President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in as the 47th commander in chief, but that hasn’t stopped him from reminding supporters that will be his next title starting Jan. 20, 2025.
In the week since soundly defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump has repeatedly referred to himself as both the 45th and 47th president of the nation, a subtle sign of basking in his historic comeback victory.
Trump’s win makes him the first president since Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th chief executive, to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office. Cleveland was last elected more than a century ago in 1884.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW THAT TRUMP IS PRESIDENT-ELECT
“As the 45th & 47th President of the United States, I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected former Congressman from New York, Lee Zeldin, will be appointed to serve as The Administrator of The United States Environmental Protective Agency (EPA),” Trump said in a statement on Monday, establishing a new narrative.
His campaign previously sent out an email on Saturday once again calling Trump “the 45th and 47th President of the United States” as they announced the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, which will take charge of planning inaugural events.
Two days after Election Day, the campaign emailed reporters with the announcement that “the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America” had announced Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff.
“I think he’s gloating a little bit,” Jon Steinhouse, 57, a Birmingham, Michigan, resident, told the Washington Examiner. “And you know, with the results of the election, I think he’s able to gloat a little bit.”
Before the election, multiple polls showed Trump and Harris virtually tied in the race for the White House but the president-elect won the Electoral College 312-226, far above the 270 electoral votes he needed. He also swept all seven battleground states, effectively curtailing any chance of a Democratic victory.
“It wasn’t even close,” said Steinhouse, a battleground state Trump voter.
Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, claimed Trump’s new format of referring to himself is a feat that no other politician has accomplished in modern history.
“It is a historic development that he served as the 45th president, lost the White House, and then won election for a second term,” Dallek said in an interview. “It hasn’t happened in modern times, and you have to go back more than a century to find the only other time in American history that this has occurred.”
“So I think it also ratifies his sense of being indestructible and one of the ultimate comeback stories in American politics,” he continued. “And so the tagline fits into that narrative, and obviously there’s some justification for that politically because he did come back.”
Jeffrey McCall, a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University, claimed Trump “overcame the odds” and “accomplished the unlikely” not just in defeating Harris but in becoming the first GOP presidential candidate in 20 years to win the popular vote.
“I might add that Trump would not be Trump if he didn’t know how to take advantage of a marketing opportunity,” McCall said in a discussion about Trump’s branding of his two terms. “Because it makes him distinct from any politician of this recent era. And like I said, he doesn’t very often miss on chances to promote himself.”
Even before victory, Trump supporters had taken to wearing red MAGA hats that had the numerical symbol 45-47 on the side at rallies. In hindsight, it proved prescient that Trump fervor would help ride him to victory. With President Joe Biden’s unpopularity and rising inflation, Trump was primed to win over dissatisfied voters.
“I think people do remember whether they were a Democrat or a Republican, or even an independent, that most people were better off,” said Steinhouse of Trump’s win. “Gas was cheaper, groceries were cheaper.”
The new branding also helps Trump overcome the sting of losing the 2020 election and the subsequent stain of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He will no longer be seen as a one-term president and has another four years to rewrite his legacy, although the domestic and foreign problems he inherits this time around are far graver than in 2016.
Trump’s 45th and 47th branding “kind of reads out the Biden years,” said Dallek. “And I think it is interesting, though, because the other thing it evokes for me, of course, is his election denialism around his defeat.”
Trump has never conceded he lost to Biden in 2020, but he will return to the Oval Office on Wednesday at the invitation of Biden after the “cloud” that surrounded his leaving just four years before.
“He went out of office under a cloud, as we all know, an incumbent who was not reelected, which is very rare in this day and age,” said McCall. “And when you look at it, pretty much all the political winds would have been against him, and somehow he pulled it off.”
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Trump faced multiple legal charges and survived two assassination attempts while running for office. More than a dozen fellow Republicans challenged him for the nomination, and he was outraised by Harris, who replaced Biden in late July. None of it stopped his march to the White House.
“When you’re making gains, across the board, demographically, compared to four years ago and even eight years ago, something has happened,” McCall added. “And I’m not sure anybody can really put their finger on it, but I think that gets at why he wants to remind everybody of the 45 plus 47 is to say I didn’t go away, and here I am.”