Donald Trump‘s Win Can Be Summed Up In These 5 Seconds From This Carpet-Bombed Attack Ad

“President-elect Donald Trump” is a phrase many of us thought we would never use again, but here we are — and an almost as brief phrase from a ubiquitous attack ad sums up how we got here.

Going into Election Day, the expectation was that it would be a close presidential race that could take days or longer to reach a clear decision. But once polls began to close and the results poured in, it was only a matter of hours before outlets called the race for Trump.

That shocking result — shaping up to be a landslide on par with President Joe Biden’s margins in 2020 — has touched off spasms of soul-searching and recriminations among many Democrats. One of the more stunning features of Trump’s win is the slate of groups with which he made gains — including with women, Black voters, and Hispanic voters.

They key to understanding how he did that lies with the closing seconds of an ad that was carpet-bombed across swing states. It attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over this interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality, in which the then-senator talked about securing medically necessary care for trans inmates:

Supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners surgery.

“Um, for prisoners, for prisoners, every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.”

It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked.

Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.

“Every transgender inmate would have access.”

Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.

I’m Donald J. Trump and I approve this message.

There were several versions of the ad, including one that was targeted at Black voters featuring clips from Charlamagne Tha God’s show.

In the closing week or so of the campaign, there was a lot of chatter about the sheer volume of these ads that were run, including this Election Night commentary from CNN anchor Chris Wallace:

DANA BASH: I mean, Pennsylvania and Michigan, in particular, in Pennsylvania, because there has been so much focus on the Latino vote in Pennsylvania, especially the Puerto Rican population there since the Madison Square Garden debacle. Even Donald Trump and the people around him, even though they’re not saying it publicly, believe that what that comedian did was not helpful.

And yet, and yet, according to this exit poll, it shows that she — that– let’s stick with Trump — that Trump is doing way better than he did four years ago with that very population, the Latino population overall, not necessarily with Puerto Ricans.

CHRIS WALLACE: Yes, and let’s face it, that even before the “garbage” remark — Trump was making a very concerted effort. He thought and obviously had reason to believe that he could make some gains with Latinos, particularly with Latino men. I think there are economic issues that all people are facing.

Also, I think cultural issues. There is a real social conservatism, you know, among Latinos.

And you know, one of the ads that Trump and a lot of people sort of wondered about, I think more than any other, was the transgender ad. And you wonder if it did actually score with social conservatives and in winning votes for him and turning them away from Kamala Harris.

Whatever the reason, you can see tremendous gains. I mean, Michigan, it’s extraordinary, just a flip.

The use of trans people as a wedge is nothing new, although it has intensified. It has been aided by constant anti-trans patter from celebrity non-conservatives like Bill Maher and Dave Chappelle. It has been relentlessly and disgustingly (and of course lyingly) pushed by Trump.

That’s not the point of this piece but it is absolutely crucial to understand how cruel and wrong this all is. Most of the anti-trans animosity is fueled by lies, distortions, and cherry-picked outliers in order to generate votes — while also creating an atmosphere of hate that is deadly. Some of it is just people being bigots.

And I do think it is a shame that an effort wasn’t made to take on these ads head-on, and not in the glancing, deflecting way Colin Allred did it in Texas. They should have knocked these lies down full-throatedly. We should in the future.

But that’s not why Trump won. Most of the voters who legit hate transgender people were already going to vote GOP.

No, the key to Trump’s victory was in the last line of that ad’s voice-over: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Trump won by making big gains with Black voters, Hispanic voters, women, and Asians while still losing all of those groups. The poorly-understood thing about the politics of White resentment that propelled Trump in the first place is that it’s not, for the most part, based on “hate.”

For decades, Democrats have failed or succeeded based on how they walked a tightrope between fighting for and protecting rights and equality without panicking straight White voters. The former is why I became a Democrat, the latter is probably why I take blood pressure medicine.

Republicans succeed by trying to convince voters that rights and equality for others means something will be taken away from them. There has always been a feeling among White voters, even some Democrats, that the Dems are looking out for someone else.

But in an election in which women’s bodily autonomy is at stake, and Trump is out there literally calling people “garbage” and “vermin” and promising to round up and deport millions and crash the economy, and his own ex-senior national security aides are saying he’s a fascist, how could that possibly work?

Because Trump was able to convince enough of the voters that Harris needed that they are part of the “us” whom the VP wasn’t looking out for. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they are going to “find out” — and so are we.

Watch above via ADMO.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.