Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Event/Special

Donald Trump Projected to Win Presidency of United States of America; Donald Trump Poised to Win All Seven Battleground States in Electoral College Victory; Trump Campaign Managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita Credited with Disciplined Campaign Leading to Trump Win; Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney Makes Statement on Donald Trump's Presidential Victory. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:00:59]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It is 8:00 a.m. in the east. Good morning to what is a changed America and what will be a changed America. Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States. We are now on hour 16 of CNN's special live coverage, what is now Election Day in America. The front pages in print and online having their say. "The New York Times," "Trump Storms Back." "The Washington Post," "Trump Triumphs." "USA Today," "Trump Reclaims the White House." And Donald Trump's favorite hometown paper, "The New York Post," "Don Deal."

So Donald Trump declared victory overnight in what was a sizable, or what appears to be a sizable Electoral College victory. He does also hold an edge right now in the popular vote. The America Democrats had hoped would show up to back Kamala Harris, especially in the so-called blue wall states, did not. And the America that did show up was concerned about the economy and immigration, and it was an American electorate that was ready and willing to overlook Donald Trump's flaws to take a chance on the former president.

Let's go straight to the magic wall. CNN's Phil Mattingly is over there to kind of walk us through, for people just waking up now, first of all, I resent you. Second of all, walk us through how we got to this point.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it felt like you were counting the hours of special coverage. I appreciate that.

So look, this is where things stand right now. We know how this has played out over the course of when polls started closing yesterday evening to where we are right now. But for those of you, again, who slept, I don't resent you. Let's take a look at how this has actually played out. This is when first votes started coming in. Obviously, we are looking at Kentucky and Indiana as well. We were trying to get a read on hey, what about Hamilton County in Indiana, is that going to tell us that there's some big surge in turnout in suburban counties, the types of demographic shifts that Democrats needed in a major way. The answer turned out to be no. But let's keep tracking through the night. Two hours and 40 minutes

later, Donald Trump took his first lead in North Carolina. Remember, the vote that was coming in, and being counted very quickly was in those southeastern sunbelt states that were two of the seven that we were all focused on. Then around 10:05 p.m., Donald Trump took the lead in Pennsylvania, one of the three blue wall states. For a time, all three were in Kamala Harris's category. Then all of a sudden, Pennsylvania went that way. Trump, as Pennsylvania -- sorry, as Arizona and Wisconsin were reporting, Trump then took the lead in Arizona, Wisconsin, around 11:00 p.m. last night. Michigan started moving towards Trump's direction, taking the lead at 11:30 p.m. last night. North Carolina becomes the first of the seven battlegrounds to be called for the former president. That was a defense. He won that state. It's the only one of the seven battlegrounds that he had won in 2020.

Then Georgia was called. That was one Joe Biden flipped back in 2020. Then Pennsylvania was called. At this point, I think everybody kind of knew, the writing was on the wall. There wasn't a lot of places outstanding and pathways for Kamala Harris and her campaign to be able to get to 270 electoral votes.

At 5:30 a.m. this morning, John Berman, you called that CNN was projecting that Donald Trump would win the presidency, would return to the White House and become the 47th, after being the 45th president of the United States. And the reality, when you dig into the data, as we've been doing over the course of the last 16 hours, the blue wall, not unlike 2016, completely shattered for Democrats. The sunbelt states in the southeastern parts wasn't actually that close when you compare it to 2020. And we're still waiting for more vote to be coming in from Arizona and Nevada, as well, but both of those places, Donald Trump has a lead right now.

BERMAN: Yes, all seven of the battleground state Donald Trump either won or is leading in. And as you walk through that timeline, Phil, which I think was really instructive there, it was pretty clear pretty early which way this thing was trending, and those trends only really grew bigger as we go to the dawn hours.

MATTINGLY: Yes. And I think what's surprising is, there was not a direct connection between North Carolina and what we saw here early and what was happening in Pennsylvania. Different states, different demographic makeups. In fact, Mecklenburg County, the largest county in North Carolina, with 10 percent of the vote here, Charlotte pushing out. This is where Democrats wanted to run up major, major vote. Democrats in 2020, these were the types of things that connected the seven battlegrounds, or at least the five that we called, or that we know kind of where they've landed right now. Kamala Harris doing well where she needed to do well, but not doing better than Joe Biden did in 2020, and certainly not really running up the margins there, at the same exact time that Donald Trump was running up his margins.

