or things like that, I think it would have gone a really long way.
It could have helped change, you know, it could have addressed more concerns that people had about the economy.
That was Rebecca in Maryland in our last call for this first hour.
Up next, reporters Dave Weigel of Semaphore and Scott Wong of NBC News are going to join us to break down the political and policy impact of the election results as Republicans unify their control of the White House, Senate, and potentially the House.
We'll be right back.
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Joining us now to discuss the political and policy impact of a unified Republican control of the White House Senate and potentially the House is Semaphore National Political Reporter Dave Weigel and NBC News senior congressional reporter Scott Wong.
Welcome both of you to the program.
Thank you for being with us.
Play to be here.
We'll start with where we were, what we were talking about in our first segment, and that is the blame game that's going on among Democrats because of resulting from those Vice President Harris losing the election.
What are each of you hearing?
Dave, we'll start with you.
Many things in different directions, some of them contradicting each other.
This is not like 2016 where a lot of Democrats could say if James Comey hadn't put his letter out, we would have won the election.
You've had Bernie Sanders say that Democrats abandoned the working class, which angered a lot of Democrats because Biden incorporated a lot of Sanders' ideas.
And Sanders praised him for really up until Tuesday night, praised their record, said it was what they need to do for working class voters.
You've seen a couple of Democrats already talk about how the party never answered questions about quote-unquote biological males and girls' sports.
This is an issue that Democrats really could ignore in past elections.
And this time, Republicans spent, between president and all these races down ballot, about $215 million on those issues, different impermutations of those issues.
And some blame for the campaign, but a lot of Democrats are waking up and look at these numbers, waking up a couple days later.
Turnout was very good for Harris in the key states.
They actually hit Biden's 2020 numbers in these key states.
This shift that they saw with working class voters, non-white working class voters, none of them say this is what we should have done to fix that.
They don't know yet.
And I agree with Dave completely that it's sort of all of the above, you know, and people are still digesting this election, still processing, still, the Democrats especially are still grieving over what has just transpired over the course of this week.
Economy is at the top of everybody's mind because Trump really hammered home an economic message, you know, citing Ronald Reagan, are you better off than you were 40 years ago?
Those words resonated with the American public.
People are feeling it in their pocketbooks.
They're feeling it with housing prices at the grocery store.
Democrats kept saying, look at all of the policies that we have done for the American people.
You know, infrastructure, prescription drug prices, CHIPS Act goes down the line.
Yes, they did accomplish a lot, but people were not feeling the impact of those legislative successes.
And so I did see one House Democrat, Jerry Connolly, quoted in my old publication, The Hill, where he said, we need to bring James Carville back.
And if you remember, James Carville said, it's about the economy, stupid.
And so there's going to be a lot of hand-wringing in these next few weeks and months.
But I think one big takeaway is Democrats need to shift back to an economic message and an economic message that breaks through to the American voters.
And Dave, something you talked about is some of the exit poll data.
You mentioned that.
What do we know so far about Tuesday night and what Democrats may need to pay attention to in the future?
Well, there was a huge shift.
Everyone except for college-educated white women, college-educated women of all races, but especially that.
Every other group, there was a shift towards Republicans, dramatic shift with non-white voters.
And you're seeing not just in the exit polling, but if you look at some of the districts where Democrats didn't have to spend much money, where they didn't do paid messaging, kind of northern New Jersey, parts of New York City, there is this dramatic shift from non-white voters who have never voted, never voted Republican, really never had, never had an argument to do that.
As Scott was saying, there's an economic message here that they're worried about, but they don't know what the exact combination is because every government had inflation that survived COVID in the last four years.
The Biden administration did get it down to the levels where they thought they could win the election, 2%.
If you told them a year ago, you'd have 2% inflation at the election and 4% unemployment.
They'd feel pretty confident.
So people were still frustrated about prices.
And part of this is that Donald Trump said he would lower them while raising tariffs.
They've never figured out how to campaign against Donald Trump with his ability to say things that are maybe contradictory or don't add up, but the entire Republican Party says they're on board with.
When Kamala Harris was trying to do this and say, I have some plans to reduce prices, there was more skepticism about her promising to do things that Biden didn't do than Trump promising to do things that he didn't do in four years.
And so that's the, I think the only coping part of this is that Trump does have this messaging ability honed in 40 years as a media personality to dazzle people in a way they've never figured, well, his last election, they've never figured out how to counteract that.
And today's point, it is in a large part about the messenger of Donald Trump, because if you look at some of the down ballot Senate races, Wisconsin, Michigan, Democrats took those races.
Tammy Baldwin was re-elected over a pretty pragmatic businessman.
In Michigan, Alyssa Slotkin, who's a House member we know well, she ran for the seat against a well-known former House member, Mike Rogers, and she prevailed.
So even in these blue wall states where Donald Trump was successful, Democrats still found success down ballot.
That suggests to a lot of people, including myself, that for a part of the electorate, it is about Donald Trump, the messenger, and sort of his cult of personality.
When we're talking about down ballot, the House is still up in the air.
Who's going to have control of that?
What are each of you watching?
Every cycle, not to put too much onus on Scott's California, but California.
It takes a long time for them to count their votes.
And we don't know.
Each election, there's been different patterns in who turns out their mail votes at what time.
Democrats are feeling better than they were two days ago about the Arizona district, Lancaskamani's district, which they lost in 2022.
And they had the same Democrat running this time.
And it looks like for a bunch of factors, they overperformed a bit there.
In Orange County, they know they've lost some races there, but they're feeling much better.
Orange County, LA County in California, that they did perform.
And these candidates did matter.
We're seeing Democrats who had a lot of money early on, messaged on the economy, were not tied to the administration, or had something they could say they did differently to the administration.
They seem to be doing pretty well, and they're not losing those.
They're not losing these voters that we were just talking about.
They were able to have a conversation with a voter who was considering Trump at the top of the ballot, but wasn't convinced that the rest of the Republican Party was like Trump.
So really, just a batch of races in California, a little bit in Arizona, in Oregon, same thing might have happened.
Janelle Bynum's race against Laurie Chavez-DeReamer.
That's one that the same kind of race in New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, was very tough for Democrats.
In the Pacific Northwest and the West Coast, they did a little bit better, and we're still trying to figure out why.
And yesterday we saw both the House Republicans convene and hold a conference call.
We saw the House Democrats convene and hold a conference call as they were sort of digesting the results of the election and looking for a path forward in order to claim the majority.
The NBC has not called the House yet, although things do look like they're trending in the Republican direction, which bodes very well for Donald Trump because if that proves to be the case, then he will have full and total control of the government.
Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats have said that there still is a tiny, tiny path forward to the majority.
It runs through some of the districts that Dave mentioned, Southern California, Siskimani in Arizona, Miller-Meeks in Iowa, which are all super, super tight races or races where the vote has not come in in a substantial way yet.
But Mike Johnson, Richard Hudson, the NRCC chairman, a number of the leadership on the Republican side say they are absolutely confident that when all the votes are counted, when all the races are called, they will have 218 House seats and will be able to retain the majority and control of the entire government.
Democrats, do you have, as you mentioned, a slim chance, but it is trending.
Republican with President-elect heading back to the White House.
What do we know about the kind of coordination that could be going on behind the scenes when it comes to a governing agenda and priorities for Republicans?
What could an HR-1 look like if they win the House?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think we have some recent history to look back to.
2017, January 2017, President Trump takes office for the first time.
He has a Republican House.
He has a Republican Senate.
If things hold the way they are trending right now, that is a situation we will be in come January 2025.
And there are already a slew of discussions happening about budget reconciliation, this process where this arcane process where the majority party can push through legislation, avoid Democratic filibuster, push through legislation with a simple majority.
They struggled with that in 2017 with trying to repeal Obamacare.
We remember that failed by just one vote.
They were successful in terms of pushing through the Trump tax cuts.
Trump tax cuts are going to be a renewal of Trump tax cuts.
We'll be at the center of any sort of budget reconciliation package that we see moving forward, along with there's a lot of discussions about some kind of border security measure President Trump has made, border security and this idea of mass deportation a top priority on the campaign trail.
There's a real question about whether something like that could survive the budget reconciliation process.
There will be a lot more written about that aspect in the days and weeks to come.
Our guests, Semaphore National Political Reporter Dave Weigel and NBC News Senior Congressional Reporter Scott Wong, are with us until 9 o'clock to discuss the political and policy impact of the Republicans winning the House, Senate, and potentially the Senate, the White House, the Senate, and potentially the House.
If you have a question or comment for them, you can start calling in now the lines.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
And people are very excited to talk with you.
Already calls on the line.
We'll start with Patrick in Pennsylvania.
Good morning, Patrick.
Yes, I'm a gay Democrat and a voter who crossed over and voted for Donald Trump.
I didn't just vote for Donald Trump.
I voted for Elon Musk.
I voted for RFK, who's going to put our incredibly terrible medical system under the microscope.
Elon is going to be dispatched to maximize the impact of technology, most likely with humanoid robots.
The Democratic Party, I'm listening to the ecosphere within the Democratic establishment, like on MSNBC with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.
They are just doing nothing but spreading lies.
They're spreading lies about the Republican Party.
They're spreading lies about why the American people uniformly created a tsunami of change that we are now witnessing.
You cannot not look in the mirror as a Democrat and see how horrific the whole structure of the Democratic, right, left-winging establishment with all this deranged woke ideology.
And I'm a gay man.
You know, they do not support, they support the most perverse realities in history that men can be participating in women's sports, that transsexualism is to be underwritten with American tax dollars when we know for a fact that millions of young people are being brainwashed, especially in the gay community or in the queer community,
that everyone's jumping on and becoming transsexual when in fact it has nothing to do with reality.
