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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump on Verge of Victory After Battleground Wins. Aired 4- 4:30a ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 04:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, right now the map tells the story. We are well into the morning here in New York, and there is much more red than blue. Much.

Welcome to CNN's special live coverage, Election Night in America. I'm John Berman, and if you're just tuning in, Donald Trump appears poised to become the 47th president of the United States, taking a wrecking ball to the so-called blue wall states that the Harris team thought was his best path to the White House. A couple of caveats right off the top.

There is still vote to count. CNN has not yet projected some of the critical battleground states and a couple others that will formally decide the presidency, but that does increasingly look like a formality. Donald Trump is just short of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win.

You can see he's at 266 right now, but three big battlegrounds, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have all gone for Trump, and the remaining four battlegrounds, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Trump leads in all of them. The vote left to count is quickly shrinking, and the takeaway seems to be that the electorate is mad as hell, and tonight they're sending a message that they will not take it anymore. The economy mattered most to voters.

Everything else that mattered did not matter nearly as much. January 6th, immigration, abortion, the chaos of the final few weeks, the bizarre behavior, the offensive, often racist, sexist musings of Donald Trump seem not to have mattered at least not as much.

Crucially, we are also seeing what could very well be a political realignment. According to the exit polls, the Democratic coalition of the working class, Black men, Latinos, white women, who all helped propel Joe Biden to the White House four years ago, they are now offering Donald Trump a ladder to power.

Just a short time ago, Trump spoke to his supporters in Florida and made a nod to unifying the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We're going to help our country heal. We're going to 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, as we said, some key states have not been officially called, so stand by for a key race alert. All right, we are waiting still for the official calls from Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin. You can see where the result stands right now in Arizona, with 11 electoral votes up for grabs.

Donald Trump with a 48,000 vote lead at this point, 55 percent of the vote in. But again, he is ahead there by two and a half points. In Nevada, six electoral votes up for stake. Donald Trump ahead by some 57,000 votes there, almost 5 percent. That's with 88 percent in. Again, both Arizona and Nevada were states that Joe Biden won four years ago. If these results hold, they would be flips for Donald Trump.

The same is true in Michigan with 15 electoral votes. Donald Trump there up by 230,000 votes with 86 percent in. This was a state Joe Biden won by more than 100,000 votes, so a major flip perhaps in store in Michigan.

Finally, in Wisconsin with 10 electoral votes, Donald Trump ahead by more than 107,000 votes at this point.

[04:05:00]

Wisconsin's a state that's always very close, within 10, 20, 30,000 votes in elections since the year 2000. That 107,000 vote lead with 96 percent in seems very large, although we are still waiting for a few more votes to be counted there before we have an official call.

Let's take a look at what that means as far as the electoral map. Donald Trump has 266 electoral votes at this point. He only needs 270 to win, so he is a state or two away at this point from the official call that he will be the 47th President of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris currently at 205 electoral votes. Again, no official call just yet, but it does seem very close, perhaps even inevitable.

Let's go over to Phil Mattingly now at the magic wall. Let's talk about where we haven't called. Some of these states we're talking about right now, Michigan, Wisconsin. Let's start there.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: We'll start there. The two blue wall states that have not been called yet. Donald Trump's lead substantial in the state of Michigan, 231,000 votes with 86 percent reporting.

I think you go into the state of Michigan, particularly after the last two cycles, and you know where the Democratic strongholds are. You know where Donald Trump needs to do well. Let's start with one of those Democratic strongholds. That's right here, Wayne County. This is actually where a ton of vote is still outstanding. We're going to have to wait and see how that all breaks down, but I can tell you right now, if it looks anything like the current margin, like the current separation between the vice president and Donald Trump, that explains a lot about what's happening here because this is the largest county in the state.

17.6 percent of the voting population lives in this state. That margin you're saying, 29 points. It's got to be, that's a great sign if you're the Harris campaign. It's not when you look at what Joe Biden's margin was. At five points, and these aren't just Democratic strongholds. These are critical vote drivers in these states.

We see it in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. We see it in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. You see it right here in Wayne.