Let's take a look over in Nash County. This is a county that Joe Biden narrowly, narrowly won back in 2020. Once Nash went, that was kind of the sign as I was kind of looking through the data last night, Nash going back to Trump was critical. Move over here to Franklin. Actually, I want to go down here to

Johnston County. Johnston is a big Republican vote driver. Back in 2020, Donald Trump did a little bit better. But in all of these places, Johnston is coming out of wake, is coming out of where Raleigh, the research triangle, critical place, second largest county in the state. The hope from Democrats was that they would, yes, blow out the vote in these strongholds, but then start pushing in to Johnston County. They didn't. He was holding his margins. And we saw the same thing in Wisconsin, in those wild counties, Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, where maybe, maybe there was a little slippage from Trump in those suburban places, but there was no sense whatsoever that Democrats were going to push out and really run up the vote as they were losing vote in critical urban counties across the map.

BERMAN: By and large, Kamala Harris did not meet the marks that Democrats wanted, and by and large Donald Trump exceeded the marks that Republicans wanted, almost, almost everywhere. Phil Mattingly, thank you very much.

Let's go over to Harry Enten now to take a look at the exit polls here. And one of the issues that, I think, was very prevalent in the closing weeks of the campaign were some of the things that Donald Trump was saying, the extreme, the sometimes racist things at his rallies. John Kelly saying that he was a fascist. So what did voters think about all of this?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: The fundamental argument of the Kamala Harris campaign was that Donald Trump was too extreme. Don't take a chance on me. And Donald Trump's argument was, what the heck do you have to lose by taking a chance on me? So who is too extreme? Look, more voters said only Trump was too extreme than Harris, 46 percent to 37 percent. But note that 46 percent was south of a majority. So the key groups in here were that both Harris and Trump are extreme and that neither of those two candidates are too extreme at five percent. I would like to know who those five percent are, but they did exist, one out of every 20 voters.

How did that eight percent of voters who said that both of the two candidates were too extreme -- look at this margin Donald Trump is putting up. It was a blow out. A 40-point win for Donald Trump among those who said both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were too extreme. And it's a similar picture among that five percent of the electorate who said that neither candidate was too extreme. Look at this, a 64 percent to 28 margin, just south of a 40-point edge for Donald Trump.

Look, more voters thought that Donald Trump was too extreme than Kamala Harris, but south of a majority said that only Donald Trump was too extreme, and among those key groups who said that both were too extreme or neither were too extreme, Donald Trump ran up the score. And that was the story this election, John Berman. Kamala Harris, simply put, tried to make a case, and the voters did not buy it.

BERMAN: That is not what they believed was important. Harry Enten, thank you very much.

We are hearing from Trump allies this morning. They are crediting what they call a disciplined Trump campaign for helping steer a pretty undisciplined candidate back to the White House. Let's get to CNN's Alayna Treene who covers the Trump campaign down in Florida this morning. Alayna, what are you hearing?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: You're exactly right, John. I've been talking to some of Donald Trump's allies, advisers, some of whom are waking up from the brief nap they took after leaving that election party very early this morning. They're saying as they're going through all of this and reexamining his win that they really are crediting Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita in particular, both Donald Trump's campaign managers, for running a disciplined campaign.

And I think, look, there is no question that the people that Donald Trump surrounded himself this time around were far more disciplined than in his previous campaigns, both in 2016 and in 2020, and also people that Donald Trump actually listened to.

We know that Donald Trump, of course, had a proclivity of getting in his own way. But for the most part, we know that Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita have done a lot to really control other parts of it, of making sure that the entire Republican Party had a coordinated message. Also, combining forcing with the RNC and merging their political operations. They are saying that they believe that that is a huge reason why Donald Trump was successful.