Patrick, we'll get a response from our guest.
What he was talking about is the big picture there, unlike 2016, when House and Senate Republicans won elections on their own right and overperformed Trump and had some ability to control the message.
Trump runs the party.
Trump ran ahead of them.
Trump has his agenda.
This is not going to be a speaker like Paul Ryan with some strength and credibility saying, here are our priorities.
It'll be Donald Trump setting the priorities.
And the cultural issues are part of that.
He made a bet, and he started doing this in 2021.
He started talking more about transgender issues, which he implemented as president at executive level, but didn't really run on in 20.
There are going to be, without Congress, you don't need Congress to do this.
There are going to be executive changes that affect the way the government treats trans health care, gender medicine, and those things.
There are going to be fights over those pretty quickly.
The Elon Musk part of this, the RFK Jr. part of this, other examples of how Trump brought people into the party who don't agree with the vast majority of elected Republicans.
They did not, I mean, I remember I was at CPAC 10 years ago when Sarah Palin was waving a big gulp around and attacking Democrats over trying to restrict what people eat.
And that's the RFK Jr. policy.
So there are a bunch of Trump items that he ran on and that he's assigning people to deal with that are not contiguous with what Republicans have run on.
Not that there's a huge disagreement.
They've just been ceding this to him.
And we don't quite know how that's going to work.
We don't even know what role Elon and RFK Jr. would have.
They kind of have ministers with portfolio roles, I should say.
Elon's going to cut the government, but it's not like they're putting up for a confirmation.
Kennedy is going to deal with health, but it seems like he's just going to have access to the HHS and FDA programs.
These are things that are just going to be happening without Republicans in Congress having much of a say on them.
And I'm interested to see how they respond because eight years ago, there was a lot of Republican pulling their collar and responding to Trump things they didn't know he was going to do.
And they've been much more supine, much more willing to say, he won.
I guess we're going along with these policies.
I guess we're going along with this complete remaking of the American health and sickness system right now.
That's very new to them under Donald Trump, and he built that over eight years.
The only thing I would add is we were talking about 2017 and the last time Trump controlled the entire federal government, and they learned a lot of lessons from those episodes and some of those failures.
And now it is a much different Republican Party than it was in 2017, as Dave was mentioning.
I mean, Donald Trump really has taken full control of the party.
Anyone who tries to challenge him is primary challenged or relegated out of the party.
And so he really has taken full control.
He is going to be dictating the agenda, and everyone else will be going along with it.
I am not anticipating too much dissension from any future GOP Congress.
But for example, I don't think many Republicans ran on taking fluoride out of the water supply.
They might have to answer that if RFK Jr. is bring that into the administration.
Yeah.
David in South Carolina, Line for Republicans.
Good morning, David.
Good morning.
Just a quick comment, and then the point I would like to hear both guests discuss, if they would.
A quick point is: I'm a working-class conservative.
I know a lot of conservatives.
No one was in love with Trump.
They just simply see him as a strong executive who can face major problems successfully, period.
And God can use him despite his faults.
Okay, so put a rest to the Republicans being in love with Trump.
But my point is, the biggest topic short of maybe if we're involved with World War III that no one has talked about in the campaign because it's horribly unpopular, is that a national debt, the rising interest rates that we have to pay, and the rise in mandatory spending is really going to put a squeeze on the national budget.
And nobody's going to talk about cuts during a campaign, but it's going to have to happen.
It's going to require great leadership to convince the American people, maybe with parole-type charts, I don't know, but to get people to come on board, do what they can for the country, tighten the belt.
And it's not a partisan issue.
The budget is a real thing.
It's not a talking point.
It's a force.
It's a speeding train that's left a station.
It has to be handled properly by both sides with good leadership and a good message and ask people to be patient and work through this.
This will be the biggest topic in the next three years.
You know, in the wake of the 2010 Tea Party wave election, deficits and debt were the primary issue, along with Obamacare.
But that really was the focus of the Republican Party.
During the Trump years, we saw deficits increase.
We saw spending was not curbed despite Republicans having full control.
I'm reminded that just yesterday, Donald Trump spoke to my colleague, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, and he told her that when asked about his mass deportation plan, about his border security plan, he said there is no price tag.
And so that will be an interesting debate and discussion going forward in the party about you want to do all these different things.
Well, what does it cost to do those things?
What does it cost to seal the border?
What does it cost to deport millions of individuals?
And that is a debate we're going to be focusing on in the future.
Yeah, Trump added to the deficit as president.
There's a bit of a pattern under George Bush, it happened, Ronald Reagan, and happened where the idea of austerity and balancing the budget does disappear when Republicans control all three branches of government, which is the context we're talking in.
Bring back to Elon Musk, one thing Trump promised is that Elon was going to cut the spending and fix this, cut $2 trillion of spending.
And that was never explained during the campaign.
There never was an attempt during the campaign to say, here is how this is going to add up.
Here are the way the numbers are going to work.
Here's why you're going to be paying less debt.
Another campaign tactic, and I found this canvassing, talking to voters, voters are not, I'm not insulting them, but they're not entirely sure how much is being spent on what.
So you heard a lot of we're spending money on Ukraine instead of helping veterans in America.
We're sending money to Israel instead of building bridges in America.
This was frustrating to Democrats because they were building bridges in America.
They spent a lot of money on infrastructure.
They were not doing austerity under Joe Biden the way that Barack Obama was induced to in his administration.
And so there are a lot of voters out there who, I think, assume that Elon Musk and cutting foreign spending are going to fix the budget problem and with no consequences.
That's not how it adds.
That doesn't add up right now.
And the Trump campaign did not say it's going to add up.
And so Republicans are very confident they can deficit spend, that the economy is strong enough, that they can make these changes.
There is a risk for them because the Biden administration came into office thinking that you could spend a great amount of money, spend a great amount of money, not make the mistakes of a too small stimulus without inflation, and they got inflation.
So there are real risks for the Trump administration if they implement literally everything he ran on because it didn't add up.
If Republicans do retain control of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson faced and lost many battles with the Freedom Caucus during this current Congress.
Does that go away with the 119th with the potential trifecta?
Not at all.
In fact, the Freedom Caucus could be empowered even more depending on where that majority number lands.
Right now, Republicans have 220 seats, just a few seat majority.
If that number stays or even gets smaller, that could mean even more headaches for Mike Johnson.
There's always the threat of a motion to vacate.
We saw Marjorie Taylor Green file a motion vacate to try to remove Speaker Johnson just months after Kevin McCarthy had been ousted as Speaker of the House and paving the way for Mike Johnson.
That threat is always hanging above the Speaker's head.
There may be some rule changes where they try to mitigate that threat, but he is going to have his hands full with obviously a very rowdy House Freedom caucus that is now being led by Andy Harris of Maryland after Bob Goode lost his primary in Virginia.
And so, yeah, it's going to be, if we thought the last Congress, the 118th, was a wild Congress, the 119th could be even wilder.
And Republicans have already won control of the Senate.
What have we heard about current Majority Leader Chuck Schumer?
Is there a chance that there could be a leadership change there?
That's another, we were talking earlier about Democrats debating what went wrong.
And the only voices I've heard saying we need a new Senate leader have been outside the Senate.
I've not heard a Democrat say that he needs a challenge.
We need to revisit this.
They lost races that define the majority where their candidates ran ahead of the Democratic ticket.
And he has managed the caucus well.
He, in the Trump years, was an effective opposition leader in the Senate.
So I've not seen a rebellion to him.
That doesn't say that couldn't come up in the next few days.
But in the Senate, Democrats have been here before where Republicans want to confirm a lot of judges.
They want to focus on reconciliation bills.
They're going to be passing, I would say, cultural issue bills, for example, the transports issue.
I was already talking to Republicans who want to have those votes and get Democrats on the record because they're already thinking, how do we win the Senate seat in Georgia in 2026?
So I've not heard Democrats saying that they're going to blame Schumer or that they need to challenge Schumer for this.
I do think you'll see that outside the party as progressives who don't want to take blame for this election say the party just had the completely wrong approach and is going to have to fight Trump in a different way.
And what do we know about the leadership elections in Congress?
When will they be taking place?
The big leadership elections will be focused on the for Senate Republicans, and that will take place next week.
Tuesday, Mike Lee, senator from Utah, will be hosting a forum for all of the various candidates for leader who want to replace Mitch McConnell, who is stepping down as the longest Senate leader in history.
And then on Wednesday, they will have the closed-door internal elections.
That is the important thing about that is it's by secret ballot.
And so nobody actually knows how any of the senators vote unless they want to publicly state so.
And so in recent days, Rick Scott, who is the senator from Florida, just won re-election.
He is running to replace McConnell.
He challenged McConnell just a couple years ago for that job and only got 10 votes.
But he has been trying to get Trump to weigh in on that leadership race and endorse him against Senator John Thune, the number two Republican, and John Cornyn, who used to have the number two job.
Those are two of Mitch McConnell's top lieutenants through the years.
And those two really are sort of seen as the favorites to replace.
One or the other will replace McConnell, but Rick Scott is making this play for Donald Trump's endorsement.
So far, Trump has not weighed in.
He's given no indication that he wants to get in the middle of that leadership fight.
But in the coming days, we should know who the next Republican leader is after Mitch McConnell has held that job for a number of years.
Another David in Flemington, New Jersey, line for Independence.
Good morning, David.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
Two comments.
One, the real risk and the real threat would have been a Trump loss.
And I base this on exit polling from 2016 and surveys with law enforcement.
Overwhelmingly law enforcement and military, active and retired, showed support for Trump.
And it was pretty clear that any public safety danger, the response from law enforcement was going to be to slow walk a response.
