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Donald Trump Elected U.S. President In Historic Comeback; Republicans Take Control Of Senate, House Undecided. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

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[13:00:52]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer alongside Erin Burnett. I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. We're just hours away from Vice President Kamala Harris addressing the nation after President elect Donald Trump reached the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White house.

This is CNN's special coverage of Election Day in America. Continue.

Donald Trump makes history winning a second term. We have learned that Kamala Harris has actually now reached out to President Elect Trump and she will speak publicly at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. More on that coming up in just a few moments.

Republicans have also seized control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in four years. The House of Representatives is still too close to call. Let's take a look at the numbers that we're seeing right now.

You can see in the U.S. Senate right now, 52 Republicans, 42 Democrats, six seats remaining outstanding, three Republican pickups in the Senate as you can see right there. In the House of Representatives, you need 218 to control the House right now. The Republicans have 204. The Democrats 182. Democrats have two pickups. The Republicans so far, five pickups, 49 seats remaining, undeclared so far in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There are also several battleground states still uncalled. Stand by for our key race alert right now.

All right, let's take a look at some of these states where we still haven't made a projection. In Michigan right now, 15 electoral votes, 99 percent of the estimated vote is in. Donald Trump maintains the lead, 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent. His lead is a little bit more than 83,000 votes in Michigan right now.

In Arizona, another key state, 11 electoral votes, 63 percent of the estimated voted vote is in. Trump has 51.9 percent, Kamala Harris 47.2 percent. He has a lead of more than a little bit more than 100,000 votes over Kamala Harris in Arizona.

In Nevada, where the 89 percent of the estimated vote is in, Trump maintains a lead, 51.7 percent to 46.6 percent. His lead is almost 65,000 votes in Nevada, with its six electoral votes.

I want to start our coverage right now, this hour with CNN's Kristen Holmes. She's over at Trump campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Mar-a-Lago. Kristen, you have some new reporting about Trump allies pitching themselves for key roles. What more are you learning?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, this transition is already in full effect, some of the members of the campaign got a transition email last night outlining what exactly this would look like. And as we know, that campaign has already set up a transition office that has been operating independently for the last several months.

Now, the big thing is who is going to do what in a Trump administration. Even at four in the morning yesterday, I started getting text messages from advisors, allies, donors, all asking what I was hearing about potential names being floated around for those administration jobs. And you can bet that the knives are already out. And this isn't just the campaign we're talking about, the larger Trump orbit.

We know that people are jockeying for specific jobs and they are eager to prove their loyalty, if not just to Donald Trump, to those who are closest to him, meaning people like Susie Wiles who ran this campaign, people in Donald Trump's inner circle, to show that they were not only loyal to him, but that he would, they would be loyal to him in an administration, something we know is going to be incredibly important to the former president.

Now, he himself has said for the last several months and particularly the last several weeks, that he didn't want to have any transition conversations. That doesn't mean that at dinners he hadn't floated certain people's names for certain positions. But that's just what Donald Trump does.

[13:05:02]

His superstition told him not to get out there and try to plan an administration. But obviously all of that part of this is coming to an end as this transition has really already started kicking up its pace and they are on track to a Trump administration.

BLITZER: All right, Kristen Holmes in West Palm Beach over a Trump campaign headquarters not far from Mar-a-Lago, which is in Palm Beach, Florida. We'll get back to you. Stand by.

I want to get to our panel right now. We have an excellent panel. And MJ, you're our senior White House correspondent. You're getting some new information about the Harris call that's about to be made or has already been made.

MR LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, we do know that Kamala Harris will be at some point reaching out to Donald Trump to formally concede that. We expect to happen before the vice president actually publicly addresses the American people. We've yet to hear from her. She didn't appear at her own election night party last night.

You know, this goes without saying, this has been a very tough night, a very tough morning for Democrats in the Harris campaign. I think there is the shock element to this. Even though a lot of folks thought that this could be a very close race, I think a lot of folks did not expect sort of the scope of her defeat. And then there's just the sense of dread that this is only just the beginning.

They are now anticipating everything that could come from another four years of Donald Trump at the White House. And I am told that there was a campaign call featuring the senior most people on the Harris campaign, usually this is led by the campaign chair general, Molly Dillon, I'm told by one participant that it was filled with tears. They were trying to be supportive to everyone on the campaign.

