It has now been more than three months since Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States last November with a resounding victory over the sitting vice president, Kamala Harris.
A presidential election in the US is not a national referendum as much as it is 51 individual contests. Each state — plus the District of Columbia — has a proportional voice, based on population, in choosing the president. Candidates must win individual states. Some states nearly always vote for the Democratic candidate. Others are reliably Republican. Certain states, however, are less predictable and as such are referred to as swing states and usually have a significant impact on the final outcome.
President Trump won all seven 2024 swing states, turned a couple of blue (Democrat) states to red, and overwhelmingly won. He became only the second man in the nation’s history to win non-consecutive terms in the highest office in the land.
Trump achieved this despite a variety of court cases in multiple jurisdictions, an extraordinarily hostile media and a would-be assassin’s bullet on his way back to the White House. Trump’s poll numbers in the first weeks after being sworn in on January 20 were the highest they have ever been.
The international media were flummoxed. How did this brash, rude, overbearing man convince more than 77 million Americans to vote for him? The answer is much simpler than it may seem.
During the 2024 election cycle, poll after poll showed the same issues were of the greatest concern to the American public. In each of those priority topics, the public gave the Biden/Harris administration a failing grade. In some of the issues, Trump had clearly enjoyed more success in his previous four years in charge than the Democratic team had.
The top priority by far for most Americans was the economy. Hurt by President Joe Biden’s policies and limited diplomatic abilities, Americans suffered high inflation and rising interest rates. The price of petrol skyrocketed under Biden. Since trucks use fuel, the cost of everything trucks delivered, such as groceries or pharmaceuticals, jumped as well.
Basic food items, such as eggs, doubled in price. When feeding your family, buying medication and filling the fuel tank in the car become difficult for families, it is only natural to seek change. When interest rates are too high for a young family to buy a home, those families long for something different. Trump, whose economic track record as president, on several indicators, was considerably better than Biden’s until COVID-19 struck, promised that change.
The second priority for Americans in virtually every poll was the open border with Mexico. On his very first day in office, Biden cancelled a number of border policies and projects that had been put in place by Trump during his first term. The result was disastrous. Harris was announced as the “border tsar”, but she did not even visit the border until she became her party’s presidential candidate nearly four years later. Biden himself literally shrugged his shoulders and said, “We’re doing all we can.”
According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in April 2020, while Trump was still in his first term, there were just more than 16,000 illegal border crossings. In 2022, just a year into the Biden presidency, monthly numbers were consistently exceeding 200,000 — April saw agents apprehend 235,000 individuals attempting to cross the border illegally. The worst was in December 2023 when, according to CBP, 250,000 people crossed the border illegally in one month.
Contrast that with the first full month under Trump 2.0. CBP recorded 8,450 apprehensions of migrants who crossed into the country unlawfully between official entry points along the US-Mexico border. That is the lowest number since statistics have been maintained, and is a 97 percent drop from the peak of 250,000. That is the very definition of success. It is clear that simply enforcing the existing laws on the books and freeing border patrol agents to do their job is working.
A third item that was prominent in the minds of many Americans in 2024 was the war in Gaza. Ahead of the election, Trump spoke of the importance of peace in the region. He promised that, if elected, a ceasefire would be in place even before he was officially sworn in.
Biden had virtually no diplomatic relationship with the Arab community, and the Netanyahu administration detested Biden, whose campaign team had been dispatched to Israel in previous years in an effort to defeat Netanyahu. In short, Biden had no leverage with either side in the conflict.
After winning the election, Trump made Gaza a top priority. He assigned a team, headed by Steve Witkoff, to work with Egypt and Qatar on terms for a ceasefire. Witkoff earned the praise of all parties to the negotiations and helped to successfully bring about a ceasefire in a matter of weeks. Nothing is simple between Israel and the Arab world, but for the first time in 15 months, people stopped dying. Trump had made good on his promise.
Trump has been back in the White House for only a few weeks but has already fulfilled some major promises and is taking action on others.
While Gaza’s future remains uncertain, a ceasefire still holds.
The US border is more secure than it has ever been.
Trump’s energy and environmental policies are expected to have a net positive effect on the US and global economies within a matter of months. Lower prices and more stability are anticipated.
The Trump team has set its sights on a number of other challenges as well – peace in Ukraine; rescuing astronauts stuck at the International Space Station; and shrinking the size of government through cutting waste, fraud and abuse. Each of these is difficult, even for Trump’s greatest detractors, to argue with. Does anyone want more war between Russia and Ukraine? Does anyone think government waste and corruption should be encouraged? Of course not.
A segment of Americans and certainly some global citizens as well, are aghast at the abrupt, boisterous way in which Trump conducts himself. If they take the time to look past the bluster, however, and subjectively assess the results — such as peace, security, stability and prosperity — they will realise that the US, and indeed the world, need Trump at this moment in time.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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