Former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, a presidential race full of history-making moments and unexpected twists.
The race began as a rematch of Trump against President Joe Biden. Biden’s disastrous performance in the first debate led him to drop out of the race and endorse Harris, who broke fundraising records within the first 24 hours of launching her campaign and infused new energy into the Democratic party.
Meanwhile, Trump survived an assassination attempt days before the Republican National Convention and crowned his MAGA heir-apparent by choosing Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate.
Trump ultimately bested Harris by flipping key battleground states to reach the required 270 electoral votes.
The Trump and Harris campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
Here’s a look back at the biggest moments of the 2024 presidential race in photos.
Donald Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.
“Our country is in a horrible state. We’re in grave trouble,” Trump said in his speech. “This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage, confidence, and spirit of the American people.”
President Joe Biden announced his reelection campaign in April 2023.
Biden confirmed that he would run again in a video announcement and held his first campaign rally in Philadelphia in June 2023.
Trump skipped the first Republican primary debate in August 2023.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum participated in the GOP primary debate.
Haley and Christie criticized Trump, eliciting boos from the audience, while Ramaswamy praised Trump as “the greatest president of the 21st century.”
Instead of attending the debate, Trump sat for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The race narrowed until two Trump challengers remained for a January 2024 debate: DeSantis and Haley. Both eventually dropped out.
Trump skipped all of the GOP primary debates. Instead of attending the debate with DeSantis and Haley ahead of the Iowa caucuses, he held a simultaneous live town hall event on Fox News.
DeSantis ended his campaign in January after he did not win a single county in the Iowa caucuses.
Haley did not endorse Trump upon dropping out in March, but later spoke in support of him at the Republican National Convention.
Trump faced a slew of lawsuits and, in May, became the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
In January, a federal jury ordered Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll a total of $88.3 million in two civil defamation cases. Carroll alleged that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store and made defamatory statements about her. Trump has appealed both rulings.
In May, Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a crime when he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump maintained that he is a “very innocent man.”
His other trials related to charges of federal election interference, Georgia election interference, and the obstruction and willful retention of classified documents have stalled amid legal battles.
His election victory may help him in all of his criminal cases, experts told Business Insider.
Biden’s reelection campaign was thrown into chaos after his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
While Trump dodged questions and made around 30 false or misleading statements per CNN’s fact-checker, Biden offered convoluted answers in a voice so hoarse that he was difficult to understand at times.
Biden’s poor performance sparked panic among Democrats and doubts about his ability to beat Trump.
In subsequent weeks, Democratic donors and lawmakers began calling for Biden to drop out of the race.
In July, days before the Republican National Convention, Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
After shots rang out at the Pennsylvania rally, the former president was seen with blood on his face as he was hurried away by Secret Service agents, fist raised in the air.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief, was killed in the assassination attempt while shielding his family from gunfire. Two others were injured.
The gunman was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
With a bandage on his ear, Trump debuted his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at the Republican National Convention.
Vance rose to fame as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir of his upbringing in the Rust Belt. He was a self-described “Never Trumper” during Trump’s 2016 campaign, but became an avid supporter by 2020. Trump’s endorsement of Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign skyrocketed him to victory and cemented him as a prominent figure in the populist “New Right” movement.
In his speech accepting the Republican nomination, Trump paid tribute to the firefighter who died during the assassination attempt.
Trump featured Comperatore’s firefighter jacket onstage and asked the crowd to observe a moment of silence in his memory.
“The amazing thing is that prior to the shot, if I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark and I would not be here tonight,” he said at the July convention.
In July, after weeks of insisting he’d stay in the race despite mounting pressure, Biden dropped out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Members of Biden’s family watched him deliver his address from the sidelines of the Oval Office.
“I’ve decided that the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” he said. “It’s the best way to unite our nation. You know there is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There is also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”
He also praised Harris in his remarks.
“She is experienced, she is tough, she is capable, she has been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country,” Biden said.
Harris held her first campaign rally and coined the slogan “We’re not going back.”
The Harris campaign broke fundraising records by raising $81 million in the first 24 hours after Biden dropped out of the race.
At her first campaign rally in Milwaukee in July, Harris touted her record as a prosecutor and slammed Trump as a candidate who “wants to take the country backward.”
“I took on perpetrators of all kinds — predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
In August, Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
An Army National Guard veteran, Walz taught social studies and coached high school football before serving six terms in Congress. As governor of Minnesota, he has championed progressive policies including paid family leave, reproductive rights, and universal free school meals.
During the 2024 campaign, his description of Trump and Vance as “weird” became a widely used talking point among Democrats.
Harris made history as the first Black and South Asian woman to accept the US presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” she said in her convention speech in August. “A president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical, and has common sense. And always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in August.
Kennedy is former President John F. Kennedy’s nephew and has become known for his baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and various controversies involving dead animals.
He began his campaign as a Democrat, then switched to running as an independent in October 2023. After Kennedy dropped out of the race, Trump added him to his transition team along with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Representatives for Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
In September, Trump and Harris met for the first time at what turned out to be their only presidential debate.
Harris was widely regarded as the winner of the debate as she repeatedly goaded Trump into talking about crowd sizes at his rallies instead of his policies.
Another debate was scheduled to take place, which Harris agreed to, but Trump said that he would not debate Harris again.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney joined other prominent Republicans in endorsing Harris.
Harris and Cheney appeared together at a campaign event in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party, in October.
Other prominent Republicans who endorsed Harris included former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, and former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Vance and Walz faced off in the vice presidential debate in October.
Vance came off as smoother and more polished than Walz, who occasionally stumbled through his answers. However, in a standout moment, Walz asked Vance directly if Trump lost the 2020 election, and Vance changed the subject.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?” Vance said.
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City where several speakers made crude remarks.
At the October rally, Tucker Carlson mocked Harris and said she would be “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low-IQ, former California prosecutor ever to be elected president,” and radio host Sid Rosenberg called Democrats “a bunch of degenerates, lowlives, Jew-haters and lowlives.”
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe garnered the most controversy when he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” Hinchcliffe sparked so much outrage that the Trump campaign released a statement saying, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
The insult appeared to prompt Puerto Rican celebrities Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny to endorse Harris.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Walz also condemned Hinchcliffe’s remarks on a Twitch stream.
“What is trash is people actually just thinking of other human beings that way,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Hinchcliffe shared a clip from the Twitch stream on X and wrote, “These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist. I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set. I’m a comedian Tim…might be time to change your tampon.”
Representatives for Hinchcliffe did not respond to a request for comment.
A week before the election, a crowd of 75,000 people watched Harris speak from the Ellipse in what her campaign called her “closing argument.”
Harris underscored the significance of speaking from the Ellipse in Washington, DC, where she said Trump “sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election, an election that he knew he lost” on January 6, 2021.
Harris also said that while Trump would enter the White House “with an enemies list,” she would “walk in with a to-do list.”
“We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms,” she said. “It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America. I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America.”
On election night, the crowd at the Harris campaign’s watch party at Howard University began to thin as the results showed early Trump leads in key battleground states.
Harris did not address supporters gathered at Howard University on election night.
Trump delivered a victory speech to supporters gathered in West Palm Beach, Florida, before the race was officially called.
“I’ll be fighting for you, and with every breath in my body,” Trump said. “I will not rest until we deliver the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve.”
The race was called for Trump in the early hours of the morning after Election Day.
Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes put Trump over the 270 required to win the presidency. President Joe Biden won the state in 2020.
Fox News projected Trump’s victory shortly before 2 a.m. on Wednesday. CNN, NBC News, CBS News, and ABC News followed four hours later.
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