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CNN Live Event/Special
Soon: Trump To Address Supporters At Campaign Event; Trump Address Supporters At Campaign Headquarters; Trump Claims Victory As He Takes Commanding Lead In Election Results. Trump Addresses Supporters at Campaign Headquarters; Trump Poised to Clinch Electoral College Victory. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired November 06, 2024 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:00:00]
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- to explain that cost of living stuff, trying to explain that yes, it sucks in a lot of places. But look around the world, the United States is actually doing better than most advanced economies.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely.
KING: He was missing.
TAPPER: Yes. There's going to be a lot said and done and told about that. Let's check in with Kaitlin Collins who's at Trump's headquarters ahead of remarks that we're expected by the former president. Kaitlin?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Jake. Just to give you a reality check where the Trump campaign has been watching this election day play out. They woke up confident this morning that ultimately their candidate was going to win, that Donald Trump would win this race. But when I was talking to them about what they thought the next few days were going to look like one, they thought that this would go on for several days.
They did not think that the numbers would be as generous as they are. As with the numbers have been coming in, as they have been reported. And they also had counseled Donald Trump that there would likely not be any kind of decision within the next 24 hours or so. Donald Trump himself was frustrated about that, and was saying that he wanted to know what the outcome of this race was going to be tonight.
And he said, Kristen, that he had not prepared a speech. And obviously, we are seeing now the Trump campaign in real time, as we've been talking to them, are adjusting to what they've been watching play out over the last three or four hours or so.
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And he's feeling really good. I talked to a number of people who were with him who said that he is ecstatic that they had already said that they thought he was in a different headspace than we went into 2020 when he was angry. He was watching those results come in, but as you said, he still couldn't understand why they weren't going to get the results tonight.
Now obviously we're seeing a lot more of these states being called right now than even his own team anticipated. I was told that they were looking very carefully at Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and they thought that maybe they would have some idea by tomorrow what those results would look like. But as we're seeing those results coming in, there's so much more of that vote counted in these states than they even anticipated.
So, clearly that shifted their entire mentality around this. Donald Trump coming here and getting ready to speak well.
COLLINS: Well -- and so, Donald Trump is in the building right now. I should note we're waiting to hear from him. He has made his way over from Mar-a-Lago about a 10-minute drive away. And you just think of -- I was there at Trump's victory party in 2016 when he first won, and the entire room was shell shocked after he won Florida, that he had actually won that election. He himself was stunned by winning.
And it was kind of surreal moment to see Trump and his family on stage as he was speaking. Then, of course, we all know what happened four years ago, when he came out and spoke and declared victory that was not his and never would become his, which belonged to Joe Biden. And so, I think the question for a lot of people watching now is what he is going to say tonight, as he's going to come out and the race has obviously not been called yet?
What he's going to say when he gets on stage after seeing the numbers that are better than even they were expecting this morning.
HOLMES: Yes. And we know that their team had not spent a lot of time coming up with any drafts for him. They were going to let Donald Trump speak off the cuff, but they were trying to come up with scenarios in which Donald Trump would not come out early. The difference between now and 2020 is that their internal polling was showing them a lot of these kind of numbers.
Maybe not exactly obviously, as you said, they were even surprised by how generous some of the numbers were but they did believe they had a real path towards winning, unlike in 2020 when that seemed a lot more uncertain which meant that Donald Trump went into this in a very different way. So, his speech that he gave, obviously in 2020 declaring victory when he did not win the election.
We'll see what he says tonight because we know that again, he was in a different place. The election is in a very different place than when he came out that.
COLLINS: Also, the access of influence around him is so different. Like four years ago, Rudy Giuliani was in the White House intoxicated, according to testimony from other aides who were there urging Trump to go out and declare victory. He's now down the riser from us this evening, he was not at the Mar-a-Lago event, but Donald Trump was surrounded by Elon Musk, we know was at Mar-a-Lago tonight.
There were photos of him sitting with Donald Trump as he was preparing to come over here. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is there as well. Dana White, Tucker Carlson, there -- Donald Trump Jr., obviously Senator J.D. Vance and those who are now you know around him that has changed, including his own campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.
HOLMES: Yes. And one of the most interesting thing about Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita is they've really managed, at times, to keep him at bay and protect him from his own instincts. Obviously, not all the time. Donald Trump can say and do whatever he wants, and he often does, however, for example, one of the things he saw just over the weekend, when he was in Pennsylvania speaking and making incredibly inappropriate and insulting comments was Susie Wiles, go stand at the buffer and stare at him.
Now we heard from the campaign that they were saying, oh, he was just trying to wrap him because he was going too long. But there's obviously a lot of questions as to whether or not it was because of timing or because of the fact that everybody knew what he was saying, could potentially cost him an election that was so it was such narrow margin.
