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Former President Donald Trump (soundbite)

00:00:03

(Crowd cheering) Well, I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this....

David Rind (host)

00:00:10

And for all the talk of election week and days and days of counting. Election night was a decisive show of force for former President Donald Trump. And CNN projects he will win the White House, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and completing a historic political comeback.

Former President Donald Trump (soundbite)

00:00:29

So wanna to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president.

David Rind (host)

00:00:41

Donald Trump is a convicted felon. He was impeached twice, the first time he was president. He tried to overturn a free and fair election. And yet, after all that, he outperformed his 2020 results, adding to his base. And now Donald Trump is headed back to the White House. My guest is CNN national political reporter Daniel Strauss. We're going to break down where Vice President Kamala Harris fell short and what this moment means for the future of American democracy from CNN. This is one thing I'm David Rind.

00:01:24

And can you say something again? I'm hearing.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:01:27

Something again.

David Rind (host)

00:01:28

There you go. That's good. That's good. That's. That's the humor I like. Daniel. Hello.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:01:35

Hello, David.

David Rind (host)

00:01:37

It is 237 in the morning, and Donald Trump just came out to address his supporters down in Florida. He, as we sit here, is that 266 electoral votes. Of course, he needs 270. CNN has projected Pennsylvania in his column. So I guess, first of all, how did this night play out? How did we get here?

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:02:04

Well, we started going into this night with both campaigns expecting a very tight race and that this race would be decided by very slim margins. But I guess the big warning sign was Georgia, where it became clear pretty quickly that Donald Trump was not only meeting his marks in the rural part of the state, he had improved upon how well he could do there compared to previous election cycles and previous times he had ran. And this was a pretty foreboding sign for Democrats because they really hadn't conceived that Trump would, after all of this, not only hit his marks and hit the same level of support that he had in the past, but also surpass it.

David Rind (host)

00:02:57

So early on. Like, the trends were not good for the Harris camp.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:03:02

'No. There was no upset. There was no steady indicator that this was going to be an easy win for Harris. And that's something that they had caveated and said they expected. But it was never ideal for them to have to depend on the so-called blue wall states. They were hoping at least, that they could be on enough on offense on this map, similar to past successful Democratic nominees for president like Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

David Rind (host)

00:03:34

So besides Georgia, this overperformance for Trump compared to his last run in 2020, like how else did that manifest?

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:03:42

I mean, I can't, David, I cannot... Answer this question without focusing on the blue wall states. These are states that Trump had that Democrats had expected to at least compete to the bitter end, Don. But it became very clear that Trump was going to run up his margins among the types of voters that they had bet this election on in Wisconsin and in Pennsylvania. And that's really the ballgame. He only needed one of those states, plus the Sun Belt states to lock this thing up. And I just want to stress here that it also became clear throughout the night that he had made gains not only with working class whites and rural areas of the country, but also with Latinos in particular.

David Rind (host)

00:04:33

Yeah, I was going to say, like, what kind of support was he picking up that maybe they weren't totally banking on going into the night?

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:04:43

You know, it was across the board. It was not just among men. It is also suburbanites and suburban women, too. He did not underperform or really lose the kind of support that Democrats in the Harris campaign had really hoped for.

David Rind (host)

00:04:59

That's interesting that, like, those are the people the Harris campaign were like, if we need anybody to turn out in big numbers, it's those suburban women.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:05:06

Yeah. And let me stress here, that wasn't just sort of a pie in the sky. Never before done. There was evidence behind that. We've seen over the past few years women really elevating Democratic candidates when abortion is on the ballot or they feel that that topic is front and center. But that just didn't manifest tonight.

David Rind (host)

00:05:28

So that that historic gender gap we heard about in the run up to this election, you're saying it wasn't quite as stark as we thought it might be.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:05:38

It was not as favorable to Democrats as they really needed it to be.

David Rind (host)

00:05:56

Well for Kamala Harris, then, is there any one thing we can point to with still votes being counted in some states as to why the vice president wasn't able to keep pace with President Biden's performance in 2020? Is it just being so tied to Biden himself in the first place?

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:06:14

I wouldn't even say that it's about being tied to Biden himself in the first place. I think it's that Carville saying that it's the economy, stupid, and she was tied too closely to an administration that Americans feel was not sufficient in helping them on the economy.

