IN the weeks after Vice-President Kamala Harris' rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, Donald Trump's allies and advisers urged him to stay on message.
He didn't. In the final months of the presidential campaign, Trump did it his way: diverging from prepared remarks, resorting to personal attacks, spouting anti-immigrant rhetoric, threatening retribution against rivals and ignoring advice from allies to stay focused on the issues.
As Trump sealed the election on Wednesday, winning 294 electoral votes to Harris' 223 with several states still counting, the result wasn't just a win for him. It was also a triumph for the chaotic, scorched-Earth politics of Trumpism.
Reuters spoke to more than 20 Trump allies, advisers, donors and Republican operatives for a detailed account of how Trump managed to pull off a stunning comeback, becoming the first former president in more than a century to win a second term after leaving the White House.
Scott Bessent, a Trump donor and economic adviser, recalled meeting with Trump speechwriters in August to offer ideas for what the campaign was billing as a big economic speech in the battleground state of North Carolina.
RIPPING INTO HARRIS
But when Trump got on stage, he essentially tore up the script, dropping some economic talking points, delving instead into the border and crime, and ripping into Harris in personal terms.
Bessent said he initially was caught off guard by Trump's address. But the crowd seemed to lap it up.
After hearing rave reviews from blue-collar workers later that day, Bessent realised the power of Trump's political instincts.
"I have to do it my way," Trump said a day after the event.
Issues outside Trump's control gave him built-in advantages. Harris' shortened campaign season narrowed the time she had to make her case to voters and launch attack ads on Trump.
Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter, now called X, offered a powerful platform for misinformation to go viral, including falsehoods about migrant crime that resonated with many voters.
And crucially, Trump was able to capitalise on voters' sour economic mood. Stubbornly high prices weighed on voters, an issue Trump successfully pinned on Democrats.
The inflation rate dropped sharply this year, but the easing came too late for Harris.
Prices during the first 35 months of Democratic President Joe Biden's administration increased 17.6 per cent, nearly triple the 6.2 per cent during the first 35 months of Trump's 2017 to 2021 administration, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
"The major factor in Trump's victory is that many people remember the pre-pandemic Trump economy as better for them than the Biden-Harris economy," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
ECONOMIC CONCERNS
A majority of voters trust Trump more to handle the economy, with 51 per cent saying they did so compared with 47 per cent for Harris, according to preliminary results from a national exit poll conducted by data provider Edison Research.
And the voters who identified the economy as their primary concern voted overwhelmingly for Trump over Harris: 79 to 20 per cent.
Trump's hardline rhetoric on immigration and other issues energised some of his supporters on a visceral level, especially white, working-class voters in economically struggling towns.
They saw Trump as an anti-establishment figure who understood their grievances.
Up until the summer, the Trump campaign was largely coasting.
Trump refused to debate his Republican rivals during primary elections, yet he still glided to victory as the party's nominee.
In May, when he became the first former US president to be convicted of a crime, opinion polls barely moved, broadly showing him ahead of Biden in key battleground states.
On June 27, the Republican got a huge break when Biden performed disastrously in their first debate.
Trump allies were suddenly talking about winning safe Democratic states such as Virginia and New Hampshire.
Then, on July 13, Trump was grazed in the ear by a would-be assassin's bullet during a speech in Pennsylvania.
His party rallied around him. Iconic photos — Trump's face blood-stained, fist in the air — were hailed by supporters as a symbol of Trump's strength, endurance and sacrifice.
Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla, endorsed him later that same day. The Republican National Convention a few days later had a triumphant air.
That week, Trump announced his running mate would be Senator J.D. Vance, a youthful advocate of isolationism, trade restrictions and strict abortion curbs. The pick brought few new voters into Trump's corner, underscoring his confidence that he was bound for victory.
Just three days after the convention, however, Biden announced he was dropping his re-election bid.
Harris quickly emerged as the alternative, raising US$100 million in two days — about the amount Trump had spent during his entire campaign to date — and unifying the Democratic Party almost overnight.
The Trump campaign appeared caught off guard. His team did not put out a statement for hours after Biden dropped out.
Over the summer, Trump and his allies grilled campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita about what went wrong, according to three sources close to the campaign.
Some of Trump's allies questioned why the pair agreed to an early debate that upended a race they were on course to win.
Trump responded by hiring Corey Lewandowski, a longtime adviser, who was fired during the 2016 campaign after clashing with other staff.
At his Sept 10 debate with Harris, their only face-to-face showdown, Trump repeated false claims that Venezuelan gangs had taken over swathes of a Colorado town.
And he championed a false rumour that Haitians in Ohio were stealing and devouring their neighbours' pets. "They're eating the dogs!" Trump shouted. "They're eating the cats!"
As those lines went viral, donors urged the campaign to focus on other issues.
But Trump doubled down. After the debate, the screens at his rallies featured big slides flashing what appeared to be computer-generated images of Venezuelans in Colorado apartment buildings.
"Migrant crime" became a hallmark of Trump's campaign, though academic studies show immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
The extreme rhetoric, though divisive, diverted attention from issues where Trump was vulnerable, such as abortion or the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
As voters responded — some with support, others with sharp criticism — Trump succeeded in injecting immigration deeper into the race.
As his polling numbers started to improve in October, some advisors and donors praised Trump: they now believed he had shifted the focus in his favour.
As Trump's polling numbers stabilised in October, supporters worked in the background to broker alliances that helped him consolidate support in the battleground states, especially among young men who don't regularly vote.
Trump donor and financier Omeed Malik helped secure former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr's endorsement after Kennedy dropped out of the race in August.
X FACTOR
But no single figure did as much to boost Trump's campaign as Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world's richest man. Musk poured at least US$119 million into a Trump door-knocking operation.
By the end of the campaign, Trump's rhetoric was turning angrier and more apocalyptic. He frequently warned of a global nuclear war should he lose. In the final weeks, he appeared to gain momentum in polls.
With the race looking like a coin toss, he showed little restraint. He repeatedly warned of the "enemy from within" when referring to political opponents.
At a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York 9 days before Election Day, a pro-Trump comedian called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage", a statement that sparked an instant backlash and risked turning off the key Puerto Rican vote in crucial battleground states.
The event was supposed to showcase Trump's broad-based coalition. Instead, opponents branded it a symbol of the bigotry voiced by some of his supporters.
A week before Election Day, Trump got a break, and ran with it. Responding to the comedian's insult, Biden seemingly referred to Trump supporters as "garbage."
Trump's showman instincts kicked in. Looking to draw attention to the gaffe, he donned an orange safety vest and climbed into a garbage truck before a sea of cameras in Wisconsin.
The moment went viral on social media, possibly distracting some voters from his vulnerable issues.
Beyond these erratic flourishes in the final days, however, Trump made a point of asking supporters whether they were better off during his presidency or the Biden-Harris administration.
In the end, a critical mass of American voters fell into one of two camps. They either embraced Trump's dark vision, or they were willing to overlook it.
It was the economy, Fleischman argued, that in the final hours led undecided voters to break for Trump. "Voters looked back and asked the question: am I better off now than I was four years ago? And I think most swing voters said: 'No.'"
The writers are from Reuters