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Trump Transition Team Sets Up Operation In West Palm Beach, F.L.; Trump Wins, GOP Takes Senate, House Still Up For Grabs. Aired 5- 5:30p ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 17:00   ET

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

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[17:00:40]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome to CNN's special coverage of Election Day in America continued. I'm Anderson Cooper.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Dana Bash.

Just moments ago, at her alma mater here in Washington, Howard University, Vice President Harris spoke to supporters after conceding the race to Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hear me when I say the light of America's promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting. While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: President Biden also spoke this afternoon with president- elect, congratulating him on what was obviously a decisive victory, 291 electoral votes so far to Harris' 223. The president-elect shaping up to win the popular vote as well. Now, we still have four states left to project, Arizona, Nevada, Maine and Alaska. Michigan was called for him this afternoon, giving him a sweep of the blue wall states.

BASH: And as for Congress, Anderson, Republicans are now leading the race to keep control of the House with 207 of the 218 seats they need to and 40 are still in flux there. The election also puts the GOP back on top in the Senate with three pickups for them so far, meaning that when all is said and done, the president-elect could have both a mandate and both chambers of Congress to help him carry it out.

COOPER: And Dana, that certainly speaks the central question from here on out, namely, what happens next, from the transition to what the new cabinet will look like to the criminal and civil cases against the president-elect. We'll talk about it throughout this hour.

First to CNN's Abby Phillip and Jeff Zeleny at Howard University with Vice President just spoke. Abby, we heard her concession speech was ran about 12 minutes long, as John King pointed out, leaving the door open for perhaps some sort of future political life for her.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I mean, I think that that is exactly what this speech was, Anderson. It was a moment for her to close this particular chapter to speak to all of the people who were gathered here, who are -- millions who are watching at home who put their hopes in her at a particularly vulnerable time for the Democratic Party, when suddenly over the summer, her running mate at the time, President Biden, was unceremoniously kicked off of the ticket and she became the nominee. I think it's hard to understate how -- it's hard to overstate how much of a vibe change Vice President Harris represented when she got on that ticket. And this moment, because of that high, feels like such a low letdown for so many people here.

One of the things, though, Anderson and Jeff, that I noted in this speech, it was driven, as she said, by the ideas that animated this campaign, which were about democracy, the threat that Donald Trump, she said, posed to this country. But I have to wonder, after the results that we saw last night, voters seemed to say that maybe they get it, they understand it, they think that he doesn't have the best character, but there were other issues that were animating them, and she did not address that. She did not address how the Democratic Party claws back from that hole that they are now in.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: She did not. And look, one of the things that has been hanging over this is the fact that she was running during the Biden administration as his vice president. It was a fight to be the candidate of change. That was always going to be so difficult for someone who literally works just down the hall from President Biden, whose approval rating was really disastrously low, at least politically speaking. So she did not address that.

However, if she would run again. So it's far too soon to know. I'm thinking back to the 2000 campaign, people thought Al Gore would run again. He thought about it.

He ended up not in 2004. So we shall see. She is a young politician. I would argue that she has elevated her standing in this presidential race, which is not always the case. As vice president, she was sort of unknown. Now she has a following.

[17:05:00]

I was struck by when she said it's OK to feel sad and disappointed, sometimes the fight takes a while. She was talking to the youth in this crowd, but also talking to Democrats. Democrats do feel sad, and they do feel disappointed. So how this goes from here, how the party really studies it's disconnect with large swathes of America, is going to be very interesting.

But in terms of a concession speech, I was struck by the graciousness of it and the fact that she said we will work with the peaceful transition of power. And that is not -- it sounds obvious, but in this moment it's not. And I think that was striking.

COOPER: Jeff, just in terms of what happens now, the -- I mean, obviously folks in the Trump campaign are already working on the transition, looking at who's going to be in what positions.

ZELENY: Without question. I mean, this is something that eight years ago the Trump campaign was not expecting to win. This time they were hoping to and were expecting more to win.

Abby and I both covered the Trump administration, we remember well the jockeying that goes on behind the scenes. It is happening furiously for cabinet positions. So that will be extraordinary. But the president-elect has a much a better sense of what running this government is like, perhaps for good or bad. But I do think that the hiring process, this transition of power, is always an interesting season in Washington.

It comes on the fifth season every four years, and I think this will be an extraordinary moment to see who he surrounds himself with. Four years ago, as we covered this administration coming in, there were adults in the room, so to speak, and a lot of sort of titans of business and others. That is not likely to be the case this time.

PHILLIP: Many fewer guardrails. You know, that really underscores one of the things that is underneath the surface here, especially for the left. There are people who are afraid.

ZELENY: Right.

