Hate wins: Donald Trump is the next president of the United States.
On Tuesday night, with the electoral stakes higher than they’ve been in generations, the citizens of the United States of America elected fear and hate.
Donald Trump — widely considered to be the least qualified presidential candidate in history, and a figure who prompts alarm and disgust around the world — didn’t run a politically savvy or well-financed campaign. Political analysts predicted that he had a very narrow path to victory.
But a surge of support for Trump in mostly rural and white areas of country ensured that an unhinged narcissist, who ran on a platform of stoking racial division and economic anxiety, will be our next president.
After launching his bid for the presidency by calling Latino immigrants rapists, drug dealers, and criminals, Trump ran a brazenly racist campaign that invigorated neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Trump called for a total ban on Muslim immigration, equated refugees to terrorists, insulted African Americans’ education, stoked anti-Semitism, pledged to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and promised to implement an ideological test for immigrants.
Over the course of the campaign, more than a dozen women came forward to say that Trump has sexually assaulted them. The accusers described nonconsensual activity that tracks very closely with behavior that Trump himself has bragged about. Trump responded by insulting and threatening them.
Trump shocked political observers by flouting the fundamental principles of democracy, including freedom of the press and freedom of religion. He has repeatedly suggested that he might not accept the results of this election, and that he may jail his political opponent Hillary Clinton.
As president, Trump will bring unprecedented conflicts of interest into office. He is embroiled a number of ongoing legal battles, some of which have court dates set for right after the election. Unlike every party nominee since 1977, he refused to release his tax returns, perhaps to obscure the fact that he may have used illegal schemes to avoid paying taxes.
None of this was persuasive to nearly 60 million people in the United States, who cast their ballots to ensure Donald Trump secured enough electoral votes to become the next leader of our nation.