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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump on Verge of Victory After Battleground Wins. Aired 4:30- 5a ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And everybody's going to be like, oh, no, we rejected identity. No, you didn't. OK. You really, you literally did not.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And a woman of color, a Black woman.

SELLER: But let's back up. You have someone who is 78 years old, who has displayed more misogyny and racism, has been gaffe prone. And what he's going to have for the next four months, five months, six months is the benefit of somebody else's economy.

Just as he served and just as he had when he got into office in January of 2017, he benefited from Barack Obama's economy. What everybody around the table will tell you, if they're being intellectually honest, is that all economic indicators are trending in the right direction. And although people are, me and Shermichael talk about this all the time, although people may not be feeling it at their kitchen table, every single economic indicator out there that points to a good economy.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Right. But it seems like rich people are feeling that and working class people aren't. I mean, isn't that kind of the basic message here?

Isn't that what we're learning from these voters, right? I mean, it's a feasible question. The working class coalition is saying, hey, this isn't working for me.

SELLERS: That has nothing to do with the fact that the economic indicators are what they are. But what I'm saying is that --

HUNT: I just mean those indicators seem to show that the wealthiest are doing well and others are not included in it.

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's the problem with my Democratic friends, and they seem to be aloof to this. You can point to all the charts in the world. People know how much money they have at the end of every single week. They know how much goods cost in a grocery store today compared to four years, five years ago. And running on the message that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have done wonderful things for the economy is just not real for everyday people. And it's why they said, with all due respect, Madam Vice President, we're rejecting this notion.

And we do want to go back to at least the first two years of the Trump term that we believe were a whole lot better.

FINNEY: But that doesn't exist. You can't.

SINGLETON: So why didn't you win? Why didn't your candidate win then, Karen, if that doesn't exist?

FINNEY: And that has nothing to do with whether or not we won. My point is we can't --

(CROSSTALK)

FINNEY: You're going to get in a time machine and go back four years?

SINGLETON: Why didn't the Vice President win if the economy was so great?

FINNEY: That's not the point I'm making.

SINGLETON: So what is the point?

FINNEY: The point -- don't look at me like that.

SINGLETON: What's the point?

FINNEY: The point that I'm trying to make is that where we were in 2017 and 2018, we can't just get in a time machine and go back.

SINGLETON: My point is your message didn't resonate.

FINNEY: I said that.

SINGLETON: And I think to try to pretend and paint a picture, and Bakari, I get your points in terms of the charts. I get it. I'm a numbers guy.

But most people are saying, I get the numbers. I don't have a 401k. I'm not invested in the stock market.

SELLERS: I was just saying that for the first six --

SINGLETON: It's not working for me.

SELLERS: All I was saying was for the next -- for the first six months of 2025, whatever successes we're going to get on this TV show and claim that Donald Trump has had are going to be because of the simple fact that the policies put in place were working. And people will begin to feel it by then, although they don't feel it now.

HUNT: Right, before we wrap up here, Alex Thompson, you have been covering the Biden campaign, followed by the very abbreviated Harris campaign. We have not heard from her yet. We expect to hear from her in the morning. What are you hearing from inside the campaign right now about how they

think this happened? You know, what the questions are that are being raised? I mean, I certainly have already heard some quiet so far, but people saying, well, if Joe Biden had still been at the top of the ticket, would this have been different?

I'm, of course, skeptical of that, but I want to know what you're hearing.

ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, the finger-pointing is already starting. It's only going to become more direct. I'll just give you two quotes from people that I talked to tonight.

This former Biden advisor, how do you spend $1 billion and not win? What the F. Well done.

HUNT: There's a lot of F-bombs that get thrown at you.

THOMPSON: And then on the other end, just like a long-time Democratic operative said, we step-walked into disaster and swapping the pitcher in the sixth inning wasn't enough. And Kamala Harris did as good a job as she could have done. Now, you know, to Bakari's point, was it gaffe-free?

I don't think that's a fair characterization. She also went on The View and said that she couldn't think of anything she would have done differently than Joe Biden. I think even people in Kamala Harris's world would have admitted that was a gaffe.

But that being said, it was a tough hand, and she played it pretty well.