But the other issue, move up here to Oakland County. This is the suburbs. This is one of those areas that Democrats have moved heavily into, taking control of, and really started to turn out major vote over the course of the last couple of cycles.

This county, back in 2020, Joe Biden won it by 14 points, a little more than 14 points. Kamala Harris, underperforming. So the theory of the case from the Harris campaign is you run up your margins in those critical urban areas that you always run up big margins in, and then you blow out your margins in the suburbs, the places like Oakland County.

That's how you hold down Donald Trump's gains in his strongholds, those rural counties. Smaller, but they add up if you add two, three, four points to what he did in 2020. In the suburbs, in the urban areas, in the biggest counties, in the biggest vote drivers in the state of Michigan, that just simply has not happened yet.

And if you want to know where Donald Trump has been overperforming in this state, these are the places, the counties where he's overperforming by 3 percent or more. This isn't overperforming by a vote. This is overperforming by a substantial margin, 3 percent or more. One of them, Wayne County.

BERMAN: That is big.

MATTINGLY: Move over, what's Washtenaw County? Washtenaw County is the home of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is not a conservative place. And I say that even as an Ohio State fan, it's not a judgmental statement in any way.

But back in 2020, Joe Biden won this county by 46 and a half points. Right now, Kamala Harris is just underperforming. And whether that has to do with the Gaza issue, which is something that is very critical in Michigan, whether it has to do with students not turning out, and when you move back over into Wayne County, whether this is about the African-American vote or second largest city in Wayne County, it's Dearborn, which has the largest Arab-American population in the state.

BERMAN: All right, we'll let you go back to crunching the numbers, Phil, taking a look at some of these other states. In the meantime, I'm going to come over here and talk to Harry Enten. Harry, you've got some of the exit polling.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN DATA REPORTER: Yes, sir.

BERMAN: You've got the story behind the story from what we've seen all night and into the morning.

ENTEN: Yes, it's exactly right, John. Look, you know, before the election, we were talking about potentially historic realignment in the electorate. It has borne itself out in the exit polls.

We can start off with Latino voters. Look, Kamala Harris is leading among Latino voters by eight points. I went back through the exit polls.

There have been exit polls since 1972. No Democrat has had such a small lead as Kamala Harris has right now in the history of the exit polls. The smallest such margin was back in 2004, when George W. Bush won Latino voters by nine points. Kamala Harris is just winning them by eight points at this point.

Now, we can also talk about Asian voters as well. What do we see among Asian voters? Look, Kamala Harris is leading among them by 18 points. You have to go all the way back since 2004 to find a Democrat performing as poorly among Asian voters as Kamala Harris is right now.

What about voters under the age of 30? This is another group in which Donald Trump is excelling for a Republican candidate. What do we see here?

We see Kamala Harris up by 13 points, significantly worse than Joe Biden did four years ago. In fact, you have to go all the way back since George W. Bush days once again to find a Democrat performing that poorly among voters under the age of 30.

[04:10:00]

If Donald Trump's first victory in 2016 was about winning white working class voters, this victory in 2024 was about going into normally Democratic bastions and taking those voters that a lot of folks never thought he could potentially do and winning them tonight in historic fashion, John.

BERMAN: All right, Harry. Thank you very much. I want to bring in my panel of political experts.

Mark Preston is here and Professor Leah Wright Rigueur. You know, Mark, the story here is pretty obvious to see. Donald Trump is doing better almost everywhere and in some cases with almost everyone.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, and really, you know, I think back to the idea of the Reagan Democrat, you know, and could, which is basically Democrats who live in the Midwest. And could the Democratic Party ever come back and get them? You know, and there's been a lot of talk over the past decade or so. Well, clearly they're gone. I mean, they are absolutely gone. And I also think that the idea that the Democratic Party is this party that is immediately going to have any kind of immigrant come and support them is kind of gone as well.

We've seen that with Latino voters now that are not, first of all, they're not monolithic, one. And two, they're not necessarily beholden to the Democratic Party. So talk about just a realignment across the board.