We would have all been in great peril in all kinds of places in our country.
Secondly, the major message of this election is that the right to choose for women is the right to choose from among the choices that men give them.
I spent my life here in New Jersey in hospital that any woman in America would die because she was spontaneously aborting, because a doctor went to an ethics committee meeting so afraid of a legal reaction is reason enough to have voted for Kamala.
There will never be an equal rights amendment.
Women will always be placed in a submissive role.
And on a personal level, many women on the left did not vote for Hillary for senator from New York because they believed her acceptance of Bill Clinton's behavior was so outrageous and insulting to all women.
What does that say about America now after the way Trump treated women that this man is in office?
This is a massive loss for America's women, and it is a direct threat to their life and safety.
Thank you for taking my comment.
Well, abortion was something that Trump finessed during the campaign, and again, would be hard to make everybody happy on as president, because what Democrats were saying is that he, and if Republicans got majorities, would support a national abortion ban, some national cap on abortion.
Lindsey Graham has the 15-week bill.
There will be an effort by pro-life groups to agitate for that.
But what they're most focused on is who staffs the administration, what the civil rights division of HHS does, what the civil rights division of DOJ does.
And there will be actions taken, if they get with their way, that make it harder to get abortion medication over state lines, that limit the process in ways that just are kind of hard to talk about in a campaign.
They don't make very good 30-second ads.
That's why Democrats were saying more the risk of a ban because that's simpler.
There will be stories about how they are limiting abortion, unless surprise everybody and do not appoint pro-life people to these positions.
And so that's the first one.
And the Democrats discussing this, I wouldn't say they're happy in the wilderness, but no one is jockeying to be the next candidate or anything like that.
But none of that will happen until they see how Republicans are acting on these issues.
And if there are people who took a risk on Trump who just didn't believe that he was going to act on abortion, they didn't believe that he was going to limit it, or in their state they said, I live in Arizona.
I'm going to vote for the state abortion amendment.
I don't need to worry about it in my state from then on.
That's the question.
Do things change at the federal level where they realize, oh, Trump is making changes that are going to affect me or affect my friends in another state.
This is the thing in the campaign.
You get a mandate for a lot of what you run on, but you might surprise people and alienate them with some of the choices you make because they didn't know about them.
The colour was talking about threats.
And I think one of the big threats that people feared was a very, very tight, close election where you would have had a contested election, where you would have had two transition teams, Kamala Harris's and Donald Trump's, moving simultaneously and America divided over who the clear winner was.
We saw the leaders of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden yesterday, Hakeem Jeffries putting out statements saying the election results are clear.
We congratulate Donald Trump.
We will have a peaceful transfer of power.
We will recognize him as the president.
Much unlike what happened in the wake of the 2020 election that resulted in the attack on the U.S. Capitol just a few blocks away from us.
And so, you know, if there is one thing to be taken away is that everybody, both parties are recognizing that Donald Trump had a clear, decisive win in this election.
And for Democrats, it's now a rebuilding year, and they're going to be searching for, okay, our leaders very likely will be in the minority in the House and the Senate.
The presidential field is wide open.
Who is going to step up now and be the leader of the party?
There's a lot of names out there.
We've heard a lot of them during the course of the 2024 campaign.
Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg, many, many others.
But who will be that individual who steps up and be recognized as the leader of the Democratic Party?
One difference I would add from 2017, though, is at this point before the transition, there were a lot of red state, red district Democrats who said, I'm willing to work with Donald Trump on infrastructure.
I'm willing to find some common ground on something, but I'm going to oppose him on immigration.
We don't need a border wall.
And I think that's flipped.
You're not hearing any Democrats say, I'm willing to work with him on some economic issue because they feel very burned.
They worked with him in 2020 and Trump just took credit for stimulus.
But on immigration, that has moved completely to the right.
And that's a point of tension where I don't know how Democrats are going to navigate it yet because there will be Democrats tempted to vote for border restrictions.
They supported them with the Lankford bill that the base of the party thought they had banished 20 years ago.
And they're back.
Less of the, how can we work with Trump to fix the economy?
I don't think they want to help him do that this time.
BJ in Plano, Texas, line for Democrats.
Good morning, B.J.
Yes.
I have several things to say.
First of all, the Democratic Party's doing fine.
They don't need no changes.
The change has got to be the world.
The United States have to make a lot of changes.
Yes, I'm right here.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
BJ, can you turn your television down in the background?
I think that's why you're getting confused.
No, I don't have my television on.
But I could talk to you, though.
There's several changes that have to be made by the United States.
One is gender and sexism.
And when I say this, I'm going to tell you first where I got it from.
To my mention earlier by Hillary.
The reason why Hillary didn't win was because of sexism and gender.
The reason why Kamala didn't win was because of the South never got over losing the Civil War.
They lost it, but they have always fought.
They lost the battle, but they didn't lose the war.
And anything that had to do with anything that the North wanted to put through or anything that didn't concern the South, except what Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton was in there, everything was fine.
But then you came to the point where you had the proclamation in 1865 that took Texas two years to tell the slaves that they were free.
That's racism.
And if you look at the map, which always quality completely red, below the Macy-Dixon line, completely red.
We got some red above it, but the whole Arkansas clearly couldn't even turn that around.
After all, he endorsed Kabul.
So what I'm saying is the world has to change before you don't matter who you put in there.
If they got color, they're not going to make it.
All right, BJ, we'll get a response from our guests.
Yeah, that's less the conversation with Democrats right now, again, because Trump did very well compared to not just his previous two races, but even Republicans the last 20 years with non-white voters.
And the Biden administration, the Harrison administration, won in the aftermath of the 2020 protests, and very early on, first day actually, the Biden administration, he put an executive order saying that their policies were going to be focused on equity, on racial equity, reducing racial income gaps.
That is another story of this election that non-white voters did not reward them for that, even though they did succeed in some of those measures, and you saw it across the country.
Non-white voters were unhappy about prices, period.
They were unhappy about the cost of living, the cost of housing, and the fact that the administration was trying to pursue more of these problems.
Again, things like what was the DOJ investigating?
What was the Civil Rights Division doing?
What cases were they bringing?
That didn't connect with people the same way.
So I think you're already seeing some questions in the Democratic coalition about how do we talk about race?
How do we emphasize it?
They started with us out in the campaign.
Kamala Harris did not emphasize her femininity like Hillary Clinton did.
She did not emphasize that she'd be the first male president.
She did not talk that much about race.
When she put out a program directed toward black men, her agenda for black men, this was, I think, undercovered.
It was things that anyone could use, but would benefit black men in particular.
So the party already was trying to move away from specific racial appeals to a broad appeal that would elevate everybody, that black voters, looking to voters, should know about.
And that didn't work very well in the election.
Swing states, like Georgia LSA, again, that is closer than it was in 2016.
It remains a swing state.
They turned out a massive amount of voters in the Atlanta area and the areas they were targeting.
But they're just dealing with Donald Trump didn't make those promises this time, and he did better with non-white voters.
And that's going to change a lot of their thinking about how do you serve a powerful electoral group in the party or reach a new one if you do things that are directed to help them and it doesn't benefit you.
You also have a lot of Democratic women who remember 2016 who thought that the country was on the cusp of electing the first female president.
They said, well, we're not going to make the same mistake again, and we have another opportunity to put a woman in the White House in 2024.
And now we know that that did not happen.
I think in the Democratic Party, there certainly is a discussion about sexism, about racism, about whether they will put forward another female candidate against the Republican Party in the near future.
I think those are discussions that are going to be happening in the weeks and years to come.
But clearly, a lot of disappointment among Democratic women who really felt that given the second shot at this, that we were going to see in our lifetimes the first female president in history.
Donna and Butler, Missouri, Line for Republicans.
Good morning, Donna.
Yes.
I just wanted to make a comment.
I keep hearing people say that Donald Trump wants to be a dictator.
He's going to be a dictator.
And I'm so sick of hearing it because it's a lie.
Because I heard him say when that comment was made, I heard President Trump say, I wouldn't mind being a dictator for one day, one day.
And there's so much, much misinformation out there on Trump that it's not even funny.
I mean, lies after lies after lies.
And we don't hire the man or vote the man in for his personality.
We vote him in for his policies.
And he's got the best policies of any president ever in my lifetime.
And I'll be 70 years old next month.
And I love President Trump and I think he's fantastic.
And I say, go, go, go, fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Yeah, what she's referring to, it was an interview with Sean Hannity that Democrats used, so I'd say throughout the campaign, but you heard less of it in the last few months.
And she's right.
The context of what him saying, I'd be a dictator on day one, was the president has enormous power to change immigration policy.
He'd do that right away.
He would start deportations on day one.
What Democrats, they built that together with the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, which came later and said this is a man who will have no guardrails.
No one's saying you can't do that, that you can't act in this way.
And part of the larger context of the election is for a lot of voters, the idea of somebody going in there and not caring about guardrails and not really slowing down and saying, how do I litigate this?
How do I get this rule through was attractive to people?
And this is something that not just Democrats, but a lot of the sort of Liz Cheney Republicans who joined the coalition in this campaign were worried about.
Are there many voters who look at, let's say, their city and are frustrated that they elect a mayor, but things don't change and garbage doesn't get picked up and there's still homelessness on the street.
Do they want somebody to just come in, not care that much about the consequences and sweep it away?
A lot of voters did.
And that's something Democrats are grappling with.
That was very powerful to a lot of voters in the New York City area, in California, who have been dealing with progressive governance that does not do dictatorial things and as a result gets less done, just builds less housing, solves less crime.
That is something that he has some leeway to do, and there is a risk of a backlash because this happened in 2017.
