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Trump Elected 47th President Of The United States; Republicans Will Flip Senate, Shifting Balance Of Power In Washington. Aired 7:30- 8a ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go over to Harry Enten now at the magic wall. Dig a little deeper here in the exit polls about what Phil was just talking about.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yeah, we can dig in to North Carolina and we can go into Black voters, particularly. It's not just on the county level, right? There are some Black voters who might live in some of the urban areas there.

I want you to take a look in North Carolina among Black voters. Look, Kamala Harris easily won among Black voters in North Carolina. But I want you to take a note of that Trump 12 percent.

Do you know four years ago what percentage Donald Trump got in North Carolina among Black voters? It was just seven percent. It was just seven percent. Nearly a doubling of his support among Black voters.

Let's look specifically at Black men -- Black men. This, to me, says it all in my humble opinion. If we look among Black men, what do we see among Black men? We see that -- if we pull it up here -- maybe we'll get it, maybe we won't get it. There we go, Black men. There we go.

Look at this. Donald Trump getting 21 percent among Black men. Four years ago he was south of 10 percent. He was in the single digits. Black women basically stayed the same from four years ago, but Black men moved in big numbers to Donald Trump in North Carolina -- something that, of course, the Donald Trump campaign believed that they could do throughout the country. Definitely seen in North Carolina.

And then finally, Black Independents. Democrats basically held. They held their support among Independents -- Black Independents.

But look at this. Donald Trump, 28 percent among Black Independents. Four years ago, Donald Trump got just 15 percent. Again, doubling.

This is what we're seeing. Democrats were still winning among Black voters, still winning among Black men, still winning among Black Independents. But Donald Trump was able to shrink the margin just like he did with Latino voters nationwide. Donald Trump going into communities of color and winning large chunks of support that simply put, John Berman, we really never see.

BERMAN: Inroads into some of these communities where Republicans have not had success before.

ENTEN: Exactly right.

BERMAN: Harry, thank you very much.

Let's go over to Kasie and her panel.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, our panel is back with us. We've got some new faces. Ron Brownstein, Scott Jennings, Kate Bedingfield have all gotten back up after a very long night.

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Can I have a sec --

HUNT: Shermichael Singleton --

SINGLETON: -- to go take care of some business?

HUNT: -- let me start with you just because what Harry was focusing on there is something -- I mean, you and I were talking about it --

SINGLETON: Go ahead.

HUNT: -- at both conventions.

SINGLETON: Um-hum.

HUNT: I mean, this is something you've been focused on for quite some time, the inroads here with Black men.

How do you explain it, how do you understand it, and what does it mean going forward?

SINGLETON: I mean, look, there are a lot of people, Kasie, that have been working on making inroads with Black voters for a long time. When I started in Republican politics are a freshman student, I re-engaged a college Republican chapter at an HBC and folks thought I was out of my mind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You were.

Mitt Romney couldn't pull it off. John McCain couldn't pull it off. And here is Donald Trump getting 21 percent in North Carolina. I think I saw Ian Bremmer post I think nationally it's around 21 percent. In 2020, he got 12 percent. You're talking an eight-point increase.

When Republicans lost the race to Barack Obama with Mitt Romney, we produced a growth and opportunity project, and in that autopsy report we talked about the need for the Republican Party to outreach, target, and engage with communities of color. We are finally seeing it.

I think Black men look at the Democratic Party and they often feel that their concerns are going unheard. And the Republican Party saying we are going to be the party that's going to put men back to work. We -- they recognize that a lot of men are falling behind. A lot of men aren't going to college. They're not getting college degrees.

So what happens to those men who still have to survive? The GOP is saying we are the party with the answers.

HUNT: Bakari.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, (D) FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA STATE REPRESENTATIVE, AUTHOR, "WHO ARE YOUR PEOPLE?": Oh, the GOP didn't actually say anything. That's the irony in this whole thing. I mean, Kamala Harris actually put out an opportunity agenda and policy points specifically for Black men, talking to Black men about Black men.

And so there was the --

SINGLETON: Two weeks ago.

SELLERS: But there --

SINGLETON: Two weeks ago.

