WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Hart on the Hill: Trump Triumphs

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

This week, Micah Hart discusses the 2024 election results.

Welcome back to another episode of Hard on the Hill. It was election night and so much happened and I am so excited to discuss everything that we saw on election night and just discuss what it's all looking like. So without further ado, let's get into things. Well, I'm probably not the only one who's super tired today. I went to bed at like 4 a.m. and got up at around 8 a.m. and it was a crazy night. I was on the radio for WRFH here at the college, and it was a great night. We had a great time. And I think that I was just surprised how rapidly things were developing this time around.

It didn't take as long as I thought it would. And I mean, we found out our presidential election winner pretty early in the morning yesterday. Donald Trump securing enough electoral college votes to win the presidency. I am looking right now at the New York Times. right now as of this recording he's at 277 Kamala Harris has 224 and this isn't including several states we're still waiting on New York Times still has main up Michigan Nevada Arizona and Alaska pretty close races Trump winning in Michigan currently with a little over 95% of the vote in winning at 50% Arizona Trump winning with 52% with 63% of the vote in

Nevada, Trump winning with 86% of the vote in. He's winning at 51% to Kamala Harris is 47%. Alaska, he's winning with 56%. There is 71% of the vote in there. And in Maine, Harris is winning 53% of the vote and there are 77% of the votes in there. So Trump is doing pretty well right now in a lot of these swing states. This is a really interesting thing to talk about is I kept saying on this show that I thought it was going to be really close. And it still could be obviously. There's still ballots being counted in these states, but it doesn't seem that way right now. It seems like Trump has a significant percentage lead electoral college-wise as well. Like, he's doing pretty well in that regard, and he could get a significant more number of

votes. Like, it's incredible to be watching. I mean, I didn't think this would happen. I thought it would be very close. One or two states, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania did really matter. It helped get him over. It was really. critical in this election. But I'm just very surprised right now sitting here and saying, yeah, look, Trump was able to do it on around like 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning the day after the election. Like it was crazy. Like this went fast and Trump did a great job at getting people out to vote and getting a good amount. And popular vote wise, Trump leading that the popular vote out as well with 51% of that compared to Kamala Harris is 47.5% right now. That's incredible. And it really

goes to push down calls to get rid of the electoral college because Trump currently winning both electoral college and the popular vote. And there are states, I mean, I was watching really closely last night, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, all which went to Trump and went to Trump pretty well. I mean, Wisconsin Trump won 49.7% of the vote to Harris is 48.8%. Pennsylvania. Trump. Trump won 51% of the vote to Harris is 48%. And Georgia, Trump won 51% to Harris is 49%. North Carolina, another one. Trump won 51% to Harris is 48% there.

So Trump doing really well in these swing states. I mean also great night for Republicans in the Senate, taking control of the Senate. 52 Republicans currently to 42 Democrats with several races. not called yet, but still, that's insane. I mean, you've had several flips already, Montana, going to Tim Shehey over current Senator John Tester, West Virginia,

called pretty early on for Jim Justice. That was a nice little victory for Republicans to get early on in the night. And then a big one that we watched was Ohio, Bernie Moreno, winning against Jared Brown, 50 to 46%. Bernie Moreno, the Republican there. Also, now J.D. Vance's seat. We'll see what happens there because J.D. Vance is going to be the vice president.

He's the vice president-elect right now. So we'll watch all of that as it unfolds over the next few months and I'll be discussing that. But just looking at the Senate, also, insane numbers for Republicans being able to win. That was huge because, as I've said, you remember, Republicans, you want to keep the Senate. You want to have the Senate because you could block judicial nominations. You can block other things as well. It's very important part of the process. So Republicans being able to have the two for two right now,

two for three right now. We haven't figured out the House yet. That's still being worked on. But that's pretty significant. And if you look at the states that are left for the Senate that are really critical right now, Pennsylvania, McCormick up there with a little over 95% of the votes, and he's up with 49.1% of the vote. Michigan, Alyssa, Slokin, she's a Democrat.