HUNT: All right. John Berman, back to you.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Thanks so much, Kasie. Stand by for a CNN projection.

All right, and we do have breaking news. CNN is ready to make a projection in New Jersey. CNN now projects that Vice President Harris will carry the state of New Jersey.

She's some 200,000 votes ahead right now. Less than five points ahead, she will get New Jersey's 14 electoral votes. What's surprising is that it's taken us until, what is it? 4:35 a.m. Eastern time to call New Jersey.

[04:35:02]

It's stunning, in fact, that it has taken this long. One of the biggest surprises is how well Donald Trump has done in some of the bluer states that we're used to. We will talk about that extensively.

But right now, Kamala Harris, we do project will win New Jersey and its 14 electoral votes. Just in terms of where that puts the electoral map right now, that gives her 219 electoral votes. But the big important number is the one on top of that. Donald Trump's at 266. Just four electoral votes away from the 270 that he needs to officially win the White House. But you can see over there on the map, those states in white are the ones that we have not projected a winner yet in.

And you can see Alaska with the three electoral votes leaning heavily toward Trump. Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, all leaning toward Trump right now. So he is absolutely poised to get to that 270 and perhaps soon.

Still, there are votes left to count. Our voting desk is tracking them all. We're going to get an update right after a quick break.

You're watching CNN special live coverage of Election Night in America.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, welcome back to CNN's special live coverage Election Night in America. Let's get right to the voting desk. Omar Jimenez is standing by there.

And Omar, one of the states we have yet to call, yet to make a projection, is in Wisconsin. What are you seeing there?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, of course, at this point, we're just trying to see where is there additional vote and what the timing is for that additional vote to come in at this point. So we've got some. So we're looking at to see if there are some numbers where we can find some of that clarity.

Specifically, we want to look at Milwaukee, where, of course, you've been keeping an eye on the margins there and the timeline for more info, which may be very shortly. Because as we understand from our team on the ground there, the thumb drives with the exports and the tabulating machines have now been handed off to the county where the upload has now started. And as of now, the estimate is we'll have those votes within 10 to 15 minutes. At this point, it may be less based on when we got that communication.

And these are the city of Milwaukee absentee ballots. And part of why this is so critical, I mean, let's just take a look back at when President Biden won the state here in 2020. You see how close it was based on where we are right now, with 96 percent of the vote in at this point.

The margin is much bigger than that with Donald Trump in the lead. These added votes, again, if this timing holds up here within the next few minutes, could give us some clarity to how this race will ultimately turn in the end. We'll keep you posted -- John.

BERMAN: All right. That is good information there. Omar Jimenez, thank you very much.

The thumb drives delivered in Wisconsin. We could get results, new results from Milwaukee very soon that could be decisive. So let's get back to Phil Mattingly at the magic wall here.

We should note right now Donald Trump leads in Wisconsin by 109,000 votes. Once we see those ballots in Milwaukee and, you know, unless Kamala Harris wins Milwaukee by 500,000 votes, which is literally impossible, we may get a better sense of what officially is happening in the state.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, I think you've talked to Democrats or Republicans right now. They have a pretty good sense of where this is going based on how much vote is in, but there is still a significant amount outstanding here in Milwaukee, largest county in the state of Wisconsin, and a Democratic stronghold.

And I think the big question with this new batch of votes is not necessarily is it going to change the race, is it's what's it going to do to this margin? Because this margin is an underperformance by a pretty significant margin, by about five points from what Joe Biden did, four points from what Joe Biden did back in 2020.

And I think the issue that Democrats have, the issue that Harris campaign has had is they were willing to acknowledge that they had work to do in urban areas, particularly with some of their Black voters. And Donald Trump had made inroads there.

What they said was in places like Wisconsin, if you push out or you go into our suburban strongholds, if you go to more educated parts of the state, that's where we'll make up for it. That's where we'll balance it out. That's Dane County. That's the University of Wisconsin. That's the home of Madison.