[02:05:09]
I mean, there was a lot of uproar, even from his allies calling him afterwards on that. And that is something that Susie Wiles is very aware of. So, his orbit has changed in terms of the people he is surrounding himself with, people who try to essentially stop him from his own instance.
COLLINS: Yes. And also, you know, I think, as they're looking at today and surprise themselves by how the numbers have gone and some places, obviously they thought North Carolina and Georgia would be a gut check. Kristen Holmes, will stay with you. Jake, back to you.
TAPPER: Thank you so much. And we have a major projection. CNN projects that Donald Trump will win the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This is a huge, huge achievement for Donald Trump and a huge bucket of electoral votes. 19 of them for his path back to the presidency. As of right now, with those 19 electoral votes added from Pennsylvania, Donald Trump is within spitting distance of 270 electoral votes.
He has 265 electoral votes. Vice President Kamala Harris has 187 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win. John King, Donald Trump is in -- within a hair's breadth of being reelected president.
KING: Yes, he is. And let's just watch over -- walk over. We'll look at where we are now. 265 to 187. And you're looking at this map. He's leading here. He's leading here. He could get a congressional vote there. There's another one at Maine he could possibly get. But if you just look out here, he is almost certain to get this. The State of Alaska has a vote Democrat forever. That would get him to 268.
So, you're at the point right now, Jake. We're picket, right? Just picket. Let's be one congressional -- he could possibly win both in Nebraska. That would get him to 270 assuming he wins Alaska, which I think is a pretty safe bet. And you just look at the map, right? Unlikely to get, you know, any of these over here. He might could possibly get an electoral vote out of Maine. But he's leading here, leading here, leading here and leading there. And he needs two.
He needs two. So, you know, if he gets that one and that one, he's way up. And if he holds -- keeps holding these. Now that's where he was, you know, when he won, he was at 304, 306, that would be 310. 310 if he sweeps. There's no guarantee he's going to sweep, by any means, but he's leading in enough states right now. Plus there's a couple other congressional districts on the board where he could -- he could, could, emphasis on, could, pass 310 electoral votes.
You come back to where we are now, though. He's just in a commanding position. And let's do the math the other way. OK? Which is what gets interesting, right? This -- so this is where -- this is now red in our count. There we go. That gets Donald Trump there. Here's the challenge. When you do the math the other way. You assume that stays for the Republican. Let's just, for the sake of argument, big comeback for the Democrat. Big comeback for the Democrat.
Democrat holds New Mexico. Holds Minnesota. Excuse me for that one. Wins Wisconsin wins Michigan. See this count? See this count? It's New Jersey. There's Connecticut, there's New Hampshire. Pop it out. What do you want to pick? You want to go state? Well, you could even go statewide. It's not going to happen, but let's say statewide, right? You do all the Maine, you come back out. What does that get you? Right?
So, it comes down to this, if she wins everything, if she wins everything. The Pennsylvania is what makes Donald Trump again -- we're not done until we're done. But Pennsylvania, in every path she had, any reasonable, plausible path to 270 included the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the Vice President of the United States. So, you get to a place now where, as you come back over here.
You're just looking at this map, and you're saying, you know, is she going to win Alaska? No one's going to Vegas on that one. So where is she in any of these? Do you start coming back? You know, is there any way to come back? 73 percent of the vote? It's 266,000 votes. Again, you know, let's just look at the live outstanding vote. Move this up so you can see it better, yes, yes, the outstanding vote in Michigan is disproportionately Democratic but there are a fair amount. See those big red circles? Fair amount of Republican votes out there.
We have a 266,000-vote lead, and a map that looks like that of what votes out, again, I don't do impossibles but I do improbables and that's improbable. You come over here to Wisconsin again, 119,000 votes ahead. That's come down a little tiny bit. It has, but it's a state won by 22,000 votes in the last two elections and Donald Trump is ahead at the moment by 119,000 votes. And so again, you're looking at what's left.
You're at 92 percent. Sure. The biggest is here. But look at those are modest circles for Republican votes as well.
[02:10:03] Essentially, in chess, she's blocked. Donald Trump is not across the line yet, because we have more states to go through but she is essentially blocked from getting to 270.
TAPPER: All right. Stand by for a projection because CNN can now project that Kamala Harris will get that one electoral vote from Omaha. Nebraska gives its electoral votes according to congressional district. Kamala Harris will get one of them. Donald Trump will get another one of them of the five. Let's look at the electoral map. Donald Trump now has 266 electoral votes because we just gave him one from Nebraska's I think first congressional district.