BERMAN: And Professor, again, I just big picture, take several steps back. We got a guy who was voted out of office four years ago, who has been convicted of a crime, who is now either poised to, or depending on how you look at it, pretty much secured the presidency once again. The first presidency is Grover Cleveland to be voted out and then voted back in.

Just from historical perspective, it's stunning.

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's absolutely stunning. But it's also a reminder that it is a referendum, not on Donald Trump, but a referendum on the Democratic Party. And I think that is incredibly important.

The 2020 election was absolutely a referendum on Donald Trump. Voters were very angry about the pandemic. They held him responsible for the pandemic, and they punished him for that. They voted for Joe Biden.

The mistake here, though, is that the Democratic Party, rather than institutionalizing those coalitions that came out of the 2020 election, they assumed that those things were a referendum about the Democratic Party and about the strength of the Democratic Party. What we're seeing now is that the fractures, the tensions that have really been, I think, in front of all of us since at least 2016 with Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump, all of those things are coming to the fore.

All of the things that Democrats thought that they could rely on, the cultural questions, the questions about Donald Trump's racism, his bigotry, his xenophobia, they found out that actually those things are not enough to bind those winning coalitions together. It is no longer enough in American politics to say, hey, that guy is a bad guy. There has to be more. And for this election in particular, it was about the economy.

BERMAN: We'll have to take a look at what the numbers say in the exit poll, but going into the election, Mark, the wrong track number, the right direction, wrong track number in the polls, you know, only 27, 28 percent of the country thought it was headed in the right direction. That really was a sign that the battle was uphill, maybe straight uphill for the Democrats.

PRESTON: Yes, and if you go into the numbers, as I'm sure Harry will over the next 25 million hours that we'll be on air discussing, really this historic time, 80 percent of the voters who supported Donald Trump saw that the economy was on the wrong track, that we weren't going in the right direction. You know, we always talk about the economy. It seems like we have these discussions every election that you and I have worked where the day after we say, wow, the economy really was what kind of drove it through.

You know, we're tripping ourselves over what we think is the hot button issue that the party is really trying to push, abortion, you know, in this case, immigration as well, although they were hot issues and really were driving issues. I don't mean to downplay them. The reality is it's the pocketbook that really affects people. And I think that's what we saw happen here.

BERMAN: And continue to see as the night goes on, there are still Senate races to call, the House of Representatives still up for grabs, but at this point, all trending in one direction.

Next, we're going to go live to the site of the celebration tonight, Donald Trump's campaign headquarters where he spoke not too long ago. Much more is seen in special live coverage on election night in America after this.

[04:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, welcome back to Election Night in America. I'm Kasie Hunt in New York. Look, sometimes we overuse the word, but we truly did just watch an unprecedented political comeback for Donald Trump.

The former president seems poised to cross the 270 electoral college threshold. He holds leads in all the important battleground states that CNN has yet to project. CNN's Alayna Treene is at Trump HQ down in Florida.

Alayna, of course, a celebratory mood there tonight. Tell us what you're learning, what you're hearing at this hour.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Yes, well, I think this will come as no surprise to you, Kasie. But when I'm talking to Donald Trump's advisors, his allies, those close to the former president, they obviously say that they're excited. They're enthusiastic about where he is right now.

But they also say there is a sense of relief. And I tell you that because going into Tuesday, they did not anticipate what we are seeing. Obviously, we have not yet called the race for Donald Trump, but he is well on his way to securing that necessary 270 electoral college votes.

But they had really thought that this was going to be dragged out for longer. They thought this race was going to be much closer, particularly in those key battleground states than ultimately what we saw unfold overnight.

Now, I do want to talk a little bit about what we heard Donald Trump say, you know, moments really ago when he took to that stage at the convention center here in Palm Beach, his election night watch party, and gave a speech.

First of all, I will say, as someone who has covered Donald Trump for several years, that as far as his speeches go, I would argue that was one of the more unifying types of remarks that we've heard from the former president. He talked about wanting to heal the country. He did declare victory, even though, like I said, we have not yet projected it. But I will say, I think at that point, Fox News had called the race for Donald Trump.

