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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump Elected 47th President of the United States; CNN Projects Donald Trump Wins the Presidency. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump triumphs. The former president convinces America that he deserves a second chance to run the country.

Welcome to our special live coverage. It is CNN Election Day in America. And it is a red sun shining across the United States. The math has spoken. You, the American voter, have spoken and the story is etched in the numbers, not just in the battleground states, but, honestly, everywhere.

Donald Trump is quite simply running up the scoreboard. He overperformed what he did in 2020, in some places, overperformed what he did in 2016. He is on track, if their trajectory is not changed, to win the popular vote.

The blue walled Democrats were betting could put Kamala Harris into the White House. It crumbled. The patchwork of voters that put Biden in the White House four years ago, black voters, Hispanic voters, women, that, too, seemed to shatter or was just simply not enough.

Now, there are important races still settled across the country, and every vote still being counted will determine if Donald Trump takes power with a Republican-controlled Congress united behind him. But right now, as things stand, he has the White House, he has the Senate, the House still hangs in the balance.

Let's get straight to Phil Mattingly, who was at the magic wall. The presidency decided at this point. Trying to understand the why now, and it's not just the battleground states, it's part of that Democratic coalition, as we said, that simply seemed to slip away. Donald Trump taking advantage, particularly among Latino voters.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we've been talking a lot about, the critical suburban battlegrounds. Democrats failed to run a big vote in their urban areas. They also failed to run a big vote in Donald Trump's rural areas.

Let's talk about the demographics though. We start in Pennsylvania. It's one of those battleground states, but there's a lot of talk over the course of the last couple of weeks, particularly about Hispanic voters in the state. There's one slice of the state where the Hispanic population is actually between 15 and 25 percent. That slice of the state, particularly after the Madison Square Garden event, in the comments about Puerto Ricans, was one where Democrats said maybe this is an opening here.

This is about 23 percent of the population in Berks County is Hispanic. Donald Trump won this by more than 12 points. In other words, he did four points better than he did back in 2020.

Now this is Lehigh County. This is the home of Allentown. This is the place that Joe Biden was able to run up the margin a little bit on, as you can see, 7.5 points, Harris underperforming there. So, for Democrats at a micro level talking about just one of the battleground states, they're saying maybe we had an opportunity there. It turns out not at all, didn't make any inroads, in fact, lost ground.

I want to go to Florida. We don't talk about it as much anymore, and understandably so. And when it comes to the Hispanic vote, you don't talk about it as much anymore because it has moved so dramatically and I think so separately from what we've seen with the Hispanic vote out west, primarily because of the Cuban American vote in Miami, Southern Florida as well.

This was like the biggest siren for me early on in the night. Osceola County, if you want to know, this county demographically is 56 percent Latino, a significant portion, and a lot of new -- an influx of population over the course of the last year or so, Puerto Rican. So, was there going to be some type of dramatic change? This isn't the Cuban American vote, this isn't South Florida, Osceola.

Why am I pointing to this? In 2020, Joe Biden won Osceola by 14 points. Do you think that's dramatic? In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Osceola County by 25 points. In 2024, Donald Trump flipped this county and won it rather comfortably.

And so you're saying, all right, it's Florida. Florida was a bloodbath, to be honest, for Democrats. Maybe that's a little bit different. My good friend, Harry Enten, picked this part up. Let me flip up to right here. Texas border, this is Webb County, this is home of Laredo. You're looking at this, you're saying, all right, Donald Trump did very well in Texas, outran what he did in 2020, winning this by about two points. What happened in 2020? Democrats won this by 23 points.

BERMAN: Wow, that's a 25 point swing.

MATTINGLY: We got a tossup, but literally up and down this area, 95 percent Hispanic population in all of these counties, Donald Trump flipped them and flipped them majorly.

BERMAN: Huge swings there. An important part of that Democratic coalition clearly gone or largely gone now.

Phil, thank you very much.

