By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2024 / 05:45 am
Donald Trump on Wednesday won his reelection bid for president, defeating Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris and becoming the first president in nearly 130 years to secure a nonconsecutive White House victory.
Multiple news networks called the race for the Republican president-elect on Wednesday morning. Fox News had called the race for Trump hours earlier.
Early Wednesday morning Trump had posted a 276-219 lead in the Electoral College over Harris as well as a 5 million lead in the popular vote.
“This was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time,” Trump said in Florida in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond.”
“And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal,” he said.
“Every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future,” he continued. “Every single day, I will be fighting for you. And 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.”
The victory caps what has effectively been a four-year effort by Trump to retake the White House after he lost his first reelection bid to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Trump has spent most of Biden’s term shoring up political support among Republicans and conservatives while fending off numerous legal challenges from state and federal prosecutors, one of which ended in a felony conviction.
The GOP president-elect worked to build a broad coalition of allies and supporters, particularly in the final year of the race, when he drew endorsements from public figures as diverse as Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Buzz Aldrin, and Peter Thiel.
Trump also appealed aggressively for the Catholic vote, arguing that Harris is “very destructive … to the Catholic Church” and slamming Harris for skipping the annual Al Smith dinner in New York City.
In July the now-president-elect picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate. Vance, a Catholic, is one of the most overtly religious major politicians in America and made faith a central part of his campaign, warning Catholics of Harris’ alleged “anti-Catholic bias” and arguing that many Catholic voters “feel abandoned” by Harris and Biden.
Vance on Wednesday described Trump’s victory as “the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.”
“We’re never going to stop fighting for you, for your dreams, for the future of your children,” Vance said, vowing also an “economic comeback”under the Trump administration.
Trump himself told “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo” in October that he would continue to back religious liberty in his second term, describing it as “a stance that I’ve taken from the beginning.”
In September, meanwhile, Trump’s campaign launched a “Catholics for Trump” coalition, which emphasized the defense of religious liberty, traditional values, and the sanctity of human life as priorities of his agenda.
