I, a British liberal leftie who considers this win one of the signs of the coming apocalypse, can tell you why:
Charlie Kirk may be an odious little man but he ran an exceptional ground game, Trump fully captured the Libertarian Party (and amazingly delivered on a promise to them), Trump was well-advised by his son to campaign on Tiktok, etc. etc.
Basically what happened is the 2024 version of the "fifty state strategy", except instead of states, they identified micro-communities, particularly among the extremely online, and crafted messages for each of those. Many of which are actually inconsistent -- their messaging to muslim and jewish communities was inconsistent, their messaging to spanish-speaking communities was inconsistent with their mainstream message etc.
And then a lot of money was pushed into a few battleground states by Musk's operation.
It was a highly technical, broad-spectrum win, built on relentless messaging about persecution etc., and he had the advantage of running against someone he could stereotype very successfully to his base and whose candidacy was late.
Another way to look at why it is not extremely weird, is to look at history. Plenty of examples of jailed or exiled monarchs returning to power, failed coup leaders having another go, criminalised leaders returning to elected office, etc., etc.
Once it was clear Trump still retained control over the GOP in 2022, his re-election became at least quite likely.
I, a British liberal leftie who considers this win one of the signs of the coming apocalypse, can tell you why:
Charlie Kirk may be an odious little man but he ran an exceptional ground game, Trump fully captured the Libertarian Party (and amazingly delivered on a promise to them), Trump was well-advised by his son to campaign on Tiktok, etc. etc.
Basically what happened is the 2024 version of the "fifty state strategy", except instead of states, they identified micro-communities, particularly among the extremely online, and crafted messages for each of those. Many of which are actually inconsistent -- their messaging to muslim and jewish communities was inconsistent, their messaging to spanish-speaking communities was inconsistent with their mainstream message etc.
And then a lot of money was pushed into a few battleground states by Musk's operation.
It was a highly technical, broad-spectrum win, built on relentless messaging about persecution etc., and he had the advantage of running against someone he could stereotype very successfully to his base and whose candidacy was late.
Another way to look at why it is not extremely weird, is to look at history. Plenty of examples of jailed or exiled monarchs returning to power, failed coup leaders having another go, criminalised leaders returning to elected office, etc., etc.
Once it was clear Trump still retained control over the GOP in 2022, his re-election became at least quite likely.