Let's go over to Harry Enten. Phil was just talking about you, Harry. Let's dive in deeper to some of that Hispanic vote in the exit polls.

[07:05:01]

What do you see?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes. Let's take a look at Pennsylvania first, right? What do we see in Pennsylvania among Latino voters? Look at this. Kamala Harris won Latinos in Pennsylvania but just by 15 points. If you go back four years ago among Latinos in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden's margin was, get this, John, 42 points. We are talking the fact that, Joe -- excuse me, that Donald Trump was able to slice that margin by more than half, by more than half in Pennsylvania.

How about Florida, which you were talking about with our dear friend, Phil, over there? How about here? Donald Trump winning among Latinos in Florida by 18 points. So, you might say, you know, Latinos in Florida, Cubans, as you two were pointing out, it wasn't just Cubans, but keep in mind four years ago, Joe Biden carried Latinos in the great state of Florida. So, Donald Trump flipped it.

How about Texas? How about Texas? Look here, again, another win for Donald Trump among Latinos in Texas. Four years ago, you know who carried Latinos in the great state of Texas?

BERMAN: I bet it wasn't Donald Trump.

ENTEN: It wasn't Donald Trump. It was Joe Biden. We are seeing this movement across the map. It's not just among Latinos who are from, say, Puerto Rico or Cubans. It's across the map. It's across different parts of the Latino electorate. Donald Trump simply put doing better than he did four years ago.

And, you know, you're making that comparison of four years ago. Remember, eight years ago, Latinos were one of the biggest trouble spots for Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. Miami-Dade, he lost that by what, 30 points eight years ago? Tonight, or last night, he carried Miami-Dade.

We're just seeing this explosion of Latino support for Donald Trump, and the bottom line is we've been talking about realignment, realignment, realignment among Hispanics, definitely realignment.

BERMAN: This is what realignment looks like, the definition of political realignment.

Harry Enten, thank you very much for that. Kasie, we'll go over to you.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: John, thanks. Donald Trump's set to return to the White House with the support of a Republican-controlled Senate. Control of the House is uncertain at this hour.

Joining us now, Senator Marco Rubio, who has been one of Donald Trump's most outspoken supporters throughout the campaign and was in attendance last night at the Trump campaign's watch party turned victory celebration. He's also the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator, good morning. It's nice to have you with us. SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Good morning.

HUNT: So, let me just start with your reaction here. This was a sweeping victory for Donald Trump, for Republicans. What's your reaction and how do you explain what we saw last night? You yourself had said you expected a closer race than this one.

RUBIO: Well, everybody did, right? I mean, that's what we're certainly being told by pollsters. And I think eventually we're going to learn our lesson here. But what I'm most impressed by is not just the size of the victory. I know the number is still growing, but the way Donald Trump won this election. He won it by fundamentally remaking the Republican Party, but I hope also revealing to people that for voters in the United States of America, their primary identity is not their ethnicity. It's not their race. It's what they do for a living. It's who they are in their daily lives.

Well, I just saw a moment ago, you had a segment on the Hispanic vote in all these different places and, you know, every expert in the world was saying, well, there's no way Donald Trump can even be competitive because Bad Bunny is not supporting him and Jennifer Lopez and George -- whoever come out against it. You know what I'm saying? These people are workers. These people are fathers and mothers and they have children and they own small businesses and they're employees of a company who's sending a job overseas. They have to be appealed to as Americans because that's what they are.

And when these migrants come and they're criminals in their own home country, say, somebody comes here from El Salvador and they're a criminal, they're not criminals because they're migrants. They're criminals because they're criminals. And then they're coming here. What neighborhood are they going to? They're going to these Hispanic neighborhoods.

That's what we heard in Pennsylvania. That's what you saw Osceola County put up a moment ago, which is an enormous community, a strong Puerto Rican presence. They're very concerned about the cost of living, the cost of groceries. And Donald Trump appealed to Americans as Americans, irrespective of your background or your customs or what music you listen to or how your last name is pronounced.