Kamala Harris has 188 because we just gave her one from Nebraska's second congressional district. 270 are needed to win. Donald Trump needs only four more electoral votes in order to be the president. Dana?
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: I mean, Pennsylvania, if you look at those numbers, 266, 266. Four more. And you just saw the math that John did, the path that he -- different paths that he put out there for Donald Trump and that for Kamala Harris. And again, we're not --
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AUDIE CORNISH, CNN HOST: -- I mean, that map of where she did not perform. Like completely grayed out map where she never over performed Biden, more than three percent that's just rough.
CHRIS WALLACE, CNN ANCHOR: I think -- I think there are two stories here. One is the burden that she faced. And to go back to the very beginning of the night, when we did the right track, wrong track. 26 percent of the country thinks that the nation is in the right track. 72 percent think they're in the wrong track. And when it came to the performance of Joe Biden, it was 41 percent to approve to 58 percent disapprove.
So, she had an enormous burden and, you know, people are unhappy with the way the Biden-Harris administration has run this country for the last four years, and she did not succeed. I'm not sure it was possible for her to succeed in somehow positioning herself as an agent of change and distancing herself from Biden. There's another part of the story that we got to talk about which is Donald Trump.
The fact is that when you go back to January 6 of 2021 to today, it is an extraordinary comeback. He was a pariah when he left town on January 20th. Refused to even go to the inauguration. There was -- the vast majority of members of his own party wouldn't be seen with him. He, you know, over the course of the four years, he proceeds to win himself back into the party. Declares, right after the tremendous defeat of the -- of the Republicans.
There were certainly an unsuccessful showing in the midterms in 2022 wins a contested primary. And, you know, this is his party. This is -- these voting party.
BASH: It's not just his party. WALLACE: No, it's his country.
BASH: I mean, we again. We have to be careful. We haven't called it yet. But Pennsylvania makes it extremely tough for Kamala Harris, and that's one of the things -- I mean, that the Trump side of this one of the most extraordinary dynamics that we didn't necessarily see coming was -- that there still was a hidden Trump vote. Everybody who -- even those who are big supporters of Donald Trump, would tell me, well now it's they're glad and proud.
People who are MAGA are very open about it, and so on and so forth. Except if you look at just these exit polls across these states and then nationally, there are so many pockets of formerly democratic sort of coalition voters who have moved in an extraordinary way. I mean, Latino men, an 18-point swing for Donald Trump. He got 18 percentage points more among Latino men than he did in 2020.
CORNISH: Also, the campaign made this concerted effort to go after the Never-Trump vote. Being out there, campaigning alongside Liz Cheney talking about having Republicans in the cabinet, it seems like that did not move people. That that is still in some ways, the Never-Trump community is kind of a homeless community and it didn't help Democrats in this conversation. In really, any of these states.
You don't get the sense that there was this vast, as you said, hidden vote that somehow pollsters missed or that people voted in secret. That kind of conversation just looks like --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: The fact is that the Trump campaign identified what the majority of Americans and it appears that for the first time, he is going to win the popular vote. In addition to the electoral vote, what they cared about that that -- what they cared about is the fact that a box of cereal costs $9.00 that with Southern Republican governors shipping illegal immigrants north, that that the whole migration issue has become a national issue, that you feel it New York and Illinois and a bun -- and a bunch of northern states.
[02:15:23]
The transgender issue was, was, you know, this, this version of the cultural wars. And, you know, people were surprised at the fact that he spent more money on the transgender issue than he did on the economy or immigration in terms of advertising. And it obviously seems to have worked like gangbusters. So, he really identified what the concerns of the majority of Americans was and he played to it.
And she faced this overwhelming burden that people just didn't like the direction of the country as it stood now, after four years of Biden and Harris.
BASH: Yes. And, you know, the big term of 2024. Anderson is the manosphere, and we're all living in the manosphere now. ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Dana, let's talk about some of -- I mean, mistakes that were made, things that weren't looked at or -- I mean, obviously there's going to be a lot of finger-pointing, there's going to be a lot of naval gazing, what stands --
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, listen, I'm still convinced that Kamala Harris performed better than Joe Biden would have tonight. I just think that there were so many of us, even those of us, who didn't like Donald Trump, who, after the debate performance couldn't, in good conscience vote for Joe Biden for four more years. But there were tremendous headwinds here. I think there was a misreading and I'm guilty of this to some degree of a lot of people don't like Donald Trump, the man, but they felt better when he was in office.
That's just the fact. It's the border. It's feelings around crime, feelings around the economy. And I think there was this very powerful ad, the Republic Jew -- Republican Jewish Coalition that was all over the airwaves. A bunch of women sitting around Jewish women just saying, I can't stand him, but I felt like we were supporting Israel and we're stronger and we're tougher in. And I think that resonates with people.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Look, I don't want to engage in an autopsy prematurely. And I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion, not just about what happened in this campaign, but about when parties lose, it's an occasion for evaluation, and I think the evaluation is necessary.
