Circumstances changed, candidates changed, and they contain multitudes.
So we shouldn't flatten each other out either.
The parties and the campaigns flatten us out, but we shouldn't flatten each other out.
We should see each other's humanity, decency, standing as a fellow child of God or nature, and your fellow American.
And it's very easy to do.
And I will shut up by talking about the same thing I started.
So please, Chris, I think we have time for one more question.
Why don't you pick someone, a lucky person in the audience for our last question?
We'll go, yeah, right up front.
You're right here.
Michael Washura, in the campaign, was there anything that you heard Donald Trump say that you believe he believes is more or less an approximation of the genuine truth?
And if yet, yes, what was it?
So everyone forgets that Donald Trump, this was Donald Trump's fourth run for the presidency.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He ran in 2000 for the reform, briefly, for the Reform Party nomination.
Okay, Ross Perot's venue.
What did Ross Perot want?
Ross Perot wanted to cut off trade with NAFTA.
He thought NAFTA was a disaster.
He wanted to bring back trade.
The guy who won the nomination that year is Pat Buchanan.
Was Pat Buchanan's shtick build a wall?
I think immigration and trade are things that are actually core beliefs of Donald Trump that he's 100% sincere about.
Beyond that, I don't know.
And we're getting ready to, how about this?
We're getting ready to find out.
The Wall Street Journal doesn't do endorsements, but in the piece that the Wall Street Journal wrote, basically endorsing Trump, they said he's crazy and dangerous, but we think he's probably bad at it, right?
We think he probably will be ineffective at doing this, but we think that Kamala Harris will be extraordinarily effective at doing the things that she wants to do, which are maybe less dangerous, but she'll get it done.
Donald Trump will fail to achieve the things that he wants.
Part of the reason that Donald Trump won is that when Democrats said he's going to have a mass deportation force, he's going to do this, he's going to do that, people said, well, he was president, he said he was going to do all kinds of stuff.
I don't know that voters take Trump either literally or neither literally nor seriously, right?
I think he's become a hood ornament for a Republican Party.
In the United States, we have a gas pedal party and we have a break party.
And the break party is the one that says too much, too fast, I don't like it, pull back.
And I think that's what they were voting for.
We'll find out literally as we walk out of here, we will start to find out which Donald Trump do we have?
And I have no idea, and I don't think anybody else does either, whether he's going to be the guy who Democrats have been warning about, that we read about, or is he going to be sort of this ineffectual would-be guy that the Wall Street Journal describes?
I don't know.
Well, it's been a long year.
We've had a number of Election Watch in our series.
We've seen some of you come back again and again.
We'd like to thank our panel.
What a wonderful ending to this to have Sean Trendi and Nathan Gonzalez with us, but also appropriately the founder of Election Watch going to the beginning, Carlin Bowman.
Thank you Pam.
Thank you.
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Coming up, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell holding a press conference with reporters after Republicans won a majority in the Senate.
From Capitol Hill, this is about 20 minutes.
Well, good morning, everyone.
This is certainly a happy day for the GOP.
And let me start by congratulating President Trump on what he's accomplished.
It's not been done, as all of you know, since Grover, Cleveland, which was a while back.
I also want to commend the Trump campaign for running a sharper operation this time, and I think Chris Lasabita and Susie Wiles deserve a lot of credit.
They ran a spectacular race.
With regard to the Senate, you guys know how long I've been around.
I had really hoped I'd be able to hand over to my successor, the majority.
I've been the majority leader, I've been the minority leader.
Majority is a lot better.
And I think based on the fact that we haven't got all the results in, we certainly already know we're going to be in the majority.
We're hopeful that that might actually grow some.
And I want to give particular credit to Steve Daines.
I had that job at the NRSC a few years back.
I've never seen a better performance.
He focused on getting quality candidates, making sure they actually got the nomination.
And as I said, to some criticism, candidate quality is absolutely essential.
I also am proud of the job that Senate Leadership Fund and its related groups did.
Overall, they were able to raise $425 million, and they made decisions to invest in, I think, all the right places.
I'll just run it down for you.
They spent $29 million in Maryland, $42 million in Michigan, $60 million in Montana, $3.3 million in Nebraska, $12.8 million in Nevada, $133 million in Ohio,
$82.7 million in Pennsylvania, $30 million in Wisconsin, and 3 million in West Virginia.
So clearly what they were doing over there is focusing on the places where we had the best chance to win.
And I think the results pretty much prove they made a lot of wise decisions.