Within weeks of his presidency taking place, he did the Muslim travel ban and there was an enormous backlash.
And a lot of people who said, I don't mind if the president takes this enormous power upon himself, all of a sudden did.
But the sentiment that you just need somebody to go in there and crack heads is bigger than I've ever seen it in covering this stuff for 20 years.
And we heard that from one of our callers earlier saying, you know, I like the fact that he is a powerful, strong leader.
I think in relation to some of the Democrats' comments about Trump being an authoritarian figure, dictator, strong man, you know, he does have some of those tendencies in the fact that he wanted to stay in power after the 2020 election results.
He tried to overturn the election.
He and his supporters tried to overturn the election.
He has specifically targeted his enemies saying that he is going to take retribution on all of his political enemies and people in the press, like not specifically Dave and I, but the press in general.
And so that is something that we have not seen in recent memory at least.
There have been big political figures who have made the press the enemy and have said that they will take retribution on their political opponents, but not in such a forward way as Donald Trump has.
Richard in Florida, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Richard.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
My biggest concern and comment has to do with the fact that the American people have lost their way.
They don't see the forest for the trees.
The forest is democracy.
The trees are the issues, immigration, economy, et cetera, abortion.
But the fact of the matter now is that we're vulnerable.
The voters have failed.
Kamla didn't fail.
Trump didn't fail or succeed.
The voters failed because our job is to protect democracy.
We're vulnerable now.
If the Democrats lose the House, we lose separation of powers.
That's separation of powers, separation of church and state, with the control and influence of the Supreme Court under Donald Trump's power is very concerning.
I think I'd love to hear your guests' comment about, instead of whose fault it is or the strategies, talk about separation of powers and why it's important.
I think that it's important to concentrate on these things.
So please comment on that and how democracy could be.
I hope I'm wrong.
But the fact that we're vulnerable now.
All right, Richard, we'll get a response for you.
Yeah, you didn't hear much at the end of the campaign, but Democrats spent a long time talking about the Heritage Foundation and other conservatives groups' Project 2025 plan.
And Trump distanced himself because he did not want to be associated with parts of that plan.
But they were built on things that he wanted to do and that he tried to do at the end of his first term, among them reclassifying a lot of federal employees, getting rid of them, firing them, replacing them with conservatives who would act more quickly on his ideas and not restrain him.
That was always a premise.
And if you read the Heritage Foundation's advice, what they see themselves doing is taking executive powers, actions that Joe Biden used.
For example, they created a kind of pro-choice task force in office after the Dobbs decision, turning that around, saying now it's a pro-life task force.
There was a lot of work done to say, next time we Republicans have the executive branch, we're going to break a lot of guardrails and do things faster and do them quickly, and we'll have courts that say you're allowed to do that.
You would not be, I mentioned the Muslim ban earlier, not be hidebound by getting sued, losing in the Ninth Circuit, that you can just go ahead and plow through them.
So what he's talking about, this is another thing that, and again, I'm not trying to say voters weren't paying attention, but Trump just kept denying.
If it was unpopular, he would deny it.
And part of the plan, part of the principle, JD Vance was saying this on the trail too, is that the president should be more like Andrew Jackson.
He should take risks and do things that he'll be sued for or that Congress might try to stop him from doing.
He should act on them.
The model for a lot of what they're talking about is Trump in 2028 when he couldn't get border wall funding saying, well, I'm moving money from the defense budget to border wall funding.
And I think you will see a lot of that.
And if you want to classify that as anti-democratic or the risk of a dictator, that is a debate a lot of Democrats are having.
I keep going back to, I don't know what the backlash is going to be.
If people say, wait a second, I didn't know this president was going to rush through these guardrails and do something so dramatic without asking Congress.
But the principle of Trump, Trump was running on, and Vance was amplifying, is that he should.
The executive should be more powerful and not worry about courts or Congress objecting to it.
The caller was talking about checks and balances, and it's important to point out that it actually is the norm for a non-incumbent president coming into office having the control of Congress in his own party, going back to 1992 with Bill Clinton.
And so we saw that with Joe Biden.
He had full control of Congress.
We saw that with Donald Trump in 2016 in more recent memory.
In terms of other ramifications of what this election will mean, Donald Trump, who nominated and successfully seated three Supreme Court justices during his first term, now has the possibility of nominating and seating possibly two others, maybe more, depending on if conservatives on the court want to retire.
That will have a profound impact for generations as his nominations and successful Supreme Court justices already have had on things like the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
So if we see people like Clarence Thomas decide they want to retire, he's getting up there in age.
Trump will now have the option to replace him with a much younger conservative judge, and he now has the Senate in his control to confirm those individuals.
Brian in Albuquerque, New York, on the line for independence.
Good morning, Brian.
Okay, good morning.
I'm in New Mexico, actually.
I would like to focus once again on immigration.
And it's going to be interesting to see what Trump and his companions actually come up with.
Birthright citizenship, for example.
I think we need to do away with that.
I think that incentivizes all kinds of cheating and bad behavior.
Then also the big ones, we never talk about visa overstay.
That's 50% of the problem.
What is the Republicans going to do about everybody that just simply stays in America?
And then the big one is American employers that make millions of dollars by hiring the illegal immigrant.
The Donald's threatening to take away their workforce.
That's going to make a lot of very wealthy Republicans mad.
I mean, who's going to process all the cattle at meat packing houses when we start shipping illegal immigrants out of the country?
And we're in this mess right now because corporate media doesn't ask the right questions.
They don't hold powerful individuals to account.
They just, you know, we get these simple little 30-second stories on to the next issue.
So birthright citizenship, visa overstay, American employers that are exploiting illegal immigrants.
Let's focus on that, like to your comments.
Thank you.
Well, Trump has said, and he said this in his first term, but he didn't act on it, that he'll introduce an executive order that says anyone born in the country to non-citizens will not have citizenship.
That, as he says, the correct interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
And that gets to what I was saying before, when you have, and what Scott was saying, if you have courts that might agree with you, and you could rocket it up to the, well, probably, probably get a lawsuit in the Fifth Circuit or in the Northern Division of Texas in a friendly conservative judge, get it to a friendly conservative Supreme Court.
Trump does want to challenge some of the precedents that have led to that people being born in America to non-citizens, living in America, becoming dreamers, dreams is a different situation.
How much of that is Trump going to challenge?
He said everything.
And when he talks about mass deportation, I do think this was reported pretty well in the campaign.
You're already seeing resistance from Democratic governors saying what Trump wants to do would involve our law enforcement, our National Guard.
We're not going to use them to ask people for their citizenship papers and expel them if they don't have them.
And the Trump campaign was saying we were going to focus first on if anyone in this country illegally is committing a crime, immediately we're going to deport them.
And they suggest that'll be easy.
Part of this, Arizona had a ballot measure that empowered law enforcement to just apply immigration law.
If they find anyone, you're at a traffic stop or somebody calls you in and says, I want you to check in on this birth looks like a non-citizen.
We don't know the full spectrum of that because there's already resistance from some Democrats who'd need to be involved in this.
And there's already complete support for it from Republicans because the context for the immigration fight over the last four years under Biden was the governor of Texas and a little bit the governor of Florida busting migrants to cities and saying, you guys deal with it.
You bust your budgets.
You house these migrants.
They didn't get a political backlash.
They did quite well with Latinos in Texas.
So Republicans are very confident that even if there is resistance from Gavin Newsom or Jared Polis or Democrats who don't want to be part of this, don't want their law enforcement to be arresting and deporting people, that much of the country will support it.
And I don't want to be too repetitive, but that was a cause for a backlash in 2017 when it affected Muslims or Arab Americans.
I don't know what the effect would be this time, but they really have pre-staged it and says what they're going to do.
The practicality of trying to deport millions and millions of undocumented immigrants is really, really difficult.
And so it will be interesting to see what policies the Trump administration puts forward.
Clearly, he does have some confidants around him, notably Stephen Miller, who used to be an aide on Capitol Hill and served in the Trump White House, has been birthright citizenship has been a big focus for him.
The caller also mentioned this idea of what does it mean to have a nation, a society without immigrants doing a lot of the very, very most difficult jobs in our society.
Meat packing, yard work.
The list goes on and on, working in restaurants, all of those types of jobs.
And so that is going to be obviously a big concern.
And what does the country look like if we go through that exercise, immigrants fill so many of those critical jobs that sort of support our entire economy?
And we've been talking about the next Congress, but they still have some work to do in this legislative session.
Congress is coming back on Tuesday.
What is the lame duck Congress going to be focusing on?
Well, the big issue that's hanging over their head is they have to fund the government.
They have to yet again avert another government shutdown.
Speaker Johnson and the Democrats came up with a very, very short-term continuing resolution that funded the government until after the election.
They averted a shutdown before the election.
They've punted it now to the lame duck session.
That is really the top priority for both parties is to avert a shutdown, which would happen in mid-December.
Also, they have punted the debt ceiling, a debt default until early January.
And so very likely, if they want to sort of clear the decks, a potential debt deal could be tied to a government funding bill.
Otherwise, Republicans will have to deal with the potential debt ceiling crisis at the start of the new Trump administration.
I think they would much rather be focused on some of these reconciliation items that we had discussed earlier, tax cuts, potentially something with the border.
And we have time for a couple more calls.
James in Lancaster, Virginia, line for Republicans.
Good morning, James.
Good morning.
I'm glad that Michelle Obama did not run.
We may have a different conversation today.
I called last month to say that Kamala Harris would not get the white women's vote, the same as Hillary Clinton did not get the black vote, which he ran.
But the biggest question I got is, why haven't Kamala Harris in this cabinet signed the 25th Amendment on this president that everybody knows is not fit to be president?
