Trump had a roller coaster of a campaign, marked by two brushes with death, four criminal indictments, 34 felony convictions, and a new opponent.
West Palm Beach – There’s a triumphalist feeling in the crowd here early Wednesday morning as election returns continue to roll in on the screens here inside Donald Trump’s election watch party, a hop and a skip from his official 2024 campaign headquarters. Major network calls for Trump in two of the seven battlegrounds — and his strong performance in the five others as of this writing — have supporters people feeling over the moon here.
Assuming Vice President Kamala Harris loses the election – an outcome that looks likelier by the minute as the electoral returns keep trending in the GOP nominee’s favor — countless analyses will be written about what, exactly, went wrong. But at this early hour, Republicans are eager to offer a few ideas. Start off with the GOP campaign’s message: an unpopular administration marked by high prices, mass illegal immigration, and chaos overseas. Add to that list a decision by the party to replace a post-debate Joe Biden with someone who is currently helping him run the country, has lots of policy baggage from her 2020 presidential primary run, and hasn’t been all that interested in distancing herself from her boss.
For Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, Kamala Harris’s recent interview on The View takes the cake as one of the biggest missteps of her campaign. (When asked what she would’ve done differently from Joe Biden, she responded with: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”)
“No one thinks the country is going in the right direction,” Mullin told National Review. “And when you say that, all the other rhetoric about, ‘I’m going to do this on day one and I’m going to do this on day one,” means nothing because what you’re saying is, is as you agree with all those decisions” that Biden made.
This election caps a roller coaster of a campaign cycle for Trump, marked by two brushes with death, four criminal indictments, 34 felony convictions, a new Democratic opponent, and lots of other twists and turns. Ask his biggest allies about these factors — especially the legal dynamic — and they say they have only fueled his rise among his base and independent voters who already believe the country is moving in the wrong direction under Biden.
“If you want to make somebody iconic, try to throw them in jail, try to bankrupt them,” says longtime Trump ally Roger Stone. “If you want to make somebody iconic, cook up a fake hoax to justify their removal from the presidency. If you really want to make somebody iconic, try to kill him.”
“All those things failed,” added Stone. “They just made him bigger and more powerful as a political force.”
Spirits were high here long before polls closed and election results started rolling in and trending in Trump’s favor. At his rallies, the former president’s on-the-ground supporters have long been predicting a landslide as his campaign has projected a more cautiously optimistic vibe.
Mid-afternoon Tuesday, the former president’s biggest super fans — the “Front Row Joes” — were already trickling inside the convention room to save standing spots near the stage. Throughout the evening, attendees sipped beer and wine here as they reacted to the election coverage on screens throughout the center: loud cheers when the moderators said the election looked good for Trump, loud boos when election forecasters said the same for Harris.
Hours before polls began to close, Trump advisers were yet again projecting confidence that the campaign’s focus on netting early vote turnout was paying dividends.
“In every single battleground state, in the rural parts of the state, and in places where we know Donald Trump’s support to come from, the turnout has been tremendous in early voting,” Trump adviser Tim Murtaugh said early Tuesday evening. “We made a distinct effort to encourage early voting this time, and I think that paid off.”
For now, people here are feeling confident about Trump’s chances of getting across the finish line. When it comes to campaign hands, that list of optimistic Trump allies includes Corey Lewandowski, the former president’s first campaign adviser in 2016 who bopped in and out of the former president’s orbit for years before being brought on for this year’s Republican National Convention. He spent the final months of the campaign helping the former president in an advisory role.
“I’ve been at a front row seat of history,” Lewandowski told National Review early Tuesday evening of his roughly decade-long working relationship with the GOP nominee. Any regrets about how this cycle’s campaign was run from a strategy standpoint? “I never have regrets,” he said. “You don’t look back you just look forward you can’t change the past. So let’s just go forward.”