SELLERS: But you can point --

SINGLETON: I just want to throw that out there.

SELLERS: You can point to me about the policy that Donald Trump or the Republican Party has put out geared towards Black men and I'll listen, but it doesn't exist.

But my only point is, kind of to your point -- I will give you credit for being partially correct this morning.

SINGLETON: Partially?

SELLERS: This is my charity this morning.

SINGLETON: OK, go ahead.

SELLERS: Black men have said for a long time they've been ignored by both parties, and so it gave a unique opportunity. And there are a lot of things about a Donald Trump presidency that we saw wooed Black men not a lot but some. You're talking about six, seven, eight points here or there which was enough, particularly in states like North Carolina and Georgia, but it's this machismo. It's this strength that Donald Trump exuded.

It's not policy. I don't want Shermichael -- the irony --

SINGLETON: But --

SELLERS: The irony in this -- the irony in this whole race -- the irony -- the great irony in this whole race is that he ran a race with no policy. He ran a race with no plan.

SINGLETON: I don't agree with that.

SELLERS: She articulated plans and policy.

SINGLETON: Bakara, I --

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: What does that say about the quality of your campaign, then?

SELLERS: He won.

JENNINGS: If he has no -- if he has no plan and no policy, and no, no, no --

SELLERS: Because it wasn't -- because it was --

JENNINGS: -- what does that say about what the Democratic Party just foisted upon all your --

SELLERS: Well, no. What is says -- what is says -- thank you for joining us this morning. What it says is that the fundamentals of this race --

HUNT: It's kind of somehow --

JENNINGS: If Trump is so terrible, what does it -- I'm just asking.

[07:35:00]

SELLERS: Well, I --

JENNINGS: That was your gamut (PH). You were deeply involved in it. You tell me.

SELLERS: I'm going to finish my sentence.

JENNINGS: OK.

SELLERS: All right.

So, what I was getting at is that the fundamentals of this race that we saw -- we saw inflation, we saw crime. We saw this being a referendum on Joe Biden.

The question was who was going to be the incumbent in this race? And for a long period of time the Harris campaign thought they could make Donald Trump the incumbent. They couldn't. They failed. This was a -- this was a fundamental rebuke of the last four years in those issues.

But when we're talking about Black men, you can't -- there is not a policy proposition, or a policy point that Donald Trump put forth. What he did though was say I hear you, I speak for you, et cetera. It was vibes on a higher level.

SINGLETON: So put -- so it's not putting forth the idea that we want to provide opportunities for working class men to survive and provide for their families? Is that not a policy proposition? The recognition that for --

SELLERS: No, that's a thought.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But I think --

SINGLETON: So the recognition, --

HUNT: Right.

SINGLETON: -- for example, that trades a lot of men, particularly men who don't have college degrees, rely on those types of skills, that's almost non-existent today. The Republicans say hey, we're champions of this. We want this to return back to working class people. We're going to focus on harnessing these things. I think that is attractive for Black men.

SELLERS: I just don't -- I don't think -- I mean, I hear you. I'm going to let everybody chat.

FINNEY: Yeah, yeah.

SELLERS: But I don't think that you're going to win the battle on Donald Trump being a robust policy geek in this race.

SINGLETON: Yeah, but I think Republicans can, Bakari.

HUNT: Hold on a second. I want to --

SINGLETON: Sorry, Kasie.

HUNT: Ron -- no, that's OK. Ron Brownstein is our, like -- has an encyclopedia of all of this in his head. So, Ron, kind of -- how do you understand it?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Well, first of all, this feels to me a little like as if Jimmy Carter had stepped down and Walter Mondale had to run again -- run against Ronald Reagan in 1980. I mean, some similar dynamics.

The exit polls point us toward focus on the decline among Black men, Latino men, and Latino women. And the actual results on the ground are broader. I mean, they're kind of like everywhere. I mean, they're a headline, head-snapping of to what you're talking about.

SINGLETON: Um-hum.

