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Harris to Make Concession Speech at 4PM ET; CNN Projects Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin Wins Third Senate Term; ; Just Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired November 06, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer alongside Erin Burnett. And 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 and delivering her concession speech after losing the race for the White House to the now President elect Donald Trump. This is CNN's special coverage of Election Day in America continue.

We have a CNN projection for you right now. Take a look at this. CNN projects that Tammy Baldwin, the senator from Wisconsin. Democrat, will be elected, reelected. She'll defeat the Republican challenger, Eric Hovde. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat incumbent, will win the senate seat in Wisconsin, an important win for the Democrats right now.

Tammy Baldwin has been a fixture in Wisconsin politics since back in 1992 when she was first elected to the state's legislature. But this was a very, very tight race. And let's take a look a bit closer at the results right now.

If we see with 99% of the estimated vote is in, Tammy Baldwin, the incumbent Democrat with 49.4% to Eric Hovde's 48.5%. She's winning by some 27,477 votes right now, A big win for the Democrats in the state of Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin, reelected to the Senate, an important win for the Democrats.

Let's go right to our Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju, who's tracking the balance of power in the Senate and the House. How does this impact things, Manu?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, definitely a sigh of relief for Democrats given that every single seat in the United States Senate is critically important because it impacts how bills can get approved in terms of giving you more of a margin to pass some bills if they were to move along straight party lines or confirm Supreme Court nominees or even more importantly for Democrats to get back in the Senate majority, each seat makes it harder and harder to do so as Republicans pad the majority.

So where do things stand right now? Right Now, Republicans have 52 seats. They are clearly the majority. They picked up three last night in red states, Ohio, Montana, West Virginia. And they have -- there are still five seats that we still have not called. So Tammy Baldwin's victory prevents them from expanding to 53 seats.

However, they can still get up to 54 seats, Wolf, because in two states right now, Republicans are leading both in Nevada and in Pennsylvania, where Pennsylvania seems increasingly likely to go the GOP side where Republican challenger Dave McCormick is facing the incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey in that state.

But here in Wisconsin, let's take a look a little bit in the numbers here. Tammy Baldwin defeating the Republican businessman, Eric Hovde, in that race. She had a narrow victory in this state even though Kamala Harris herself had lost in Wisconsin. It shows you the difference. There are 27,000 votes ahead of Eric Hovde, the Republican businessman. Hovde is someone who is self-funding his campaign, is an owner of a multibillion dollar bank, someone who had engaged with Baldwin in a really intense, ferocious back and forth over the air race, perhaps one of the nastiest Senate races in the country.

But what we saw here is a bit of a phenomenon that's happening. Some split ticket voting in Wisconsin. Kamala Harris losing in Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin the Democrat winning there. You're seeing it in places like Arizona. Right now, the Democratic candidate in the Senate there, Ruben Gallego, is leading his race.

[14:05:03]

Kamal Harris is behind in Arizona, similarly in Michigan, Harris losing in Michigan, the Democratic candidate for Senate, Elissa Slotkin, now ahead in that race. So this is something to look at, Wolf, because in the Trump era, there's been so few split ticket voting. But here in Wisconsin, Democrats succeeded in winning in the Senate race down ticket even as Harris fell short in this critical swing state.

BLITZER: All right. Manu Raju, excellent explanation. Thank you very, very much.

And Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken to Donald Trump and officially conceded. And the nation will hear from her about two hours or so from now. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is over at Harris's campaign headquarters in Washington, D.C. Kristen Holmes is over at Trump campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Priscilla, first to you, give us some new details about what Kamala Harris will say in her concession speech.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well, we're learning in the last hour that the Vice President did call former President Donald Trump and congratulated him on his win. According to an (inaudible), she also discussed what they called, quote, the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans. Now, that is a theme that is likely to continue into her remarks later this afternoon at her alma mater of Howard University. That is where sources tell CNN she is going to implore supporters to accept the results of the election and also urge supporters to find common ground. So that is what we're anticipating in her remarks that again are

scheduled for later this afternoon. But behind the scenes, Wolf, there has been a state of shock and disbelief among her allies and sources close and in the campaign. Of course, remember, Wolf, that over the course of yesterday into election night, senior Harris campaign officials had been projecting privately and publicly confidence and optimism in their internal data and their belief that undecided voters or voters who previously leaned Republican would support the Vice President. That ultimately was not what the results showed. And now, they are contending with that.

