Why Trump Won

He's back.

After the most dramatic election cycle in modern American history, Trump has won a sweeping victory, moving every single state in America in his direction from 2020. He didn't just sweep the swing states. He only lost New Jersey by five points. He won Miami-Dade County in Florida — the first Republican presidential candidate to win the county since George H.W. Bush in 1988. He won 45% of the Hispanic vote. In several of the key swing states, he broke 40% with the Jewish vote. He won north of 20% of the Black male vote.

Trump grew his coalition in every single area.

Across the board.

So, what happened?

The answer has two components: first, Trump. And second, the Democratic Party and its apparatchiks in the media.

First, Trump. Trump is a unique figure.

He was one of the most famous people on earth before he ever ran for president. This made him immune to attempts to characterize him in overwrought fashion. Nobody truly believed Donald Trump was Hitler; after his first term, there was literally zero evidence that he would ever be. Yet Democrats continued to treat him as a threat to the very fabric of the republic, a would-be dictator hell-bent on seizing power and wielding it against his enemies. The attack didn't land.

Trump also has magnetic charisma. It's a sort of charisma that many Americans don't understand: he rambles, he jokes, he says silly things. But he is absolutely himself, 100% of the time. He is the most authentic political candidate of our lifetimes. Americans trust him, despite his penchant for exaggeration and tall tales, because they know him.

And what's more, Trump knows them, too. Trump has an innate love for the American people. When he dons an apron at a McDonald's and serves fries, he's not doing that because he wants Americans to believe that he's suddenly a blue-collar fry cook. It's because he wants them to know he likes and respects them. And that he likes and respects their values.

Which brings us to the Democratic Party and their propagandists in the media.

The story of the 2024 election isn't about Kamala Harris. She is a nothingburger. She always was. She was never "joy" or "brat." She is a career politician who has never won a vote outside of California. She was slotted into Joe Biden's nomination because the sitting president physically expired on the debate stage. And she then proceeded to act as a fresh coat of paint on the battered jalopy of the Democratic Party record.

Americans saw through it. What Americans saw, instead of her celebrity-flecked candidacy of pseudo-excitement, was yet another iteration of the Democratic Party's playbook: transgressive values disconnected from the traditional family values Americans like; a peculiarly insular view of the economy that believes a government handout can make up for expensive groceries and declining prospects; an arrogance rooted in the supposed superiority of a pseudo-intellectual self-appointed nobility — a nobility that scorns achievement and innovation in the name of luxury beliefs; an anti-American sense of our country's history and role in the world.

Americans have been saddled with this Democratic playbook since the Obama era. And they hate it. That's why Trump won in 2016. And it's why Trump won again in 2024. Because while the left likes to proclaim that Trump isn't normal, the reality is that their agenda isn't normal. The form of normality they cherish is deeply abnormal. It runs counter to American notions of virtue and individual freedom, of property rights and American exceptionalism. Slathering platitudinous nonsense on that abnormality doesn't render it more normal; it just renders it more dishonest.

And so the normies struck back. They said enough. They want the American dream — Hispanics in south Texas and white Americans in northern Ohio and Black voters in Wisconsin; Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims.

It turns out the American dream is still alive in the hearts of Americans. We want our share of that dream. Even more, we want to dream that dream together.

That's why Donald Trump is back. Because America is back.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Ben Shapiro, bestselling author and syndicated columnist, first went into syndication after appearing in JWR.