UPDATE: At 3:44 a.m. MST, the Associated Press called the presidential election for Donald Trump.
CASPER, Wyo. — As of 2 a.m. MST, the Associated Press News reports that Republican Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump has secured 267 out of the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the 2024 general election, and several outlets are projecting his victory over Democratic challenger Vice President Kamala Harris.
The AP says it is waiting on updates from Michigan and Wisconsin to determine whether Harris has any path to overtake Trump in either state.
Trump decided to trust projections and delivered a victory speech early Wednesday morning from his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, saying, “It is now clear that we have achieved the most incredible political thi—… Look what happened! Is this crazy?”
His running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance said, “I think we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.” Trump would be only the second President to serve nonconsecutive terms.
“He’s turned out to be a good choice,” Trump said of Vance.
He gave a shout out to his allies at the finish line, entrepreneur Elon Musk and pharma hawk Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Trump also recognized Republican wins in the U.S. Senate, where the GOP will retake the majority.
Trump reiterated the priorities that resonated most with his supporters, including a mass deportation of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, a plan that critics say comes with a host of logistical, economic and humanitarian consequences.
Harris criticized Trump on the campaign trail for allegedly encouraging Republicans in Congress to scuttle the bipartisan Secure the Border Act, which would have stepped up border enforcement, in order to keep the issue ripe for the final stretch of the campaign.
U.S. Senator John Barrasso told Oil City News in March of 2021 that the one issue to watch for was immigration, when border crossings were spiking. According to Pew Research, they peaked in December 2023 and have since fallen to levels consistent with the Trump administration.
Trump did not elaborate on economic policy during his speech, but on the campaign trail blamed the Biden-Harris administration for high inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Harris promoted policies including an expanded child tax credit and a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Trump proposed exempting various types of income from the income tax, repealing green energy tax credits and imposing steep new tariffs
The nonprofit Tax Foundation says certain combinations of those could plans could lead to modest growth in GDP and a net gain in jobs, and said Harris’s would be a drag on jobs and GDP while generating more revenue.
Sixteen Nobel Prize–winning economists signed onto a letter in June saying that Trump’s tariff plan would likely reverse the recent downward trend in inflation and this his second term in general “would have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy.” They credited Biden’s infrastructure spending with stimulating economic growth. Wyoming was allocated about about $2 billion through multiple rounds of the American Rescue Plan Act, some of which resulted in grants for Casper. Governor Mark Gordon said last month the funds were used to replace an aging sewer system in Glenrock and a water tower in Wheatland, and that the state is trying to commit the reset of the money before the spending authority expires at the end of the year.
Trump was seen as a disruptor on the political scene even before he dominated the Republican primary field in 2016, espousing a roundly debunked theory questioning President Barack Obama’s country of origin and belittling his opponents and detractors. That trend continued unabated and even intensified in the final days of the 2024 campaign, during which he simulated oral sex on a microphone stand and made comments some interpreted as tacit endorsements of violence against his detractors.
Trump’s victory speech echoed his first in 2016 and early State of the Union addresses, sparing insults and calling for unity.
“I will not rest until we have delivered the safe, strong, and prosperous America that our children deserve, and that you deserve,” Trump said.
Trump came to Casper in May 2022 for a Save America rally, where he promoted Harriet Hageman’s successful bid for Liz Cheney’s Congressional Seat. Cheney had become vehemently unpopular both in Wyoming and in her Caucus in the U.S. House due to her leadership position on the Jan. 6 committee investigating whether Trump his followers to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
At the rally, Trump spoke for 90 minutes on the Biden Administration’s immediate moratorium on the sale of federal extraction leases, which lasted over a year. He acknowledged the sister of Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, the Bondurant native who died with 12 other service members in a suicide blast during the U.S. withdraw from the Afghanistan in August 2021. He talked about inflation and “the radical abortion” agenda, just one month after the Supreme Court.
He said one reporter had asked him to define “Trump-ism.”
“It’s really very simple,” Trump told the Ford Wyoming Center. “It means low taxes, low regulations, the most powerful military in the world… It means tariffs and taxes on other countries that take advantage of the United States, which is almost every one of them.”
When Trump mused about a 2024 presidential run, the venue raised a sustained cheer.
Preliminary results from the Natrona County Clerk’s office show Trump receiving roughly 73% of the vote.