So with that, I'll be happy to see what you want to talk about.
Good morning, Ms. Lee.
Thank you.
Senate Republicans will have 54, 55, maybe even 56 seats before this is done.
You have been an advocate of maintaining the filibuster, the former president, now the president elect.
You know, I'm glad you raised it.
And what will you do outside of the leadership now to continue to advocate on that if there are forces here who try to get rid of it?
I'm really glad you raised that.
I should have covered that before.
I think one of the most gratifying results of the Senate becoming Republican, the filibuster will stand.
There won't be any new states admitted that give a partisan advantage to the other side.
And we'll quit beating up the Supreme Court every time we don't like a decision they make.
So I think this shifting to a Republican Senate majority helps control the guardrails to keep people who want to change the rules in order to achieve something they think is worthwhile is not successful.
And so I think the filibuster is very secure.
Leader McConnell, practically speaking, what does having a 52 or 53 seat majority mean for getting Trump's agenda through the Senate compared to a 50 or 51 seat?
And does this mean maybe you expand the agenda beyond the Trump tax cuts to explore other things and what might those things be?
Well, we hear optimistic reports of what may have happened in the House.
And obviously, if you were going to legitimately work around the filibuster, it would be through reconciliation.
And so I think we'd be obviously more successful if we flipped the House.
And Speaker, I think, put out a statement saying he's optimistic.
I hope that's the case.
Leader McConnell.
In March, you blamed former President Trump, President-elect Trump, and his inner circle on the delay to Ukraine aid.
Are you confident that he is the best person to deter our adversaries?
Yeah, look, I'm here this morning to talk about the election, and I think I'm going to largely confine it to that.
Mr. McConnell?
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about what you expect your role to be next year when you're not in leadership?
I know you've talked about foreign policy.
You've got JD Vance as the vice president.
He's obviously got diverging views from you on foreign policy.
What is your role going to be over the next two years?
Okay.
I'm not going to speculate about what anybody else may be doing.
I thought your question was what I was going to be doing.
I'm going to concentrate on defense and foreign policy.
I think this is the most dangerous time since right before World War II.
Our adversaries, North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Iran, and Iran's proxies are all talking to each other.
They have one thing in common.
They hate us and they want to diminish our role in the world.
It may seem old-fashioned to some, but I'm still a Reagan Republican who thinks that America's role in the world is absolutely indispensable.
Even if you're concerned about cost, it would be interesting to know that at the height of World War II, 37% of our gross domestic product was being spent on the war.
37%.
And we lost over 400,000 Americans.
The Reagan buildup, without a shot being fired, was about 6% of GDP.
We're currently spending 2.7%.
We need to ramp up defense spending in order to prevent a direct conflict with our adversaries.
It's a lot cheaper to prevent war than it is to have one.
And so that's the focus I'm going to have for the next couple of years.
Senator.
Leader McConnell, will you do you plan to chair the Appropriations Subcommittee of the Defense Subcommittee?
I haven't made a decision.
I'm hoping as a former leader, you guys will care what I think anyway, and I don't think it'll have anything to do with committee assignments.
Are you anticipating any moves from the Democrats in the lame duck weeks coming up here?
Well, we are going to have to finish, figure out how to finish up the year, and that always involves a conversation between Senator Schumer and myself as to how we wrap it up, but those conversations haven't started yet.
Just a week before this election, your biography was released.
Your biography was released, and it included a lot of sharp criticisms of President Trump.
Do you stand by those criticisms?
Yeah, I'm not here to do a book review this morning.
Next week, your colleagues will choose the next majority leader.
What should they take away from last night when they vote for the next leader?
What can I take from last night?
What should your colleagues take from last night when they choose the next leader?
Candidate quality is essential.
Absolutely essential.
And I think we had the best candidates everywhere yesterday.
You've been the majority leader in this situation with narrow majorities in the House and Senate.
How challenging do you think it's going to be to keep the Republican Party together if you end up with full control?
Well, you're a bit a student of history, Burgess.
Since senators became popularly elected in 1914, my party's never had more than 55.
Democrats had massive majorities during the 30s, during LBJ, during Barack Obama.
So obviously the higher we get, the better, but this is not 60 votes, which is what they had at the beginning of President Obama.
So I think we did pretty well with narrow majorities during the previous administration.
Three new Supreme Court justices, 54 new circuit judges, comprehensive 30-year overdue tax reform.
Yeah, I mean, it's harder, but I think we were successful before with a narrow majority, and I think we will be again.