She is up right now by 0.1% with a little over 90%. of the votes in Wisconsin. Same thing, Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat, up by 0.1% with just over 95% of the vote. In there, Arizona, Gallego is up to Lake by 2% with he has 50 right now with 60% of the vote in. And then Nevada, really, really close, a 0.1 difference, but the Republican, Sam Brown, is waiting with 84% of the vote in, and he has 47.3% right now. Other than that, there are a few other states we're waiting for, but Republicans looking pretty good right now, they would say that they have, they must feel confident about this.

I mean, it was a pretty impressive showing for Republicans and just being able to expand that majority more gives you more padding just in case whatever happens. It doesn't just say, hey, we want, it sends a message to D.C. It sends a message to Congress that things won't go the way they have been going. And this has been something I've been watching as well as like, people voting for policy, personality, what are people voting for?

And you just see the shift to the red to Republican, really showing that people really voted. Obviously, I think on the economy, I think on the border, I think on national security. And people sent a message last night, I think, in how they voted. And the House, let's just talk about the House quickly here. the house also obviously as I said it's still being called numbers wise it does take a little longer in the house just because there's such competitive races and there's so many of them so this is normal I wouldn't be concerned at all about anything if you're on either side of this is just the process for the house of representatives and it's a it's a good thing to be watching but right now

as I'm recording this according to the New York Times Democrats sitting at 177 seats, Republicans to have control. You need 218. Pretty close right now to see who's going to win. There are a lot of, obviously, competitive races. We're watching. One big race that I was watching was Michigan 7, which ended up being a flip in this state to Tom Barrett from Democrats have this seat and now Republicans have it.

Barrett winning by about 3%. It's looking like they're very close race. across the country for the House that everyone will be watching for sure still as we're waiting to see if there are enough flips for Democrats to take control if Republicans are able to take control and what that majority would look like still if they keep control. Do they gain more seats? Because again, remember, this is about how many seats at that point. Because once you get the majority, you want to have a solid majority.

Republicans, remember, don't have a huge majority right now in the House. And it's caused some problems. I mean, we had a speaker get ousted. earlier and now we have our current speaker Mike Johnson. You look at everything going on and you say how much can you get this by and how does that affect the rules in the house when they make their rules? What does this lead to after this? So it's not just about getting to the number 218 or for Senate 50 or 270 for the president. It's how much do you win by? Because that does definitely affect things especially for Congress. Not as much the president needs about getting to 270. But if he does

get more and you get a landslide, that does send a message to DC. and say this is about the people and the people send a clear, clear, clear message. This wasn't close. So that's how it matters there. But in Congress, like, how much do you have wiggle room wise? Can you make certain policies? Can you get things through faster? Like, if Republicans get a trifecta, that's going to be something to watch is.

How are they able to operate? Because you obviously do have states where in the house, you'll have districts that were very close that are competitive. They have to be careful still. But do you have enough leeway where they can vote a certain way and you're allowed to still get your things done and make sure you can keep those seats in the next two years. Those are strategies that you have to watch this thing. And it's something that you have to even start thinking about now because even though we just had this election, you're still now thinking about the next election.

How do we make sure we keep these seats, retain them, get some more onward so we can expand that majority? Those are things that both sides start thinking about, honestly, I think starting today is how do we move forward from here? And that's something just in general that parties have to start doing right away is like how do you move forward whether you won or lost like what do you do? Obviously Trump's going to have to start the transition team looking at what do they do? What do they start looking at? How do they get the um everything in place for January? How do they have everything structured? What does that look like? What are these cabinet positions going to look like? They have to get that all figured out. This is going to be a long process of figuring out how this works.

