Donald Trump wins: Expect an interesting ride

Donald Trump is headed back to the White House after crushing Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s election. Following months of polls showing the former prosecutor and the convicted candidate neck and neck, at the end of the night the results weren’t even close: this was a landslide electoral college win for Mr Trump, who unlike in 2016 was also on course to secure the popular vote. Much ink will be spilt over the coming days about mistakes the Harris campaign made, including her difficulty in connecting with voters on economic and other issues. But ultimately this was an anti-incumbent vote from a disgruntled electorate who bought into Mr Trump’s promises he could usher in a new era of American prosperity, reverse the flow of immigrants and end the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine . The 78-year-old’s success marks one of the most remarkable comebacks in US political history. Not since Grover Cleveland’s victory in 1892 has a former president been returned to the Oval Office for a second non-consecutive term. Beyond regaining the White House, the Republicans are on track to sweep the Senate and the House of Representatives, plus they already have a lock on the Supreme Court. In other words, come January 20 they will have total control of the federal government and the Democrats will be relegated to being a noisy pressure group with almost no political power at the national level. And that’s when things are likely to start to get weird. Mr Trump assembled an unlikely coalition on his way to the election, featuring the likes of Elon Musk, Robert F Kennedy Jr and evangelical Christians who view his survival of an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania as God’s work. Mr Musk, one of the world’s richest men, holds dozens of federal contracts worth billions of dollars and has a top-level security clearance for his sensitive government work. Despite this, Mr Musk has been holding private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal . Under the administration of President Joe Biden, such interactions might be viewed as a wild conflict of interest. But under a presumably Russia-friendly Trump administration, any such concerns will seem almost quaint. Mr Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla chief executive, will likely be invited into the heart of a Trump government that will adjudicate future defence and space contracts. Mr Trump has said he will establish a government efficiency commission headed by Mr Musk, who has promised to slash spending across the federal government, though one wonders whether it will apply to any agency channelling money to Mr Musk’s ventures. And Mr Kennedy, long dismissed as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist by the Democrats, will now probably be invited into a Trump administration as some sort of health tsar. He has already said he wants to ban fluoride, long credited with saving children from dental cavities, from the water supply and Mr Trump has seemed receptive to his idea of banning vaccines. The President-elect made some big promises on his way back to the White House, including his vow to end wars. A key bloc was evangelical Christians, who will want to see him move towards a federal ban on abortion and an increase in support for Israel as it continues its wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Inevitably, Mr Trump will toss aside some of the voting groups he promised to cater to as political realities set in. Most at risk of being discarded are Arab Americans and women pushing for reproductive rights. He vowed to end the war in the Middle East, but his true loyalties lie with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also said he would “protect” women’s rights, but after a landslide win the voices from the right calling for an abortion ban are going to be hard for him to ignore. Mr Trump will be the 47th President of the US. We are in for an interesting ride.