hello, i'm wolf blitzer with erin burnett. i want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. we are hours away from vice president kamala harris addressing the nation after president-elect donald trump reached the 270 electoral votes needed to win the white house. this is cnn special coverage of election day in america continued.

donald trump makes history, winning a second term. we have learned that kamala harris has reached out to president elect trump and will speak publicly at 4:00 p.m. eastern. more on that coming up in a few moments. republicans have also seized control of the u.s. senate for the first time in four years. the house of representatives is still too close to call. let's take a look at the numbers we are seeing. you can see in the senate, 52 republicans, 42 democrats, six seats remaining outstanding . three republican pickups in the senate. in the house of representatives, you need to hundred 18 to control the house. right now the republicans have 204. the democrats 182. the democrats have two pickups from republican so far. 49 seats remaining undeclared so far in the u.s. house of representatives. there are also several battleground states still uncalled. standby for a

key race alert right now. let's take a look at some of the states where we still have not made a projection. in michigan 15 electoral votes, 99% of the estimated vote is in. donald trump ring -- maintains the lead 48% to 43%.'s lead is a little more than 83,000 votes in michigan. in arizona with 11 electoral votes 63% of the estimated vote is it in. trump has 51.9%, kamala harris has 47.2%. he has a lead of a little more than 100,000 votes over kamala harris and arizona. in nevada with 89% of the estimated vote, from maintains the lead 51.7% to 46.6%. the lead is almost 65,000 votes in nevada with its six electoral votes. want to start our coverage with christian homes. she is that

trump campaign headquarters in west palm beach florida, not far from mar-a-lago. you have new reporting about trump allies pitching themselves for key roles. what more are you learning? >> reporter: the transition is already in full effect. some members of the campaign got a transition email last night outlining what exactly this would look like. as we know the campaign has already set up a transition office that is operating independently for the last several months. the big thing is who is going to do what in a trump administration . even at 4:00 in the morning i started getting text messages from advisors, allies, donors all asking what i was hearing about potential names being floated around for administration jobs. you can bet the knife severity out. this is not just the campaign. we are talking about the larger trump orbit. we know people are jockeying for specific jobs and our eagle -- eager to prove

their loyalty. people in the inner circle to show that they were not only loyal to him but that they would be loyal in an administration something we know will be incredibly important to the former president. he himself has said for the last several months and particularly the last several weeks he did not want to have any transition conversations. that does not mean that he had not floated people's names for certain positions that's just what he does. his superstition told him not to get out there and try to plan and administration. obviously all that part of this is coming to an end as the transition has started kicking up its pace and they are on track to a trump administration. >> all right. kristen holmes in west palm beach near trump campaign headquarters not far from mar-a-lago. we will get back to you. i want to get to the panel . you are getting

some new information about the harris call that is about to be made or had already been made? >> we know that kamala harris will be at some point reaching out to donald trump to formally concede. that we expect to happen before the vice president actually publicly addresses the american people. we have yet to hear from her. she did not appear at her own election night party. this goes without saying it has been a very tough night, a very tough morning for democrats and the harris campaign. i think there is the shock element to this even though people thought this could be a very close race, i think a lot of folks did not expect the scope of her defeat. then there is the sense of dread that this is only just the beginning. they are anticipating everything that could come from another four years of donald trump at the white house. i'm told there was a campaign call featuring the seniormost people on the harris campaign. usually it is led by the campaign chair. i'm told by one participant it was

filled with tears. they are trying to be supportive to everyone on the campaign. there was an acknowledgment of everything the campaign had gone through and the unusual nature of the campaign having been so truncated. this is something i think will be talking about a lot. one senior advisor i was talking to said the harris campaign ended up being the biden campaign with harris at the top of the ticket. it was essentially the biden campaign with new posters. as we are looking at the results last night and processing everything . they were clear that this was such a repudiation of the last four years with joe biden. a lot of democrats are wondering did the harris campaign to enough to really separate herself from the biden administration. will that have made a difference in the end if she had gone that path? >> thank you very much . michael preston, good to have you here with the panel as well. as you know the