COOPER: You think the Democratic Party will do that?
AXELROD: I think the Democrat I think it will do that, and it should do that. And I said, I mean, as I was saying to you guys before, I mean, I, you know, I appreciate the Democratic Party because it's -- I think it's it believes in the use of institutions to help lift people up and that we're a better country when you do but the Democratic Party has become more of a suburban, college-educated professional party.
And it still feels allegiance to working people, and it still tries to fight for working people, but it approaches working people like missionaries, like Mar -- or like Margaret Mead would approach the natives and they come and the Democrats say, we want to help you become more like us. And the implication is that somehow, if you work with your hands or work with your back, that you're less than.
And these are the people who make our country go and they deserve respect and dignity. Everybody deserves that. I think Kamala Harris tried to express that in this campaign, but it has to be more of an exercise over 90 days of a campaign. It has to be a really rethinking. I mean, we talk about -- you talk, Dana, about solar panels and so on. I don't even understand how people can question that we need to do something about climate change, giving the catastrophes that are besetting us now. That said, if you make your living extracting fossil fuels and old energy from the ground, and that you make a good middle class living that way, and you have to give that -- you -- we -- and people come to you and say, for the good of humanity, you're going to have to give up your good middle-class job. That obviously doesn't sit well, and there needs to be an honest discussion about that.
I think the Democratic Party has to do that. But let me just say one of the things because I know I pushed one of your hot buttons there. But Kamala Harris. Kamala -- there'll be plenty of critiques and so on. Kamala Harris completely over performed expectations. I think she handled herself with a lot of grace. I think she did -- she probably turned in one of the great debate performances, you know, that we've seen to the point where now, you know, the guy who appears to be the president-elect Donald Trump didn't want to debate her again.
And I think she tried to appeal to the better angels of people's nature. And so -- I'm not going to --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm just going to say it was this moment that I realized America just elected the guy who said they're eating the cats and they're eating the dogs. I'm just taking them to take that in (INAUDIBLE)
[02:20:06]
VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Look, I think Kamala Harris had to do two things. She had to introduce her interest herself and disqualify Donald Trump. She tried to do that by saying that she was on the economy for the people middle class, contrasting his kind of rich as hell kind of thing. She tried to do that the board is an issue. She tried to be tough on the border and accused Trump of playing politics on the border.
And she thought abortion was going to really, you know, make work for her. She just got beat by, you know, her own words --
COOPER: Her own words from 2019. And also --
(CROSSTALK)
VONES: And more -- and more recent ones as well. If you look at Trump's ads, Bidenomics is working. Whoever came up with Bidenomics needs to be put in the corner someplace. So then, she -- because she doesn't separate herself, and then she -- then she says, you know, nothing comes to mind, so she doesn't separate herself from Biden. And then the whole transgender thing.
So, the ads just beat her to death on tying her to the economy, tying her to Biden and tying her to weird stuff. And so, there was really never a great response. And then, to your point, the ad that came out that was beating come up around fear about Israel not being protected. There was never a response from the campaign on that, which I thought was a big mistake. Amanda Berman from Zioness had to raise money running her own ads, trying to fight back alone.
That didn't work (INAUDIBLE) but listen, you tied her to the economy. You tied her to Biden. He tried to weird and it was not --
(CROSSTALK)
AXELROD: I agree with everything you're saying. I just didn't want to engage in the autopsy before she has been -- before we've called the race and before she dropped out. But, you know, one thing on that, she -- the answer on I can't think of anything offhand about where she would differ with Biden was disastrous and there's no doubt about it. The question is, what motivated it and whether she just felt she did -- she did not want to --
COOPER: Loyalty.
AXELROD: Yes, loyalty. So, she should have just said, look, I'm grateful to him. You know, I'm proud of some of the many things we did together, and I'm not going to critique him. I'm going to -- I'm talking about the future would have been a better answer. But, you know, it's easy to be on the sidelines.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think looking critique whether she's the correct messenger or not? I think the message, right? When you're selling a product that Americans don't want to buy doesn't matter who the messenger is. So, I think the Democratic Party just sit back. Talk about naval gazing. Sit back and think, what were we selling? What are the American people looking to buy? Right? There, you know, maybe it's not Green New Deal. Maybe it's -- maybe people like drive it. Listen --
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You got to keep 330,000 clean energy jobs and people are still thinking about it.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Pretty good. Pretty good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I get it, but I'm saying there's something afoot here. When you look at that map of the counties that she won by three percent and there's not one of them in America. There's not one that there's a blank map, there's something the Republicans are selling the people want.