David Rind (host)

00:06:33

It's like when people said they were paying too much and they were sick of it, like they weren't joking.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:06:37

No, they weren't joking. And honestly, even now, I can say confidently, voters did not feel that they had a good grasp about how Harris would help them on the economy compared to Trump. There is a strong association with Donald Trump's presidency, especially before Covid and a healthy economy compared to now. And that's despite a lot of indicators that suggests the opposite. But that's just how voters feel. And, David, I just want to also one one other thing that is very reminiscent of 2016 here is that there are like in 2016, there were bread crumbs around the world suggesting that Democrats were in more than a slightly uncomfortable place. You know, incumbent parties in other countries have been punished for their economic outlook. And I this is something that I've tried to pay attention to since 2016. Voters, when they have the chance to vote, really associate and really blame whichever party is in power right now with the economy that they are presiding over.

David Rind (host)

00:07:50

Well, then I guess with that said, should we interpret the results as we see them at this point as a symbol of Trump's power? Or is it more of that just frustration with the party in power currently?

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:08:06

I think I mean, we gonna see the coming days. Exactly...

David Rind (host)

00:08:11

Or is it too early to even say?

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:08:13

Well, I think what what is clear is that the kneejerk response for Democrats is not to say that Harris was a flawed candidate, more that the headwinds were so advantageous to Trump. And also privately, you're not going to find Republicans truthfully saying that his campaign this time around was flawlessly executed. More so that they just rode on headwinds that were strongly in their favor.

Former President Donald Trump (soundbite)

00:08:44

America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the Senate; Wow, that's....

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:08:59

We should also note here that the results we're seeing trickled down to not just Democrats in tight races, but Democrats who've won in battleground states time after time and had built and cultivated really strong brands like in Montana and Ohio, where Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown, the pride of Democrats who were have experience winning tough races have both been replaced.

David Rind (host)

00:09:32

Right? Republicans taking back the Senate. The House, still very close, Could take some time to sort that out. I mean, some of this anger and dissatisfaction with, you know, the Biden administration, the economy like that seems clear across the electorate. And it's a message that seems to resonate. So I guess, you know, can we expect to hear more of that darkness, that negativity with another Trump term.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:10:00

If anything there? This is a more emboldened Trump. There is no question about his win. He is on track to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College, ending a two decade winning streak for Democrats of the raw vote of Americans.

David Rind (host)

00:10:19

I mean, that's really worth putting on, right? That's stunning.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:10:21

Yeah, it is stunning because this is something, frankly, that even the Republican Party did not expect to happen. There has not been strong, realistic discussion in the past few cycles of any sort of salvation where they could win the raw popular vote. It has always been about the Electoral College. But this is the election that seems to be changing that. You know what's also clear, David, is that since Trump lost the 2020 election, he has promised and vowed revenge. And there's nothing right now discouraging him from that. There is very little there are very little guardrails that can keep him from exacting the revenge he feels he deserves. And it's really hard to tell what kind of people he plans to put around him that could keep him in check on some of his impulses that Democrats have warned about for a while.

David Rind (host)

00:11:23

Well, yeah. I mean, how should we think about Trump and Trumpism, this movement, which has been around for almost a decade now, and in those years, there's been talk by some of the left that Trumpism is just a fad or this bizarre blip in American history. He said it after Biden's win in 2020 and kind of after the Democratic midterm wins in 2022. But I guess it seems clear to me that after tonight, like this isn't going away.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:11:51

What's clear about the election results tonight: his base stuck with him; bet sticking with him despite a large Republican primary field, would ultimately lead them to victory. And these election results tonight confirm that there is no sign that Republicans feel the party needs to move on. As you know, strategist told me at the beginning of the cycle or turn the page.

Former President Donald Trump (soundbite)

00:12:19

They said that, many people have told me, that God spared my life for a reason. 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.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:12:43

This is the party of Trump. More so than ever. And it's pretty clear that the movement is more important than the usual sort of markers and resumes that for decades voters have leaned on in picking a candidate.

David Rind (host)

00:13:01

Yeah, I mean, no matter what the final electoral vote count turns out to be or who wins the popular vote, it's clear that movement is here to stay for now at least. Well, Daniel, thanks so much for breaking this down for us at this late hour. I appreciate it.

Daniel Strauss (CNN reporter)

00:13:17

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

David Rind (host)

00:13:26

One thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paolo Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Faiz Jamil Matt Dempsey as our production manager. Dan de Zula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manzarek, Robert Mathers, John Deer, Nora Cleaning Steinhart, Jamie Andres, Nicole Passthrough and Lisa Amaral. Special thanks to Zack Cohen, Ross Levitt, John Pomeranz, Wendy Brundage and Katie Hinman. I'll talk to you later.

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