Donald Trump’s four-year campaign to return to the White House following his 2020 defeat by President Biden at times led to acts of political violence by those taking the candidate at his word. His messaging was consistently a mix of bold deceit, appeals to an assortment of grievances, and demands for retribution addressed to the United States’ 2024 electorate, 30% of whom still believed Trump’s continuously repeated lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Twelve million undocumented aliens were threatened with massive deportation; in the name of America First, pledges were made to impose high tariffs on a wide swatch of imports—60% or more on goods from China. Placed into the context of populism in contemporary democracies, what emerged was a campaign as noteworthily populist and negative as Trump’s 2016 and 2020 bids for the presidency, but also uglier and more manic than refined. Its success across a wide cross-section of American society is now documented by election results that raise questions about the future of politics in America, of America’s relationship with the world, of democracy in Ukraine and elsewhere, and of populism itself in American politics.