I mean, when my father reached his age, we pulled his car key from him that he could not drive because he'd get lost.
We've got the most powerful man in the world running a country that is not fit.
And everybody knows it.
Why didn't Kamala Harris and her team make this most difficult decision that might have swayed people to vote for her?
To remove, I mean, below-seating school would have supported that move.
They pushed him out.
And now he's going overseas to represent us dottling old people.
Don't know he's that man.
I'm confused about this.
We worry about Trump and democracy and Hitler and fascists.
And we've got an old man in there that should not be leading our country.
Who's running our country?
That's it.
Y'all have a wonderful weekend.
I'll see you next month.
Yeah, the caller is explaining why Biden did not end up as the nominee despite winning the nomination.
The long story there is that in 2021 and 2022, even though Biden was old, even though voters worried he was too old to run again, he seemed to be more in command of himself, of his ability to make a point, to make an argument, than he would be a year later.
And Democrats lived through this agony through 2023 and the half of 2024 until that June debate.
That's why he wasn't the nominee.
They just lost all confidence that he could perform in a campaign.
They retain the confidence, and this is what the caller is questioning.
They do retain this confidence that he can do the job.
He can't do the job of campaigning.
He can't do the job of messaging.
But he is on the phone all the time.
He is working on foreign policy.
And there are not people leaking and saying, Joe Biden, screw this up.
He fell asleep in the meeting.
He is diminished, but he's able to do the job.
Democrats are not going to take more dramatic action to limit him in the last months of his presidency.
But they never got past that question.
And that's one of the more compelling, I think, arguments Democrats have had in the last five days, four days.
If Biden had just decided in October, I don't think I can do this again.
I'm going to walk into history the way he would a year later, would they have been in a better position to win the election?
Would they not have had, he would have been president, but it would have been a situation like any lame duck president where the next George Bush or John McCain is making the argument that they can pivot and do something new.
It would have been complicated, but they would have, that's the hindsight that Democrats, I think, agree on the most is that given that he couldn't run again anyway, what if he just decided not to earlier and when they would have had time for a primary?
Tammy, I will say I had a conversation yesterday with a moderate House Democrat, very upset with the way that the race went.
And this person said that they cast blame at Jill Biden and the Biden family in part because they saw up close the sort of deterioration that was happening with the president's ability to campaign.
The president did not do a whole bunch of public events during that period.
And so he was sort of kept under wraps by the family and the White House team.
And so there is, among all of the finger pointing, some of that is directed at the Biden family, the feeling that sort of as Dave mentioned, if Biden had dropped out of the race much, much earlier than there would have been a very rigorous primary.
Even earlier this year, there still would have been time for a primary where the party could rally behind somebody.
Clearly, so late in the game when it became when it was turned over to Kamala Harris, there were allies of hers that were saying, look, she's the sitting vice president, the most highest profile person in the party after Joe Biden.
She deserves the nomination.
But there was also a feeling in the party at that time that maybe she wasn't the strongest candidate going forward against Donald Trump.
Our guests, Dave Weigel, National Political Reporter for Semaphore, and Scott Wong, NBC News Senior Congressional Reporter.
You can find their work online at semaphore.com and nbcnews.com.
Thank you both for being with us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
More of your phone calls after the break as we go into open form.
You can start calling in now the lines.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
We'll be right back.
Visit cspan.org slash results for comprehensive coverage of the 2024 campaign results.
Get the final Electoral College breakdown in the presidential race and see which states each candidate carried.
Dive into our interactive maps to explore the outcomes in Senate, House, and Governor's races, and monitor the final balance of power in Congress.
Plus, watch acceptance and concession speeches on demand anytime.
Stay up to date with C-SPAN, your unfiltered view of politics, at c-span.org slash results.
Join Book TV, Saturday and Sunday, November 16th and 17th, for the Texas Book Festival, live from Austin.
Our coverage begins Saturday at 11 a.m. Eastern and Sunday at noon.
Highlights include PBS's Race Juarez with his book, We Are Home, on immigration and the process of becoming an American.
The Washington Post's Liza Mundy discussing her book, The Sisterhood, on Women in the CIA, former DOD and DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and his book, Watch Dogs on the Role of an Inspector General, and Elizabeth Diaz discussing her book, The Fall of Roe, on Post-Row America.
Watch the Texas Book Festival live Saturday and Sunday, November 16th and 17th on Book TV on C-SPAN too.
To see the full Texas Book Festival schedule, visit our website, booktv.org.
Sunday on Q&A.
Stuart Eisenstadt, former domestic policy advisor to President Carter and U.S. ambassador to the European Union under President Clinton.
He shares his book, The Art of Diplomacy, in which he discusses his career and the impact the civil rights movement had on him.
We go to eat, and black students from North Carolina Central are sitting in.
You can look at the, you can Google this.
That's when the sit-in started in Queensboro and Durham.
And I said naively to my fraternity brother from New York, why are they doing this?
And he said, what universe do you live in?
It's because they can't be served.
And it was like somebody lifted a veil from me and I saw the world in a very different world.
I had gotten so used to the segregated world, I didn't question it.
I became very active in the civil rights movement in UNC.
And when I was with President Carter, we supported affirmative action and minority set-asides for black contractors.
So these kinds of transformative events when you're young can sometimes carry over into your career, and they certainly did for me.
Stuart Eisenstadt with his book, The Art of Diplomacy, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are in open form.
We'll get to your questions and calls in just a minute, but first wanted to show you this headline from this morning's Wall Street Journal.
The headline, Feds Cut Rates by Quarter Point.
The article says the Federal Reserve approved a quarter-point interest rate cut Thursday, but signaled a little more uncertainty over how quickly it would continue lowering rates as it seeks to prevent large rate increases of the prior two and a half years from unnecessary slowing the economy.
It continues to say Thursday's rate decision followed an initial cut of a half point in September and will bring the benchmark federal fund rate to a range between 4.5% and 4.75%.
All 12 Fed voters backed the cut.
Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell talked about the rate cut.
Here is what he said.
Inflation has eased substantially from a peak of 7% to 2.1% as of September.
We are committed to maintaining our economy's strength by supporting maximum employment and returning inflation to our 2% goal.
Today, the FOMC decided to take another step in reducing the degree of policy restraint by lowering our policy interest rate by a quarter percentage point.
We continue to be confident that with an appropriate recalibration of our policy stance, strength in the economy and the labor market can be maintained, with inflation moving sustainably down to 2%.
We also decided to continue to reduce our securities holdings.
I'll have more to say about monetary policy after briefly reviewing economic developments.
Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace.
GDP rose at an annual rate of 2.8% in the third quarter, about the same pace as in the second quarter.
Growth of consumer spending has remained resilient, and investment in equipment and intangibles has strengthened.
In contrast, activity in the housing sector has been weak.
Overall, improving supply conditions have supported the strong performance of the U.S. economy over the past year.
In the labor market, conditions remain solid.
Payroll job gains have slowed from earlier in the year, averaging $104,000 per month over the past three months.
This figure would have been somewhat higher were it not for the effects of labor strikes and hurricanes on employment in October.
First up in our open forum, Eric Duluth, Minnesota, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Eric.
I'm going to read verbatim a text that I sent into C-SPAN.
It's lengthy, but I think every sentence means something.
Democrats, stop blaming yourselves.
Biden did great.
Harrison Walls would have done great.
This election represented the completion of the coup initiated on January 6, 2020, by the cult of Trump and the money of Putin.
The right-wing echo chamber pumped misinformation into their hype-infused cult members, and no one was able to stop it.
So the bonfire grew.
The actual blame, aside from Trump and Putin themselves, must go to those on the inside who knew Trump's dishonest nature and gave him a pass anyway.
When the Congress failed to impeach him, despite confirmation of the sordid scandal involving Stormy Daniels being paid off by Trump psychophant David Pecker, the Congress failed us.
When the Supreme Court failed to take him off the ballot, even though some individual states had moved to do so, and instead granted him unprecedented immunity, the Supreme Court failed us.
When the Department of Justice failed to stop Elon Musk and Citizens United from paying off voters, they failed us.
The blame for the fact that a rapist/slash felon owned by Putin's purse is about to come to power is squarely on the shoulders of these right-wing stickophants.
These treasonous developments have made American leadership for now into an exact replica of the entities Eisenhower and the D-Day forces attacked on the Normandy beaches.
Thank you.
Elsie in Alabama, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Elsie.
Yes.
I'm 80 years old.
I voted for Trump, and I am tired of the Democrats calling us Nazis everything they can think of.
It's time for the Democrats to realize that the middle class is still alive and well, and they ignore us for the elites and the celebrities.
And I'm very tired of it.
I want to be treated as a respectful person instead of being called Nazis and garbage and all the stuff that the Democrats call us.
We're not extreme MAGA Republicans.
We are just normal people who want a chance at what we feel like is a good president.
That's all I've got to say.
Elsie, can I ask you a question?
Yes.
What was your top campaign issue this year?
The economy and the immigration.
That was Elsie in Alabama.
Dave in Michigan, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Dave.
Yeah.
Hello.
Hi, Dave.
Yeah, I didn't know if I was on.
Well, I just heard you ask somebody what their main issue was for this last election, and mine would have been just the democracy, the meaning of that, what it means to me to have a democracy.
I'm kind of the issues like not any issue is as important as the country that we live in maybe becoming more like a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
And I am afraid, actually, that shows like this, where I could even call and say what I think, and I'm just a retired civil servant and news places that talk straight and give the news straight.
And in that, I'm thinking places like the Associated Press and just places you can go to that are generic in nature, and then they're just going to give you the news.
I'm kind of afraid that places like yourselves are going to find it harder and harder just to broadcast and bring forth news.
I don't understand why.
