The NPR Politics Podcast - Donald Trump Poised To Win Election

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Donald Trump is poised to win the election and will likely return to the White House as the 47th president. How will he govern and what does it mean for the country?This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. It is 3 52 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 6th, and Donald Trump is on the cusp

of a return to the White House. When I said that, many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now we are going to fulfill that mission together. We're going to fulfill that mission. Domenico, as we record, Trump has swept three of the swing states pretty decisively. Talk us through where we stand. Yeah. I mean, where we are right now is that Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States.

You know, him being able to win Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina. As we said, coming into this election night, there was no path for Kamala Harris. The math just didn't work. If she didn't win one of those three states, Trump has won them and is going to be the next president now because of it. It's quite remarkable that he was able to win by the margins that he won by in some of these places and the fact that he's leading at this hour in the other Blue Wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan by fairly sizable margins. He's also leading in Arizona and Nevada, which could mean a seven state sweep for Trump in

all of those toss up states. And you know, that's, that's pretty notable, but it's also not that surprising given the fact that we're in a place where American politics seems so national now, not just so localized, that one little tip in one direction couldn't kind of make the whole house of cards fall down. And it seems like that's what's happened tonight. But traditionally, they do all break in one direction. That's what I mean.

It's not unusual. I always say historical rules only work till they stop working. Well, this historical rule kept on working. The battleground states tend to go in one direction. And the other thing that was typical about this race, of course, when Donald Trump is in a race, it never seems typical at all, but in an environment where incumbents have been toppled all over the world in Western democracies and otherwise, and people feel the cost of living is too high and immigration is a problem, even though all these countries are also facing a labor shortage. You know, this was a race that the challenger was supposed to win, according

to historical rules, and he did. Yeah, people have been in a bad mood. I mean, they've been in a bad mood for a very long time, right? I mean, people have been saying that the direction of the country is going the wrong way for every single month for the past 15 years, which is kind of crazy. But the fundamentals, Mara's right, we're totally on Donald Trump's side, the economy, people saying that their perceptions are that they don't feel as good as they did maybe five years ago. They say four, but I think they really mean five when they think of the trump economy considering We were right in the middle of the coveted pandemic Four years ago, but you know people are feeling you know sticker shock the prices at grocery stores

They've told us over and over again on the campaign trail It's a thing that we've heard about all throughout all of this and you know for the people who voted for donald trump The exit polls tell us that these character issues, judgment and all of that, were much further down the list for them than something like being able to be a good leader, the ability to lead. And the economy, obviously, huge portion of that.

It's hard to see how prices go down, right? I mean, inflation has leveled off, but going back to 2020 you know, 2020 prices, that seems pretty far fetched. Basically, Donald Trump said, I can wave a magic wand and make prices go down to where they were when I was president before. And a lot of people believed him. And we're going to see what happens.

He says he has a mandate. The last guy who won the popular vote and the electoral college thought he had a mandate. His name was Joe Biden. And he presided over what became one of the most unpopular administrations in American history. But what's really interesting to me is when you remember about the first Trump term, once he was in office, he

was treated like a normal president. People rendered a judgment on him at the end of his term. They didn't like it. They didn't like the way he handled COVID. And it'll be really interesting to see if he can change the rules of the game so profoundly that he won't be judged as a normal president or not. Yeah, on that note, Mara, I want to hear just Trump spoke this morning, about 2 30 this morning to his supporters in Florida. I want to hear just a little bit of that. America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the

Senate. Wow, that's great. So there's that word mandate you mentioned, Mara. What can we expect from Trump in a second term? Well, we certainly know what he said he wants to do. And I believe that politicians are transparent. They tell you what they want to do. And when they get into office, they try to do it. Even though a lot of Trump supporters thought that he was joking or sarcastic or didn't really mean it when he said things like, I want to let Putin do whatever he wants. And he said he wants to weaponize the Department of Justice to go against his enemies. He said he wants to use the military against his political

opponents, de-professionalize the civil service, something called Schedule F, where he can fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with his loyalists. He also says he wants to put on steep tariffs, which I think the business community doesn't like. But which he would have the power to do. He would certainly have the power to do, and that's what I'm focused on, things that he can do on his own legislation is secondary. All right, we'll take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment.

This message comes from wise, the app for doing things in other currencies, send, spend or receive money internationally and always get the real time mid market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the wise app today or visit wisecom, T's and C's apply. hour. We'll give you quick election updates with the latest results. We're the NPR News Now podcast. Stay with us. On the Embedded podcast, every Marine takes an oath to protect the Constitution. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This is the story of a Marine in the Capitol on January 6. Did he break his oath? And what does that mean for

all of us? Listen to A Good Guy on the embedded podcast from NPR. Both episodes available now. Election seasons are tough on everyone, so Pop Culture Happy Hour is there to serve you recommendations and commentary on everything in the pop cultural universe while helping you snap out of that doom-scrolling mindset. It's important to stay informed, but you also need to take care of yourself. So treat yourself to a new episode about the pop culture you love on Pop Culture Happy Hour, only from NPR. And we're back. So Republicans will also have control of the Senate. We know that so

far. That will have huge repercussions for Trump's ability to govern. Domenico, what do we know right now? Domenico Grigori, Ph.D., Ph.D. Well, what's really surprising is just how big the Senate majority may be for Republicans, because if Trump does wind up pulling off, you know, winning, you know, Wisconsin and Michigan and Nevada. He very well could wind up with 55, 56 Senate seats, which would be, you know, very, very high for Republicans and not what was expected. It was expected that they might have a 52, 48 majority. Democrats would still be in striking distance to be able to try to come back in 2026.