This is more than just a realignment. I hope it's a realization that when you come to this country and you put your roots down here and you raise your children here, you become an American and everything from your, our economy to our safety, to our national security matter as much to you as they do to anybody else in this country.

HUNT: Sir, do you think this is a permanent realignment for these voters or do you think that this is unique to Donald Trump?

RUBIO: No, I don't believe in anything's permanent anymore because American politics moves so quickly and so rapidly. I saw, again, a moment ago, and we were talking about Miami-Dade County. I mean, Miami-Dade County flipped from 2016 to, in about eight years, this dramatic turn. So, nothing is permanent. I think as long as -- you know, let me put it to you this way. From now on, anybody who's running, at least for the foreseeable future, and says, I'm going to put the priorities of Americans first, I am going to ensure that our laws are enforced when it comes to immigration, we're not going to be anti-immigrant, but we're going to be anti-illegal immigration and chaos.

[07:10:00]

And we're going to try to keep America out of wars. We're entering into an era of pragmatic foreign policy in which the world is rapidly changing. You know, adversaries are uniting in North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, increasingly coordinating. It's going to require us to be very pragmatic and wise and how we invest overseas and what we do and how we approach things.

I think that message is going to transcend traditional, you know, ideological and partisan lines. But, you know, six years from now, maybe the Democrat was saying that. So, I don't think any of us could just sit back and say that this is permanent. This is not a partisan realignment. It is an American realignment. And Donald Trump just happens to be the candidate over the last ten years.

That's truly not just revealed it, but captured it and communicated it in a very unique way. But, I mean, it's incumbent upon those of us who were in office now to turn that into policy and ultimately to continue it as a movement. Otherwise, you know, someone will learn from it and they'll, they'll adopt it.

HUNT: Interesting. Sir, as we look forward here, are you interested in a role in the next Trump administration?

RUBIO: Look, I always am interested in serving this country. I'm doing it now in the United States Senate. That's where I plan to be next week. And, you know, beyond that, I'm not trying to play coy. It's just -- literally, just, you know, just a few hours removed from this election. Nobody actually going in knew exactly. We felt good about it, but nobody knew what was going to happen. I haven't had any such conversations with anybody in the Trump administration.

And either way, I plan to work with them, whether it's in the Senate, which is an important place to be, or in some other capacity. If those conversations happen, we'll have them, but, you know, I certainly haven't talked to anybody about it. And I know, again, it sounds like, you know, I hear people talk about it and mention it, that's just speculation right now, it's got a lot of talented people to pick from, but that's just a bridge I haven't even started to cross yet because I don't even know that bridge is there, but I know I'll be in the Senate, and that we're focused on.

HUNT: So, speaking of the Senate, who would you like to see as the next Senate Republican leader?

RUBIO: Well, we've got great people running. I mean, that's the truth. I like them all. Obviously, Rick Scott is my hometown -- my home state senator. I think he would be a great majority leader. I know he's going to be running, and we'll see how it all plays out.

But, ultimately, I think whoever our next leader is has to be somebody who understands what happened here, what voters are telling us. They're not sending us up there. This is not a college football game where we celebrate because our team won. They're not sending us up there to celebrate. They're sending us up there to work and to try to turn, you know, the message of this campaign into public policy for the benefit of all Americans.

And that means, you know, begin to secure our border, begin to rebuild our economy in a way where working people, hard working everyday people can afford life, get ahead, do basic things that we used to take for granted, right? If you work hard, you should have a job that pays you enough to own a home, and start a family, and retire with dignity. We want to get back to an economy that makes that possible, and a world that's increasingly dangerous.

You know, we wake up every single day to bad news after bad news. We've got to start taking this pretty seriously. When you've got North Korean troops embedded alongside Russians in the middle of Europe when you've got the Chinese now habitually and routinely harassing not just Taiwan, but the Philippines, you've got to -- and, of course, Iran, that continues its ambitions, including trying to kill Donald Trump, I think we've got a very dangerous world that's going to require immediate attention.