I don't understand why right before the election these newspapers were not able to endorse a candidate.
I don't know what that is, but it all seems to be going into kind of more oppressive an oppressive state.
And I find it sometimes hard to express my opinion.
You hear me stuttering, but I'm kind of afraid of where we are as a country with Donald Trump being president unchecked.
And thank you for taking my call.
Dave, can I ask you a question?
Yeah, you sure can.
You are a Democrat calling from one of the key battleground states this election cycle, and President-elect, now President-elect Trump won.
Michigan, did that surprise you?
Yes.
It really did.
What surprises me, I think I don't understand when I'm looking at popular vote tallies, how Biden got nearly 10 million more popular votes in the last election than Harris has in this one,
where all the people, I mean, in Michigan alone, I was doing just some little calculations, and supposedly there were 7.2 million registered voters in the state of Michigan.
But I think if you add up the numbers of people that voted, add up all the tallies of votes for everybody in Michigan.
There were maybe a million people that didn't vote.
Why are people not voting?
Why did 10 million less people vote for Democrats?
I don't get it.
But I am afraid.
And Americans are fickle.
They don't persevere.
It didn't go like people wanted it with the economy or whatever they say.
After Donald Trump and COVID, you mean the economy is going to snap back into running like an engine?
No, it's not going to run on all cylinders.
Americans are silly.
They're fickle.
And I agree with a person that you were just talking to or the people, the two panelists that you were just talking to.
There was a caller just before them, and he said, I fear that we've lost our way.
We don't see the forest for the trees anymore.
And I get it.
I thought, no, that guy's speaking.
He's got it right on the head.
But Americans are like that, man.
We want everything boom right now.
That was Dave in Michigan.
Bonnie, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bonnie.
Good morning.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
And please allow me, as a 75-year-old, educated, white, recently blind person to speak to the country.
I listen to C-SPAN every morning from 7 to 9 before I go into my office.
And I'd like to reach out to all Americans that it is now the young people's future.
And they have spoken.
The legal immigrants have spoken.
We've got to stop this and allow this man, no matter what his background is, to do two years.
He's got two years to straighten this country out.
And if those were unfortunate enough not to have traveled through the world, and I have, I've been to Venezuela.
I have been to the Middle East, up and down.
We don't want to be like this.
We want peace.
And no matter what this man did before he gave up two years ago, he didn't have to run again.
He didn't have to go through everything like he did, but he did it for a reason.
And let's see.
And he went out and seeked the most brilliant people.
Elon Musk was a Democrat.
We're fortunate to have this man want to make a better country.
We've got to stop this bull crap about democracy.
And we got to say, okay, it's the Gen Zs and the X generation.
Let's see what you can do because we've messed up.
You can't spend more money than you take in.
And I personally am excited.
And I have, I have not voted straight ticket.
I voted for Obama the first time, thinking that he could help the minorities.
He didn't do it.
I vote for the person running, and I believe through everything I've listened to, and I listen very distinctly, the American younger generation are becoming very much more literate in knowing how government runs, and they want a better future.
The main thing was immigration, legal immigration.
My grandparents came here through Ellen Island, and they came here properly.
And we need to have proper immigration.
No matter what has happened, the Democrats, Republicans, both sides, both sides.
But now it's left up to the younger generation and all the minorities that got together and said, we want to give this man a chance.
Thank you for listening.
That was Bonnie in Pennsylvania.
And Bonnie, you may already have it, but I know you said you listen from seven to nine before you head into work.
But if you download that free C-SPAN mobile app, you can take us with you and keep listening to the rest of the show.
Kim, St. Clair Shores, Minute, I believe that's Michigan on the independent line.
Good morning, Kim.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm doing well, Kim.
Yes.
I just have a comment about the previous panelists you had on there.
They were very liberal.
Everybody could see it.
And what they don't realize, especially the NBC guy, it's their fault.
They didn't want to look into Kamala Harris's background.
Everybody just put her up as she's the best thing since sliced bread.
She was very liberal.
And I think the American people are ready for a change.
We back RFK.
What is wrong with looking into the FDA?
Big pharma.
We have a generation of immunocompromised children, and I think we need to look into that.
And thank you for kicking my call.
As Kim in Michigan, this headline from this morning's Washington Post, Trump makes his first key hire, says President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday announced that Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, would serve as White House chief of staff.
A leading contender emerged for other cabinet roles such as Attorney General in his second Trump administration.
Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns, Trump said in a statement Thursday that called Wiles universally admired and respected.
She would be the first female White House chief of staff.
Wiles, 67, has led Trump's operation since 2021 when he was wildly viewed as a pariah after the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
Unlike some advisors, she rarely battled with him and has maintained a close rapport.
Deborah, Hyattsville, Maryland, Line for Democrats.
Good morning, Deborah.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
I just wanted to bring up the economy.
A lot of people said they thought the economy was their number one thing.
And I believe it could have been.
But also, people need to look.
Whatever state you live in, look at the minimum wage pay: $7.25.
And then we had the pandemic, and the prices went up in the grocery stores.
So if you live in a state, say Alabama, they pay you $7.25.
Wyoming, they pay you $7.25.
Pennsylvania, the minimum wage is $7.25.
And we haven't had a raise since 2009.
That's over 15 years ago.
And people need to look at it.
If you're not getting a salary every year and you're still getting minimum wage pay, and that's been the same way for 15 years, and you're going to blame the inflation and all of that on Biden, you can't do that because you need to blame your state representatives.
They come back in January, and I believe some states stay 90 days, 120 days.
You need to go up there to that capital, wherever, what state you live in, and demand that they take that minimum wage pay up from $7.25 to at least $11.
The state I live in, Maryland, they pay minimum wage pay $15 an hour.
I'm just saying, it's all about that pay.
And 15 years ago, and you living on $7.25, that's terrible.
And then we have 20 states in the United States that pay people minimum wage pay.
And that's all I got to say, C-SPAN.
And thank you for listening.
Frank in Birmingham, Alabama, line for independence.
Good morning, Frank.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I wanted to just kind of like go back a little bit, starting with George Clooney.
After the debate, he instantly wrote an opinion for Obama to go.
And of course, Vance Jones of CNN, he started that crime stuff again.
So, again, Obama and Nash Pelusi got together, and they came up with the best possible VP for Kamala, who would have been the governor of Pennsylvania.
But because they said he was a little bit too Zionist you and all that, he wasn't the guy and he came up with the clown that got the Minnesota governor, which was just a total, total disaster.
But more so than anything, the Democrats got to stop trying to horn in on these celebrities, on these movie stars.
They don't vote.
They come out, they perform, they go back home, you never see a sticker on them.
And they just sell too much.
Clinton did it, but Clinton was better at it than anybody else.
But that is just a sad tragedy for me.
They testify in the attic and they live in the basement.
Could you imagine a superstar saying, okay, I want 5,000 of y'all to meet me at this poll.
I want 5,000 of y'all to meet me at this poll to really use them and not in the area that we do to get them to sing and do all this kind of stuff.
And then Kamala should have stayed in her lane.
She started coming up with all these acronyms and things for Trump and trying to deal with that.
And she turned into the prosecutor she was.
Now, you will recall in the genesis of her, black people had a problem with her as a prosecutor out in San Francisco.
So a lot of that started resonation.
She wouldn't call her father's name.
She wouldn't deal with her father no kind of way because when she got the 18% when she first ran and they asked her, well, will you legalize marijuana?
She said, well, you know, I'm Jamaican.
And her father was offended by that.
There was no reconciliation there.
She had nothing to say about Woody Brown, who was the one, the incubator of her campaign.
She said nothing about Craig Collis.
So there was just a lot of stuff that she did not do.
And then finally, they hoodwinked her when they came up with that last little Iowa poll, said she was leading in the poll.
And my God, she had $1.5 billion.
And now the campaign is broke.
And they still calling me because I made a contribution to her when she first came on the scene when she was questioning, what is his name?
What was the guy's name from Alabama?
Sessions.
Sessions, he was the first one that recommended Trump run in Madison, Alabama.
But anyway, I was so impressed with her then, even though I had chagrin about how she was as a prosecutor.
I looked over that.
Frank, did you end up voting for Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris?
No, I voted.
No, I voted for Connell West.
I voted for a real black man.
And that's where my vote went because I'm just so upset with the votes we could have if all these young black men and black women wasn't getting killed in all these major cities across America.
And that's just a problem for me when crime was not even an issue.
When they had the debate, they only spent 12 seconds talking about crime and violence in America.
And then the Ukraine thing.
Those were the two things that turned me against her.
I never would have voted for her anyway because, like I said, I already committed to Carnell West and I kept my commitment.
But the Ukraine thing and this murder and this violence and these guns in Birmingham, we broke every record in the history of Birmingham and we're still dying.
So then Medicare, healthcare.
We got so many black people can't vote.
They're too sick to vote.
They can't go vote.
And we don't get the medical treatment as black people in this country like we need.
You never hear white people really grumbling about health care so much as black people.
We don't have access.
And there's so much wrong with America.
And I wish we could fix it.
But let me say this before I go, please.
I want to send a shout out to Raf Reids.
I saw him on C-SPAN yesterday, and he had a plan.
Kamala and them was all over the place.
They got robbed by black vote matters and woke no vote, and they just took her money and used it like a dish rag.
But it was really, when I look at what really wanted for Trump, after I watch Raf Reeds and what they did with the Christians and what they did in the real battle states, they went to battle.
They didn't let up.
But you had a bunch of black people getting a whole lot of money.
And they really, like I said, they raped Kamala.
I hate to say it, without a condom.
And that's so sad.
But thank you for taking my call.
Bye-bye.
That was Frank in Alabama.