But that doesn't seem to be the case now. It'd be a much higher hill for Democrats to climb to be able to try to get back into the majority in the Senate a couple of election cycles away from now. We'll see what happens. The House is another story. Really the ballgame seems to be there where Democrats seem to have a shot here at winning the House. They need a net gain of four seats overall. They are holding up fairly well, but Republicans in California and Arizona, as the vote is starting to sort of close there, they're gaining a little bit more momentum and may

be able to hold off Democrats. We are not going to know for some time because many of these races are really, really close. We're talking about like, you know, some 70 races that I've been tracking over the last day. You know, in fact, you think about a seat like the Maryland 6th Congressional District, there's 300 votes that are separating the Democrat from the Republican. So it's going to take some time before we know. Danielle Pletka And of course, if Republicans hold the House and having taken the Senate and the presidency as things stand right now, that opens up a

whole other conversation about what Trump could do beyond simply executive power. Danielle Pletka Of which he has a tremendous amount and the Supreme Court has given him much more, just to establish that. I mean, legislation is important, but we're living in a new era of almost unfettered executive power. Emma Cieslik Before we go, any final thoughts? I'm gonna start with you, Mara. Mara McAllister Well, I think there's so many things we're going to learn from this election, and both parties are going to spend a lot of time looking over the entrails. But one of them that really

strikes me is that a highly professional, well-funded, sophisticated ground game is no match for just plain old organic enthusiasm. I don't think Trump's win was because he had a good ground game. I think it's because he had more organic enthusiasm. I don't think Trump's win was because he had a good ground game. I think it's because he had more organic enthusiasm. Yeah, absolutely. I think that Trump is a one-man turnout machine for the people who want to vote for him. That's it. Full stop when it comes to that. What was stunning here is that white voters actually went up to 71% as a share of the electorate, which is higher than they were in 2020, which was 67%

of the electorate. And that's really stunning because we know that white voters are going down as an eligible share of the voting population overall. So the fact that Trump was able to turn them out really helped him win despite the fact that Kamala Harris was able to win 43% of white voters, which is actually pretty good for a Democrat. This is political realignment in the face of democratic change. In other words, it's going in the opposite direction. It's not hitching a ride on the growing sections of

the electorate. It's the opposite. Not to mention the movement with other demographics. I was just going to say, Trump really pulled off a coup in how many Latino voters he was able to win over because Harrison only got 53% of Latinos, according to the exit polls, that is down from 65% where Joe Biden was. That is the lowest any Democrat has gotten since 2004. Um, when George W. Bush nearly pulled off, uh, even race with Latinos.

So there's a big realignment that's happening in this country. And when you're in the middle of a realignment, it's really hard to see what the country is going to be like, what that realignment is going to mean. And I don't think we're going to really know any of that until maybe even 2028. Danielle Pletka Yeah, no. And now that we're, since we're talking about final thoughts, there are so many of them. We're also in this whole new world where one of Trump's biggest backers, Elon Musk, owns a massive social media company that became a megaphone for Donald Trump, not to mention conspiracy theories, disinformation, and misinformation. That's

going to have profound effects on American politics too. I think there's going to be heavy debate about what the correct approach is for Democrats and how they can win in the future because they clearly moved to the center. In fact, to the center, right, I would argue in the Biden administration and they lost. Right now you can say that it's because of Kamala Harris's words from 2019 and the fact that, you know, even our polling showed that people didn't believe necessarily that she was sincere about the, her intentions for the proposals that she's putting forward. At least many men didn't feel that way. But there's also going to be a lot of progressives who feel like Kamala Harris really reached out to disaffected Republicans who wound up voting for Donald Trump anyway, for the most

part. And that might not have been the best approach because she wasn't able to turn out you know 18 to 29 year olds for example only 55 percent of them went for Harris Democrats win when they're at 60 percent so I think that's going to get fought out and you know where that usually gets fought out in a primary like one that didn't happen this time. We will be back in your feed this afternoon so be sure to hit the follow button wherever you get your podcast so you get notified every time we have a new episode. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Hey everyone, I'm B.A. Parker, a host of the podcast Code Switch, and on my show, I get to dig into all of the facets of being a Black woman, from honoring my ancestors to exploring representation in reality TV. Code Switch is a place where I think out loud about how race and identity are connected. Join me on the Code Switch podcast from NPR. If you need a moment to catch your breath and calm your nerves, listen to the latest all songs considered from NPR music.

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