BROWNSTEIN: Philadelphia, Detroit, Las Vegas -- big declines in margins for the Democrats. But also the kind of death by a thousand cuts not only in blue collar places like Racine and Macomb County outside of Detroit, and Scranton, Lackawanna, Kenosha, Bucks, but also in the white collar places where the resistance to Trump has been the greatest. It was just a little nick everywhere.

Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, wasn't quite as good. Delaware wasn't quite as good. Oakland County wasn't quite as good. Yes, Dane County was 75 percent. Waukesha -- she kind of held. But really, across the board -- Chester -- it wasn't quite enough.

And so you kind of look and say OK, what is systematic that transcends racial lines? Joe Biden -- well, first of all -- and I'll come back to gender.

FINNEY: OK.

BROWNSTEIN: The gender gap.

HUNT: Sorry.

BROWNSTEIN: She did not win -- she did not win -- it's the same thing. She did not win women by as much as Joe Biden --

SELLERS: Right.

BROWNSTEIN: -- did or Hillary Clinton did.

KATE BEDDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: White women.

BROWNSTEIN: What transcends it -- no, women -- all women in general. I mean, and white women -- you know, at least in the exit polls, she won them by more. She did better. She did better among college white women.

But what transcends it is Joe Biden's disapproval of 60 percent, you know, pretty much everywhere, and two-thirds of voters in all of the swing states say the economy was fair or poor.

And, you know, as in 2022, she ran a little better than Democrats do among those discontented voters, but not enough to overcome the fact of how many of them there were.

And to your point, then, what we saw in 2022 and what I thought we were going to see last night was in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 80 -- 75 to 80 percent of voters who said they were pro- choice voted for the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in '22. Last night it was only about two-thirds of voters who said they were pro- choice voted for Harris, including --

You know, Trump won more than a quarter of women who said they were pro-choice. And that says to me there's a systematic movement here of discontent about the economy, lack of trust in Democrats to manage it, and a turn toward Trump to do exactly that.

BEDINGFIELD: Yeah. Look, I think that's right, and I think it's also important to level set that globally, this outcome is what we have seen for every head of state who has stood for re-election since the pandemic. I mean, there has been across the board an anti-incumbent sentiment that I think does transcend some of the margins that Trump was able to expand on with different racial groups in this country.

So that's not to say that I don't think the Democrats need to have a soul-searching moment both on messaging, agenda, how they are connecting with people across the country. I also think they need to have a soul-searching moment on campaign tactics. I mean, that's the other piece here. You look --

FINNEY: Um-hum.

BEDINGFIELD: -- at what legacy media and the influence that legacy media had in this race. You look at traditional field.

You know, I will -- I will eat some crow. I sat here with David Urban yesterday. He said a traditional field program doesn't matter and I said I think you're going to regret that. He was right. And I think you can look at the last few presidential elections and even make that argument.

[07:40:00]

So I'm not saying that the Democrats don't have work to do here. And I think -- I think Sen. Rubio made a really interesting point about this being an American realignment as opposed to a purely political realignment. There's opportunity for Democrats to harness this change. But I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that this has been the global sentiment since 2020.

And I think Bakari made the point earlier there was not one tactical decision --

HUNT: Yeah.

BEDINGFIELD: -- that led to this outcome.

SELLERS: No. That's my larger point. There's not one decision that Kamala Harris could have made.

BROWNSTEIN: If you're slipping in Montgomery County in Pennsylvania, and Macomb County in Detroit, and Clark County in Las Vegas, it was beyond tactics.

HUNT: It's everywhere. It's literally everywhere.

BROWNSTEIN: It's structural. It's --

JENNINGS: I mean -- I mean, in the reality, it's just a huge market correction. I mean, I think that Biden ran to end the chaos and calm everything down, and the reality is it seemed more out of control and more divided at the end of this term than it did when he started. So I think when they won, they thought they had a broad, progressive mandate. They went too far and now we have this market correction.

And that's why you're seeing such an even pullback. It's not -- it's not just one group of people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

JENNINGS: Everybody sensed that it was -- they went too far, and it hurt us on the economy. It sent too far on the culture or whatever.

On the tactical issue, I could not agree more. Trump and his people got it dead right. For years in the Republican Party we went on this volume-based ground game. How many calls did you make today? How many doors did you knock on? And it was more about quantity than it was quality.

