Donald Trump declared victory and promised to “heal” the country as results placed him on the brink of defeating Kamala Harris in a dramatic White House comeback.
His triumphant speech came despite Fox News being the only network to declare him the winner, with no other US outlets having made a call at that point.
As ecstatic supporters cheered and chanted “USA,” Trump took the stage at his campaign headquarters in Florida, joined by his wife Melania and several of his children.
“We are going to help our country heal,” the Republican former president said.
“It’s a political victory that our country has never seen before.”
US networks had called Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina for the 78-year-old, while Trump led Harris in several other states, although those hadn’t been officially decided yet.
A sense of gloom quickly enveloped Harris’s camp.
“You won’t hear from the vice president tonight but you will hear from her tomorrow,” Cedric Richmond, Harris’s campaign co-chair, told a watch party in Washington as supporters began to leave.
In another setback for Democrats, Trump’s Republican Party also gained control of the Senate, flipping two seats and overturning a narrow Democratic majority.
A Trump win could send shockwaves across the globe, as US allies in Europe and Asia fear a return to his nationalist policies and his praise for autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
However, the US dollar surged, bitcoin hit a record high, and most equity markets saw gains as traders predicted a Trump victory as the results came in.
For weeks, polls had shown a razor-tight race between Harris and Trump, who would become the oldest president in history at the time of his inauguration, the first felon president, and only the second in history to serve non-consecutive terms.
Trump is also facing sentencing in a criminal case over hush money payments on November 26, while the controversy over his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden continues to loom.
But in the end, victory came surprisingly quickly.
The mood shifted sharply at Harris’s watch party at Howard University, her alma mater and a historically Black college in Washington, as the results poured in.
“I am scared,” said Charlyn Anderson. “I am anxious now. I am leaving, my legs can barely move.”
Meanwhile, the celebrations grew more intense at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and at the watch party nearby.
Tech mogul Elon Musk, who has supported Trump and is poised to lead a government efficiency commission under him, posted a picture of himself with the Republican.
“Game, set and match,” Musk said on X, the social media platform he owns alongside the Tesla electric vehicle company and SpaceX.
Millions of Americans had lined up to vote throughout Election Day, with many more casting early ballots, in a race with profound consequences for both the United States and the world.
Voters were deciding whether to hand Trump a historic comeback or make Harris the first woman to hold the world’s most powerful position.
In a stark reminder of the tension — and the fear of potential violence — dozens of bomb threats were made against polling stations in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The FBI stated that the threats appeared to originate from Russia, which the US has accused of attempting to interfere in the election. Though all the threats were hoaxes, they caused significant disruption.
Harris, 60, had hoped to become the second Black president and the first of South Asian descent.
Her entrance into the race had been dramatic, coming after Joe Biden dropped out in July, while Trump — who was impeached twice during his presidency — had endured two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction.
She focused her campaign on portraying Trump as a threat to democracy and firmly opposed his stance on abortion bans.
Trump, for his part, vowed to launch an unprecedented deportation campaign targeting millions of undocumented immigrants, speaking in a campaign steeped in dark rhetoric.
The election was closely watched worldwide, especially in war zones like Ukraine and the Middle East. Trump has suggested he would cut aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion.
Credit: AFP
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