But there there's obviously a system in place and they're working on that for sure and they're going to start doing that. But watching that, I think now is what you have to shift your attention to is how does this all look and how do the numbers actually fit into the situation of how Congress can legislate and how the president executes legislation. And I will be watching now and talking about that over the next few months now is how does Donald Trump lead? What does he lead like? What are the policies he's going to push for right away? What executive borders are we going to see right away? What are going to see from Congress? How much of a mandate is this? going to be. How much is, are they going to just go, yeah, we're going all and we're going to get this

done right away. Um, or how much are they going to have to wait and be like, well, we have swing things we have to deal with. It's nicer in the Senate just because it's longer terms where it's a little bit more flexible there, I think then two year terms in the House of Representatives. Again, really fast turn around there. So we'll see obviously how this all goes. And I, I will obviously talk about these results. So probably next week just to give an update and refresh everyone on what's going on. But right now, obviously, if you're a Republican, you're sitting pretty nice and you are probably really happy about these results right now with the president, the Senate, and the House even right now is looking. Obviously, it's leaning Republican right now in terms of

how many there are that have been called. Again, anything changes with those. We don't know official results of who will win control of the House. But right now, not terrible for Republicans. So something else I want to talk about is I just saw a U.S. News and World Report article that the Democrats' current National Committee chairman, Jamie Harrison, is not expected to seek the renomination for the chairmanship again when the party will hold their vote early next year. That's just going from sources that the U.S. News and World Reports was saying that he's not expected to seek this position again. And I think that's something that I want to just talk about for a second is leadership and how that looks after an election. And look, if you lost, if you were running the DNC and you were like doing all of that and you guys lost like this

and if Trump continues to win swing states, like, and it looks worse, you probably should step out. Like, allow somebody else to come in and look at this. Because that's another thing within politics is you need a fresh pair of eyes to come in after an election to say, What went well? What went bad? How are we going to move forward? This is day one starts today for the next election. Okay? Day one starts today.

And yeah, I don't think we all have to be super like, oh, look at this. I'll look at all these races right now. Like, we don't have to look at everything perfectly right now. But you do want to consider things to look at in the future and have notes on it and say, look what we did this time around? How did that work? How did that work? What should we be doing next time? Who should we appeal it to next time?

Like, I think Kamala Harris had an issue with male voters. period. And I think she needed to do better with them than she was doing and marketing more to them and talking to them more. I don't think that the campaign did a great job at that. So that's something maybe the Democrats go back and look at and say, hey, we did really bad with this group of voters. How do we fix that? How do we fix that in House races, in Senate races, in the presidential race? Does that affect each other? What did that look like? How did Harris help or hurt candidates across the country? What does that look like? Where do we go from here? How should our messaging look? That's what I think they have to do. Republicans have to go in and say,

we won, what do we do from here? How do we go forward and keep what we have? How do we look at what we did and say, can we keep replicating this in the future? How can we expand our base even more than this? How can we reach out to different people? How can we add to the party? And they have to look and say, what policies are we going to do to add to the party to make sure we're representing our full base those are things they have to look at what went well what went wrong i think a lot went well for republicans last night i think they're going to be looking at saying how do we keep up this momentum how do we keep this number of seats in the senate how do we keep this number in the house how do we keep this presidential electoral victory this way how do we make these states more red i think you'll

you're even witnessing that with states like ohio and florida which what have been considered swing-sit, but I think are definitely trending more to the Republicans now. I mean, you saw Bernie Moreno one last night, Trump won Ohio last night. Florida came in pretty quickly and looked pretty great for Trump. And so I think you really have to look at. That's what they're going to be looking at is how do you keep those states that we see go back and forth?

But can Republicans just keep them now? How do they approach that strategy? And then obviously the midterms are the next elections. How do you go from there with governor's races, Interstate Senate races. How do you keep momentum? As the party in control, it's always harder. So you have to be very cautious looking at what can you do to make sure that your party has the best chances to lose the least amount of seats?