Now, of course, I will say, if it didn't go Donald Trump's way, you'd probably would hear the same thing from these same people saying, well, it's their fault that this didn't happen. But they do argue that for someone like Donald Trump, who is off message a lot, who went off message a lot throughout the course of the campaigns, particularly in the final weeks, they think that behind the scenes, to have some of that stability really did help them here.

[08:10:12]

Now, one thing I do want to point out is Wiles in particular. She was hired in 2021. And she has remained at the top of Donald Trump's political operation since then. And that is a huge deal, because as we know, it is very hard in Trump world, it is very rare in Trump world to maintain a position of power for that long. And she continues to have a very good rapport with Donald Trump. I think a lot of people are looking now to see potentially what type of role she could take in Donald Trump's second administration. People say if she wants to be chief of staff, that role will probably be hers because of what she has done over the course of the last several years now leading up to this moment.

And one other thing while we're talking about what a potential second Trump administration -- or not potential at this point -- what a second Trump administration will look like, we are already hearing that the jockeying has commenced. I will say, we hadn't seen much of that before, even though people were throwing their names into the hat, trying to get an audience with Donald Trump's closest advisers about it. Donald Trump is very superstitious. He did not want to have any formal discussions about what his cabinet would look like or what any administrative roles would look like or make any promises to anyone. But now, that is changing, of course. He is in -- he's going to be in an official transition mode with just a couple of months now until inauguration.

And so we're hearing a lot of people, you know, at least I'm being told, as is our colleague, Kristen Holmes, that many people are starting to reach out in earnest to those around Donald Trump trying to see what positions they may be able to put themselves up for. John?

BERMAN: No doubt about that. I'm sure we're several hours into the jockeying already. Alayna Treene for us in Florida. Alayna, thank you so much, great work on all of your coverage.

Let's go to Kasie and her panel now. Kasie?

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: John, thanks. An understatement indeed on people reaching out to see what's in store for them. Our panel is going to join us to react to this. Liz Cheney tweeting her reaction to Donald Trump's win just moments ago. Here's what she says, quote, "Our nation's democratic system functioned last night, and we have a new president-elect. All Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections. We now have a special responsibility as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years. Citizens across this country, our courts, members of the press, and those serving in our federal, state, and local governments must now be the guardrails of democracy."

So, of course, Liz Cheney had devoted herself to preventing Donald Trump from ever entering the White House again, but the never- Trump movement inside the Republican Party, honestly, not borne out here today.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: A bang-up job. I mean, I -- this never-Trump whole complex that grew over the last several years, nothing has ever failed as hard in politics as this. The Lincoln Project, all these people that built millions upon millions upon millions of dollars from Democratic donors, and all the eggs that was put in this basket. The split was amazing. Trump got like 94 percent of Republicans. I don't think they accomplished anything, except probably build a bunch of beach houses. That's about what they did.

Republicans being lectured to, condescended to, browbeaten by all these folks over the last -- look, at some juncture, it's OK if we have different opinions about the election. You don't have to beat people to death over it. And the more you do that, the more it drives people away. Total failure.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But we've got to -- I think it's important to level-set. The statement that Liz Cheney is making, in the Trump era, is an important one. You can argue that politically, the never-Trump effort failed --

HUNT: Let me pause you for one second, because there is a difference between Donald Trump and the Lincoln Project, and what happened with Liz Cheney, which is a break that occurred after January 6th.

BEDINGFIELD: Yes. And Scott, you can't pretend that Donald Trump has not spent a lot of his time and energy trying to convince the American people that the electoral system in this country is rigged. And that's before you even get to January 6th. So im going to give you the political ramification. I'm going to let you have that argument. It is incredibly important for people to say, our systems will hold, our institutions will hold, our elections are free and fair, even if we don't like the outcome, we have to abide by them. And you cannot pretend, in the Donald Trump era --

JENNINGS: I'm not pretending anything.

BEDINGFIELD: -- that's not an important thing to say.

JENNINGS: I was happy to say these things before we knew the outcome of the election. I will just point out in our own exit polling on the issue of democracy, 73 percent of the people said they thought that democracy was threatened. And they split evenly between the two campaigns, 49 to 49. And so --

HUNT: That's probably because Donald Trump spent a lot of time telling a lot of people not to trust our democracy, no?