PHILLIP: Actually afraid --

ZELENY: Right.

PHILLIP: -- because Donald Trump has promised that the very first thing he is going to do, for example, is to carry out a mass deportation campaign. There are American citizens who have family members who could get caught up in that. He has made promises to go after his political enemies. There are things that Trump has promised to do that, frankly, don't have anything to do with the economy, but those are the things that are at the top of the agenda. And the results last night were not just at the top of the ticket.

You've got a Senate that is going to be Republican, and it's already a Congress that is very much more Trumpian than it was when Trump became president in 2016. So he's going to have a long rope to put his acolytes into positions of power. He's going to have a better understanding of the government. And that is the reality of 2024 that is very different from 2016. And you can sense among Harris' supporters that they understand that there's not going to be a benefit of a doubt given to Trump as he goes into this presidency. They are preparing themselves from day one for what could be very entrenched period of pushback against Donald Trump and his allies in Washington.

COOPER: All right, Abby, Jeff, thanks. Dana, back to you.

BASH: Anderson, as we mentioned at the top, President Biden and President-elect Trump also spoke today. We learned that Mr. Biden will address the nation tomorrow. CNN's Kayla Tausche is at the White House for us.

First, Kayla, what do we expect to hear from the president tomorrow and what did you hear about the conversation he had not only with Donald Trump but of course with his vice president?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the conversations were very brief. They were very high level. A White House official said that President Biden congratulated the vice president on what he described as a historic campaign. And as for the conversation with now President-elect Donald Trump, President Biden talked about being a president for all people and ushering in a peaceful transition of power. And those are some of themes that we're expecting President Biden touch on tomorrow when he delivers this address.

Despite some of the more piercing rhetoric from the campaign trail recent weeks, we expect the president to talk about how he was a president for all people and he expects Donald Trump to be the same, how he will uphold democracy, which is, of course, one of the core pillars of what he ran on protecting back in 2020 and frequently revisited throughout the course of the last four years. Now, clearly it is not a bittersweet moment for President Biden. It is expected to be quite bitter as he delivers this address in a race he believed that he could have won. Whether that -- there's any tinge of that in his remarks, we don't expect there to be. We expect him to be on script and speaking at a high level. But of course, we'll see when he actually delivers them, Dana?

BASH: Yes, I mean, you sort of alluded to this. This is obviously a fraught dynamic here because President Biden, as you said, still believed that he could have beaten Donald Trump. He was sort of unceremoniously removed, even though he said he did it on his own. What are you hearing from his advisers about what's going on there behind the scenes?

[17:10:17]

TAUSCHE: Well, Dana, there are three schools of thought that have sort of emerged in the light of day after the results have come in, and not just come in, but shown a landslide and decisive victory of sorts for Biden's predecessor that he really ran a campaign directly against. And those three schools of thoughts are as follows. The first is perhaps Biden should have just remained the candidate. He had that strong coalition in the blue wall of white working class voters that helped tip the race to his favor in 2020 and that carried Donald Trump in 2016. Perhaps he would have been able to carry that out.

Then there's the school of thought that perhaps blame should be placed on former President Barack Obama for anointing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, who effectively pushed Biden out of the race this time around, with aides saying that, you know, it was essentially the party's most powerful that told Biden that he needed to step aside. They said that any other Democrat could beat Donald Trump. And clearly they say that was not the case. And then there's a final school of thought that is perhaps they just didn't fully grasp just how unpopular President Biden was. They believed that the data would eventually play out in voter sentiment, that President Biden's approval rating did not accurately reflect how people actually felt on the ground. But Dana, as we know, voters are never wrong. They have this opportunity to speak their mind, to cast their ballots and show where their priorities are. And that is the source of a lot of reckoning for the Biden team in the light of day.

BASH: Yes. And it's pretty clear their priority was with inflation and the economy. Kayla, thank you so much. Anderson.

COOPER: Dana, thanks.

Joining us now is Bryan Lanza, senior adviser to the Trump 2024 campaign.

Bryan, you were obviously part of President-elect Trump's first transition team. I'm wondering what you're hearing about the team that's being put together now. What do we know?

BRYAN LANZA, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP 2024 CAMPAIGN: First of all, thank you, Anderson, for having me on. Listen, we're attracting the best and the brightest this country has. I think the transition team has done a good job, you know, sort of staying behind the scenes in the last couple months and sort of gathering a list of people who want to work in the administration, who want to serve this country in a positive way. And now we're going through the process of reviewing, doing the necessary background searches we have. We're excited to have so many people, so many people excited to be part of this administration and unifying the country.