There has been some finger pointing about the strategy and whether it was wise to go, for example, after those disaffected Republicans with Liz Cheney or whether they did enough to lock in their base. But certainly, those are the questions that they will continue to grapple over over the next several days and weeks. But ultimately, Wolf, she has conceded. She has called the former President and she will be speaking to her supporters later this afternoon. Wolf?

BLITZER: Priscilla Alvarez, thanks very much over at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Right now, I want to go to CNN's Kristen Holmes. She's in West Palm Beach, Florida, over at the Trump campaign headquarters. What are you learning right now.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Donald Trump has been on the phone mostly all day talking to allies, advisers. We know that some foreign leaders have reached out to the former President. All of this is going to be very important to Donald Trump as loyalty is one of the key things that he looks for as he is building out his next administration.

And I can tell you, Wolf, that the knives are already out, not just among Donald Trump's campaign, but really his entire orbit. People have been calling me all morning. They've been calling the campaign, his inner circle, trying to pitch themselves for various roles in the administration or just to remind the people around Donald Trump how loyal they were to the former President at various times.

One thing to keep in mind, Donald Trump was keeping track of who endorsed him and when, when it came to Republicans, noting that if they endorsed him before Iowa, they were more loyal than people who only endorsed him after they thought that he could win.

Now, conversations around administration posts have largely happened without the former President who has said that he didn't want to have these conversations until he actually won the election, largely because he is superstitious. Now, he himself has floated various names at different occasions, but not really been a part of any real conversations. That really ends today.

People on the campaign already received emails as to what exactly the transition was going to look like, how it was going to move forward. And as I noted, there is so much jockeying going on in Trump's world and his larger orbit as to who actually gets an administration position that all of this is starting now as we look forward to January. BLITZER: All right. Kristen Holmes, thanks very, very much. Kristen

Holmes reporting for us. I want to go back to Erin Burnett right now. Erin?

BURNETT: All right. Wolf, and I want to talk about this other breaking news that is developing at this hour, which is that the special counsel, Jack Smith, is in discussions with the Justice Department to essentially get rid of the January 6th case, Mar-a-Lago case, those cases pending against Trump. Now, of course, those are the federal ones separate from the state. But this is huge news and everyone's here with me.

Elie, let me just start with you. Can we just take a step back? It's huge news because you had, and we'll talk about these separately, but classified documents, misuse hanging out in the bathroom. Who knows what they were -- at Mar-a-Lago, black and white case.

[14:10:02]

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

BURNETT: You had the January 6th case, which there had been years of adjudication and back and forth, now into what was an official act and what wasn't.

HONIG: Yeah.

BURNETT: Day in and day out. And now, what happens?

HONIG: So first of all, this is an astonishing result if you just sit back and think about it. I mean, these are two of the biggest prosecutions the Justice Department has ever brought. Neither of them will see the light of day. Neither of them will get to trial. Neither of them will get to a verdict. Here's what Jack Smith, I believe, would be discussing as between what can happen between now and January 20th. He's not going to be able to have a trial. But a big question is will he issue a special counsel report like we saw with the Mueller report, the Durham report, the Robert Herr report? The special counsel regulations say, he is supposed to file a written report when he's at the end of his case.

Now, ordinarily, you'd wait until after your trials. That's not going to happen. But I want to see -- are we going to see a Jack Smith report between now on January 20th?

One other point I want to make about this new reporting that we got from Paula Reid, that Donald Trump is going to fire Jack Smith and he accepts that. Note the contrast because four years ago when the Biden administration took over, and I know Kate (ph) will remember this, they inherited a special counsel that I'm sure you were not fans of, a guy named John Durham.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: John Durham into Hunter Biden.

HONIG: Well, into the origins of the Russia investigation, and he was a Trump. And what did the Biden administration do? Nothing.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hands off.

HONIG: They let him finish his job. He took into 2023 complete hands off. And Donald Trump said, I'm firing Jack Smith in two minutes, to quote him.

BEDINGFIELD: Right.