[08:15:36]

BEDINGFIELD: Which goes to, you know, I hear you and Republicans making the argument that Trump won on this kind of like fundamentally unifying message.

I would sincerely hope that he uses this moment to remind people, reassure people that our elections are free and fair in this country. He wields and enormous amount of power. He has a loyal following, I'm not saying I believe that he will, unfortunately, but he wields an enormous amount of influence and he should use it for good.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But I don't think he will is the problem.

BEDINGFIELD: I doubt he will.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't even hear you over there. Go ahead.

HUNT: Sorry, Karen.

FINNEY: No, unfortunately, just as his previous term, I don't think that he will. I think we already have the evidence that he won't. And I think he -- I mean, look, he just ran a very divisive campaign. And he ran it in an environment where, you know, I think one of the things we will be looking at, just as after 2016, we were looking at the resources that were saying that it was about, you know, cultural anxiety and people feeling anxious about their place in a changing world.

When you kind of look at what the gender divide really means in this country and that's not by exit polls. I'm not talking about the surface but there is something else that is happening in this country that Donald Trump, I think, because he's very good at this, he tapped into it with men in the, "I hear you, I see you." I think some of it is part of the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, where there were a lot of men who felt like there just wasn't a place for them, like they maybe weren't Harvey Weinstein, but they felt like, so what is appropriate? And I think they did feel kind of left out.

I think there are two levels of this where I think Donald Trump is going to continue to be very divisive. I think Liz Cheney's comment is incredibly important, because the rule of law is matter and I think part of what she's saying is somebody, we, the people, are going to have to keep him in check. And I think there are other currents going on in the country that certainly Democrats would ignore at our peril.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: So, you know, like we said, when you see movement and it's in as many places as we saw, it's something structural. People are saying they're unhappy with the way things are going in the country, economically, the border, crime. They want Trump to fix it.

They were also saying, many -- I mean, whether you're talking about focus groups or reporters out talking to people, there were a significant number of voters who would say, when hearing the most extreme things Trump is talking about, we got through the first term and none of these things happened.

So, 11 percent of voters said Trump was too extreme voted for him. That is the bet they are making. So, we're going to find out. Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. going to be in control of public health and challenging vaccine mandates in the states?

Donald Trump said in an interview with "Time" Magazine that he believes that he has the right to fire a US attorney who will not start an investigation of someone he wants to be investigated whether there's any evidence or not.

Mass deportation, all of these things, did he mean them, and if he does them, will the voters who said I'm annoyed that gas and groceries are so much stay onboard? We may or may not find out.

SELLERS: That's my point and that's what I was attempting to piggyback on what Kate was talking about. Because, what do they say, past is prologue, right? And this man 78 years old and I know that one of the reasons this election went the way that it did is because people on this referendum on Joe Biden were more fond of the Trump years on Election Day than they were of their current situation, right?

That's kind of the larger picture, but we have a colloquialism. its FAFO, I'm going to let people Google that, right? And you're going to find out in the first six months of what that chaos was.

You know, for us on TV, it was like drinking out of a fire hose. It was foreign policy via tweet, right? It was what is the news story of the day? It was -- they had so many different press secretaries and so many different Cabinet secretaries, and they were just running through and churning through and we forgot what that chaos was.

HUNT: The number of steps I got on Capitol Hill every day, trying to cover the Trump administration was -- thousands.

SELLERS: We just forgot what that -- and then we just beat January 6 to a pulp, rightfully so but --

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: But it wasn't just men who voted for the former president. Ron went over all of the exit results.

He did incredibly well with a lot of women, a lot of people of color. People say, oh, you know, he ran on this dark, bleak message. But you know what, for a lot of people, the country is dark and bleak. We're in New York.

I went to Target yesterday with my wife. And every darn thing, lotion, everything that you could think of locked up, behind doors. Like someone has to come unlock the key for you to grab a darned thing of deodorant. That's normal in America. And so, when people say, crime is not a problem, these things are locked up because of theft.

So, crime is a problem, so Donald Trump's case about the issues in this country are very accurate for a whole lot of regular people out there. That's why he got the support we are seeking.