And there was an acknowledgment, I am told, of everything that the campaign had gone through and sort of the unusual nature, of course, of this campaign, it having been so truncated. This is something that I think we will be talking about a lot.

One senior adviser I was talking to earlier in the day said the Harris campaign ended up being, in their view, the Biden campaign, with Harris at the top of the ticket. It was essentially the Biden campaign just with new posters.

As we are looking at the results of last night and processing everything, it is very clear that this was such a repudiation of the last four years of Joe Biden. And I think a lot of Democrats are wondering, did the Harris campaign do enough to really separate herself from the Biden administration and will that have even made a difference in the end if she had gone that path?

BLITZER: Lots of questions that still need to be answered. Thank you very much MJ Lee. Mark Preston, good to have you here with our panel as well.

As you know, the Democratic Party, they have a lot of questions that they have to answer. Where does the Democratic Party go from here? And does Kamala Harris have a big role in the Democratic Party next go around? What are you knowing? What are you hearing? What do you know?

MARK PRESTON, CNN VICE PRESIDENT OF POLITICAL AND SPECIAL EVENTS PROGRAMMING: Well, right now she has the most important role for the Democratic Party over the next couple of hours because how she gets out of this race in a way that is congenial and is, you know, talks about the transition of power is going to be very important given that Democrats have put so much into that they didn't think President Trump would abide by it had he lost.

Here's the reality right now for the Democratic Party. There is no true leader for the Democratic Party. And if you look at across the board, who is the leader for the party, you would have to say it would be Chuck Schumer. I think that our friend Manu can talk even more to that about how he what his power will be.

But if you assume now, if we're assuming that Republicans take control of the House, they will control the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court in four years to another conservative on the Supreme Court. So the Democratic Party right now, they can do all the backstabbing and the knifing, as we always see in a campaign. But the reality is they better get their act together and they better get it together quick because right now they are going to get steamrolled by Republicans.

BLITZER: Yes. And Manu is going to be a busy guy covering Capitol Hill for us. I want you and our viewers to listen to what Senator Mitch McConnell just said as the Republicans clearly take back the Senate. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: This shifting to a Republican Senate majority helps control the guardrails to keep people who want to change the rules in order to achieve something they think is worthwhile is not successful. And so I think the filibuster is very secure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Worth noting. Mitch McConnell is going to give up his role in the Senate. So give us your analysis.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, that was actually a significant point. He's been saying that for some time. Of course, the filibuster is something that requires legislation to be advanced by 60 votes. Most bills have to be passed by 60 votes to avoid the filibuster. That will be a problem for Republicans coming in because they're going to have even though they have the majority, when they can confirm nominees by a simple majority, they can confirm some of the Supreme Court by 51 votes.

[13:10:00]

Getting most legislation through will require getting some Democratic support to surpass the 60 vote threshold. Looking at probably 52, maybe 53, 47 in Senate. We'll see how that ultimately plays out. But also just underscores the challenges in governing. Even though it will be one party rule, they can pass their agenda, Marcus. Absolutely right.

However, in the House, while the Democrats have a complicated path to flip the House, the House majority could also be narrow once again for Speaker Mike Johnson and we saw the troubles that he had with the razor thin House majority. So it will not be easy.

The one party rule can be very complicated as well. And for Mitch McConnell, who is stepping aside, that's going to be a challenge for the next Republican leader. It could be Senator John Thune, the number two. Currently Senator John Cornyn, a former number two. He's someone who is -- those two are seen as the leading contenders. Rick Scott, the Florida Republican, seen as a long shot candidate, that race next week. So essentially the person who may advance the Trump agenda. BLITZER: And we'll see what happens on that front. All right, Manu, as

I said, you're going to be a busy guy, as we all do. Everybody stand by. I want to talk a little bit about what's going on, the balance of power in Congress. Joining us now, Republican Congressman Mike Lawler of New York, who just secured his reelection win big time last night.

Congressman Lawler, thanks very much for joining us. Congratulations on your win. Let's talk a little bit about what's being called a very impressive decisive win, a very decisive win for President Elect Trump right now. Give us your immediate reaction why you think he did so well.

REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): Well, look, Wolf, when he won back in 2016, he won by 80,000 votes in three states. And when he lost in 2020, he lost by 40,000 votes in three states. Obviously, we're a deeply divided country, but that was a big win last night.

And when all the votes are counted, he will not have not only have won all the swing states, he will have won the popular vote. And I think voters are fed up across the country with the politics, the personalities, the nonstop focus on what divides us.

And they are more focused on the substance of the issues impacting their families. From the affordability crisis to the crisis at our southern border to the international crises, over 70 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction.

The reason I won last night in a 2 to 1 Democratic district that has 85,000 more Democrats than Republicans and won convincingly by over 25,000 votes and a 7-point margin and when all the votes are counted, Donald Trump may have won my district despite losing it by 10 points last year or four years ago is precisely because of the issues.

People cannot afford to pay their bills, their grocery bills, their energy bills, their housing bills. The average mortgage cost in my district went up $1,000 a month over the last year. People are struggling. You look at the migrant crisis, over 10 and a half million migrants flooding into the United States. New York State spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money to provide free housing, free clothing, free food, free healthcare, the illegal immigrants. People are tired of it.

And I think Donald Trump has a mandate to govern, to address the issues on the economy, on the border, on public safety and the international crises around the globe. And it looks as though not only are we going to keep the House, but obviously have flipped the Senate.

BLITZER: You're pretty convinced you're going to keep the House of Representatives, Is that what you're saying?

LAWLER: Yes. I think when you look at the pickups in Pennsylvania and Michigan, that will offset the three seats we lost in New York. And it looks as though we're holding on in Nebraska and Iowa and in California, the numbers are coming in pretty solid. So when all is said and done, I think the House will remain roughly where it is right now, 221 or so in Republican hands. BLITZER: All right, Congressman, I want you to stand by for a second.

We have a projection we want to make right now. We have a CNN projection that's going on in Michigan. Take a look at this right now. CNN projects that President elect Donald Trump will win the state of Michigan and its 15 electoral votes. It's another important sign of just how sweeping his win has been. This is the third of the so called blue wall states to be won by Trump after Pennsylvania and Wisconsin both went his way. Trump won them eight years ago, but lost those states to Joe Biden back in 2020.

Let's take a closer look at the numbers right now. We'll show you what we have. John Berman, go ahead, give us the latest. You're all right.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, yeah, let's take a look at Michigan right now. You can see we just projected Donald Trump is the winner there, ahead by 83,000 votes.

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This was a state that four years ago, Joe Biden won by 150,000 votes. So you can see like a 230,000 vote swing in the state of Michigan. Here's the map. The red counties, he won, the blue counties, Kamala Harris won. So where did Donald Trump overperform what he did four years ago? I can show you that right here. Let me see if I can get at the stick.

Everything that's colored in here is where Donald Trump overperformed versus four years ago. It's almost every county, the entire up all these counties, save a few, Donald Trump overperformed in all of them. He did better this time than he did four years ago. And one of the counties that's the most glaring here is Wayne County. That's where Detroit is. You can see Kamala Harris won, sure, she won. She won by about 29 percent.

Four years ago, Joe Biden won by 38 percent. If you do the math there he was up 38 percent. Kamala Harris only up about 20, 29 percent. Now, there's a lot of reasons for that. One of them is that across the country, one of the things we've seen is that Kamala Harris underperformed in some of these major urban centers.

But Wayne County is its own issue, or was for the Democrats. Wayne County is where Dearborn is with a very high Arab and Muslim population there throughout the county, upset over the war in Gaza. That clearly could have been a problem for Kamala Harris. There you go next door, Washtenaw County. This is where Ann Arbor is, also the state capitol. Big liberal center. Kamala Harris got 71 percent there four years ago. You can see Joe Biden got 72 percent.

So, you know, Harris did a little bit worse, but when she's doing a little bit worse there, it just doesn't offset the gains that Donald Trump was making in all these other parts of the state. So, Wolf, a very similar story in Michigan to what we're seeing in the rest of the country, which is across the board. Donald Trump did better in the red counties, did better in the blue counties, and in some cases a lot better in those city centers. Wolf. BLITZER: All right, John Berman, appreciate it very much. Thank you

very much. Want to thank Congressman Mike Lawler as well for joining us. We'll continue our conversation with him down the road. To be sure. Our special coverage of Election Day in America continued right after this short break.