This is a place that is a, that is a Democratic stronghold. They expected to blow out the vote here. You look at that margin, you say, all right, 99 percent reporting when you've got a 74 percent in your favor, almost 75 percent. That must be exactly what you did, but it's underperforming Joe Biden by a point and a half. You can't drop off. You can't be as soft as they've been in those urban centers, population centers that used to be strongholds -- It's still hard to some degree -- and not make up for it in a significant way in places like Dane.

BERMAN: So we're talking about Milwaukee, Phil, right there, the results there. Let's drive two hours south about it because look, we've projected Illinois will go for Kamala Harris here, but the numbers we're seeing in Illinois, particularly in Chicago, man, are they eye popping?

MATTINGLY: Yes. Look, did you and I think we were going to be talking about Illinois at this point in the morning after election night? No.

But the reason why is the story that it connects to in places like Milwaukee, in places like Detroit, in places throughout the country where Democrats have long held significant advantages in these urban areas and majority African-American areas. That's a big margin, 88 percent reporting. Now compare it to 2020.

That's stunning. BERMAN: That is a huge difference.

MATTINGLY: Joe Biden got 82.5 percent of the vote in Chicago in 2020. Kamala Harris right now with 88 percent reporting is at 60, not even 62 percent. And so people are going to try and figure out as we've been looking at exit polls, we're trying to get a sense of where things stand. But I'm just going to tell you, if you go into the states where Democrats traditionally win and win by a lot, where they are not doing as well as they traditionally do, where Donald Trump is overperforming in a place like Maryland, which is, again, a state that we called for Kamala Harris, we expected.

They got a new senator. Larry Hogan was defeated by Angela Alsobrooks. But pop in over here, Frederick County, but also you go into Baltimore area, this is where I was going for actually, where the margin here is just not anywhere near what we saw back in 2020.

Kamala Harris at 83.9 percent. Four and five points below. And that's the same in Prince George's County in Maryland.

[04:45:00]

You push up into New Jersey, which we just called.

And this was another thing. I've been tracking this throughout states that we normally don't spend a lot of time looking at. And if you look at the places where Democrats traditionally run up big numbers, traditionally have a majority African-American population, Joe Biden won this by 46 points.

Kamala Harris is underperforming by 10 points. This is not a blue wall problem. This is not a Milwaukee problem. This is an issue in urban population centers. The Democrats usually blow out the vote on throughout the country right now.

BERMAN: Huge swings in some of the biggest cities in the country. This is part of the story we're seeing tonight and into the morning. Phil Mattingly, thanks very much.

Let's get back to Kasie now.

HUNT: Yes, John. And I mean, we're going to continue that fascinating conversation that you're having.

I mean, Bakari Sellers, this was the thing that had me looking at Pennsylvania early in the night because it was really clear that those counties, we've talked about them ad nauseum for months, Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware.

Those were the places where Harris really needed to run up the score if she was going to have a shot here. And as we saw Trump making gains elsewhere in more rural areas, even in urban centers among, you know, African-American Black voters, she really needed to get things going there. They ran a strategy aimed at that, you know, kind of late in the game here, but it wasn't enough.

I mean, what is going on?

SELLERS: I mean, it's hard to say what's going on at 4:45 when, you know, we just kind of got the results a little while ago. But I will say that what we saw was Black voters kind of held the line in these urban centers, and I think you'll see that. Many of the exit polls still have him in about 12 percent, 13 percent, 14 percent.

But it didn't offset the slight tick that you saw in every single rural county around those states of Pennsylvania or Georgia, where he would tick up three points from last year. And she would either hold pat or just fall slightly behind what Joe Biden performed at. And so at the end of the day, you were comparing everything to 2020, and they just did not meet that mark.

And that, you know, the question is, why? What was that fundamental inability to meet that mark and not being able to offset the rural uptick that we saw Donald Trump being able to achieve?

FINNEY: But also, I think we can't underestimate this. I mean, the theory of the case here was, can somebody run a 100-day, 107-day campaign and win? And it was always going to be very hard.

I mean, they weren't just trying to build the plane as they were flying it. They were trying to change out the crew, put in the jet fuel. So I mean, I think as we get more data and better understand what's happening in the electorate, some of it may be things we've talked about.