[08:20:18]

HUNT: So, Scott, let me ask you a question, because, we started this conversation with Liz Cheney talking about, okay, this is what's important for people to focus on in this second Trump administration.

Ron raised the question, okay, is Donald Trump going to do some of these things that he said that he did that could potentially alienate some of those voters, right, who they voted for him anyway, even though they think he's too extreme because they're upset about this.

This shows that there's an opportunity for Democrats in the future and that Republicans will have to work to hold on to this. They'll have to govern in a way that if you want to continue that mandate, right? If you want to keep that mandate together in the next election. Does Donald Trump care about like what Republicans are going to want to try to keep that in power going forward, considering that this is going to be his last administration? Is he going to be thinking about that as he governs the country?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think he's only going to care about what the people who just elected him asked him to do. This is a mandate. I mean, the economic program, the immigration program, the foreign policy program, everything he laid out, you know, nobody's forgotten what Donald Trump did as president and certainly everybody heard loud and clear what he was running on in this election. And he won a resounding victory.

So, my -- you know, rudimentary and humble political advice would be, just do what you said you were going to do and you'll have a very successful term because that's what the people asked for. SELLERS: We got what we deserve.

HUNT: All right, so of course, this is one of the questions that we are contemplating here. RFK, Jr. in the Trump Cabinet? Now a very real possibility after last night's result. A Kennedy family member joins us next live.

CNN's special coverage continues just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:25:41]

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and he's going to help make America healthy again.

(CROWD chanting "Bobby.")

[END VIDEO CLIP]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That was the newly elected Donald Trump a few hours ago at Mar-a-Lago. He's been saying for weeks now that he would let Robert Kennedy Jr., "Go wild on health."

RFK, Jr. we should note has pushed numerous falsehoods around public health, claiming vaccines cause autism, not true, he also spread the baseless claim that chemicals exposure in water can lead to sexual dysphoria, again, not true.

Joining me now is Kerry Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s sister. Also, a very active Democrat who worked hard to get Kamala Harris elected president. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. As you wake up, Donald Trump elected to the White House once again, just broadly speaking, what's your reaction that?

KERRY KENNEDY, ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.'S SISTER: Well, you know, I think, this is time for Democrats to take seriously the mandate that's been handed to Donald Trump, 71 million Americans came out and voted for him.

Why? How do we reach out to people? What was wrong with her policies and what was wrong with her messaging? How do we reach out to people who were not with us in this campaign?

I think both are the questions that we have to ask ourselves and then, I think, it's the job of all of us, as Americans to find ways to heal the divisions within our country, to reach out to family members, which we have had divisions with. To reach out within our own communities and re-establish those bonds of love and community and a quest for justice and peace and building a stronger democracy, which is so important to our country.

BERMAN: You said, reach out to family. I know it's only what, 8:27 on the East Coast. Have you spoken to your brother since Donald Trump was elected to the White House again?

KENNEDY: I have not spoken to him since this very moment, but I certainly will reach out to him later today.

BERMAN: What do you plan to say?

KENNEDY: I plan to say "congratulations and good luck." You know, I disagree with Bobby on a wide range of issues, some of which you just mentioned. You know, he said that HIV does not cause AIDS.

I'm concerned about childhood vaccines and assuring that the United States both domestically and internationally continues to make all of those vaccines available to people and to our children and to our world and many, many other issues.

But that said, I also -- I love Bobby. He's a member of my family, and I like him. I love being with him. So, I believe that we can have divisions over very fundamental and important issues for our country and still find ways of loving each other internally.

BERMAN: But that said --

KENNEDY: I think there's more at stake here than, you know, than my brother and I think, as Liz Cheney pointed out, it's going to be up to all of us as Americans who love our country to assure that our institutions are kept safe and bolstered during this time. And that the courts are bolstered and that the future of democracy is bolstered both domestically and internationally.

And I think that we have to be very, very careful -- yes, go ahead.

BERMAN: I'm so sorry to interrupt, a delay in the connection here. I know you said you loved your brother and you like your brother. You like spending time with him.

Do you trust your brother to be in charge of health care in the United States given what you said about your concerns over the future of childhood vaccines?

[08:30:15]