Table of contents for TIME Donald Trump in TIME Donald Trump

IT WAS THE MOMENT HE HAD FANTA-sized about for four years. At 2:24 a.m. on November 6, Donald Trump strutted on stage in a Florida ballroom, surrounded by advisers, party leaders, family and friends. The Associated Press had yet to call the race, but it was clear by then that the voters had swept him back into power. Staring out at a sea of supporters in red MAGA hats, Trump basked in the all but certain triumph. “We’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” Trump said. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” How Trump, 78, won reelection will be the stuff of history books, and already America’s choice can be traced to some key decisions. To Trump’s top aides, the thesis of the campaign could be summed…

Depending on your perspective, the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 counts in a Manhattan courtroom on May 30, 2024, was either a refreshing affirmation of the rule of law or a miscarriage of justice in a politically motivated prosecution. A jury returned a verdict finding that Trump had caused the falsification of checks, invoices and ledgers to conceal the payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election, with intent to conceal the violation of campaign finance and tax laws. We are all entitled to our own views of the case, of course, but opinion should also be based on facts. Certain myths crept into the conversation, and it’s worth examining some of them in order to dispel them. MYTH: Prosecutors stretched the…

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAD just finished a round of Sunday golf and repaired to his private quarters at his Palm Beach, Florida, club when the news arrived. After 22 months, the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation were in. Moments before, around 3 p.m. on March 24, 2019, Trump’s White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, had received a call from attorney general William Barr’s chief of staff, Brian Rabbitt. The Department of Justice official said that after more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants and a similar number of witness interviews, Mueller had not established that the Trump campaign or its associates had conspired with Russia during the 2016 election. In addition, Mueller declined to draw a conclusion about whether Trump had obstructed justice in the aftermath. Barr and…

A FEW DAYS AFTER DONALD TRUMP was elected president in November 2016, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell placed a call to incoming White House counsel Don McGahn. McConnell knew that Trump had a chance to change the ideological makeup of the federal court system in a way not seen since the Reagan era, but only if Mc-Connell and McGahn could get him to tighten up a disorderly political operation—and fast. “I said, ‘Don, we’ve got an opportunity here to have a huge long-term impact on the country,’” McConnell recalled, sitting in a cushioned chair in his Capitol office. He made McGahn a promise to move qualified judges through the Senate confirmation process as quickly as the White House could send them. The conversation launched what may prove to be the…

In April 2024, Donald Trump sat down at Mar-a-Lago for a lengthy talk about what he would do in a second term. Here are selections from that interview, condensed for space. TIME: Let’s start with day one: January 20, 2025. You have said that you will take a suite of aggressive actions on the border and on immigration— Donald Trump: Yes. And on energy. You have talked about a massive deportation operation. What’s your plan, sir? We will be using local law enforcement. Does that include using the U.S. military? It would. When we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard. You would use the military inland as well as at the border? I don’t think I’d have to do that. I think the National Guard would be able…

THE IOWA VOTER HAD A QUESTION for Ron DeSantis—a plea, of sorts, on behalf of “all the small-town people.” Outsiders “suggest we’re the flyover country, the racists, the deplorables, the Walmart shoppers,” Jason Summers, a 53-year-old Republican activist, was telling the governor of Florida in the summer of 2023. Presidential candidates, he added, “come around every four years, they kiss our babies, pat us on the head and send us on our way, and then they forget about us.” How could the residents of Albia, Iowa—population 3,712—be sure that DeSantis wouldn’t abandon them too? Less than an hour earlier, DeSantis had roared into town juggernaut-style, disembarking from a bus emblazoned with his name, the name of his super PAC, Never Back Down, and trailed by a dozen advisers. Standing in…

More than two months after hearing oral arguments in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, the Supreme Court in July 2024 partially backed former president Donald Trump’s claim that he was immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took while in office. In a 6–3 decision split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents are largely immune from prosecution for official acts but not actions they took in office that aren’t part of their job responsibilities. The landmark ruling did not dismiss any of the criminal cases against Trump, including the state business fraud case in New York, the federal classified documents case in Florida and the state election interference case in Georgia. But it did send certain elements of Smith’s federal…

First published November 9, 2016 IT WAS ALMOST 3 A.M. WHEN THE PRESIdent-elect finally took the stage, his blue suit, white shirt and red tie perfectly matched to the phalanx of flags arranged behind him. The polls and the experts and the data modelers had predicted it would be a woman for the first time in the nation’s history—but no, it was another man, another blue suit, another red tie. And yet, if it had been the woman, everyone would have known what to expect. Donald John Trump, political novice, self-promoter and gleeful provocateur, was elected the 45th president of the United States on November 8, 2016, in one of the most extraordinary and unforeseen developments in American history. Universally dismissed as a vanity candidate when he entered a field…

IT ALL FINALLY CAUGHT UP TO HIM. THE lies, the outrageous boasts, the disorder and disastrous management, the rants and the race-baiting, the predatory instincts and compulsion to dominate—all the things that made President Donald Trump the ringmaster of the American political circus at last compelled a majority of voters to drive him out of the tent on November 7, 2020. Few other presidents in modern history so inflamed the nation or exposed the cracks in our democracy as did Trump. In the end, his pride didn’t just precede his fall; it precipitated it. Until the final months of his 2020 run, Trump’s campaign was managed by a novice who burned through millions of dollars. Trump thought he could wish away a deadly virus. He dismissed his legions of critics,…

In selecting Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, Donald Trump elevated a leading light of the right-wing populist movement spawned by Trump’s rise rather than someone from another faction of the conservative movement. Vance has been a vociferous critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine and other foreign entanglements; a proponent of restrictive immigration policies and an aggressive deportation operation; and a champion of Trump’s protectionist trade regime and high tariffs on imported goods. “It’s part of the agenda to reindustrialize the country,” Vance told me in April. In other words, Trump chose a MAGA favorite who he believed could shore up rust belt voters in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The senator was also thought to be popular with a subset of Silicon Valley…

PRESIDENT TRUMP WAS VISIBLY delighted. As he took the stage at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on February 6, 2020, his eye was drawn to newspapers laid out on a long table by the lectern. He picked up a copy of USA Today and held it up. “Acquitted,” read the headline. Then, with the architect of his impeachment—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—standing nearby, he grabbed a copy of the Washington Post and popped his eyes in mock surprise at the typeset: “Trump Acquitted.” Trump held up the same newsprint in the East Room of the White House when he crowed about his acquittal to reporters three hours later at the start of a rambling, celebratory speech that painted his impeachment as part of a long arc of efforts to…

For millions of Americans, January 6, 2021, was a jarring day that ended their nation’s 150-year streak of peaceful transitions of power. For Donald Trump, it was a windfall. Ever since his supporters stormed the Capitol as Joe Biden’s victory was being certified, Trump has continued to falsely insist he won in 2020 and paint the unrest as the result of a stolen election. In December 2021, Trump said that the real insurrection “took place on November 3,” recasting the violence that left five dead as an “unarmed protest of the rigged election.” It proved to be a potent—and lucrative—lie. Nearly half of Republicans believe Trump won in 2020, according to a poll taken in January 2022. For months, fundraising emails from Trump claiming the 2020 election was “rigged and…