a third consecutive rebuke in the national elections, Republican leaders tried to ignore him. His main opponents were too cowardly to confront him. Friendly judges and legal delays pushed his most severe criminal trials to after the election. Until July, Trump's election opponent was still an unpopular sitting president, with many believing he was too old to continue in office. Biden performed poorly in the first and only debate, confirming those doubts. The Democrats hastily replaced the first-term president with Harris, losing a candidate who might have had broader support and more experience. Voters remained unfazed by Trump's advanced age and increasingly incoherent campaign rhetoric. Most Americans viewed Trump's legal troubles as part of a larger corruption scheme aimed at depriving him and them of power. The global turmoil following the outbreak of COVID-19 led to the ousting of incumbent leaders worldwide, allowing Trump to benefit from the situation.
The consequences could be historic. Trump has dominated American politics for nine years, and after four years of a tumultuous presidency and an insurrection, America chose to reappoint him. In the campaign, Trump proposed an authoritarian agenda that undermined American democratic norms, and he has been preparing to implement this agenda: mass detentions and deportations of immigrants; retaliating against political enemies through the judicial system; deploying troops against his own civilians. The question of how far he chooses to exercise the power granted to him by the public will determine the fate of this country.
For the loyal followers of 'Make America Great Again', Trump's victory is an exhilarating vision. For less fervent supporters who helped him reach the peak, his rhetoric is primarily bluster aimed at reforming a government out of touch with America's economic and social needs. For most of the rest of America and much of the world, Trump's second term seems like a blow to democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere. This divide will become a focal point of American public opinion over the next four years. The polarization in this country is more severe than at any time since the Civil War. But soon, at least one thing will connect us all: by January 20, we will all be living in Trump's America. This article is based on more than 20 interviews conducted over the past eight months, telling the story of how Trump achieved this, giving us a glimpse of what Trump might look like.
As usual, Trump devised his strategy instinctively. In April 2023, just days after becoming the first former president to face criminal charges and make history, he squeezed in with advisors at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The topic of conversation was: how does he control the political narrative? Trump had just finished a call with his friend, UFC CEO Dana White. There was a fight that Saturday in Miami. 'I think those guys will like me,' Trump said.
On April 10, when Trump entered the arena, he was met with thunderous applause. There, he encountered the Nelk Boys, a group of influential figures hosting right-wing podcasts. Trump had appeared on their show a year earlier but was removed from YouTube for spreading election lies. This serendipitous meeting led to a second appearance. His closest associates at the time did not realize it, but the interviews on male-centric podcasts would become a turning point in his extraordinary political revival.
It's easy to forget how unstable Trump's prospects were at the start of his campaign. He announced his third presidential run in November 2022, just days after the Republican Party suffered a disastrous defeat in the midterms—his third consecutive election viewed as dragging down the GOP. Trump's carefully selected candidates accepted his lies that the 2020 election was stolen and lost key races nationwide. Elected Republicans interpreted this as a sign of America's distancing from Trump, and nearly all avoided his discontent-laden opening speech at Mar-a-Lago. They just hoped he would disappear.
But it turned out that launching the campaign early was a wise move, allowing Trump to frame the upcoming criminal prosecutions as politically motivated. With each indictment, his support among Republican voters grew, and he raised millions of dollars in cash. His main competitors spent more time attacking each other than defeating the obstacles in their path. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis could arguably be Trump's strongest opponent but dropped out after the Iowa caucus. By March, Trump had accumulated enough delegates to become the Republican nominee. This was the most intensely contested presidential primary in modern American history.
Trump's overwhelming victory in the primaries was the result of strategies carefully crafted by his two campaign managers, Susie Wells and Chris Lasivita. Wells is a seasoned strategist from Florida, who worked for DeSantis during his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, but they fell out after he took office. After the 2020 presidential election, Wells took over Trump's primary political action committee, 'Save America'. According to sources close to him, even while in exile, Trump was plotting a path back to Washington, suspecting that the biggest obstacle in the 2024 primaries might be DeSantis. Who better than Wells to help him?
Wells recruited experienced Republican operative Lasivita. Together they drafted the campaign strategy. They concluded that the supporters of the Make America Great Again movement were strong enough to ensure Trump's victory in the Republican primaries, giving them time to trial a plan to defeat Biden in November. Trump's team focused on building an operation to identify and expel those who were not reliable Trump supporters.
Wells and Lasivita, political director James Blair, and Trump's longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio believe gender will be key. In 2020, Biden maintained a lead among female voters that was 13 percentage points ahead of Trump, similar to Hillary Clinton's lead over Trump in 2016, while narrowing the gap among male voters by 5 percentage points. 'Men made us lose the last election,' a senior source on Trump's campaign said. 'Our goal is to ensure that doesn’t happen again.'
