DONALD Trump declared victory in the United States presidential election as he addressed jubilant supporters at his campaign headquarters in Florida yesterday.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he said to cheering crowds.
Trump pledged to “heal” the country.
The 78-year-old Republican has picked up battleground states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, surging ahead of Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.
Just before Trump began speaking, Fox News projected that he had won the election.
His return to the White House is an extraordinary comeback for Trump after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
Trump’s victory threatens to cause shockwaves around the world, as US allies in Europe and Asia fear a return of his nationalist policies and his praise of autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Delivering a wide-ranging speech to supporters at his watch party in Florida, Trump thanked voters: “I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president.”
As he spoke, his wife Melania and several of his children were standing behind him.
Trump also praised his vice presidential running mate Sen. JD Vance: “He turned out to be a good choice.”
Vance, in turn, said Trup had just pulled off “the greatest political comeback in American history.”
Trump just briefly mentioned the assassination attempt made on him in July, which he survived after a bullet grazed his ear at a campaign rally.
He told the crowd his life was “saved for a reason” – a suggestion that was made throughout his campaign.
Trump also said he would bring “every ounce of spirit and fight” to the White House, and that being president is the “most important job in the world”.
He added that he will run his government on the motto: “Promises made, promises kept.”
Meanwhile, gloom swiftly descended on Harris’ camp.
“You won’t hear from the vice president tonight but you will hear from her tomorrow,” Cedric Richmond, Harris campaign co-chair, told a watch party in Washington as supporters left.
Polls for weeks had shown a knife-edge race between Harris and Trump, who would be the oldest ever president at the time of inauguration, the first felon president and only the second in history to serve non-consecutive terms.
Trump also faces sentencing in a criminal case over hush money payments on November 26, while the controversy over his denial of his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden still persists.
Millions of Americans had lined up throughout Election Day (Nov. 4) — and millions more voted early — in a race with momentous consequences for the United States and the world.
Harris, 60, had been aiming to be only the second Black and first person of South Asian descent to be US president.
She made a dramatic entrance into the race when Biden dropped out in July, while Trump — twice impeached while president — has since ridden out two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction.
She hammered home her message that Trump was a threat to democracy and her opposition to Trump-backed abortion bans.Bottom of Form
Trump has vowed an unprecedented deportation campaign of millions of undocumented immigrants, in a campaign full of dark rhetoric.
The US election is being watched closely around the world including in the war zones of Ukraine and the Middle East. Trump has indicated he will cut aid to Kyiv’s battle against the Russian invasion. (BBC, AFP, Philippine Daily Inquirer)