HUNT: So, you mentioned obviously that there are going to be -- there's going to be a new team in place coming in for the Trump administration. If you are part of the Senate, you'll have a say, of course, in confirming Donald Trump's nominees. He's obviously campaigned with Elon Musk extensively and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently expressed interest in a cabinet level post. Do you think the Senate would confirm him to a cabinet level post?

RUBIO: Well, I think the Senate's going to give great deference to a president that just won a stunning, what I think is an Electoral College landslide, when all of a sudden done in a mandate, and he's being given a mandate to govern. And I think presidents who are given a mandate to govern deserve from the Senate the opportunity to surround themselves with people that are going to help them execute their policies.

We have to understand the job of anybody that President-elect Trump puts in place. The job of those people is not to be a check on Donald Trump or to control him. It is to help carry out what the American people have sent them there to do and sent them there to do in a pretty overwhelming fashion by modern standards.

So, I do think that that's important. Obviously, I have to be qualified and all these sorts of things, but beyond that, we have to ensure that he has a team around him that helps him execute his public policy, not undermine it or stand in the way of it. That's the same thing Joe Biden and every president we've ever had has wanted to be surrounded by is, you know, people that are going to do a good job, but ultimately help carry out the policies that the people who elected that president sent them there to do. HUNT: So, speaking of those policies, sir, would you be supportive of mass deportations if that's what incoming President Donald Trump were to do?

RUBIO: Well, first of all, the first mass deportation, and the one that's most important, is criminals. Yes, if you're a convicted murderer, or a killer, or some very dangerous individual that has a criminal record in another country, or have committed crimes here, you need to be removed from the country.

[07:15:08]

I don't care where you came from. You're here illegally on top of the fact that you're here to commit crimes, you must be eliminated and removed immediately from the United States of America. That's without a doubt.

Now, beyond that, I do think we have to have immigration laws and they have to be enforced. That is the law of the country. The laws of our country today have been, if you are here unlawfully, you are to be detained through removal.

Now, you can decide who to prioritize and you can decide who you want to move into the front of the line in terms of enforcing that. But that has to be the law of the country. That's -- if you don't enforce that, then what you're basically telling people all over the world is come to America, you're not supposed to be here, but you will let you in and then you're going to get to stay.

Look, we admit every year over a million people get green cards, they get U.S. residency over a million people a year. No other nation in the world is as generous as that. And I think everyone would admit there are things we need to do to modernize our legal immigration system.

Right now, we simply can't do it because we have millions of people a year that are entering the country illegally. And some of them are very dangerous criminals from all over the world, not just from Latin America, from all over the world, many of whom we have no idea who they are. And then they come here and commit serious crimes and pose threats to the country. So, I think that's where you start. That has to be the priority.

But, yes, I support enforcing the immigration laws of the United States, because if we don't, then we don't have immigration laws.

HUNT: In the event that someone's crime is simply breaking the immigration law, you've made this distinction between people who commit crimes and those who come in illegally, but don't have another crime on their record.

In the event that they have children who are U.S. citizens, how, in your view, should the system treat those people? There have been some suggestions by Trump supporters that those children be deported with their parents. What do you think is the right way to deal with that? RUBIO: Well, I mean, again, we talked about a list of prioritization. I'm not going to be making pronouncements here about what the Trump administration and how they're going to prioritize it. I can guarantee you their number one priority is going to be, first and foremost, people who are here illegally and unlawfully and have committed or are committing serious crimes or are threat to the country.

If you're a convicted murderer in El Salvador, or a convicted murderer in Venezuela, or whatever, and now you got into the United States unlawfully, you need to be removed. I don't care how many children you have in the United States, you're here unlawfully, you need to go, because you're a threat to the country. And that's where you prioritize, I believe, and you work your way down from that.