Polls found that men, especially younger men, had the strongest aversion to Biden, particularly on economic issues. In face-to-face confrontations, Trump had the most significant lead among unreliable male voters under 40. Advisors focused on activating this group, which generally viewed Biden as an old man who should not be president. These young men did not get news from mainstream media and were less concerned about reproductive rights or democratic backsliding. When they did engage with politics, it was primarily through avant-garde bro podcasts and social media. They appreciated Trump's recklessness and unconventional habits. Focusing a lot of energy on winning over those less interested in politics was risky. But Lasivita often repeated a quote from Winston Churchill that later became his campaign slogan: 'To seek safety everywhere is to be paralyzed everywhere.'
While Trump sought male votes, he also had to avoid losing the election among female voters by a larger margin than in 2016 and 2020—no easy feat, as the Supreme Court justices he appointed helped overturn Roe v. Wade, paving the way for nationwide abortion bans. Whenever the topic of abortion arose, Trump insisted that the issue was now decided by the states and focused as much as possible on economic, immigration, and crime issues—issues that his campaign believed triggered anxiety among affluent suburban women who might have otherwise supported him.
When Trump gave an interview to Time magazine in April 2024, Biden's poll numbers were declining, and Trump's camp believed they were on the path to decisive victory. In the two interviews, Trump laid out the agenda for a second term that would reshape America and its role in the world. Meanwhile, a group of Trump-aligned organizations, like the 2025 Project from the Heritage Foundation and the American Revival Center, was laying the groundwork for implementing Trump's authoritarian vision. Many of their ideas—from strict abortion restrictions to repealing environmental protections to placing the entire federal bureaucracy under presidential control—are not favored by the broad electorate. Yet Trump seemed to believe that victory in the fall was destined.
Starting from Biden's disastrous debate performance on June 27, the campaign's confidence only grew over the tense three weeks. On July 13, Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a shooter's bullet grazed his ear; Trump stood up, raised his fist, and bled, a defiant scene that thrilled supporters. Days later, Trump announced 39-year-old Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate at the Republican convention, signaling confidence that the MAGA movement would endure even without its leader in politics.
The climax did not last long. Three days after the Republican convention, Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed Harris. Within days, the vice president consolidated Democratic support. Soon, her fundraising exceeded Trump's by hundreds of millions, and she held rallies that attracted attendance and enthusiasm not seen by Republicans since the Obama era. Trump's victory no longer seemed guaranteed.
In a series of meetings at Trump's golf clubs in Palm Beach and New Jersey, Wells, Lasivita, and their staff held multiple discussions to address the threats posed by their new opponents. Younger candidates made it harder for them to attract disillusioned voters from Biden. Controlling losses among female voters would be even more challenging when competing against women. The Democrats' efforts to link Trump to extreme agendas like the '2025 Project' began to bear fruit. According to Trump's sources, early internal polling indicated this challenge. Fabrizio's surveys showed a widespread desire for change, with the biggest risk being letting Harris become the candidate for change.
Trump's team began running ads and had their agents on cable news blaming Biden's election on Harris, speculating that she would inherit many of her boss's weaknesses. They focused on her role in immigration matters, as she was tasked with addressing the root causes of Central American migration, attributing the surge in border crossings to her. Meanwhile, Trump began to distance himself from the '2025 Project' while striving to portray Harris as more leftist than she actually is.
Privately, the campaign team believed Trump's message on abortion—leaving it to the states—was insufficient. Polls showed that abortion rights were the third or fourth most important issue for voters. After months of hesitation on federal restrictions, a senior aide told him it was time to address the issue directly. On October 1, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would not support a national ban.
There were challenges internally as well. Trump became increasingly anxious. He brought in allies from previous campaigns, including Corey Lewandowski, one of the managers from the 2016 campaign. According to multiple campaign officials, Lewandowski was one of the staunchest supporters of 'letting Trump be Trump', believing Wells and Lasivita had messed things up. In August, Lewandowski held a meeting with Trump, suggesting the Republican candidate fire the entire campaign leadership. Trump made no commitments, merely nodding and listening to his advice. Wells and Lasivita soon met with Trump, stating that Lewandowski was distracting and derailing the campaign. Wells told him that what they were doing was effective, and now was not the time to veer off course. Trump agreed. On the next flight, he held a meeting with everyone, including Lewandowski, who was sidelined and no longer acted as an advisor, basically only appearing in cable news.
Harris's momentum seemed to last until September. She won the only debate between the two candidates, tempting Trump into mistakes. 'We were very concerned internally; she is a stronger opponent than we realized, and the dynamics have changed,' a senior Trump official said. But a week later, when polls showed the debate had little impact on the campaign's outcome and candidates were even in polls, the campaign team breathed a sigh of relief. Trump returned to his mantra: accelerate efforts to win over young male voters. Several insiders told Time magazine that by the end of July, Wells commissioned 27-year-old Republican consultant Alex Brusewitz to provide Trump with a list of online podcast personalities for interviews. The next morning, Brusewitz and another senior Trump advisor, Daniel Alvarez, found Trump on the golf course.