We will get back to your calls and comments in just a few minutes.
But first, the House is coming in for a brief pro forma session.
We will take you to that right now.
The House will be in order.
The Chair lays before the House a communication from the Speaker.
Thank you.
The Speaker's Rooms, Washington, D.C., November 8th, 2024.
I hereby appoint the Honorable Adrian Smith to act as Speaker Pro Tempore on this day.
Signed, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben.
Would you pray with me?
For those who have gone down to the sea in ships, who have battled enemies in desert wastelands and darkened forests, who have flown the vast skies above the earth, for all who have served wearing the cloth of our nation, we give you thanks.
Many of these cried out to you when they were in trouble, counted the stars in the sky when standing the night watch.
Their fingers hovered over triggers, praying that no adversary would appear in their scopes.
And you, O Lord, delivered them and led them out of peril.
You stilled the storms to a whisper.
The waves of the sea were hushed.
The warfare grew calm and you guided them to their desired haven.
You gathered them from the corners of the earth, from east and west, from north and south.
You sent out your word and healed them.
We give you thanks, O Lord, for your unfailing love and ask your continued favor on the veterans who have stood and still stand the watch to preserve our freedoms.
In the strength of your word, we stand in the face of all danger.
And in your eternal name, we pray.
Amen.
Pursuant to Section 3Z of House Resolution 5, the Journal of the last day's proceedings is approved.
The chair will lead the House in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Pursuant to Section 3Z of House Resolution 5, the House stands adjourned until noon on Tuesday, November 12th, 2024 for morning hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.
And that was the House gabbling in and out for a brief pro forma session.
As he mentioned, the House will be back on Tuesday to pick up its business and during the lame duck session, including funding the government.
Wanted to give you an update on where the current race or where the election results currently stand.
Looking at the presidential election, President-elect Trump does currently have 295 electoral votes.
That's compared to Kamala Harris with 226.
There are still two states that have yet to be called, Nevada and Arizona.
President-elect Trump is currently leading in both of those states.
In the Senate, Republicans have flipped four seats and currently have 53 seats, meaning they will control that chamber come next session.
Democrats currently hold 45 seats.
Nevada and Arizona are still outstanding, and the Democratic candidates in both of those states are currently leading.
In the House, 25 seats are still to be determined, but right now, Republicans are leading with 211 seats compared to Democrats with 199.
218 seats are needed to control that chamber.
If you want to follow along, we are continuing to update our C-SPAN website with election results.
You can find them all at c-span.com/slash results.
And wanted to flag this article in today's Washington Times: Republicans expand majority in Senate with McCormick.
Republicans flipped another Senate seat on Thursday as their candidate, Dave McCormick, ousted three-term incumbent Democrat Senator Robert P. Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania, ensuring the GOP will have at least a 53-seat majority in the next Congress.
McCormick win comes after Republicans already flip seats in Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia.
Two Senate races in Nevada and Arizona remained uncalled Tuesday afternoon, but again, Democrats lead in both of those.
Mr. McCormick certainly benefited from his coat, from this is talking about former President-elect Trump, from his coattails and was 0.5 percentage points or nearly 32,000 votes ahead of Mr. Casey when the Associated Press called the race with 99% of ballots counted.
In the final, if the final margin remains half a point or less, it would trigger an automatic recount process per state law.
Mr. Casey did not concede the race after the AP's call.
His campaign spokeswoman, Maddie McDaniel, said in a statement that there are tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted, including provisional, military, overseas, and mail-in ballots, and the race should not be called until those votes have been tallied.
Just about 25 minutes left in this morning's Washington Journal.
We'll go back to your calls.
Alex in Washington, D.C., line for Independence.
Good morning, Alex.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call.
I just wanted to start off by saying that I'm hoping going forward that C-SPAN can talk a lot more about the issues that are important to people's well-being, things like immigration, things like trade policy, things like the monetary policy of the United States, and how the overspending leads to inflation.
I think doing those things will help to lower the temperature in the country.
I think the media has done obviously incredible psychological damage to a lot of people in the country.
You can hear it when they call in.
They're still obsessed with Russia, even though the Steele dossier thing was totally debunked.
They're angry and they're hateful, and they don't really understand why.
And I think they can understand more if they were just able to talk about issues again and understand why a lot of people were just looking at the issues and understanding what was in their own best interest in voting that way.
I think it's important to keep in mind that the Democrat Party used to be opposed to illegal immigration because it suppressed workers' wages.
They used to be exposed to globalist trade policies because they understood that it would be bad for labor unions here in the U.S.
And all of those things are totally gone now.
And I think if people can go back and understand why they abandoned those policies and why those policies have become the policies of sort of the populist wing of the Republican Party, they can understand why people are voting the way they are.
The second thing is for everyone who talks about defending democracy, just consider the fact that the NIH actively deleted emails to avoid FOIA when they were trying to investigate the origins of COVID, which was basically funded when the funding went to the lab indirectly from the NIH.
That Biden's current Secretary of State orchestrated a lie with 51 former intelligence officials that basically bought Biden the presidency.
And why didn't the Democratic Party have a primary?
There's a very simple reason.
It's because they wouldn't have gotten the candidate that they wanted, and they would have ended up with someone like Bernie Sanders, who they had to basically cheat out of the nomination in 2016.
That's why they can't run to an open primary.
And this is not about fashion Democrats.
This is about saying that the country can be better when the Democratic Party is able to shed its corporatist ownership right now.
And once it can do that, it can go back to realizing what are in the best interests of its actual party members.
And then there can be a return to discussion of issues, which brings me back to my original point that I really hope the media, including C-SPAN, can really focus on those issues and have diverse people with diverse viewpoints on them come in and discuss them and have actual debates as opposed to one person just coming in and giving their opinion.
I think that will really help to take the temperature down.
Thank you.
That was Alex in Washington, D.C. Alex, we appreciate your suggestions.
And the topics you mentioned are all topics that we have covered extensively here on Washington Journal previously, as well as on the network for yourself and anyone else who may be curious and want to go back and look at some of those.
You can find them on our website.
There's a very easy search bar at the top.
You can just type in a keyword and find it.
That will not only show you the results from Washington Journal, but speeches and events covering the topics as well.
Wilbert in Culpeper, Virginia, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Wilbert.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
I had flashbacks when the House came in because I used to work at the Capitol in the U.S. House of Representatives when Tip O'Neill was there and they finally got the bill to open up the chamber for the American people to see.
So I admire that.
But I am a straight-ticket Democrat.
And I think for the Democrat Party, they have to grow some spine and some backbone because we don't have no spine and backbone.
And we don't know how to hit people when they hit us.
We're just too soft.
Now, one thing I admire about President Trump coming in, I admire that as a straight-ticket Democrat.
He had the courage to go over to North Korea to talk to the president over there to try to open that country up for the American people to see how they live over there.
I admire President Trump for that.
Most Democrat presidents are too scared to even talk to people like that to try to open that country up.
And I hope he goes back over there and have a dialogue with this man and open that country up where the American people can see another side of life that people live.
Have a good day, America.
That was Wilbert in Virginia.
William in Columbus, Ohio, line for Republicans.
Good morning, William.
Good morning.
I am a retired or disabled educator here in Columbus, Ohio.
And I don't have any statistics to give or anything like that.
I just wanted to express on C-SPAN here: we need to just wait and see.
Let's watch what President Trump does.
Obviously, he was elected legally.
Everybody in the country desires for him to be in there, or they would have placed Kamala Harris in his place.
So I just have the wait and see attitude.
And I think everyone else should do so as well.
I understand the reason for these beast shows to get the feel of the public and all of that.
I just think that it's wise for us to back up, take a step back, and give this man another four years to see what he does for the country.
I don't think he wants to drive the country in the dirt.
He's not that type person, I don't think.
William, can I ask you a question?
Did you vote for former President-elect Trump previously in 2016 or 2020?
I did.
Both years?
Okay.
Both times.
And what would you like to see him focus on for the next four years?
The economy, which he's really strong in, and just us coming together as a country.
However, he can do that.
He needs to bring the country together because we're so divided.
And I think the divisiveness is what keeps this wheel of tit for tack going.
If he can come up with a cabinet or a plan of some sort to change the atmosphere in our country, I think will be very beneficial for it.
That was William in Columbus, Ohio.
Gary in Almady, Georgia, line for it, Democrats.
Good morning, Gary.
Good morning.
I just want to say, I don't know what's going on with our world today in the United States, democracy and all.
I will say this, though.
Everybody's saying Trump is going to do this, do that.
Is he a man of his word?
Be a man of your word.
I mean, we got people heard here.
Black people, white people, Mexicans, all.
All I'm saying, if you're going to do what you say, do what you say.
Another thing, Jerome Powell, I'll be looking at when it's ironic how prices and stuff.
Oh, the prices went up.
Oh, we had Trump here.
It was good.
Okay, let's go by for a minute.
Okay, when you have tax cuts and you give it to the rich, you know, CEO is going to look after you.
You know what I'm saying?
If you own, you got businesses there, corporations.
Hey, you give me a tax cut.
I'll do anything you say.
We can make the Democrats look real bad.
Yeah, let's go up on the prices.
Let's rise so we can get our candidate to win.
You know, there's a lot of corruption going up in government.
I mean, but I always say, dog, I see high and look low.
So, like I said, y'all got the House.
Y'all got this Congress.
Y'all got the presidency.
But all I'm saying, we're all American.
You want us to come together?
Y'all come meet us halfway.
We meet y'all halfway.
Just do it right.
Be a man of your word.
I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat.
You got a family out there.
You take care of your family.
Nobody knows your needs like y'all know.
And for one thing, I will say: if I got somebody up there that's lying and doing wrong, doing corrupt, I'm not going to stand up from nobody.
