Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach Victory Celebration

At 1:42 A.M., a woman in a white romper and high heels projectile-vomited just after crossing the velvet rope into the V.I.P. section of Donald Trump’s Election Night watch event. She was one of hundreds of guests who had stepped out from a fleet of buses from a celebration at Mar-a-Lago, and it was around this moment that I realized we really were at a victory party. Trump and Elon Musk and a select group of supporters had been watching returns at Trump’s oceanfront estate; now that it was clear the former President would win, they were relocating to the Palm Beach County Convention Center to pack the floor for his speech. People had been milling around at the convention center for hours, mostly just watching TV. I’d seen Mike Lindell and Roger Stone circling, and some senior campaign staffers had emerged from an upstairs ballroom to say, repeatedly, that they were “feeling good.” The energy changed with the Mar-a-Lago arrivals. People in designer evening wear were mixed in with the Front Row Joes, some of whom were wearing sanitation-worker outfits. Tucker Carlson was received with Beyoncé-level adulation as he walked in, and someone shouted “Make a hole!” so that Nigel Farage could be whisked through. A man went onstage to set up the teleprompter glass at what would be Trump’s lectern.

Since early in the evening, the sense was that the rally-like crowd, drinking wine from a cash bar and eating spring rolls, was prepared to receive Trump as a winner no matter the outcome. There was a feeling of being prepared for the worst, given what they’d seen their candidate put through. On my way into the event, I ran into Joel Tenney, a pastor I’d met ten months ago, in a church in Iowa, where he was a Trump “caucus captain.” After almost a year of volunteering for Trump, Tenney was here as a special guest, wearing a black MAGA hat. By this point, Trump was in the lead in Georgia and North Carolina, and Tenney and his wife were in a really good mood. Still, they wanted to talk about how they were sure that they had “experienced voter fraud” in the previous election. “She gave us Sharpies because she knew we were Republican,” Tenney’s wife said, of a poll worker. Tenney added, “The machines are made in Germany. And Hillary interfered with Bernie Sanders.” As things started to look more certain for Trump, Tenney told me, “I can finally sleep again.”

The previous night, on my way over to Palm Beach, I saw a sign that said “Democrats killed democracy.” But there was little other visible evidence that an election many were describing as a referendum on democracy was about to happen. At a trivia night held around the pool of the Colony Hotel, guests dressed in patterned Dolce & Gabbana split into teams to compete over questions such as “How many pieces of candy corn are produced per year?”

On Election Day, I saw Rod Blagojevich in warmup gear getting coffee at the Hilton nearby. He was one of those MAGA characters who turned up everywhere in the course of the campaign: at the check-in desk at my hotel in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention; at the recent rally in Madison Square Garden, where he walked in with Sarah Palin. Rudy Giuliani was another such figure; that morning, in Palm Beach, he had pulled up to Trump’s polling station in a blue Mercedes convertible—which he’d been ordered to give up as part of a defamation settlement. (“Rudy, do you worry you’ll be homeless?” someone asked him, as he idled outside Trump’s precinct. “I don’t worry about anything,” he said.) In some ways, the looming question of the day was whether the Rudys and the Rods would soon recede from public consciousness into obsolescence, and defend an ex-President in exile, or emerge as legitimate figures at the center of our politics, pardoned of all misdeeds. I wondered the same when I saw Kristi Noem in a polka-dotted dress eating dinner at the Hilton before going into the watch party.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, as state after state projected victory for Trump, I kept hearing that his motorcade was about to leave Mar-a-Lago and make its way to the convention hall. Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s press secretary, told one of the journalists working for Decision Desk HQ that they should just call North Carolina and Georgia for Trump so everyone could get to bed earlier. David Sacks and Marco Rubio showed up; Mike Johnson had been watching election returns with his constituents in Louisiana and decided to fly to Florida. Earlier in the day Trump had been pushing theories about “massive CHEATING”; now his feed had gone quiet.

On the frigid floor of the convention center, people danced to “Y.M.C.A.” I heard someone yell, “We’re gonna win—it’s too big to rig!” Another guy near me screamed, “Unburdened by what has been!” When the Associated Press called Pennsylvania, after 2 A.M., two women near me burst into tears. The crowd booed a panellist on Fox News who referred to January 6th as an insurrection. Marjorie Taylor Greene was tweeting that Trump had won the Presidency for the third time. I stood with a couple of people who were talking about whether Thailand’s famous baby pygmy hippo, Moo Deng, would end up being more right than the well-respected pollster Ann Selzer. (Over the weekend, Selzer had come out with a surprising poll that had Harris ahead in Iowa; Moo Deng had “picked” Trump in a ritual.) A conservative media writer came up and said, “They’re going back!” mocking the Harris slogan. “Not in front of the journalists,” his friend cautioned, laughing. “They’re going back, too!” The friend went on, “Trump needs to be in Mar-a-Lago and not come out until the Inauguration, literally stay put, just hone Project 2025 and don’t go outside.” They thought someone would kill him otherwise, and then everything would fall apart. “It’s the interregnum period,” the friend said. We stood around talking about whether Trump would let Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., take fluoride out of the drinking-water supply, as he had recently mused about doing. One of them said that he knew fluoride was beneficial, but that he’d rather decide on his own about his body.

The sense going into the night was that the race would be too close to yield an immediately conclusive result, and that everyone should brace for weeks of legal fighting and recounts; the R.N.C. had sent out dozens of e-mails about possible election-integrity issues. It was all set up. But, in the end, there wasn’t a chance to test whether some members of the G.O.P. would break with Trump if he contested a defeat for a second time, or whether his push to overturn the outcome would go even further. Instead, Trump arrived ahead in the popular vote and said he expected to get three hundred and fifteen Electoral College votes. He was on and off the stage within half an hour, surrounded by his family and friends and campaign staff. The perpetual candidate was now the President-elect again.

Trump promised that a golden age was on the way. “We’re gonna turn our country around, make it something very special,” he said. “It lost that little, uh, that little thing called special.” He told the crowd that he was going to “help our country heal,” that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” And now, “success will bring us together.” He started doing one of his new favorite bits, about Elon Musk and a rocket. He had told the same story twenty-four hours earlier, at his last campaign rally, in Grand Rapids, which also took place after one in the morning—and many times before that, too. Again? Now? A few people were starting to leave—it was 2:40 A.M.—but a woman on her way out laughed along with one line, like it was part of a familiar bedtime story.

“The rallies were used for us to be put in this position where we can really help our country,” Trump said. “But now, we’re going on to something that’s far more important.” He brought up his friend Dana White, the C.E.O of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who said, of Trump’s victory, “This is karma.” Trump said that, as he watched the election returns on TV that night, “They had some great analysis of the people that voted for us. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that. They came from—they came from all quarters. Union, non-union, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American—we had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment. Uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.”

Joel Tenney, the pastor from Iowa, had found me in the crowd just before Trump arrived, and reminded me that he is known as the Retribution Pastor, for saying Trump’s opponents will face retribution if he wins. “Tell them, ‘I told you so,’ ” he said. “Tell the New York Times.” He said that retribution is coming: “Retribution means justice. There has to be justice. There will be justice for all who promoted evil.” Then he smiled and told me to have fun.

At three in the morning, on the way out, I strained to hear what song was playing in the ballroom after Trump had left; it wasn’t something from his usual playlist. By the “Make America Great Again” photo wall, a group was belting out “How Great Thou Art,” a Christian hymn that became popular through the Billy Graham Crusades. (Carrie Underwood recently did a cover.) As I walked out the door, a voice louder than the chorus shouted, “Our country is saved!” ♦