'I have a podcast list I want to recommend to you,' Brusewitz said. Trump interrupted him, 'Have you talked to Barron about this?' he asked, referring to his 18-year-old son.
'No, sir,' Brusewitz replied.
'Call Barron, see what he thinks, and then tell me,' Trump said before hanging up. Bruce Switzer contacted Barron later that day, learning he particularly liked Aiden Ross, the provocateur known for live-streaming video games with celebrities (like NBA2K and Grand Theft Auto). They agreed that Trump should start from there. The podcast strategy was underway.
In August, Trump appeared on Ross's podcast, which quickly became popular, garnering millions of views during the live stream. In the following weeks, Trump gave a series of flattering interviews with young podcast hosts: Logan Paul, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan. The campaign team deliberately avoided interviews with most traditional media.
Trump took an unorthodox approach to outsiders. Kennedy claimed he offered control over healthcare policy to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in exchange for him dropping out of the race and supporting him, thereby defusing a potential third-party threat. The campaign outsourced its labor-intensive ground operations in key swing states to organizations like Turning Point USA and America First Works. In the final weeks of the campaign, billionaire Elon Musk invested over $100 million into his political action committee to assist Trump in swing states. Musk promised to lead a new 'Government Efficiency Committee' that would oversee the numerous federal agencies regulating his companies, hiring staff and incentivizing them to reach out to voters with pay. He personally camped in Pennsylvania, considered a crucial battleground state by both sides, and issued $1 million checks to registered voters who signed petitions. Musk also turned his social media platform X into a melting pot for conspiracy theories, describing the stakes of the campaign to his more than 200 million followers. In the final weeks of the election, he released extreme right-wing conspiracy theories claiming the Democrats were 'importing' undocumented immigrants into swing states to irreversibly tilt the electoral map in their favor. 'If Trump can't win,' Musk said, 'this is the last election.'
As usual, Trump's self-destructive impulses presented challenges. Just a little over a week before election day, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by holding a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. Trump’s opening speaker gave a speech filled with hateful, xenophobic, and racist rhetoric. The Trump campaign brought in a group of crude boxers, including the insulting comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a 'floating garbage island.' According to two insiders, the campaign did not vet his remarks or upload them to the teleprompter before his routine speech.
Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly recently publicly stated that Trump once praised a general of Hitler. Trump's former chief of staff, retired General Mark Milley, called him a 'full-blown fascist'. Internal polls from Harris's campaign showed that the toxic atmosphere at rallies tilted late-deciding voters toward supporting her. Trump appeared to be on the brink of collapsing at the last minute.
Just after 9 PM on election night, Trump walked into the banquet hall at Mar-a-Lago, filled with his wealthy donors, the cheers deafening. Behind him were his family, including his son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara, as well as his youngest son Barron. Over the next three and a half hours, he and Musk, along with White, excitedly watched the election results exceed even the most optimistic predictions from his supporters.
Trump's transition team was packed with loyal followers, including former cabinet member Linda McMahon and businessman Howard Lutnick, along with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and running mate Vance. They all had the task of ensuring that only true believers would join his incoming administration. He was expected to leverage the network of organizations that had been preparing to implement his ideas. This included his former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, who was drafting executive order proposals that Trump could sign within hours of taking office.
The first and most radical agenda item is expected to be immigration and border issues. In an interview with Time magazine, Trump stated he planned to use executive power to begin mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, ordering the National Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and federal law enforcement to conduct raids. According to campaign sources, former Trump officials now associated with the 2025 Project, like Tom Homan, are expected to lead this effort.
Meanwhile, Trump's senior advisors told Time magazine that a massive purge of the federal bureaucracy was planned. They indicated that the most satisfying part for Trump would be firing special prosecutor Jack Smith, who charged Trump with deliberately mishandling classified information and conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump's most controversial moves will almost certainly face significant legal and political battles. He vowed during the campaign to select an attorney general to investigate and prosecute his political opponents and critics. A Supreme Court ruling last summer emboldened Trump, granting the president immunity from certain criminal prosecutions for official actions. Given Trump's psychological tendencies, his vows of retribution against opponents, and the removal of many obstacles that hindered him in his first term, authoritarianism scholars believe a nation is on the brink of crisis.
Ultimately, the election is a judgment of the American people and the president they choose to elect again. Trump's resurgence is no accident. By launching a social and political movement, Trump gained coercive power over the Republican Party, systematically dismantling many long-standing norms in America and ushering in a cadre of sycophants willing to satisfy his most dictatorial impulses. He would enter a second term committed to creating a governing environment with almost no limits on his power. He does not hide this. This is what the American people have decided they want.