HONIG: I should say there's a little bit of a difference because DOJ policy says DOJ cannot prosecute the sitting president, which Trump will be in now.

BURNETT: All right. Now, let's just say, and we don't know, but there is a report, okay? If there is a report, I'm just thinking back because you mentioned Ben Herr (ph). The Ben Herr report was maybe no one remembers anything was in it except for one thing. They remember that he said that Biden was not able to remember things, and that Biden might get off because people would see him as an old man who didn't have a memory. And that was what stuck with the public. That became part of an important narrative that led into the debate and the whole thing. So I'm just saying, a report can have influence.

BEDINGFIELD: It can. And I think that, you know, the Herr report fed into a preexisting narrative that was already starting to pull Biden under. So, you know, I think we have to recognize that it wasn't the Herr report alone that, you know, kind of generated this. And I think depending on when we saw a report from Jack Smith, I mean, we will see where Trump is politically. But yes, absolutely, these reports can certainly have political impact.

I mean, I think, you know, Elie and I were talking about this earlier this morning. You know, the thing that concerns me here is, you know, we talk a lot about legal precedent. But the political precedent that's being set here by the firing, the dismissal of this, you know, special prosecutor, say we're essentially saying, you know, elected officials are above the law. The, you know, candidate, the president elect is above the law, and the message that that sends, the kind of political precedent that that creates I think is a really dangerous thing.

BURNETT: Yes. I'm sorry, I'm laughing. I'm laughing because the trailer for Ben Herr is running on my phone. I meant Robert.

HONIG: It's Robert Herr.

BEDINGFIELD: I knew you meant Robert, yeah. I know.

HONIG: I know what (inaudible) has been (inaudible).

BEDINGFIELD: Robert Herr report.

BURNETT: Sometimes, you can just do with (inaudible).

HONIG: The chariots never lie. BURNETT: You can just do with 11 chariots, all right. Okay. All right.

Let's talk about Mar A Lago because, right, Mar-a-Lago goes away in this case. Mar-a-Lago is -- was the one that was considered by whatever the political persuasion, whatever people. That was a black and white case. That one extensively is going away too. And that's, of course, linked to Aileen Cannon, the judge who has been put forth as possibly an Attorney General nominee for Trump.

BRAD TODD, GOP MEDIA CONSUMTANT AND STRATEGIST: I would argue they've been adjudicated. 70% of Americans thought these cases were politically motivated.

BURNETT: Right. With the jury of public opinion.

TODD: And the jury is the largest jury that's ever sat in the United States. And it happened yesterday in the ballot box. The public -- and plenty of people have misgivings about Donald Trump who voted for him yesterday. I think that's another thing we have to acknowledge and in spite of that, they felt like Kamala Harris represented a greater threat.

And so I think Jack Smith should take his cases and go away. That's what the public told him to do yesterday.

BURNETT: It was baked. It was baked.

ALLISON: It was baked. I think for Democrats and people who supported Kamala Harris, they were disappointed that it didn't have more of an impact because they felt like it should, that trying to overthrow an election should be disqualifying. But to Brad's point, it wasn't. And I think there will be frustration that it took so long for some of these cases. It took four years and we haven't even gone to trial on some of them.

BURNETT: Right. Had they gone faster and started soon?

ALLISON: That's right.

BURNETT: We might not (inaudible) --

ALLISON: There's still a lot of (inaudible).

HONIG: (Inaudible)

ALLISON: Just one more point.

BURNETT: Yeah.

ALLISON: There were still a lot of -- there were like delays. But I also think we have the January 6th hearings. People knew, they watched January 6th, right? Whether we like it or not, we talked about this in the break, the decision to prioritize democracy as the theme of why Donald Trump should not be elected was not the thing that voters decided on.

BURNETT: No. HONIG: This will be one of the great unanswered questions, I think, of

this administration, which is what took so long.

[14:15:02]

I wrote an article in the middle of 2022 before Jack Smith was ever main special counsel. And I said, it's already too late.

BURNETT: Too late.

