Overcoming nerves and fatigue, MAGA movement celebrates Trump win

Others couldn’t hide their jitters. “I’m scared — I’ve been scared for the last two weeks,” said a woman named Renee, who had been seated in the bleachers behind Trump when a would-be assassin tried to kill him at his June 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Another woman described being so nervous she compulsively scratched her arm all day. Indeed, the arm looked pretty red and rough after hours of not knowing who would win the presidency.

Overall, it would be fair to say that, nervous or not, the people in the crowd, bedecked in lots of MAGA merch, expected Trump to win, even though they thought it might take a while. Though most didn’t come out and say it, they remained traumatized by election night 2020, when they thought Trump had won reelection only to watch as Democrats found more and more votes for Joe Biden to win the White House days later. They saw the vote counting stretching out again this time, too.

But Michael turned out to be pretty close to the final result on both the timing and the margin of Trump’s victory. Yes, it took until 2 in the morning, and Trump’s national lead over Vice President Kamala Harris was a bit less than 4 points, rather than 5 — but still. The optimists were right.

The convention center crowd was big and made up of Trump donors and supporters from around the country, as well as the entire campaign press corps. Trump wasn’t there for most of the evening. He spent election night at a members-only event at his club Mar-a-Lago. The crowd at the convention center waited until early morning for word that he was coming over to address his supporters. 

You could feel the crowd’s mood of apprehension during the early evening. And then the good news for Trump started arriving from Georgia and North Carolina. Even with that, though, there were worries about Pennsylvania. People had been hearing and reading posts about good turnout for Harris in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, and they feared the Democrats might pull off another Pennsylvania win.

“I’m just concerned that they knew they were behind in the early vote and had sufficient manpower and financial resources to just flood the zone,” said longtime conservative activist Ralph Reed, who is based in Georgia and felt confident about that state and North Carolina but worried about Pennsylvania. “And Harris spent the entire final day in Pennsylvania. She did five events and they claim they knocked on 3 million doors, and in a race that could be decided by half a percent, that could make a difference.”

In the end, it didn’t matter. The posts out of Pennsylvania were spin, and the Republican advantage was real. Trump won Pennsylvania.

Some Republicans could see what was coming. Earlier in the day, I asked veteran GOP strategist Alex Castellanos for his thoughts. “What I see is the culmination of a four-year-long Republican surge in registration,” Castellanos replied via email. “Republican success in mail-in and early vote. Hispanic growth. Rogan, RFK Jr. And Trump leading in Pennsylvania among independents 45 to 39. (Real data from last week.) Add to that Democratic underperformance in core urban areas and more women voting than men because black men aren’t showing up in core urban areas, and the picture is clear to me. Trump is going to do very well, better than expected.”

And then this, from a man who has been part of a lot of races. “This I know for sure: the conventional wisdom is almost always wrong,” Castellanos said. “When all the pollsters and newspaper headlines tell us ‘tight race hits finish line,’ there is almost no chance it’s going to be a tight race.”

And it wasn’t. This was not the first campaign that cried out for clear-eyed analysts like Castellanos to interpret what was happening, but it was a really important example.

As it was happening, Trump campaign officials, both those at headquarters and those who came to the convention center, maintained they were confident and happy with their candidate’s position in the race. That is, of course, what campaigns always say. But as time went on, it became clear that they really were confident and happy with their candidate’s position in the race.

And then their candidate pulled off the greatest comeback in the history of American politics. The idea that Trump could bounce back from defeat, from two impeachments, from myriad investigations, from four indictments and one conviction on 34 felony counts, from lawsuits meant to destroy his business empire, and from actually being shot in one assassination attempt and targeted in another — the idea that he could return from that to become, once again, president of the United States was breathtaking.

Back in March, I traveled to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Trump and a talk about his comeback. At that time, he had locked up, but not yet formally received, the Republican presidential nomination. He balked at the idea of having made a big comeback because he said a comeback would never be complete unless he won the presidency back. And he explained that he always thought he could run again, even in the worst days after Jan. 6, 2021. At the dinner, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump recalled a family meal at Mar-a-Lago the night after Trump returned there from Washington, his term over. “I know I can do this again,” Lara Trump recalled the former president saying.

And now he has. “This is great,” Donald Trump told the crowd at the convention center. “This is a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. … Now, it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal. We’re going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country, and we’ve made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that.”

Trump spoke for just a few minutes. No marathon speech like some of his rallies. And to save time, the campaign trimmed the planned program. None of that mattered. The supporters left the convention center literally dancing and singing. They were thrilled to have been part of it.

Now, of course, Trump will begin the work not only of planning his second administration but of defending himself against the continued, and heightened, attacks that are sure to come from Democrats shocked by their loss and determined to drive him from office. It will be very, very hard. But Trump has already accomplished something so rare and astonishing that it almost defies belief.