I want an honest person.
And if you go overseas there and you're talking to those people over there, remember, we got our people over there fighting for us over there.
We got our kids over there fighting for democracy, for freedom.
It's a lot of people hate us over there.
We need to come together.
Got your point, Gary.
That was Gary in Virginia.
And Gary brought up the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell yesterday during while talking with reporters after announcing the most recent rate cut.
He was asked if he would resign if President-elect Trump asked him to.
Here is that exchange.
Hi, Victoria Aguida with Politico.
Some of the President's elect advisors have suggested that you should resign.
If he asked you to leave, would you go?
No.
Can you follow up on is it do you think that legally that you're not required to leave?
No to follow up on Victoria's question.
Um, do you believe the president has the power to fire or demote you?
And has the Fed determined the legality of a president demoting at will any of the other governors with leadership positions?
Not permitted under the law.
Not what?
Not permitted under the law.
Thank you.
Courtney.
We have just under 15 minutes left in today's Washington Journal Epinex Lewis and Vineland, New Jersey, line for independence.
Good morning, Louis.
It's Lois.
Oh, I am so sorry, Lois.
And I'm going to depend on the Pentagon to protect us because when they take their oath, they take their oath for the safety and security of the people of the United States, all the people.
And they also pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
And any enemy from within is an enemy of the people and our Constitution.
So I'm going to depend on the Pentagon to make sure that we are safe, not Trump.
Pam in Maryland, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Pam.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm calling about the economy.
I'm over 70 years old, and when I was a child, AIDS were only 35 cents a dozen.
I just want to let you know, every 10 years, prices double.
When I was a teen, cars were only $2,000.
You do the math over seven decades.
Also, Curtis, John, J.D. Bance, he is a proponent of Curtis Vava, and he believes in communism.
And I think he is an enemy of the people.
And according to the Bible, his plan will only last three and a half years before the whole world falls into chaos.
That's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Dan in Connecticut, line for independence.
Good morning, Dan.
Good morning.
I'd just like to say that the Democrats, they really did not run on policy.
The media called the Trump supporters Nazis and fascists.
All they did was Trump, Trump, Trump.
You know, accused us of being garbage.
The Biden White House pushed censorship on the Americans.
They said inflation was transient.
We all know it wasn't.
They just lied.
We all know it.
Como would not do interviews.
She did not come across as intelligent.
We all know that.
And what we want, we want things to be fixed.
We want our politicians to be held accountable to represent us, not to keep fighting each other.
They never get anything done.
We want crimes to be taken care of.
We want legal immigration.
All these things that they should be working on.
But all they do is, you know, all Como did was Trump is this, Trump is that.
Supporters are garbage.
Dan.
Dan, you're calling on the independent line.
Is that accurate?
Oh, no.
I thought I called the Republican line.
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure you I was about to say you you sounded pretty pretty set on one side.
Do you want to finish your comment?
Yes.
Yeah, I mean it's it's just the the media all they do is push talking points.
You know, just repeat the same thing over and over again.
They lie over and over, and then people will get it.
They get their beats all emotional.
I mean, we just need to focus on policy.
We need to focus on fixing the economy.
Our national debt is a disaster looming.
You know, they really need to work on that.
I think it's brilliant that they got Elon Musk.
He's a businessman.
He knows what he's doing.
A very successful person.
I don't think he's just going to do what's good for the billionaires.
That was Dan in Connecticut.
This headline in this morning's New York Times: January 6th defendants are already angling for pardons.
The article says, on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised to pardon some of the 1,500 people charged in connection with January 6th, sometimes suggesting his clemency might extend to leaders of the far-right groups like the Proud Boys and to other defendants who assaulted police officers.
It remained unclear whether or how fully he would fulfill those vows, but should he issue wide-ranging pardons, it would amount to a repudiation of the largest criminal investigation ever undertaken by the Justice Department and damages, perhaps fatally, efforts by prosecutors to seek accountability for a violent mob attack on the lawful transfer of presidential power.
Already, some January 6th defendants are excitedly expressing hope that Mr. Trump might strip them, might strip them of convictions or free them from prison when he takes office.
Only hours after the election was called for Mr. Trump early Wednesday, one convicted writer, Christopher Carnell, asked a federal judge to push back a hearing in his case saying he, quote, expected to receive clemency.
Not long after the request was filed, a judge overseeing the case, Beryl A. Howell, rejected it in a terse order.
Still, other lawyers for January 6th defendants have privately said they are planning similar moves and will seek to exercise convictions, excise convictions, or push back pending trials until after Inauguration Day in hopes that Mr. Trump will save their clients.
Back to your calls, Jim in Newton, North Carolina, line for independence.
Good morning, Jim.
Hey, good morning.
All the hate and racism that's going on in America is only coming from one place.
That's the mainstream media.
They get on there and all they do is talk about how good the Democrats are and how bad the Republicans are.
And they just keep driving that and driving that and driving that in people's minds.
And people believe that crap.
Even on C-SPAN, when people call in to give their opinions, if it's something about a Democrat did bad, y'all cut them off.
But if it's, I mean, when they call in about a Republican that did good, y'all cut them off.
But when a Democrat calls in and talks, y'all just let them talk forever and ever.
Mainstream media, people need to stop watching that crap.
Jim, do you watch it?
All of them gets paid big bucks.
Jim, do you watch the networks like that?
I did in the past, many years ago.
Every now and then I'll click over just to see what's going on.
And when I do, it's always something negative about a Republican.
Where do you get your news?
Always building up Democrats, always building up Democrats.
Jim, where do you get your news?
I get it from my local news, and I get it from the internet.
I do my own research.
I don't listen to all this crap that C-SPAN and MSNBC and CNN.
I don't listen to all that crap.
All they are is opinionators.
It's just like the view.
There's no difference between the view and the mainstream media.
All of them is opinionated.
It's nothing about Jews.
They don't know anything about Jews.
All they know is opinionation.
That's all they know.
That was Jim in North Carolina.
Danielle in Chesterfield, Missouri, line for Democrats.
Good morning, Danielle.
Hi there.
I think, first of all, thank you for taking my call.
I'm a white pregnant woman living in a red state, and I think I was most surprised by all the white women voting for Trump.
And just as I would hope that those who voted for V.P. Harris get what they voted for, like a generous child care tax or generous child tax, help with the first down payment for a home, a legitimate economic plan.
I genuinely wish that white women for Trump get everything they voted for too, and that it affects them personally.
So I genuinely hope that they get a dollar gas.
I hope that they have a traumatic pregnancy loss and they're taking the court and questioned by strangers to determine if they think that they terminated the pregnancy on purpose.
I hope they have to relive that pregnancy loss over and over in a courtroom and maybe even a jail cell.
I hope that every time they send their kid to school, they have to sit at home every day and hope that those kids come home alive and let it, I hope that it consumes them as they sit at home.
And maybe at that point, that woman may even think like, wow, I don't want to do this mom thing anymore.
I need birth control.
But she may need her husband's approval.
And remember, your husband doesn't really care about your body because you don't have a choice over your body.
And he might say no.
And I hope that if she ever gets sexually assaulted, that she screams it from the tallest building she can find, that those screams fall on deaf ears.
And I want those same people who she thought respected and loved and cared for her, look her in the eyes and lift her abuser up to the highest position of power over her.
And when she starts to wonder why, why me?
Why would they do this?
I want those around her to tell her, well, he said gas would be cheaper.
And I could go on and on about these examples.
And you may think, Danielle, that is so extreme.
That's so messed up that you would want that for anyone.
And normally I would be like, yeah, that is really extreme.
That's crazy for me to say.
But not only did you wish that on your fellow American women, you voted for someone who promised to put those words into action.
And he made that choice for all of us.
And I want to say this one last thing.
Those who voted for VP Harris, this election isn't a lesson for us to learn.
This election is a lesson to learn for those who voted for Trump.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
That was Danielle in Missouri.
Our last call in today's program, Mark in Belgrade, Montana, line for Republicans.
Good morning, Mark.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
And I just want to say, God bless you, and God bless that last woman who called.
She seems a little bit extreme, as she mentioned.
So I just want to take a second and say, God, I hope God gives her blessings and that she's prosperous and that whatever evil is in her life leaves.
I want to start with that.
My God.
Anyways, so, you know, mainstream media, you know, they put out Joe Biden's speech.
They put out Kamala's speech, basically saying, you know, we need to bring down the heat.
We need unison.
We need to bring the country together.
All meanwhile, still kind of channeling the same rhetoric, like, you know, Trump's a fascist.
He's a massage nest.
He hates women.
He loves tyranny.
He loves autocracy.
He loves monarchies.
He loves all these things, right?
And then, you know, at the same time, you know, you look at everything he does, and he just does great things for people.
He just wants everybody to be successful.
He wants women to be prosperous.
He wants men to be prosperous.
The United States does not care about your race, your gender.
It doesn't care about anything.
It just wants everybody to be prosperous.
And I feel that way for everybody across the other side of the aisle.
And if we want unison in this country, we need people like all the mainstream medias to start reporting fairly and not reporting yellow journalism based on their political, whatever political party they want to benefit from.
You know what I mean?
It's just crazy.
I mean, you see what I'm saying?
Mark, you're in a red state in the big Senate race there.
Tell me about your experience with that.
Well, it's funny because, you know, it seems like even though the population is so small, there's still a lot of people here that are able to share ideas and exchange ideas without the violence and all those kind of things.
Now, the elect, senator-elect Tim Sheehi, he ousted John Tester.
Are you surprised by that?
No, not really, because, you know, John Tester has been, and if I get the facts wrong, please don't put me on mistake or anything.