democratic party they have a lot of questions they have to answer. where does the democratic ready go from here? does kamala harris have a big role in the democratic party next go around? >> right now she has the most important role for the democratic ready over the next couple of hours. how she gets out of this race in a way that it is congenial and talks about the transition of power will be very important given that democrats have put so much into that that they did not think president trump would abide by it had he lost. here's the reality right now. there is no true leader for the democratic party. if you look across the board who was the leader for the party you would have to say it would be chuck schumer. i think we could talk even more about how his power will be. if you assume , if you are assuming that republicans take control of the house they will control the house, the senate, the white house, the supreme court in four years to put

another conservative on the supreme court. the democratic ready can do all the backstabbing and knifing as we see in the campaign but the reality is they better get their act together quick . right now they will get steamrolled by republicans. >> i want you and our viewers to listen to what senator mitch mcconnell just said as the republicans clearly take back the senate. listen to this. >> this shifting to a republican senate majority helps control the guardrails, keep people who want to change the rules in order to achieve something they think is worthwhile is not successful . i think the filibuster is very secure.

>> worth noting that mitch mcconnell will give up his role in the senate. give us your analysis. >> that was a significant point. the filibuster is something that requires legislation to be advanced by 60 votes. most have to be by 60 votes to avoid the filibuster. that will be a problem for republicans coming in. they can confirm nominees by civil majority. getting most legislation through will require getting some democratic support to surpass the 60 vote threshold. you are looking at 52, 53. we will see how that plays out. it also underscores the challenges in governing. while the democrats have a complicated past to flip the house it could be narrow once again for speaker mike johnson.

it will not be easy. for mitch mcconnell who is stepping aside that will be a challenge for the next republican leader john cornyn, the former number two. are seen as leading contenders. that is so essential to the person . you will be of busy guy. let's talk about the balance of power in congress. mike lawlor just secured his reelection win . thank you very much for joining us. congratulations on your win. it's talk about what is being called a very decisive win for president-elect trump. give us your immediate reaction why you

think he did so well >> when he won in 2016 he won by 80,000 votes in three states. when he lost in 2020 he lost by 40,000 votes in three states. obviously we are a deeply divided country but that was a big win last night. when all the votes were counted he will not only have won all of this swing states he will have won the popular vote. i think voters are set up across the country with the politics, the personalities, the nonstop focus on what divides us. they are more focused on the substance of the issues impacting their families from the affordability crisis to the crisis at our southern border to the international crises. over 70% of americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction. the reason i won last night in a democratic

district with 85,000 more democrats than republicans and won convincingly with a seven point margin and when all the votes are counted donald trump may have won my district to start -- despite losing it by 10 points four years ago was precisely because of the issues. people cannot afford to pay their bills, grocery bills, energy bills, housing bills, the average mortgage cost went up $1000 a month over the last year. people are struggling. you look at the migrant crisis. over 10 and a half-million migrants flooding into the united states. new york state spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money to provide free housing, clothing, food, healthcare. people are tired of it. i think donald trump has a mandate to govern to address the issues on the economy on the border, public safety and the international crises around the globe . it looks as though not only are we going to keep

the house but obviously have flip the senate. >> you are pretty convinced you will keep the house of representatives? is that what you are saying? >> yes. i think when you look at the pickups in pennsylvania and michigan that will offset the three seats we lost in new york . it looks as though we are holding on in nebraska and iowa and in california. the numbers are coming in pretty solid. when all is said and done i think the house will remain roughly where it is right now to 21 are so -- 221 or so in republican hands. >> i want you to stand by for a second. we have a projection we will make right now. we will see the projection going on in michigan. take a look at this right now. cnn projects that president elect donald trump will win the state of michigan. it's another important sign of

how sweeping the win has been. this is the third of the so-called blue all states to be won by trump after pennsylvania and wisconsin both went his way. trump won them eight years ago but lost them to joe biden in 2020. lets take a closer look at the numbers right now. we will show you what we have. john, give us the latest. >> in michigan right now you can see we just projected donald trump is the winner ahead by 83,000 votes. this was a state that ford -- four years ago joe biden one by -- won by 150,000 votes. you can see a 230,000 votes swing in the state of michigan. here is the map. where did donald trump over perform what he did four years ago? i can show you that right here. everything that is colored in is where donald trump over performed versus four years ago. it's almost every county. the entire u.p.,