But he also mentioned one key thing, which I think is so important. And this is what I'm also picking up on, is that we saw that Republicans won the Senate. Donald Trump called that a mandate.

[04:20:00]

He said he was given a mandate from the votes, but also looking ahead to having a Republican Senate if he is in office. I think that was a key thing that he had mentioned while walking through some of the top priorities that he wants in a future administration. So all in all, a good night for Donald Trump's campaign. They've returned to Mar-a- Lago.

I think we're going to hear some more conversations unfolding over the next 24 hours or so, as they look ahead to what this exactly means for the former president, as well as his campaign.

HUNT: Yes, well, Alayna, what is your sense, too, of how they're thinking about a potential -- or it's almost not potential anymore, because they're poised to do it, we have yet to call it -- but the second Trump administration, who they're going to put in those posts. Obviously, Elon Musk, someone who has been a huge part of the Trump campaign. What are you hearing?

TREENE: Already, Kasie, that jockeying has begun. One thing I would keep in mind with this is that so far, you know, at this point, a presidential candidate, one of the nominees, you normally have an official transition process underway. Donald Trump does have a transition team, but they have not gone through some of the more official channels for how that should operate, including working with the Biden administration on some of that process.

All to say that is because Donald Trump is very superstitious. He did not want to have serious conversations before Election Day about who would fill top cabinet positions and key administrative roles.

However, we are told, and this is also according to some reporting from my colleague and I, Kristen Holmes, you know, some people have been calling Donald Trump over the last few hours now and calling top aides to him, saying, you know, trying to feel out the sense of what possibilities there could be for them in a future administration, in this expected administration.

And so we're already starting to see some of that take shape. It's very early on. And I will tell you, Donald Trump, as far as, you know, presidential candidates go, he is far behind that process than what we would see normally for a Republican nominee and someone who had just essentially won the election -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Alayna Treene for us. Alayna, I know you're going to be there for us throughout the night. So thank you.

All right, our panel is here to discuss. And as we start, thank you all for being here with us. I want to look at this moment from earlier tonight.

Donald Trump's running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, describing what we're seeing and painting the ongoing results of this election in no uncertain terms.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America. And under President Trump's leadership, we're never going to stop fighting for you, for your dreams, for the future of your children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The greatest political comeback, Kristen Soltis Anderson, after January 6th, I had a really hard time imagining we would ever be here again. How do you -- I mean, you're a pollster who looks at this data all the time. I know you were wondering for weeks before this what was going to be right about it, what was going to be wrong about it.

What did we learn about America tonight?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think we learned that America is very, very frustrated and was looking for change and in the end decided that change meant going back to something that they felt a little more familiar with, Donald Trump. We know that voters have been angry. They're frustrated.

We know these right track, wrong track numbers are terrible and they can be terrible for a lot of different reasons. There are Democratic voters that say it's terrible because we think Donald Trump has poisoned the climate and sowed all of these seeds that have made things terrible.

But a majority of voters tonight seem to be saying we don't think that the party that's in charge now can fix these problems. We need to go back to Donald Trump. It's in some ways the buyer's remorse election.

For a lot of voters after January 6, Donald Trump's job approval was in like the mid 30s. It was terrible. But if you ask voters now, did you approve or disapprove of Donald Trump's job? It goes up to almost 50 percent that say they approve. There is a sense of buyer's remorse. And that's what we've seen in these returns.

HUNT: Shermichael Singleton, you and I have spent so much time over the course of the election cycle. You would continually talk about Black men, in particular, the economic anxiety that many were experiencing. And you saw Harry Enten walk through some of the numbers for groups of voters that honestly voted for Joe Biden in bigger numbers than they were willing to vote for Kamala Harris this time. What do you see?

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I think it was indeed a clear mandate. I think you have a lot of people in this country who do feel left behind despite ethnic differences. I think the idea that reproductive rights alone was going to propel the vice president is certainly helped.

Clearly, you saw women who voted for that issue in terms of state mandates, but also voted for Donald Trump.

HUNT: Arizona.

[04:25:00]

SINGLETON: Arizona, for example, correct.