And they told me early on we're throwing out the old playbook. We're going for quality and we're picking the right targets this time -- the kinds of people who can help Trump change the composition of the electorate. And a lot of people -- a lot of old school Republicans, a lot of old party be like oh, I haven't heard from anybody. Oh my gosh, they're not doing anything.

Well, guess what? Donald Trump, Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, and the rest of these people had it dead right. They threw out the old way, they tried a new way, and everybody sort of made fun of it and poo- pooed it -- and here we are this morning.

SELLERS: I like the fact that I -- you have to give credit to Susie Wiles, and Chris LaCivita, and Jason Miller. Like, you just fundamentally --

JENNINGS: Yeah.

SELLERS: -- do because they worked with what they had. I mean, you had a campaign -- you had a messenger that couldn't really stay on message, and it appeared as if he was falling apart as the race went on. You had moments in this race, like MSG, but they actually kept --

You know, we were saying how disciplined Trump was prior to Biden getting out of the race, and then when Biden got out of the race Trump kind of lost his edge a little bit. And he was 78 years old, and he wasn't the same candidate. But they ran a race that they did what they knew how to do.

I mean, for -- and Ron can -- I would -- I would love to hear his insight on this because one of things that I saw was they said we're just going to gin up rural voters. That's what we know how to do. And if we can go around the country and add two to three percent with rural voters, then we'll beat Kamala Harris and we'll beat everything you can do in urban America.

BROWNSTEIN: And they did, right? But they also did that in urban centers --

SELLERS: They did.

BROWNSTEIN: -- and in suburban -- like, basically, going in you felt there was a pincer movement from Trump. That he was going to, in fact, improve over 2020 in those small-town rural areas, and he did. And you felt that he had a shot at improving in the urban centers because of -- well, primarily because of discontent over the economy, and he did.

But what was there in the middle was the opportunity to do better in Oakland, and Montgomery, and Delaware, and Waukesha --

SELLERS: Yeah.

BROWNSTEIN: -- and Dane. And that didn't happen. Either she did only as well and, in most cases, she lost a little ground.

So it was -- you know, like I said, it was systemic. It was like across the board. And I just have this image in my head if Jimmy Carter had stepped down and Walter Mondale had run against Ronald Reagan in 1980 -- you know, you can't escape. Historically --

SELLERS: We remember that race like it was yesterday.

BROWNSTEIN: I do. When you -- when you have an outgoing president -- when you have an outgoing -- when you have an outgoing who is popular -- like Eisenhower in 1960, Obama in 2016, or Clinton in 2000 -- they cannot guarantee their success or wins. When you have an outgoing president who is unpopular -- Truman in '52, Johnson in '68, Bush in '08 -- it pretty much guarantees the opposite. And it feels like that gravity was just too much to overcome with any personal contrast.

With Trump, you know, Harris didn't do that bad in the exit poll on who you trust on the economy -- minus four. But two-thirds of the voters said the economy was in bad shape. And two-thirds said that in all of the swing states. And Trump won a big percentage, something like 80 percent of people who disapproved of Biden, and that was 55- plus.

HUNT: Remember when I said he was an encyclopedia?

SELLERS: An encyclopedia.

HUNT: There he is.

SELLERS: He's too smart to be on this panel.

HUNT: There he is.

All right, we're going to push pause here. Coming up, Donald Trump's supporters saying they're celebrating tonight's results. It's an understatement. We're going to go live to Trump Tower up next.

You're watching CNN's special live coverage.

[07:45:00]

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BERMAN: Welcome back to CNN's special live coverage.

After a criminal conviction, two assassination attempts, two impeachments, and a race the pollsters said would be close but wasn't really quite as close, Donald Trump is triumphant this morning.

CNN's Polo Sandoval is at Trump Tower. Polo, what are you seeing there so far this morning?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John. Good morning.

Even before sunrise, we did see a very, very small presence of Trump supporters at the foot of Trump Tower here in New York City. I overheard one describing this as history in the making. Really, any way you look at this there certainly is no ignoring just the unprecedented and historic nature of this moment.