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ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: And welcome back to our special coverage. Election Day in America continued and CNN is now projecting that President elect Donald Trump will win the state of Michigan. It is another sign of how dominant his victory has been. Why we use the word landslide, it wasn't eking it out in the battlegrounds. It was overwhelming. Michigan's votes were not needed for Trump to win. And yet that just is icing to the cake. Adding to that electoral vote dominance, which now stands at 291 votes. It is the third of the so called blue wall states he has won along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And my panel is back with me. So, Kate, let's just start with Michigan. I mean, and you even saw it in Minnesota where despite having the vice president from Minnesota, Harris dramatically underperformed what Biden had done four years ago in Minnesota.

She wins it. But just to show this was overwhelming, my favorite map is looking at the country and seeing the little arrows of which way things went. And it's like you don't even see any blue on there, even in the middle. I mean, there's a couple of them, but it's just a red sea of arrows going Right. And Michigan is really ground zero for that.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Yes, I look, I mean, this was a thorough shellacking, to use Barack Obama's term. And I think there are a couple things. I think certainly there is anti-incumbent sentiment across the country, but also globally. I mean, this is not the only place in the world where since 2020 somebody has stood for reelection and has suffered a defeat like this. I mean, this has been a pretty consistent dynamic around the world since the pandemic. So, you know, certainly no question VP Harris was facing those headwinds.

You know, I think you look at the places where she underperformed Biden's vote and you look at the breakdown with different ethnic groups, racial groups across the country, it's hard to point to one place where she really, you know, it would almost be sort of easier to look at the result and say, OK, well, it was clearly, you know, her underperformance in Dearborn. It was clearly Gaza that, you know, didn't bring Michigan home for her. That's not the case, unfortunately, for the Democrats.

BURNETT: Right. I mean, so you can't just look and say, oh, George Stein and Dearborn. It would have flipped.

BEDINGFIELD: No, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I think there are -- I think Democrats across the board are clearly have a challenge connecting with working class voters. This has been -- this is not unique to Vice President Harris's campaign. This is a demographic shift, a realignment in this country that's happened over the course of the last 10 years.

So certainly not solely her shortcoming, but clearly the Democratic message is not resonating with working class people the way it needs to.

BURNETT: The weekend before she appears, Michelle Obama appeared with Kamala Harris. Michigan, you know, all the stops were pulled out of the people the Democrats thought would be the ultimate motivators in multiple states but in Michigan, and it doesn't seem that anybody had a sense of how dire it was. I mean, clearly they didn't have a sense of how dire it was.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, you know, I think people go to rallies who are already supporting you. Like, those rallies are a whole day commitment. You're standing in line.

BURNETT: And her rallies, where the way Trump's rallies, I think this is important. They were the way Trump's rallies were four years ago.

ALLISON: Yes.

BURNETT: In the past week and a half, Trump's rallies, if you panned around, were empty stadiums.

ALLISON: But, you know, I think there's a reason why they were. So nobody had rallies in 2020. There was a -- so there was a demand for interaction on the political sphere. I really do think that when the story is told about this election, we need to be able to talk as a Democratic Party to all people. I think that the fact that she's a black woman also has something to do with it.

But I think we really will have to take some time to study the impact that 2020 had and how we didn't canvas doors, how we our engagement was all digital, how that really accelerated how we communicate it with voters.

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And I think in some instances, everyone thought we could just revert back to business as usual. But the world had changed, and I'm not sure politics and the way we campaign and not just Kamala Harris.

BURNETT: Yes.

ALLISON: I mean, in every instance, it was just like, OK, we're not going to -- we're just going to ignore that millions of people died and we had a global pandemic and we couldn't even sit on a set at, you know, election night. So there are some other things that are happening that I think played into this.

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I think that's right. I mean, I think, you know, the -- I've been saying for a long time that the 2007, 2008 financial crisis created a very -- there's a lot of social science on this, a long tail of a populist upheaval throughout, like the Western democracies --

BURNETT: Yes.

