Trump Takes It! Winning Pennsylvania and thus the presidency, he promises a 'Golden Age' for America

Donald Trump took the stage at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach at about 2:30 a.m. early Wednesday morning and claimed victory in the 2024 election, promising a “golden age” for America.

“We’re gonna fix our borders. We’re gonna fix everything about our country,” he told a cheering crowd.

“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible and it’s now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political — and look what happened. Is this crazy? — But it’s a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this,” he said.

Trump spoke from the podium with daughter-in-law Lara Trump on his right and wife Melania Trump on his left, and an array of other friends and family members spread out like wings on either side. They included running mate J.D. Vance, his wife Usha, daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner and campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president,” Trump said. “And every citizen: I will fight for you, for your family and your future….Every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America. That’s what we have to have.”

“Winning the popular vote was very nice, very nice, I will tell you,” he continued. “It’s a great feeling of love. We have a great feeling of love in this very large room, with unbelievable people standing by my side. They’ve made the journey with me…We’re going to make you very happy. We’re going to make you very proud of your vote.”

Trump’s appearance at the convention center in downtown West Palm Beach came almost two hours after Kamala Harris’ campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond appeared on stage at her election night gathering at Howard University, saying that Harris would not appear until the following day.

“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet,” he said. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”

Richmond promised that Harris would be back Wednesday to address Howard University, her supporters and the nation.

CNN commentators immediately noted the similarity to the same point in the early morning hours after the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, took the stage at the Javits Center in New York City, telling supporters to go home, and that the candidate would not appear until the next day.

But this was not the only echo of 2016, when it seemed impossible that a man who had never before sought or held public office could, on his first try, win the presidency — not of a minor nation but of the world’s dominant military power.

When Trump announced two years ago that he would run again for president again, it wasn’t even certain that he would be the front-runner, or if he were, that he could survive what the same malevolent actors who engineered the theft of the 2020 election would throw at him.

It turned out that he could. Ninety-one felony charges across four states, a raid on Mar-a-Lago, multiple attempts to keep him off the ballot and two assassination attempts did not deter him. If anything, they served to keep the spotlight on him and to rally a great part of the country to the defense of a man who was so obviously being treated unjustly.

(And the Republican National Committee, reorganized under the leadership of Michael Whatley and Lara Trump, forgot about country clubs and learned how to fight, recruiting 230,000 Republican lawyers and poll watchers to prevent the mass violation of election laws in places like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia and the collar counties around it.)

It was a come-from-behind story, like 2016 — an almost impossible (or at least unlikely) climb out of a deep crevasse with walls of ice on either side that are not at 90 degree angles but closer to 100 or 110 even. Closer inspection and years of study won’t full satisfy our wonder that any man could beat these kinds of odds.