HONIG: Merrick Garland doesn't even realize it. He's already lost the game. And with respect to Donald Trump's defense has been delay, delay, delay, but I don't begrudge him that because he made a defense immunity, which any half competent defense lawyer would make. Ask any defense lawyer on the planet. Of course, you make that argument. He went to the Supreme Court and like it or not, and there's plenty of criticisms, he won. That's what you're supposed to do as a defendant. So sure, he was trying to drag it out. It was a risky strategy. It paid off. But man, oh man --

ALLISON: But when you wait for years --

HONIG: Right. I was going to say DOJ left it with no runway.

ALLISON: It works in your favor. Yeah.

HONIG: So it's on DOJ.

TODD: Now, let's go back to Ashley's point though, the Kamala Harris's campaign made this too big of an issue in the campaign. And it's a mistake. Campaigns often make candidates and political operatives like us. We make the mistake that we think campaigns are about us. Voters think they're about them. And every time Kamala Harris was talking about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump was talking about Kamala Harris, they were not talking about the voters.

BURNETT: Right. Well, and there was always a challenge that Democrats had, which was a vote for democracy is only a vote for this.

ALLISON: Yes.

BURNETT: And that was not something that obviously fell on fertile years.

ALLISON: It always had to be the -- yes, and it always needed to be the yes and democracy yes, and I'm going to help you keep put --

BURNETT: And I'm going to make my case.

ALLISON: -- more food on your table. I'm going to help you get your rents down lower. I'm going to help you buy a house. And she made those arguments. But I think, you know, well, it would be interesting to do a parallel of like how much time in speeches did she spend on talking about these issues versus how much time she spent talking about the economy.

BEDINGFIELD: And it's interesting too though, because if you look at the exit polls, democracy actually -- it was --

BURNETT: It was neck to neck with the economy.

TODD: Trump won (inaudible) voters.

BEDINGFIELD: The idea that -- right. But the actual vote of the people who said that the issue of democracy was significant for them first or second actually was fairly split.

BLITZER: Yes.

BEDINGFIELD: So it wasn't that the issue of democracy wasn't relevant for voters. It was that there was -- that Trump was able to effectively muddy the waters on this.

ALLISON: Because when we saw exit -- because when we would do polling and say, like, who -- the country is split on whether or not Donald Trump still even won the 2020 election. Like, we are living in such different universes as folks who supported Donald Trump and folks supported Kamala Harris. And in order -- we're going to have to find a pathway for it. I don't actually know what it is. B1ut this is -- it doesn't feel sustainable.

BLITZER: Well, look, I understand it's a land side, but I have to say it is a great thing that you see people on the left immediately say they lost and they accept it and they move on. And I think that if you wanted to return to normalcy, and maybe the left did not get what they wanted as a return to normalcy, but you did get the way that people conducted themselves last night, the way that Americans conducted themselves at the poll, Trump voter next to Harris voter with dignity and respect. That was a wonderful thing.

TODD: Here's the question is, do Democrats decide that they lost because the public is a bunch of bigots and sexist? Or do they decide because -- they lost because the voters rejected the policies? That's a big question.

ALLISON: I think it's not one thing. We just talked about it. I don't think it is one thing. You cannot speak in absolutes in this election. I think that it is true -- we have never had a female president so we have to ask ourselves why. But we also can say that, you know, folks felt like the economy was better under Donald Trump, whether it's -- whether the facts say it is or not, that's how people feel.

BURNETT: It is amazing. So many countries in the world are female presidents. And America.

ALLISON: And not us.

BURNETT: The (inaudible) and everything just seemed to get over that line. All right. Thank you all. Don't go anywhere, though. Stay with CNN. Our special coverage of Election Day in America continues. Wolf and I will be back after this short break.

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[14:22:22]

BLITZER: CNN has projected within the last hour that President elect Donald Trump will win the state of Michigan, giving him a clean sweep of the so-called blue wall states. John Berman is with me over here at the magic wall. Walk us through Trump's victory there.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, let's take a quick look at Michigan which we now project Donald Trump will win. You can see, he is leading there right now by 83,000 votes. This is a state that four years ago, Joe Biden won by 154,000 votes. And in 2016, Donald Trump barely won by 10,000 votes. So you can see it flipped, flopped, and then flip back to Donald Trump.