COOPER: We are --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the Democrats don't.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: We're waiting on Donald Trump's remarks at any moment as he's on the cusp of reaching the 270 electoral votes, he needs to return to the White House. We'll hear from him ahead.
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[02:25:26]
COOPER: And former President Donald Trump, there you see him on the stage. Let's listen in.
Former President Trump obviously awaiting for the Lee Greenwood song to end. You see Speaker Mike Johnson, Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance. Let's listen.
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you very much. Wow.
TORRES: Well, I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this incredible movement. This was a movement like nobody has ever seen before. And frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's ever been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond. And now it's going to reach a new level of importance, because we're going to help our country heal. Help our country heal.
We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders. We're going to fix everything about our country. And we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we've achieved the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Is this crazy?
But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. And every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day I will be fighting for you and with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve, and that you deserve.
This will truly be the golden age of America. That's what we have to have. This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to Make America Great Again.
[02:30:05]
And in addition to having won the battleground states of North Carolina, I love these places -- Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: We are now winning in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Alaska, which would result in us carrying at least 315 electoral votes.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: But -- that -- but it's much easier doing what the networks did or whoever called it, because there was no other path. There was no other path to victory. We also have won the popular vote. That was great.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much. OK. Now winning the popular vote was very nice. Very nice. I will tell you, it's a great -- a great feeling of love. We have a great feeling of love in this very large room with unbelievable people standing by my side. These people have been incredible. They've made the journey with me, and we're going to make you very happy. We're going to make you very proud of your vote.
I hope that you're going to be looking back someday and say, that was one of the truly important moments of my life when I voted for this group of people beyond the president, this group of great people.
America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the Senate. Wow, that's good.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And the Senate races in Montana, Nevada, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we're all won by the MAGA movement. They helped so much.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And in those cases, every one of them we worked with the Senators. They were tough races. And I mean the -- the number of victories in the Senate was absolutely incredible. And we did teller rallies, we did teller rallies with each one of them, and sometimes we did two or three for -- and it was amazing to look at all of those victories. Nobody expected that, nobody. So I just wanted to thank you very much for that. And we have -- you have some great Senators and some great new Senators. And it also looks like we'll be keeping control of the House of Representatives.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And I want to thank Mike Johnson. I think he's doing a terrific job, terrific job. I want to also thank my beautiful wife, Melania, First Lady --
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: -- who has the number one bestselling book in the country. Can you believe that? (CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Oh no. She's done a great job. Works very hard, works very hard to help people. So I just want to thank her. But I want to thank my whole family, my amazing children, and they are amazing children.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Now we all think our children -- everybody here thinks their children are amazing. But that's a good thing when you think they are. But Don, Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron, Laura, Jared, Kimberly, Michael, thank you all. What a help.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: My father-in-law Victor is tremendous, and we miss very much Melania's Mother Amalia. We miss Amalia, don't we? She would be very happy right now standing on this stage, she'd be so proud. She was a great woman, that one, beautiful inside and out. She was a great woman. I want to be the first to congratulate our great -- now I can say, Vice President-elect of the United States, J.D. Vance.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
[02:35:00]
TRUMP: And his absolutely remarkable and beautiful wife, Usha Vance.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And he is a feisty guy, isn't he? You know, I've said, go into the enemy camp and you know the enemy camp is certain networks and a lot of people don't like to -- sir, do I have to do that? He just goes, OK, which one? CNN, MSNBC (ph). He'll say, all right, thank you very much. He actually looks back, he's still like the only guy I've ever seen who really looks forward to it, and then he just goes in and absolutely obliterates them.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Say a say a couple of words.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, Mr. President, I appreciate you allowing me to join you on this incredible journey. I thank you for the trust that you placed in me, and I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: And under President Trump's leadership, we're never going to stop fighting for you, for your dreams, for the future of your children. And after the greatest political comeback in American history, we're going to lead the greatest economic comeback in American history under Donald Trump's leadership.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Thank you very much. He's, he's turned out to be a good choice. I took a little heat at the beginning, but he was -- I knew -- I knew the brain was a good one, about as good as it gets. And we love the family and we're going to have a great four years and we're going to turn our country around, make it something very special.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: It lost that -- lost that little -- it lost that little -- that little thing called special. We have to make it so. We are going to make this so great. It's going to -- it is the greatest country and potentially the greatest country in the world by far. And right now, we're going to just work very hard to get all of that back. We're going to make it the best it's ever been. We can do that. We just, if we had to wait longer, I don't know. It was going bad and it was going bad fast. We're going to have to seal up those borders and we're going to have to let people come into our country.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: We want people to come back in, but we have to -- we have to let them come back in. But they have to come in legally. They have to come in legally. Let me also express my tremendous appreciation for Susie and Chris, the job you did.