The electorate just didn't feel like they knew her well enough or didn't feel like they knew whether or not they could trust her with the economic issues. Which, by the way, for women candidates, the economy and national security are always two very hard issues where you have to, you know, shore up your credentials. And yes, pointing back to 2016, sexism, I'm going to say also racism and bias had to have played a role.

THOMPSON: When what you're saying, Karen, is part of the reason why a lot of Democrats are very angry at Joe Biden tonight, because they feel that the decision to run again when he was 80 years old was very reckless and a very risky decision, a risky gamble that he lost. And then he basically swapped out and he chose Kamala Harris, not just in 2020, but he chose her, basically gave her a $100 million head start when he endorsed her and gave her his campaign.

And you know, in some ways, while a lot of people want to say, well, Kamala was bad in the interview, and I just mentioned it before, she was bad in the interview with The View, she was bad in the interview with 60 Minutes, there are a lot of Democrats that are actually much more angry at Joe Biden tonight.

FINNEY: Yes, I think that's, I mean, I'm just saying, yes, I was expecting that because if he had dropped out sooner, and she would have ascended as the nominee, she would have also had more time.

GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, look, I don't think there's any candidate, no matter when they started, this decisive of a delta between Republicans and Democrats, it doesn't matter who came in. The right choice was putting Kamala Harris in when they did. These numbers would be exponentially worse if Joe Biden was going to be the candidate.

And if you would have plugged Kamala or anybody else in earlier, it still would. This was a mandate by America.

THOMPSON: I think the question was if you'd installed, if you'd had a process two years ago.

HUNT: If there was a real Democratic primary.

DUNCAN: Once again, Donald Trump ran as the outsider and people appealed to it. If they ran the same messaging that they did and didn't talk about the economy or didn't take the border seriously enough, quickly enough, it would have been the same result. I think what I see is that there was a multitude of issues inside the Democrats, right?

As I was out there campaigning in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, there's all kinds of issues, right?

[04:50:00]

It was they weren't speaking clearly about the economy to each individual nuance. The transgender issue bothered some segments of the group. Abortion was one that was spoken in two different divisions, right? There's a health care portion of it and there's a birth control element to it.

So there's all types of turning parts. The Democratic Party has got a lot of work to do and soul searching.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, a rubber stamp for the Trump agenda. We're going to take a look at the ongoing fight to control Congress.

We've got much more CNN special live coverage coming up in minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Welcome back to CNN's special live coverage, Election Night in America. Donald Trump absolutely on the brink of clinching 270 electoral votes and the White House.

But control of Congress is also at stake here. CNN has already projected the Senate for the Republicans, but still some key Senate races are still outstanding. We are lucky to have Jessica Dean tracking it all.

Jessica, what's the latest?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN: All right, let me walk you through some of these key race alerts that we have been following as this night has gone on.

[04:55:00] And these are in the blue wall states that we paid so much attention to.

So let's start first in Pennsylvania, where you see Dave McCormick, the Republican leading the incumbent Senator Bob Casey, 49.2 to 48.2. That's with 95 percent of the vote in. Look, this was a seat Democrats certainly hoping to hang on to. Dave McCormick, you'll remember, ran last time in the primary against Mehmet Oz.

He did not win, so this is his second try at it.

Let's take a look at our next state here, Michigan, where you'll see Mike Rogers leading Elissa Slotkin, a current representative at 48.5 to 48.4, just a razor thin margin there in Michigan, with 91 percent of the vote in.

And also in Wisconsin, where you have Eric Hovde leading the incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin, 49.8 percent to 48.1 percent. Again, 94 percent of the vote in there.

Again, all three of those would be pickups for Republicans who already control the House. Because take a look at the -- I'm sorry, the Senate, the balance of power with Republicans at 51, two Democrats at 41. They've already picked up two seats tonight.

So now the question is, John, will they continue to pick up more seats? That is what we're tracking. Again, all three of those blue wall states, should they go Republican, would be pickups for the Republicans.

BERMAN: Yes, very close though, especially in Michigan right now. The question is, how long are Donald Trump's coattails there? We could find out in the next several minutes or hours because the former president appears to be close to crossing 270 electoral votes, the threshold he needs to win.

Stay with us. Our special live coverage continues right after this.

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