But the most important thing is if you do not begin to enforce your immigration laws, if you do not send the message that there are people in this country unlawfully and they're going to be removed, then more people are going to come. It's all an entirely incentive-based.

The reason why so many people have come is because, rightfully, they believe that if they come in, they will be admitted, they will be released and they will be told come back for a hearing and that's not going to happen any time in the near future and they're going to get to stay. And that's acted as a magnet, as an incentive for people to come and frankly for people to be trafficked here.

That's the piece that everyone's forgetting. They are paying some criminal organization to traffic their loved ones or themselves into this country. It's a very dangerous situation and it's just not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. No country in the world would allow it. We shouldn't either.

HUNT: Sir, very briefly before I let you go, I'd like to ask you in your capacity as the ranking member on the intelligence committee, there've been reports out in The Wall Street Journal and then confirmed by The New York Times about a Russian effort apparently to put flammable devices onto airplanes. There are -- the reason as to why they may be doing this is unclear, but I'm interested to know what you can tell us about this apparent plot, the potential danger here, and how you think the U.S. should be responding based on what you know in your capacity on the Intelligence Committee.

RUBIO: Well, I won't comment on even articles that are based on things that are supposed to be classified or intelligence, but let me just say generally, and I think this has been reported publicly, and that is, we know that the Russians and Vladimir Putin have undertaken sabotage operations in Europe to try to punish countries that are assisting Ukraine, and we know that that's an ongoing threat. And I think that is, in some ways and I know the campaign has passed, but I want to be clear, I think in some ways, this comes down to the fact that they simply do not respect or do not fear what the reaction would be from the Biden administration.

And so this is a very serious threat. It's a very serious problem. You know, if there's anything that's explosive on an aircraft, be it cargo or passenger, it's a very serious thing and it's something that needs to be dealt with very firmly.

But let me just point you back to the fact that we know that the Russians have been involved in attempted sabotage operations throughout Europe as a way of inflicting costs on nations in Europe that are assisting Ukraine.

[07:20:00]

And I think that's an area we need to focus on and that the Trump administration would make a priority, in my opinion.

HUNT: All right. Senator Marco Rubio for us this morning, Senator, very grateful for your time today. Thank you.

RUBIO: Thank you.

HUNT: John Berman, back to you.

BERMAN: Thank you, Kasie, very much.

I am back with Mark Preston and, and Professor Leah Wright Rigueur. Marco Rubio said a lot of things there, but one of the things he used was the M word, and that would be mandate.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: What do you think about that?

PRESTON: That's what I mean -- Professor and I have been talking about this all morning. That is an extremely dangerous word to use. He will have a honeymoon, no doubt about that. He will be able to get some things through. And the fact of the matter is he has the United States Senate. He may have the U.S. House of Representatives. So, not only will he have a honeymoon from the American people but he'll have at least the levers of government to try to get some things done.

However, when you use the word, mandate, that means that everything you want to get done is going to get through, and that the way the founders set up our government, there's just no way, unless he was able to get more than 60 votes in the Senate, he not even close to 60 right now, even though they did well in the Senate.

BERMAN: Look, certainly not everything he wants to get through, but insofar as he has been given support by the American people to do something, Professor, what would you say it is?

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN CONOTRIBUTOR: So, I want to cautious this again even though it's clear that Republicans are not going to be cautious on this. I think they are going to look at this as a mandate. But I think part of what we have been saying is that you cannot look at it as a mandate because it was a referendum on how the Democrats had essentially not lived up to the promise of change that the American people said that they explicitly wanted.

So, what does that mean? It means that if Donald Trump puts into effect and puts into policy, puts into law with, you know, with the three branches of government, policies that are unpopular with the American people, the American people in turn will punish him for that.