GOLDBERG: -- but particularly in the United States. And I think that was one of the reasons you got Trump as it was playing out that populism. And then you have the unsettling nature of Trump's presidency and then you throw a pandemic on it.

And so just almost all of the muscle memory of our politics was scrambled. And then the weird thing about this just on this last night's election is the one thing it did was it erased any sort of just so stories or anecdotes. Like, you can't say, oh --

BURNETT: Right.

GOLDBERG: If you picked Shapiro, it would have been different. Right. You can't do any of that stuff because it was a systemic secular trend --

BURNETT: Yes.

GOLDBERG: -- that went a certain way.

BRAD TODD, GOP MEDIA CONSULTANT AND STRATEGIST: I think there is a common thread, though, and it's the fact that she does not know how to speak to the working class. If you listen to Kamala Harris talk, it sounds like she's running for the faculty senate at some liberal arts college somewhere. It doesn't sound like she's trying to work for working class votes. And that's why you saw her lose gear on with Hispanics and with working class blacks and with Asians. And it was across the board.

But it's all because they sold an identity politics message that was aimed at coastal voters. And we talk too much about it on TV shows, too.

BURNETT: Yes. No, yes, there's plenty of soul searching go around here.

TODD: You know, weren't talking about -- you know, we talked about the last week about how there's a hidden suburban woman vote and abortion was becoming more prominent and Trump's gaffes were becoming more prominent. No, it was the prices in the store. It was the lack of --

BURNETT: Yes.

TODD: The lack of control of the border. And we didn't spend enough time talking.

BURNETT: So can we talk about, you said, you know, the digital. The one thing that we kept hearing in the final days from the campaign. OK. And this was -- and the Republicans acknowledged it. OK. Which was outsourcing your ground game to Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk was a really bad idea. Because when you're paying people to knock on doors, they don't really care. They're not really passionate. That's why Trump was going to fail.

And you had Democrats coming in with 2,000 doors knocked in the past hour, and all by volume. You know, you had all the passion on the door knocking. And yet what happened. Do those people just not show up?

ALLISON: I think it's a combination of it. Again, it's not one isolated thing that it's just not going to be like, I know it would make people probably feel better because then on the Democratic side, you say, well, we're going to focus on that to fix it. It's got to be a comprehensive approach.

If you -- there were paid canvases on the Harris campaign, too, but they were turnout canvases. And then a lot of the folks that came in as volunteers, they were hitting the same doors over and over to try and persuade. And I think that the paid canvas helped with Donald Trump. I also think, though, that, like he --

BURNETT: Yes.

ALLISON: Jonah, you said this earlier. Both campaigns were right about their electorate. Trump was just a little more right. The way that he was able to run up 100 votes here, 100 votes there in these smaller counties, it really did hurt her.

I mean, the spread in some of these states is not so massive that if, like a couple of tinkers here and there might have shifted it, but the fact that in these rural counties, he ran up the score and she couldn't run it up enough in some of the population centers where she really thought about it, I'm just going to say it, and I know I'm about to get a lot of hate on Twitter for saying this, but it's not just working class people.

It's a conversation we need to have with white women, like, what is happening? You know, and for Hillary Clinton, 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump in this year, 57 percent voted.

And I think there was this belief that white women would come over to Kamala Harris because of Roe, because they did do that in 2020, but it wasn't at the presidential level.

BURNETT: Right.

ALLISON: It was at the Senate and House races and in governor's races. And then the final thing I'll just say is that there is a lot of talk about soul searching and when you lose, you know, I like sports. Like you run the tape, you study what you did wrong. And I think Democrats should do this.

But I just have to say I don't think Republicans did soul searching after they lost in 2020. I think that, you know, they lost. Trump denied the election results for 10 days or so. People were like that's January 6th is awful.

BURNETT: OK.

ALLISON: And then we slowly and surely found people fall back in line with this narrative that he didn't win.

TODD: It was new contested primaries though. I mean, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley did make the case that Trump was not going to win this election. They did make the case for why he shouldn't be the nominee.

[13:30:04]

And when they started, Trump was 11 points down. And until Alvin Bragg indicted him, Trump was losing the Republicans --