Trump Supporters Revel in His Victory

by · NY Times

‘It Was Just Jubilation’: Trump Supporters Revel in His Victory

Although some people were not sure which policies Donald J. Trump would focus on first, they were relieved and elated by the win.

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Trump supporters congregating at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning.
Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

By Emily CochraneJohnny Kauffman and Richard Fausset

Mike Cordeiro, a libertarian-leaning owner of a small Florida cannabis company, woke up on Wednesday morning feeling great. He has long thought the American status quo needed a good shaking. And with the victory of Donald J. Trump, he was optimistic that big change was in the offing.

“It’s amazing,” Mr. Cordeiro, 42, said of Mr. Trump’s victory. “I think it’s a beautiful thing, the people he has with him: Elon, Tulsi, Vivek, or whatever his name is. I think it’s going to be a game changer.”

As tens of millions of Americans trudged off to start their Wednesday with hearts full of fear, anger and dread, a little more than half of the nation’s voters — over 71 million — were feeling something between cautious optimism and flat-out ebullience over Mr. Trump’s decisive victory and return to the White House.

For the moment, among the Republican candidate’s supporters, the feelings of relief and joy were clear. Less clear were ideas about where the mercurial Mr. Trump might take the country, policy-wise, though bedrock Trump campaign promises to fix the economy and immigration had obviously resonated.

On Tuesday evening in North Carolina, Debbie Earp, a retired executive assistant, left a watch party in Raleigh for Mark Robinson, the embattled Republican candidate for governor. She was sad to see him lose.

But she and a friend went home and stayed up to watch the presidential results trickle in, their excitement growing as it became clear that Mr. Trump had taken the lead.

They woke up “100 percent elated,” Ms. Earp, 67, said.

“You just look forward to what’s coming — it’s like Christmas,” she said. “We’re going to be opening up various presents as he continues to lead us.”

Ms. Earp, a lifelong Republican, said she was enthusiastic about Mr. Trump’s pledge to deport undocumented migrants and having Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a key supporter and adviser. She was thanking God, she said, for ensuring a return to “a government of truth.”

“He is not only going to help restore America; it’s going to be global,” she added.

Ronnie Graham, 73, a business broker in Raleigh, N.C., said he stayed up into the night watching results, waiting for something to go awry the way it seemed to in 2020. Just days earlier, he had stood at his church and told the congregation about how he believed this was the most important election in the country’s history.

“It was just jubilation — we could barely sleep,” he said in a phone interview. “I believe that God has saved him and saved his life, spared his life so he can help bring back our republic.”

Like Ms. Earp, he too wanted to see Mr. Trump immediately act on the border.

“The economy, inflation — it’s horrible, it’s completely broken, but the No. 1 thing is close the border,” he said.

For Marcus Fuller of Orlando, Fla., an unemployed Trump supporter, specific policies were not a concern at all.

“I’ll be honest: I don’t care what he does,” he said. “I just feel more safe with Trump being president,” he said, adding that included Mr. Trump’s handling of wars and the economy.

For some Trump supporters — those who believed his dark and unfounded conspiracies about the 2020 election and the idea that Democrats had somehow cheated to win — the victory in 2024 demonstrated that their vigilance over America’s voting systems had been effective.

This was the position of Amy Kremer, a Georgia Republican activist and national committeewoman for the Republican National Committee who helped organize the Jan. 6, 2021, rally for Mr. Trump that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.

“2020 was stolen … I have not forgotten.” Ms. Kremer posted early Wednesday morning on X. In a later post, she added, “We stopped the steal!”

For Mr. Cordeiro, the owner of the cannabis company, Tuesday was particularly sweet. He was an opponent of a measure on Tuesday’s ballot in Florida that would have legalized marijuana in the state. He sells varieties of hemp because of a legal loophole in the federal farm bill, and he believes that if the ballot measure had passed, it would have put the weed industry in the hands of big business, with new regulations that would shut out a small-scale entrepreneur like himself.

Mr. Trump, he said, is also an outsider, and spent his previous term trying to figure out how government worked.

Mr. Cordeiro expected his next term in office to go much more smoothly. “All those four years, as smart as Trump is, he learned so much that he’s not going to make the same mistakes,” he said.

Eric Adelson contributed reporting.

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