Because it's always going to be tough as the party in control to keep seats. It's just that way. It's always been that way. And that makes sense because people are like, oh, I don't like that. And they're going to not move for that because they see that as your fault. and so it does make a lot of sense as to why that works out but it doesn't always work that way and so if Republicans look now and say what do we do

they can start early on and start saying here's how we'll deal with this in 2026, 28 and 2030, 2032 how will they deal with this in the long term? Those are things that I would be watching as time goes on and think about just really where things look for both parties. I think that there will be a lot of serious

conversations on both sides about what needs to be done and how they get it done. Well, I just want to talk for this last part of the show, just about everything we saw over the last few months. And I've talked about that, but it was a crazy election. It was crazy. And it's somehow, in a night, is over. It's done. We're moving forward now. Okay? and I really want people to know, like, as the holidays are coming up, people see their families, and sometimes it sparks a lot of political debate, a lot of political rhetoric and frustration and anger. And look, you should never be completely just losing friends and losing family relationships over politics. Like, we should be able to agree to disagree.

These are family. These are friends. These are people you care about. And you're going to try to, people are losing them because of a policy or a person that they don't even know in D.C. Like, that's not good. We need to heal as a country. And I think healing part of that is mending our personal relationships with people, knowing it's okay to agree to disagree. And knowing that we can have conversations.

And I always mentioned this. and I will always be mentioning these things because I think they're so important to who we are as a country that we can have the amazing and truly just huge and important right of voting, that we are so blessed to live in a country where we can vote. We have power in our ballot, and our voice means something.

But then we can also disagree with people, and it's okay, and they can vote how they feel too. And at the end of the day, we're all still Americans. We are all still. under the stars and tribes of red, white and blue, America. We are all a people who we disagree, but we live here, we come together. We have a lot in common. I think we do have more in common than we think.

And when we sit down and have these conversations, we learn about people. We learn about their experiences. We learn about who they are, where they came from, why they are the way they are, why they vote, the way they vote. And we can understand greater why they do things the way they do. they feel this way, why they feel that way. It helps unlock so much for us as people by having these conversations, having discussions on everything, but then not hating each other for disagreeing, not yelling at each other

because one person thinks this about the border, one person thinks this about the border, but being able to agree to disagree, have a conversation, have dialogue, not just yelling, that's what I think we need to look at. And let's be honest, this holiday season, just pass the turkey, past the cranberry sauce, and have a discussion about who you are in your lives and what's going on in your lives, not politics. It's a day to be thankful for everything in our world and everything we have

and we have what we should really be thankful for, I think, is our families, our faith, our friends, our communities. Politics should be left aside, okay? I love politics. I talk politics a lot, but I don't want it to become, life. I don't want it to take so much of me. That's all I talk about. I want to have relationships of people I agree with and disagree with. And yes, I have a lot in my community of people who agree with me, but I have a lot who disagree with me. And I love them both the same. Why? Because I don't make

politics everything. I don't write somebody off because we disagree on a policy. I don't write somebody off because we voted for different people. I know people for people, not a policy. And I think that's what we really need to remember as we go into this Thanksgiving Christmas season of, look, these are the things that matter. We got to really center ourselves on what matters in life. So I really think taking a second to think about that and reflect is so important. And knowing who you are and not trying to instigate anything too at these holiday things. I know it can be easy to be like, oh, look at, look at we won or you lost or whatever that may be. Like, it can be easy to get into that and just, do that, but I really think that we should try to just move on from those things and have fun

conversations, bake a turkey, bake a pumpkin pie, hang up all the ornaments on the tree, just watch the snow fall down. Have a great time and have a, have a great season because I think that's what really, really matters. Well, you're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and I'm Mike Gahart, and I am so, so, so thankful that you decided to tune in today. and listen to this show about my post-election thoughts. It was a crazy ride, and I'm excited to be finishing out my show next semester and just talk about everything going on because there will be so much political news next semester,

as well with a new president or Republican Senate, and we'll see what happens at the House. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.