The Journal. - How Donald Trump Pulled Off a Historic Comeback

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Republican former president Donald Trump defeats Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, reclaiming the White House. WSJ’s Alex Leary reports on Trump’s winning strategy and the campaign that fueled it. Further Listening: -Red, White and Who? Playlist  Further Reading: -Trump Defeats Harris, Marking Historic Comeback  -How Donald Trump Won—by Being Donald Trump  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Decision Desk HQ can now project that former President Donald Trump will be our next president. It was a historic run for president and now a historic return to the White House. A nail-biting election is over. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. In the end, the results were fast and decisive. Donald Trump has won or is leading in all the battleground states. Frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time.

There's never been anything like this in this country. So we have a result. Trump won. What's your reaction? This can't be understated. This is a huge, huge deal, unprecedented almost. It's only happened once before in history. That was way back in 1892 when Grover Cleveland came back and won after

losing a reelection campaign. So this is a monster thing for Trump. That's our colleague, Alex Leary. Trump overcame indictments, a conviction, two assassination attempts, and two democratic challengers. He will now be the oldest person to be elected president. You know, this is the guy, the art of the deal, the art of the comeback. I mean, we've never seen anything like this in our lifetimes. This election was just

full of astonishing twists, ups and downs, a really remarkable, stunning sort of set of circumstances that happened. And he's back in the White House now. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Leinbach. It's Wednesday, November 6th. It's Wednesday, November 6th. Coming up on the show, how Trump pulled off a historic comeback. How do airplanes fly? What's in this box? What does this thing do? Kids are curious about everything, including guns. Learn how to store your guns securely and make your home safer at nfamilyfire.org. Brought to you by N Family Fire, Brady and the Ad Council.

Trump entered this presidential race in November of 2022. He was at a weak point. Congress was holding hearings about the January 6th Capitol attack. In the 2022 midterms, some Trump-backed candidates lost their races. And prosecutors in New York and Georgia were investigating him. So a lot of baggage. That's a big hill to climb for him. A lot of Republicans in Washington were finally like, maybe this is the end of Trump. They were ready to move on from a very tumultuous presidency and a lot of controversies.

So yeah, it was a big challenge he had ahead of him to mount this comeback, despite having a lot of strength on the ground with his longtime AVID supporters. Trump leaned into all this controversy. When he had to show up at court, he essentially made the moments into campaign events. Trump turned the trials into his advantage because he would use appearances at the courthouse to stand in front of the television cameras and make his point over and over and over. It's a political campaign, a witch hunt. He also, while he was in New York for his court action in the summer, would campaign

around the city. This strategy fueled support among his base. The Trump campaign even sold t-shirts with his mugshot on them. And that support was visible in the primaries, when he was up against rivals like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador Nikki Haley. In every state but Vermont, Trump won the Republican primary. And one by one, his challengers bowed out. I have decided to suspend my campaign for president.

I am suspending my, I'm suspending my, accordingly I am today suspending my, The time has now come to suspend my campaign. Time has now come to suspend my campaign. After easily securing the Republican nomination, Trump began facing off against President Biden. And then summer 2024 happens, where a cascade of incredible things took place that would change the race. We can start with the debate with Joe Biden.

Joe Biden said suddenly that he would debate Trump and it was a complete, utter collapse for Joe Biden. The COVID, excuse me, with... We all saw him on that stage and kind of fumbling with his words, having trouble completing thoughts. If we finally beat Medicare. Thank you, President Biden, President Trump. He's right. He did beat Medicare.

He beat it to death and he's destroying Medicare. And Trump, you know, who's not known for really restraining, kind of let Biden do that. He hung back. He didn't interject. He sort of let Biden collapse. So that was one and that really was the end of Joe Biden. He hung on for a little bit longer. And then there was, of course, the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, just days before the Republican National Convention.

Take a look at what happened. Trump was on stage and shot at several times and one nicked his ear and You know, he got up and his face is all bloody and pumped his fist and said fight fight fight Everyone was just like wow, you know, how do you conjure up that to handle it like that as opposed to like just cowering on the ground? How do you conjure up that to handle it like that, as opposed to like just cowering on the ground? So that was a real boost for Trump. And a lot of people at that point, given how terrible Biden was performing, thought,

well, Jesus, this thing may be over. But then, just eight days later, another stunning turn. President Biden dropped out and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. Suddenly they had a new opponent to face, Kamala Harris, much younger than Joe Biden, a woman, a woman of mixed race, and it presented just all sorts of different dynamics for the race that Trump would have to then contend with. Trump no longer had an opponent that was seen as weaker and not up for the job.

Kamala Harris is nothing of that. And so Trump had lost one of his biggest assets in facing Joe Biden. How did that affect his campaign strategy? The campaign had a shift to sort of like going back to its bread and butter issues, which was had a shift to sort of like going back to its bread and butter issues, which was the economy and immigration. And so Trump just began to really once again hammer away at those issues. I stand before you today is the only candidate who can rescue our economy. And I mean from obliteration. Today our cities are flooded with illegal aliens.

Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. We will rapidly defeat inflation and I will make America affordable again. And I'm hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer. Trump had a record to run on, so he could point back to what he did in office. American citizen or a law enforcement officer. Trump had a record to run on, so he could point back to what he did in office. Again, the economy was strong before the pandemic hit, so Trump could point to that. So he had a track record to sell to voters and say, look, I did this once and I can do it again.

So that was the big difference for him. And over time, it started to cut through the enthusiasm that was surrounding Kamala Harris, that people were seeing that, was she really going to offer some better economic vision than Joe Biden? But Trump never stopped being Trump. Like in the days before the election, he criticized Liz Cheney, a Republican who supported Harris, for her approach to foreign policy.

She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it. And Trump's campaign had to distance itself from an offensive joke about Puerto Rico made by a comedian at a rally in New York. But in the end, Trump prevailed.

Americans chose him by wider margins than in 2016, with gains all around the country. And behind that victory was a Trump campaign that had a new approach. That's next. How was Trump able to pull off this win? The big picture is Donald Trump benefited from an electorate that was still quite weary about the economy. That's the number one issue. Secondly, Trump also benefited by the concerns over immigration in this country, illegal immigration, the security at the southern border. And Trump seized on that, and he seized on people

being fearful of what's happening in their communities. There were migrants sent from southern states up to New York City, for example, and that caused a lot of disruption. So immigration, economy, two major issues that Trump enjoyed advantages on, that was the key to his success. How would you say that his campaign this time differed from the past?

Trump surrounded himself with a small, very disciplined, capable campaign staff. And they kept it small. They purposely didn't get wound up in personalities. And, you know, it was led by a Florida operator named Suzy Wiles, who was really known for her sort of understated, calm steadiness. And that was a real contrast from some of the past Trump campaigns. Her theory was that the issues were on Trump's side,

that there was a lot of economic sort of optimism and success during the pre-COVID part of his presidency, and that people longed for that. People wanted to go back to that. What did his coalition end up looking like? His coalition was largely the same sort of working class white voters across America, especially in rural areas that delivered big time for him. But also Trump importantly broadened that coalition

to include black men, Latino men, and sort of widened it out. This is a big shift and potentially could have dramatic effects, positive ones, for the GOP as it goes forward and tries to compete in an increasingly diversifying United States. So that's a big, big deal. And, you know, Trump was successful

in pulling in new voters to the Republican side, mainly men. And Trump's campaign really was trying to go after younger men. How did they do that? They did that through, you know, Trump was showing up at UFC fights, and which are very popular with young men. His youngest son, Barron, sort of got in his ear of saying, you should really do these kind of podcasts,

because they're reaching young, young people, young voters. Here's Trump on the podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. I think it was great. It was a lot of fun. You are a fascinating guy and you've done a great job. Thank you very much. And thank you very much. It's been an honor. So Trump was successful in courting those kind of voters,

people that may not traditionally have kind of engaged in politics or certainly maybe not even voted for a Republican. One thing that also felt different for Trump this cycle was his ability to get support from Silicon Valley and from one guy in particular? Yeah, Elon Musk. A huge, huge get for Trump. Musk had once been quite critical of Trump. And Musk, his views were tending more conservative, more Republican. The Journal, we actually reported early on that Trump and Musk were kind of talking on the phone quite a bit, sort of the prelude to their more formal relationship.

So, yeah, Trump really netted a huge win with Elon Musk and his dollars that went towards, you know, turning out vote in key states, especially Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state. Musk basically lived there for the last month and focused so much of his own energy on getting people charged up about Trump. So Elon Musk, his influence here cannot be understated in what he provided. The playbook worked. Not only did Trump win, but the Republicans took the Senate and could possibly take the House. This afternoon, Harris is expected to concede to Trump and address her supporters. Okay, so Trump is now going to be president again, back in the White House. What do you think this will look like?

I think he's going to pursue a very aggressive strategy, a very aggressive agenda. He's talked about very sort of aggressive policies on immigration that he's going to do on day one, I fully expect that he will try to carry out some sort of mass deportation efforts. So it's going to be quite very controversial. So that's a big deal. He's going to certainly look to wipe away a lot of the regulations that the Biden administration put into place. That's a big deal for big business and others with interest in peeling away some of the

regulatory measures that the Biden administration put into place. And his victory here really cements Trump as sort of the defining politician of this time. Yes. Trump as sort of the defining politician of this time. Yes, you know, Trump in all of his bluster and larger than life style, he has really shown a different way. And that is you can be big, you can be brash, you can be loud, you can be controversial, deeply controversial, and attract enough people in this bitterly divided country to succeed. That's all for today, Wednesday, November 6th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Tarini Parti.

Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.