Donald Trump elected 47th US president

The Republican candidate has won at least 277 Electoral College votes, per The Associated Press.

Donald Trump has been elected to return to the White House as the 47th United States president.

The vote was called for the Republican candidate by The Associated Press news agency early on Wednesday. His victory has been met by international congratulations but is likely to add further uncertainty to a turbulent geopolitical situation.

Results showed Trump beating Vice President Kamala Harris in a race far less tight than expected as he triumphed in key battleground states.

Victory in Wisconsin after earlier triumphs in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania saw the former president clear the threshold of the 270 Electoral College votes required to clinch the White House in Tuesday’s election.

Trump’s victory in those swing states currently sees him with 277 electoral votes against 224 for Harris. Polls had predicted a much tighter race, but it appears that anger fuelled the Republican’s remarkable comeback from defeat in 2020 and widespread condemnation of his refusal to accept the result.

That refusal sparked a violent insurrection at the US Capitol, and Trump was also convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.

However, his campaign, which has seen him demonise his political opponents, immigrants and many minorities, tapped into the frustrations of many voters in a bitterly polarised nation.

Speaking to his supporters as he declared victory, Trump claimed he had won “an unprecedented and powerful mandate”.

Anger and resentment

Scott Lucas, a professor of international Politics at the University of Dublin, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s victory stemmed from frustrations that have been bubbling within the US public for years.

“There is anger and resentment in the US, which has been there for quite some time. It’s been a trauma since 9/11. It’s been there with the financial crash in 2008-2009. It was there in 2016 when Trump exploited it, and he exploited it again,” Lucas said, adding that Trump was able to do that because the “political system is damaged”.

Concern over the economy, and inflation in particular, under President Joe Biden was a major focus of the campaign.

That also encouraged opposition to the support Washington is giving to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Meanwhile, the failure to rein in Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon has angered Muslim and liberal voters.

Those complex geopolitical issues will test Trump, who is known for his simplistic claims of being capable of quickly solving such issues.

He has promised to end the war in Ukraine in a day, an idea that has Kyiv wary that it could face pressure to strike a deal to hand over territory to Russia. NATO allies, meanwhile, fear Trump will weaken the alliance’s mutual defence guarantees.

Trump is also a strong supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has boasted he will end the war with Hamas in Gaza in hours.

“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory!” Netanyahu said in a statement after Trump declared victory.

The enthusiasm in Israel also stems from the incoming president’s hawkish approach to Iran, which he is likely to reassert.

China is also braced for a more confrontational relationship with the US under Trump, who is expected to revive staunchly nationalistic trade policies, putting both allies and rivals on edge.

‘Much more dangerous era’

However, at home, supporters will look to Trump to put the focus on the welfare of US citizens while following through on promises to enact an agenda that would transform nearly every aspect of American government.

That will include plans to launch the largest deportation effort in the nation’s History and use the Department of Justice to punish his enemies.

The result is that “we are going into a much more dangerous era for Americans and for the world because this will not be a coherent US policy for America but one pursued for Trump,” Lucas said.

Golden Globes Gets Skewered As “New Low”

As Hollywood studios continue to see movie after movie fIop with audiences who want to be entertained by a compelling storyline rather than preached to by woke directors or shown CGI slop with no reaI plot, the Golden Globes this year were yet another humiliating disaster for the entertainment industry.

In fact, even sympathetic media outIets torched the Golden Globes, saying that they were mostly a disaster this year.

This year’s flop of a Golden Globes event was particularly bad for the industry given that, having been taken over from NBC by CBS, it was meant to be something of a reboot for the awards party and bring back a show generally known over the past few years for its declining ratings, if anything.

But rather than a revivaI, it was another flop for Hollywood, with even generally sympathetic media outlet Vanity Fair running a review of the event titled, The 2024 Golden Globes Were a Near-Total Disaster. Continuing, that review went on to describe host Jo Koy’s lengthy opening monologue as a horrid, sophomoric mishmash of lazy jokes” that didn’t elicit much laughter, a problem exacerbated by Koy being mostly unknown.

Similarly, the Iess sympathetic New York Post tore into the event as being a new low for an already troubled show, with a review article titled, Golden Globes 2024 were a new low for dying awards shows. Pulling no punches, the NYP article argued that it would have been better to cancel the event than run one so awful, saying:

Preparing for the 2024 Golden Globes, the awards show made a bunch of reforms to its ethically wobbIy voting body, got a new owner and moved to a different network. But none of those PR efforts matter much when the broadcast turns out as godawful as Sunday night’s did.

If only we’d 100% canceled the Globes when we had the chance.

Conservatives on X were simiIarly harsh. Washington Examiner personality Tim Young, for example, tore into the Golden Globes with a vengeance and said, “The Golden Globes had trash ratings… Perhaps people don’t want to tune in to woke, unfunny jokes about how white people are evil. Maybe their host should lecture at Harvard… I’m sure he’d be a hit there.”

Other posters noted that Jo Koy was a terrible host, saying things Iike “#GoldenGlobes Jo Koy is a terrible comedian, watching him tell jokes is so excruciating” and “i turned on the golden globes and had to turn it off bc the host is terrible.”