Let's get a sense of where Donald Trump secured this victory. And it's kind of I can tell the story in three counties, all right? Right around here, you have Oakland County, Wayne County and Washtenaw County, all a little bit different. Oakland is the traditional affluent suburb. This is the type of place that Kamala Harris was hoping to run up the score, counties like this all around the country, outside Philadelphia, outside Detroit, around Milwaukee. Well, you, you can see she won by a little bit less than 11 points there. But she really needed to do better than that because four years ago, you can see Joe Biden won by more than 12. So she won, but not by quite as much as Joe Biden.

A similar story in a very different county, Wayne County, this is where Detroit is the biggest county in Michigan by far. You can see, Kamala Harris won by about 29% there. But four years ago, Joe Biden won by 38%. So just a huge difference in Wayne County. Now, that could be part of the urban boost that Trump got around the country, or it could be the large Arab and Muslim population, which is in Wayne County, Dearborn and whatnot. That might have impacted Harris's top line number there, too.

And if we move a little bit to the west here, finally, Washtenaw County, this is the third type of county that Democrats really needed to do well in outperform expectations around the country. This is where Ann Arbor is, the University of Michigan Wolverines. This is the kind of place where Kamala Harris had to (inaudible), you know, have huge, huge margins. And she did well. Nearly 100,000 votes in about, you know, 50% or so. This was a D40 plus 46 county. So Biden did a tiny bit better. He had a little more than 100,000 vote margin there. And you can see, Kamala Harris a little bit less than 100,000 vote there. So kind of that alone might explain what happened in Michigan.

Just one thing I want to point out here as we see the margin, Trump ahead by 83,000 votes. There's still a Democratic Senate race.

[14:25:01]

There is a Senate race which we haven't projected a winner yet. You can see the Democrat, Elis Slotkin, trying to hold on to the seat from the retiring Democrat, Debbie Stabenow. Slotkin is ahead. She is outperforming Kamala Harris, you might say. She's up by 16,000 votes where Harris trails by 83,000 votes. So somehow, Slotkin hopes, hopes to be able to hold on there. We will see as this develops over the next several hours, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Good explanation. Thank you very much. John Berman reporting for us. Want to go back to Erin Burnett. Erin?

BURNETT: All right. So Wolf, let's take a closer look at Michigan because obviously, we have just made the call, Michigan going for Trump. Harry Enten digging through the exit polls there.

Harry, you know, early on last night, there were some exit polls from Michigan on Hispanic voters that sort of made me go, whoa, what's going on here? It's unclear whether those were really going to pan out. Not only did they pan out, but there are other things that really stand out for you in those exit polls from Michigan.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yeah, absolutely right. You know, you talk -- you saw John talking about Wayne County. They are voters of color, a prominent part of Wayne County. In fact, it is the most diverse of the Rust Belt blue wall states Michigan is. And look here, you see among voters of color, Kamala Harris won by 34 percentage points. Donald Trump got 32%. You might say, that's not so good. But four years ago, he got less than 20%. So a dramatic improvement, nearly doubling his vote share among voters of color. But it's not just voters of color that Donald Trump did particularly well with in Michigan in terms of what is traditionally the Democratic base. How about voters under the age of 30? I don't think I would have ever imagined seen the day in which Donald Trump would tie among voters under the age of 30. Of course, they're very prominent around Ann Arbor, right, which we saw, as John pointed out, that slight movement towards Donald Trump from four years ago, just another example of Donald Trump going in and doing well among a traditional Democratic constituency.

And finally, how about folks who didn't vote in 2020? You know, normally, Democrats say, we want the high turnout. That's what we want. We want those untraditional voters to come out. But those who didn't vote in 2020, Donald Trump actually won slightly among them, getting 50% to Kamala Harris's 47% in the state of Michigan. So the bottom line is traditional Democratic constituencies may not be so traditional anymore. They may be part of an emerging maybe Republican constituency, Erin.

BURNETT: Yeah, really amazing. And especially as this could turn out, if it's a sweep of the House and the Senate and the White House, even when you're looking at 50, 47.

ENTEN: Realignment.

BURNETT: There's a lot of real questions about just the overall system. Harry, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BURNETT: And still ahead, which party will control the House? That is the real question. We still don't know the answer because votes are still being counted in enough crucial districts that we cannot make a call. We are going to be joined by a Democratic lawmaker from Pennsylvania who did just win reelection. Stay with us.

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