The story of how Trump went from diminished ex-president to a victor once again

Follow AP’s coverage of Donald Trump’s transition back to the White House. And they want that back in the White House.” A new Republican coalition After his 2020 loss, Trump’s campaign worked to grow his appeal beyond the white working-class base that had delivered his first victory. He noted Harris “didn’t even come close to Dearborn.” Trump received another boost when the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse either candidate, citing a lack of consensus among its 1.3 million members. He doubled down on his controversial pledge to “protect women,” saying he would do so whether they “like it or not.” He railed against former Rep. Liz Cheney, saying she would be less inclined to send Americans into war if she experienced what it felt like to be standing with nine rifles “trained at her face.” And on the Sunday before the election, at a rally in Pennsylvania, an exhausted Trump, fully unleashed, abandoned his stump speech altogether to deliver a profane and conspiracy-laden diatribe in which he said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his 2020 loss and wouldn’t mind much if reporters were shot. Trump, onstage the next day, seemed to acknowledge their efforts as he repeated a familiar complaint about how he’s not allowed to call women “beautiful” anymore, and then asked that it be struck from the record — saying, “So I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I, Susan Wiles?” Victory As his top aides huddled upstairs in his office at Mar-a-Lago, Trump spent much of election night holding court with friends and club members as well as Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — leaders of a new Make America Great Again majority that bears little resemblance to the Republican Party of old.