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE) TRUMP: Susie, come, Susie -- come here. Come here, Susie. Chris, come here, Chris. Susie likes to stay sort of in the back. Let me tell you, the ice baby. We call her the ice baby, right?
(CHEERING)
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Chris, come here, Chris. Susie likes to stay in the background. She's not in the background. Come here, Susie.
CHRIS LACIVITA, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: This wasn't expected, but I just want to thank obviously President Trump for this journey. It was a great one. And he's a hell of a candidate and he is going to be a hell of a great 47th president. And this team that we have the best team, and of course, even my boss, Susie Wiles, the best. Thank you.
(CHEERING)
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TRUMP: Thank you. And thank you, Susie. Look at that, she's shy. I've never seen her be shy before. Susie -- they've been -- they're great. Everybody up here is great. Everybody up here is very special. But, the Trump -- who did you say? Oh, let me tell you. We have a new star. A star is born, Elon. So --
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TRUMP: Now. He is -- now, he's an amazing guy. We were sitting together tonight, you know, he spent two weeks in Philadelphia and different parts of Pennsylvania campaigning -- he sent the rocket up two weeks ago and I saw that rocket and I saw it coming down. I saw it. It was, when it left, it was beautiful, shiny white. When it came down, it didn't look so pretty. It was going 10,000 miles an hour and it was burning like hell. I said, what happened to your paint job? He said, we've never made a paint that could withstand that kind of heat.
[02:40:00]
And -- but I saw it come down and turn around, and it was -- it's like 22 stories tall, by the way. It looks a little smaller than that, but it's big. And it came down and down, and just saw that fire burning. And I'm saying only Elon could do this. It must be an Elon. And I tell the story, I told it last night, I had a man on the phone, I had the screen muted, no sound. I was talking to a very important man, happens to be here. And that very important guy, one of the most important people, and I would say in the country actually.
But I was president and now it looks like I was going to be maybe president again. So, I figured I could ask him to hold. So I asked him to hold and because especially -- because you're going to be president again, they hold. So I took the phone down and I'm looking at the screen, I'm seeing this crazy thing that's going around and coming down. It looks like it's going to crash into the gantry. And I said, oh no. And I said, do me a favor, do you mind holding for a couple of minutes? I want to see this. I thought it was a space age movie or something.
I put the phone down -- bad part, I didn't pick it up for 45 minutes and he was holding. But this spaceship came down and I saw those engines firing and it looked like it was over, it was going to smash. And then I saw the fire pour out from the left side and it put it straight and it came down so gently and then it wrapped those arms around it and it held it. And just like you hold your baby at night, your little baby. And it was a beautiful thing to see. And I called Elon, I said, Elon, was that you? He said, yes, it was.
I said, who else can do that? Can Russia do it? No. Can China do it? No. Can the United States do it, other than you? No, nobody can do that. I said, that's why I love you, Elon. That's great. And when we had the tragic Hurricane Helene and it hit particular -- hit North Carolina, they were really devastated. The water, this was a big water as big as we've ever seen, water hurricane. It built lakes out of nothing, fields became lakes and the danger was unbelievable.
And the people from North Carolina came to me and they said, would it be possible -- at all possible for you to speak to Elon Musk? We need Starlink. I said, what's Starlink? It's a form of communication. So I called Elon and I'll tell you what he had, and it was very dangerous. People were dying. They had no communication. All the wires were down. I called Elon Musk. I said, Elon, you have something called Starlink. Is that right? Yes, I do. What the hell is it? He said, it's a communication system. That's very good.
I said, Elon, they need it really, really badly in North Carolina. Can you get it? He had that there so fast, it was incredible. So, and it was great. It saved a lot of lives. He saved a lot of lives. But he's a character. He is a special guy. He is a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses. We don't have that many of them. We have to protect our super geniuses. I want to thank some of the guys, we have up here today, the U.S. Open Champion. He's a fantastic golfer, he's slightly longer than me. It's (inaudible) a little bit longer than me, just a little bit.
Bryson DeChambeau is up here someplace.
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TRUMP: What happened to Bryson? Where is he? Bryson?
Oh, he was shot? He's hitting balls? He's on the way. Oh, he's hitting balls. Bryson -- oh, look at him.
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TRUMP: He had a great -- he's got a great career going, great U.S. Open. Bryson, that's a fantastic job. And we also have a man, Dana White, who has done some job.