So we are likely to see perhaps even more people, both supporters and opponents of Donald Trump, come here to Midtown Manhattan to really have their voices heard outside of Trump Tower, very similar to what we've seen when Donald Trump returns to New York City for his criminal proceedings. So that's certainly something to look forward to in terms of the presence outside of Trump Tower.

[07:50:00]

Security wise, at least on the surface, it is business as usual, though there is no mistake that behind the scenes there's likely some planning that's happening in terms of the NYPD and Secret Service presence as Donald Trump essentially transitions from candidate to projected winner of the presidency. So certainly, some potential changes that we are expecting there.

But for now, again, a very small presence of really a handful of Trump supporters outside of Trump Tower. All of that likely to change as more people wake up this morning to the news that Donald Trump is the projected winner -- John.

BERMAN: Of course, the difference now from 2016 when he first ran, Donald Trump now a Florida resident, not a full-time resident of Trump Tower behind Polo there in Manhattan.

Polo Sandoval, thank you very much.

Let's go over to Phil Mattingly at the magic wall. Polo was in New York and there is actually a story to be told about what happened in New York, though it was a state, as always -- or at least as is always in recent memory that Democrats did win.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: So broadly, New York is one of several northeastern states that Donald Trump overperformed what he had done in 2020 or 2016. It didn't mean he was going to win the state. But if you look at this margin right here, Donald Trump -- Kamala Harris winning by about 11 1/2 points with 94 percent reporting.

Well, let's start with what happened in 2020. Whew, yeah. So a pretty significant shift -- a pretty significant gain from the former president. Where did he gain? This is the most fascinating element of this for me. Which county? So there's 62 counties, John, in the state of New York. I counted them myself just to prove it to myself that was the case.

Thirty-six of them represent places where Donald Trump is overperforming his 2020 results by three percent or better. Not overperformed by a vote -- not by one percent -- by three percent or better. That includes, of course, Nassau County. This was a county that in 2020, Joe Biden won it by 9 1/2 points. Donald Trump flipped it into his favor, leading it with 95 percent reporting, by almost five points. So again, didn't flip the state. He said he might be able to -- didn't. But not unlike New Jersey, not unlike Massachusetts, and not unlike some of the other areas around here, he did much better than he had before. And what that portends going forward I think is going to be an interesting question for Democrats.

BERMAN: Very interesting, indeed.

Phil Mattingly, thank you very much for that.

So the Senate has turned red. The House still up for grabs but seems to be trending in a certain direction. We're going to have much more on the fight for Congress ahead.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:56:15]

BERMAN: All right, welcome back to CNN's special coverage of Election Day now in America.

I'm here with Jessica Dean because while we know Donald Trump is going back to the White House, some parts of Congress decided not all.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. So there are pieces to fill in. And I just think as people are waking up, just to get the full picture, we're going to do a broad overview.

So let's start first with the U.S. Senate and the balance of power. Here's what we do know. Republicans are going to take the Senate. They have done that. They have 52. That includes three pickups. That's where they flipped those Democratic seats.

Now, Democrats with 42 and that includes on Independent. There are six seats remaining. A lot of those are within battleground states, so we're going to continue to monitor those. But we do know for sure Republicans will control the House. So let's -- I'm sorry, the Senate.

Let's now look at the House. The question there is who will be in control? This is where Democrats hope maybe they can hold the line, John. That maybe this is where they can be a check on President Trump. And, of course, Republicans would very much like to maintain their majority because that would mean they would have all the levers of government.

So again, the magic number in the House, 218. Right now, Republicans at 204 with five pickups. Democrats at 182 with two pickups. That means we have 49 seats remaining. And John, as you alluded to, those are kind of spread out all across the country. A lot of those are in California, which we know take a while to count. So we are keeping our eyes on those.

But the big question remains who will control the House.

BERMAN: Yeah. And again, those five pickups though for Republicans --

DEAN: Big.

BERMAN: -- they make it hard for --

DEAN: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- for Democrats. We'll watch that throughout the day, and maybe days.

All right, a headline for the ages. Donald Trump wins. We have much more. This is CNN's special live coverage.

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