So I think what you're going to see from this transition, you know, is going to be a unified front. And, you know, President Trump and Kamala Harris spoke a little bit earlier. It was a very gracious phone call that the vice president gave, and the president was very clear she thought she ran a strong campaign and she was very tenacious in the process. And, you know, she also mentioned she wanted to work with the president to unify the country. So I think from the transition, who wants to display a unified front, and also from the relationship that he has with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, we're looking to have a unified relationship with the country in January.

COOPER: There are documents that the president-elect needs to sign to unlock transition activities of the Trump administration can kind of hit the ground running. Do you know if President-elect Trump has signed those yet? Because I understand there were several deadlines that his team had skipped.

LANZA: Listen, those are sort of the technical processes of transition. Our understanding is that they're not legally required to be signed, but they're in negotiations. They're having conversations, are looking forward to finalizing the member of an memorandum of understanding. But let's be clear, Anderson, it's not a legal requirement for the sign -- for the campaign or the transition to sign anything with the government. We're working and cooperating in unison to make sure we cross the necessary thresholds so that our people can be briefed properly with national security background information and so that we can hit the ground running.

But let's be clear, it is not a legal requirement to sign a memorandum of understanding with the government for this transition.

COOPER: I remember when George W. Bush was elected and talked about the mandate that he had. This is probably as close to a sweeping mandate as a president-elect could have asked for. You know, having control of both the Senate potentially, it seems, on the way to have control of -- keeping control of the House as well. What do you expect to see in the first hundred days?

LANZA: Listen, it's very much a mandate for common sense. What we expect to see for the first hundred days is people focused on affordability. The American people want to do something with respect to affordability. They've been wiped out. They've suffered from that tremendously through the policies of the previous administration, and we're going to focus on that.

We're also going to focus on securing the border. That's very common sense to the common people. They want to understand, you know, a country that's so welcome of immigration. Why are people breaking our laws to get here? And more importantly, why is our government not doing anything about it?

So as we go forward with this common sense mandate that we have, we're going to be addressing the issues that we talked about at campaign in a straight faith, forward way. But we're also going to make sure that American people understand. We understand their priorities, we appreciate their vote, and we're going to go forward in a common sense approach with the mandate to make sure that we hit everything right, that the people -- that the promises the president made are kept.

[17:15:07]

COOPER: There were -- obviously the former president, the president- elect ran on this idea of mass deportations, there were people at the Republican convention holding up signs that were printed out for that. Do you know how that -- what is the plan for that?

LANZA: Well, let's be clear. When we talk about this mass deportation, it has to do with illegal aliens. We're not doing anything with legal residents or people who are here legally. It's people who are here illegally is going to be the approach with mass deportation. Now, we've always said it, the president has said it before, there's going to be a staged process.

There's going to be a phase in. The easiest people to target are the criminals, the people who here have committed violent crimes illegally that are still here. You know, that's going to be step one. And once we sort of understand what step -- once we sort of understand how step one moves forward, we'll understand -- we'll move to the next layer. But let's be clear to the American people, we are going to deport illegal aliens who have broken our laws and who have been violent to our people. COOPER: Bryan Lanza, I appreciate your time.

Coming up next, CNN's John King at the magic wall breaks down the magnitude of the Trump victory. And later, more on what we're learning about the transition as our special CNN election coverage continues.

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[17:20:02]

BASH: This is CNN special coverage of election night in America continued but not continued by much. It is Wednesday and we already know who will be the next president. And a short time ago, Kamala Harris brought her campaign to a formal close in front of supporters at Howard University right here in Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: And the fight for our country is always worth it. It is always worth it.

To the young people who are watching, it is -- I love you. To the young people who are watching, it is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it's going to be OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's John King is at the magic wall.

John, we still have a few states that are outstanding and that could actually make Donald Trump's victory even bigger.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Could make it bigger, could -- you know, could shrink some things. We'll see how it plays out.

A couple things to look at from when I went off the air at 4:00 this morning, number one, Donald Trump still leads by 4.8 million votes in the popular vote. There are some Democrats who say, you know, California takes actually sometimes a couple weeks to finish its count because of mail-in ballots. New York State sometimes takes a long time to count. There are some Democrats out there holding out what I guess is a last gap, hope that somehow she might catch up in the popular vote. But 4.8 million is a pretty strong lead.

We'll watch and see if that happens. And remember, Donald Trump lost the popular vote in both of his previous runs. So that is a trophy not only does Donald Trump like to have, but inside his campaign, they're already talking about this as part of a mandate, you win the popular vote as well.