And so I just think we have underestimated. The frustration and the anxiety of a lot of working class people in this country, Kasie. And what you're seeing is sort of this transformation of the Republican Party to, I guess one could potentially argue, a multiracial working class party and the Democratic Party becoming more wealthier, more elites, more highly educated. And the question for me as a conservative becomes, how does the party adjust these new concerns of these new people?

Our policies in the past haven't typically addressed their concerns. Now they're going to have to.

HUNT: Jeff Duncan, you put it all on the line for Harris. You were someone who in in the state of Georgia, in the thick of the 2020 election, when Donald Trump tried to change those results, who really felt personally the impact of how that played out. And you worked really hard for Kamala Harris.

What does it say to you that at the end of the day, voters said to Donald Trump in in bigger numbers than we expected? We want you back in the White House.

GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, absolutely. I think towards the tail end of the election cycle, it started to become apparent to me that Donald Trump, as an outsider, was better perceived than as an insider. So when he was running in 2016, he was an outsider and he was judged on his rhetoric. He was judged on his tone and tenor.

And then in 2020, he was judged on kind of the merits of what he did. Right. He was how he reacted to COVID, how he had some issues with foreign leaders. And now, again, he embraced that outsider role. And I think he's that he's audibilized that angry voice in people's heads, whether it's inflation, whether it's immigration, whether it be whatever the issues.

Now he's got to figure out a way to take that from audibilizing, being the mouthpiece of that anger, to figuring out how does he solve some of these real problems? Because he's made a ton of promises on the campaign trail. Some of them I hope he follows through with and some of them I hope he doesn't.

HUNT: Karen Finney, in many ways, I'm sure for you, it feels like you've been here before. The last time there was an election where people were based here in New York City, there were celebrations ready right at Hillary Clinton headquarters. I don't think they went so far this time with, you know, Kamala Harris's team, I think, being very well aware that this was going to be a very close election. It's less close than they expected.

What do you what lessons do you think the Democratic Party needs to learn from this?

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, I think it's hard for us to say that right here tonight as we're looking at the initial data, because I just don't want to draw broad conclusions. I mean, look, I think clearly on the economic message, there's something about that that it certainly resonated. But I'm not -- I think what people were missing doesn't exist anymore.

So I'll be curious to see how does Trump try to deliver on that promise. Our economy is not the same as it was pre-COVID. So how does he supposedly bring back all this good times?

Look, I think it says, too, that again, we talked about this over the last couple of years. The administration has not done a good enough job communicating with people about what they've done. And I -- and the Trump campaign was able to once again, I think Jeff is exactly right, tap into frustration and anger as an outsider. Right. Without the sort of as an incumbent outsider in some ways.

But in 2020, it was much harder for him to distance himself from being the incumbent because he was in the White House and we were in the middle of a pandemic where we needed to see him every single day talking to us about the economy and what's going on.

HUNT: Bakari Sellers, you were, I will say, one of the more optimistic Democrats that I would talk to on the regular. I mean, you were kind of very bullish on Harris's chances. States like North Carolina, you know, other places were clearly didn't go that way.

What went wrong?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm not sure what went wrong exactly in terms of the fact that Kamala Harris ran a gaffe free, scandal free, raised a bunch of money, built a plane while she was flying type of operation since July 21st. I do think we saw an electorate move further to the right in the electorate was probably more red or conservative than we actually gave it credit for. But there's no -- there are no tears tonight because Democrats have been here before.

I mean, this is not anything new to us. America gets what they deserve. I mean, if you want four more years of Donald Trump, you have it.

And even more importantly than that, I mean, you think about the fact that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are in their 70s. So you'll have, you know, the Supreme Court will change for the future of my kids and my kids' kids. And that is what was at stake in this particular election.

No one's going to say this because everybody tends to get on their high, you know, Dr. Phil horse and say that, you know, this country wasn't built on D.I. when it was like literally built on the backs of slaves who did it for free.

[04:30:00]

But there is something to say about the fact that it's very difficult for women to lead in this country. And everybody's going to be like, oh, no, we rejected identity.

No, you didn't. OK. You really, you literally did not.