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TRUMP: He is that tough guy. So Dana started UFC and came to me, do you mind if I use your -- nobody wanted to give him rings because they said it's a rough sport, a little rough. And I helped him out a little bit and I went, and they said, this is the roughest sport I've ever seen. But I began to like it and he loved it. And nobody's done a better job in sports, and you know he is a very motivational kind of a guy. What he does, he gets these fighters and they -- they really go at it. And it's become one of the most successful sports enterprises anywhere at any time. It's doing so well.
I'd like to ask Dana just to say a couple of words because people love to hear from him. Dana?
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[02:45:00]
DANA WHITE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP: Nobody deserves this more than him and nobody deserves this more than his family does. This is what happens when the machine comes after you, what you've seen over the last several years, this is what it looks like. Couldn't stop him, he keeps going forward. He doesn't quit. He's the most resilient, hardworking man I've ever met in my life. His family are incredible people. This is karma, ladies and gentlemen. He deserves this. They deserve it as a family.
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WHITE: I want to thank some people real quick. I want to thank the NELK Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin' With The Boys. And last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.
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WHITE: And thank you, America. Thank you. Have a good night.
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TRUMP: That is a piece of work. Now, he's an amazing -- he's really an amazing guy, but most of all, I want to thank the millions of hardworking Americans across the nation who have always been the heart and soul of this really great movement. We've been through so much together. And today, you showed up in record numbers to deliver a victory. Like really, I probably like no other. This was something -- this was something special. And we're going to -- we're going to pay you back.
We are going to do the best job. We're going to -- we're going to turn it around. It's got to be turned around. It's got to be turned around fast. And we are going to turn it around. We're going to do it in every way with so many ways, but we're going to do it in every way. This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.
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TRUMP: So I just want to say that on behalf of this great group of people, these are hardworking people, these are fantastic people. And we can add a few names like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He came in --
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TRUMP: -- and he's going to help make America healthy again.
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TRUMP: And now, he's a great guy and he really means it. He wants to do some things and we're going to let him go to it. I just said, but Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world, more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby.
We're going to be paying down debt. We're going to be reducing taxes. We have -- we can do things that nobody else can do. Nobody else is going to be able to do it. China doesn't have what we have. Nobody has what we have. But we have the greatest people also, maybe that's the most important thing. This campaign -- this campaign has been so historic in so many ways. We've built the biggest, the broadest, the most unified coalition.
They've never seen anything like it in all of American history. They've never seen any -- young and old men and women, rural and urban, and we had them all helping us tonight. When you think, I mean, I was looking at it, I was watching it. They had some great analysis of the people that voted for us. Nobody has ever seen anything like that. It 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. We're the party of common sense. We want to have borders. We want to have security. We want to have things be good, safe. We want great education. Want to -- want a strong and powerful military, and ideally we don't have to use it. We had no wars. Four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS. We defeated ISIS in record time and -- but we had no wars.
They said he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. But this is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. Together, we're going to unlock America's glorious destiny. We're going to achieve the most incredible future for our people. Yesterday, as I stood at my last stop on the campaign trail -- I'll never be doing a rally again. Can you believe it? I think we've done 900 rallies approximately from the -- can you imagine?
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[02:50:00]
TRUMP: 900 -- 901 something -- a lot of rallies, and it was sad. Everybody was sad, many people said, this is our last rally. But now, we're going onto something that's far more important because the rallies were used for us to put -- be put in this position where we can really help our country. That's what we're going to do. We're going to make our country better than it ever has been. And I said that many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason.
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TRUMP: And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now, we are going to fulfill that mission together. We're going to fulfill that mission. The task before us will not be easy, but I will bring every ounce of energy, spirit, and fight that I have in my soul to the job that you've entrusted to me. This is a great job. That there's no job like this. This is the most important job in the world. Just as I did in my first term, we had a great first term, my great, great first term. I will govern by a simple motto. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises.
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TRUMP: Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. We will make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful, and free again. And I'm asking every citizen, all across our land, to join me in this noble and righteous endeavor. That's what it is. It's time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us. It's time to unite, and we're going to try, we're going to try. We have to try, and it's going to happen. Success will bring us together. I've seen that. I've seen that.
I saw that in the first term when we became more and more successful, people started coming together. Success is going to bring us together. And we are going to start by all putting America first. We have to put our country first for at least a period of time. We have to fix it, because together we can truly make America great again for all Americans.
So, I want to just tell you what a great honor this is. I want to thank you. I will not let you down. America's future will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer, and stronger than it has ever been before. God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.
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JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: All right. Donald Trump taking a victory lap of sorts. I do not think that, as far as I know, any major news organization has declared him to be the victor. But it certainly seems that he is on his way to that point and there he is giving a generally, as far as he goes, unifying and generous speech.
He invited to speak his campaign managers as well as Dana White, as well as his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. Maybe I have missed something. Has anybody actually declared him in any case?
