Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, a highly divisive first-time candidate who waged a scorched-earth battle for the presidency, shocked the world by narrowly beating his far more experienced Democratic challenger, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The victory, sealed with a concession phone call from Clinton early Wednesday, amounts to one of the most stunning upsets in political history.
Trump’s margin of his victory in rural and suburban counties overwhelmed Clinton’s advantages among more educated, diverse and urban supporters, carrying him to a narrow win. But after relying on intense support from largely white, non-college educated voters to carry him to the White House, President-Elect Trump will now face the difficult task of leading a deeply divided and increasingly diverse United States.
We’ve never seen a candidate like Trump before, one who operated without rules or regard for polling-friendly messages. By tapping into the energy of countless disaffected Americans left behind and disgusted by the current political system, he single-handedly realigned a major political party.
Tens of millions of voters viewed him as the human embodiment of a welcome wrecking ball aimed at Washington.
Largely as a result of Trump’s ugly campaign, the country was dragged through the mud of a dark political fight brimming with insults, graphic sexual assault allegations and a paucity of substantive policy proposals.
This was the election in which the word “pussy” became unavoidable, in which reporters were threatened, in which individuals with disabilities were mocked and ordinary citizens were routinely roughed up when protesting at political rallies.
A hard line on immigrants
From day one of his campaign, Trump placed combating illegal immigration at the top of his agenda, conveniently riding atop an ugly wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that has flowed through parts of the Republican Party in recent years.
Trump’s policy proposals on this issue have been simplistic and, at times, blatantly racist, from the border wall with Mexico — part of nearly every stump speech despite Trump’s reputation as a notoriously off-script candidate — to the Muslim immigration ban.
The border wall was a central plank of Trump’s campaign starting on June 16, 2015, when he and his wife Melania descended the escalators at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy.
During a meandering, off-the-cuff speech, Trump denounced Mexican immigrants and insisted that his negotiating prowess would force Mexico to pay for a new border wall.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you,” Trump told his supporters.
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Trump’s Muslim immigration ban, which he called for in December 2015 in the wake of a mass shooting by ISIS-sympathizers in San Bernadino, California, drew condemnation from within his party as well as the Obama White House.
At various points during the campaign, Trump insulted a Hispanic-American federal judge’s ability to fairly rule on a case involving his business, called for a “deportation force” to send illegal immigrants back to their home country, and was accused of fat-shaming a Miss Universe contestant from Venezuela.