And we've seen this happen in the past. We've seen midterm elections where Americans have come out and said very strongly, we do not like this. We do not like the decisions. One of the things that Donald Trump has somehow managed to escape, but not necessarily, but one of those really unpopular policies was the overturning of Roe v. Wade, right, the Dobbs decision. We actually saw in this election that several states passed referendums protecting and enshrining abortion rights in law, including in states that went for Trump.

So, there are people -- it's very clear that the American people discern and can make decisions about I can support Trump on this, but on this, I'm going to punish him if he breaks from that. And I think the other thing that's really important here too is that Americans are going to look at the economy. If they still feel the burn that they are feeling right now from the economy in two years, they will send a message to Donald Trump and to Congress letting him know that this is unacceptable.

BERMAN: All right. Stand by, both of you, a lot more to discuss.

Donald Trump made a direct appeal to black men and in some counties, in some places it worked. We're going to look at where and why.

This is CNN special live coverage Election Day in America.

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[07:25:00]

BERMAN: All right. Welcome back to our special live coverage. It is CNN Election Day in America, sort of like Election Day after in America. Donald Trump has been elected president. Again, Phil Mattingly is with us at the magic wall talking about what he did to get there and with whom. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Yes. I think throughout the course of the last several hours, which may also be days, it gets a little lost at this point in time. We've been trying to kind of go through the specific slices that Donald Trump was able to not just match his margins but do a lot better then, why he had this pathway to win the election more significantly than he ever has before and have a pathway back.

We've talked constantly about the blue wall. We have not talked a lot about the Sun Belt here. I think there's a couple things in the Sun Belt. I want to start here in North Carolina that early in the night were warning signs when I was talking to Democrats down there about what may be coming. And I want to start right here in this area. These are not counties that we talk about very often. But put over the demographic layer in terms of African-American population, the darker the county, the higher the level of black population in these areas. This is Eastern North Carolina. These are smaller counties.

Now, take a look when I pull out here about where Donald Trump overperformed in the state of North Carolina, you'll see a couple of them are in here. But throughout the course of this area, again, Bertie County, not a huge county, a place that Kamala Harris won by 15 points. Back in 2020, Joe Biden won it by 21 points. And this is the case around throughout Eastern North Carolina, Joe Biden won this, won Hertford County by 34 points. What happened, underperforming, again, throughout North Carolina, in the eastern part of the state, kind of more rural areas, but a high level of African American vote majority counties, Harris was underperforming by three, four, five points.

And we saw something very similar play out here. The state of Georgia, Joe Biden flipped it in 2020. '24, Donald Trump rather handily when you compare it to 2020, put it back in the Republican column.

We talk constantly about Fulton County, about DeKalb County, about the suburbs outside of the Atlanta metro area. What I think was most interesting was what happened right in here. What do I mean by that? There's several Southeastern states that kind of comprise this, but known as the black belt. These are smaller counties, more rural counties, black farmers. The darker the county that you see here, the higher the level of black voters in that county. Where did Donald Trump overperform in Georgia?

BERMAN: A lot of those counties.

MATTINGLY: Up and down these counties. Again, these are not huge counties. But these are the types of counties that Democrats thought, including, you know, Bill Clinton went on a 2.0 Bubba's for Bill tour, kind of going out into more rural areas, black farmers were part of that.

And I think in this area in particular, they didn't just need to match margins from 2020. They needed to run them up significantly, or in some of the more red counties, hold Donald Trump's margins down. Where there were majority black voters in counties, in more rural areas, not just the urban areas of Milwaukee, of Philadelphia, of Detroit, but in more rural areas as well, it is very clear that there was an underperformance in those two Sun Belt states.

BERMAN: It's really interesting in both blue counties and red counties. In some red counties, he did better than he needed to, and in some blue counties, he did well as well.

[07:30:00]

All right, Phil Mattingly, thank you very much.

Let's go over to Harry Enten now at the magic wall. We'll dig a little deeper here in the exit polls about what Phil was just talking about.

ENTEN: We can dig into North Carolina.