CHRIS WALLACE, CNN HOST OF "WHO'S TALKING TO CHRIS WALLACE?": Fox has.
TAPPER: Fox has? OK. Well, in any case, he's well on his way to that point. So --
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: And if you notice, he did not dispute in any way the results of this election. So obviously, he is feeling more confident in it than in another scenario.
WALLACE: I think -- I think there was one in that long speech with all the weave, there was one key line. America has given us an unprecedented mandate. Now, it may not be unprecedented, but there's no other way you can read these election results as -- than he has received a mandate, received a mandate in his personal victory. In the Senate, the Republicans taking the Senate and picking up more seats than were expected. He said that they'd taken the House. They haven't taken the House yet. Nobody has declared that. But I don't see any other way to read this than that he has a mandate to fulfill his agenda.
TAPPER: 100 percent, and I think one of the things that's so significant about that is that the Democrats treated his first term as a fluke because he lost the popular vote and won the electoral vote. And in that sense, it was to a degree, although that has certainly happened in history before, this is a sweeping --
CORNISH: Yeah.
TAPPER: -- victory. And John and I were going over the margin of error even in the blue states, New Jersey and New York, he significantly shrank the partisan chasm in those states, and we have declared that the Republicans are going to take back the Senate.
[02:55:00]
We do not know what's going to happen to the House. But he does have a sort of mandate without question.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And he talked in this speech about the promises that he has made, and he said he's going to keep them. And so some of the most clear promises that he has made are on the economy, very, very sharp tariffs, that have been controversial in the business world and among economists. Assuming that he gets that through, assuming that that happens, we will see if that is true or whether it will help.
On the immigration front, which was an -- since the minute he came down that escalator in 2015, a huge, topic for him. This time around, he has said point blank, he is going to engage in mass deportation. We'll see how that works. We'll see -- just even the mechanism of that. And the other thing that I don't think we should lose sight of is that he has said very clearly, multiple times that he will go after and prosecute his enemies. And how he will go about doing that, what that means for the -- who would be his attorney general. We will have to wait and see.
We also should remember that if he is the person that raises his hand and takes the oath of office, January 20, 2025, thanks to the Supreme Court, there will be far fewer --
WALLACE: Checks
BASH: -- guardrails, checks on him legally. That will be the law of the land that he will be able to do a lot more. And not to mention the federal indictments against him will almost surely disappear.
TAPPER: They're gone. Absolutely.
BASH: They'll disappear.
TAPPER: Yeah.
CORNISH: Yeah. He talked about putting the last four years behind us, maybe those are some of the things that'll go away. And I also want to recognize something that Dana White said at the UFC where he said, this is karma. Just to hear that through the lens of his supporters, that they feel that between his convictions, impeachments, et cetera, that he has been persecuted and that this was their response to that. There was like a huge applause line in that room.
WALLACE: Yeah. I mean, think about it. This is a man who has been impeached twice, a man who has survived two assassination attempts, one of them very serious, four indictments, almost 100 charges. And he looks like he's going to have walked through all of it.
BASH: And he is at 34 -- on 34 counts a convicted felon.
WALLACE: Right. And well, we'll see what happens on that conviction and --
BASH: Yeah.
WALLACE: -- what punishment he faces. I don't understand how a man like that couldn't feel tremendously empowered to do whatever he wants because he has got the mandate. He -- the system, I don't believe it was a persecution by the system or weaponization or legal -- but he certainly does. And it seems to me he's going to feel they threw their -- they did their worst to me, and I survived it and I thrived, and the country gave me a mandate.
TAPPER: I think probably there are a lot of Americans out there watching who are trying to make sense of tonight and trying to figure out why this happened. And I know that there are those who think that this is a manifestation of ugliness among their fellow Americans. That this is -- this is a vote for bigotry, and this is a vote for misogyny, or this is a vote for racism, et cetera.
And I want to take a moment and just reflect on the fact that if you look at the reasons why the voters who decided this election voted the way they did, it is not because of those parts of the MAGA movement or Trump's comments in the past. It's not about vindicating Trump for the lawsuits or the criminal charges or the impeachments. The people who decided this election, the people in the battleground states who switched or who turned out don't like the country as it is right now, mainly because of the three issues. And people like it or not, Donald Trump ran an issues-based campaign.
BASH: Yeah.
TAPPER: Whether or not his two-hour stem-winder rally speeches covered all of it, it was mainly because of the economy and the beating the people are taken -- taking at the gas pump and in grocery stores, inflation and immigration, and the fact that immigration -- there is a crisis at the border. There has been for several years. The first couple years of the Biden-Harris Administration, they were in denial about it and acted as though anybody who asked about it was just reading right --