Look at the map. I mean, your eyes don't lie, there's not really much I have to say. When you look at this map and you see all that red and especially where you see it. All right, those are the blue wall states. Donald Trump flipped them in 2016, that was the wow then. Well, he flipped them back again. Joe Biden got them blue in 2020, now they're back. This is going to be the conversation about Democrats. These states have voted together since 1992. They voted blue in all of those elections except two, 2016 and yesterday.

So Democrats are going to have a conversation there. And they have Democratic governors in all three of them. They're going to lead that conversation about how do we pick up the pieces and move forward. But that's big for Donald Trump. And then the conversation has been, well, the demographics are changing in the Sunbelt.

So North Carolina, it already was diverse. Now it's becoming more college educated, Democrats should be able to win it. Donald Trump took it back. Georgia, Joe Biden took it only by 11,000 votes, but Donald Trump took it back again. Big black population, Democratic foundation, more college educated voters, more diverse should be able to win it, they didn't. And then we're not finished out here, but Donald Trump gets Arizona back.

And even Hillary Clinton won Nevada in 2016. Again, we're not done, but if -- look, I can just go in and take this away and look at where we are in the counts right now. In Arizona, it's 106,000 votes. Remember how narrow that was in 2020 and in Nevada. Again, they take a while to finish the count, but it's 64,000 votes.

So if you look at the map, it's incredibly impressive. And if you go county by county and you look -- you can look, you know, inside Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Donald Trump running stronger, those areas are going to stay blue. They're not going to change. But it's just a sweeping victory no matter how you look at it. And so I just want to come into one state, Michigan, right.

And you look here, spent a lot of time here in the campaign. This actually came back a bit from last night. Last night we were talking about -- what about the youth vote in places like Washtenaw County where the University of Michigan is, the Democrats as the votes were counted, did come back some, see it's 71 percent right there compared to 73 percent for Joe Biden. So it did get better. It didn't get back to Biden levels, but it got better as the count continued in.

But here are the places the Democrats are going to autopsy. And it's actually kind of striking. When I first started doing this, Macomb County, Michigan was home of the Reagan Democrats. Right? How did Ronald Reagan win those union autoworkers?

Right? Well, now the conversation is how is Donald Trump not only winning but building support among union autoworkers? That's 2020. You come back to 202, he's at 56 percent in Macomb County. So Democrats are going to have a conversation about how do we appeal to farmers, how do we appeal to people who work with their hands, how do we appeal to all of the people, not only in farm state America and prairie America, but industrial state America? The Democrats have a problem.

But let's flip it, Donald Trump won the election and he was right last night to say the American people have given him a mandate. He's going to probably win the popular vote, he's going to be over 300 in the Electoral College, that is a mandate. The question is, what does he do with it? And you know this better than I he'll have a Republican Senate, we're not sure about the Congress, but this is a resounding victory especially after, again, the conversations we were having just after the Biden inauguration were that Donald Trump was done. Donald Trump is not done.

He's coming back, and he's coming back with a giant wind at his back.

BASH: Yes. I mean, it is a comeback that is really astonishing. No question about that. John, thanks. Anderson.

COOPER: Dana, thanks very much.

John, just mentioned the House. CNN's Manu Raju has a CNN projection to bring us into the House race. Manu.

[17:25:01]

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Anderson, CNN can now project a Republican pickup in the race for the House, representing the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, Republican GOP state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie defeating the incumbent Democratic Congressman Susan Wild in that district. It was a district that Joe Biden narrowly carried in 2020, a bellwether district and a big GOP pickup.

We also have a prediction out of New Mexico where there's a Democratic polled in that race, Gabriel Vasquez, the incumbent Democratic congressman holding onto his seat, fending off a challenge from Republican Yvette Harrell in that race. Now, what does this all mean and who's leading in which districts at this key moment in the race for the House? Well, Democrats have some advantages and Republicans do as well. Democrats are leading in a handful of states and Republican -- and districts and Republicans are leading in a handful of other districts. But in order to win back majority control of the House, Democrats need to get -- we have a net of four, a four seats altogether.

Right now, as you see, Republicans are leading in two Democratic districts. In order to get a full majority in the United States House, there needs to be 218 seats to get that majority. But at the moment, the Democrats have a bit of a fraught path to that majority given the fact that Republicans have picked up a net of six seats so far. They're -- but potentially could pick up a couple more. Democrats may pick up a few as well that may not meet the net four seats to get the majority.

Which is why at the moment, Anderson, both the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is projecting confidence that the GOP will hold the House. They're not ready to project that yet, but their path to the majority for the Democrats at the moment is complicated. Anderson.

COOPER: Manu Raju, we're following closely.

Just ahead, President Obama breaking his silence, coming out with a new statement. Also, go back to Florida for an update on the transition process ahead. And more reaction to Trump's win and Vice President Harris' concession speech.

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