all of these counties save a few. donald trump over performed in all of them. he did better this time than he did four years ago. one of the counties that is the most glaring is wayne county. that is where detroit is. you can see kamala harris won. she won by about 29%. four years ago joe biden won by 38%. if you do the math he was up 38%. kamala harris only up about 29%. there's a lot of reasons for that. one of them is that across the country one of the things we have seen is that kamala harris underperformed in some of these major urban centers. the issue for wayne county is where dearborn is with a very high arab and muslim population throughout the county upset over the war in gaza. that clearly could have been a problem for kamala

harris. you go next-door. this is where ann arbor is. a big liberal center. kamala harris got 71% . four years ago you can see joe biden got 72%. harris did a little bit worse but when she's doing a little bit worse there it does not offset the gains donald trump was making in all these other parts of the state. a very similar story to what we are seeing in the rest of the country which is across the board donald trump did better in red counties, did better in the blue counties and in some cases a lot better in the city centers. >> i appreciate it very much. i want to thank mike lawlor as well for joining us. we will continue the conversation with him down the road to be sure our special coverage of election day in america continues

welcome back to special coverage, election day in america continued. cnn is projecting that president elect donald trump will win the state of michigan. it's another sign of how dominant the victory has

been. it was overwhelming in the battlegrounds. michigan was not needed for trump to win but it is icing on the cake at into the electoral vote dominance which now stands at 291 votes. it's the third of the so-called blue wall states he has won along with pennsylvania and wisconsin. my panel is back with me. caitlin, you saw in minnesota where despite having the vice president from minnesota harris dramatically underperformed what biden had done four years ago in minnesota. just to show this was overwhelming, my favorite map is looking at the country and seeing the little arrows of which way things went. you don't even see any blue on there. it is just red arrows. michigan is really ground zero for that. >> it was a thorough shellacking. there are a couple of things. i think there is an anti-incumbent sentiment across

the country but also globally. this is not the only place in the world where somebody has stood for reelection and has suffered a defeat like this. it's been a pretty consistent dynamic around the world. certainly no question, vp harris was facing those headwinds. i think you look at the places where she underperformed biden . you look at the breakdown with different ethnic trips across the country. it is hard to point to one place where she really thought it would almost be easier to look at the results and say it was clearly her underperformance in dearborn. it was clearly gaza that did not bring michigan home for her. that is not the case unfortunately. i think democrats across the board clearly have a challenge connecting with working-class

voters. this is not unique to the campaign. it's a demographic shift or realignment in the country that has happened over the course of the last 10 years. certainly not solely her shortcoming but clearly the democratic message is not resonated with working-class people the way it needs to. >> even before michelle obama appeared with kamala harris. all the stops were pulled out of the people, the ones they thought would be the ultimate motivators. it does not seem anybody had a sense of how dire. >> i think people go to rallies who are already supporting you. those rallies are a whole day commitment. >> her rallies were the way trump 's rallies where 4 1/2 years ago. these ones were half-empty stadiums.

>> there's a reason they were so full. nobody had rallies in 2020. there was a demand for interaction on the political sphere. i really do think that when the story is told about the election we need to be able to talk as a democratic party to all people. i think the fact that she is a black woman also had something to do with it but we really will have to take some time to study the impact that 2020 had and how we did not canvas stores. how the engagement was all digital and that really accelerated how we communicated with voters. i think in some instances everyone thought we could just revert back to business as usual but the world had changed and i'm not sure politics and the way we campaign -- not just kamala harris but in every instance we are just going to ignore that millions of people died and we had a global pandemic and we could not even sit on a set on election night.

there are some other things happening that i think played into the loss. >> i've been saying for a long time that the 2007, 2008 financial crisis created a longtail a populist of people throughout western democracies but particularly in the united states. i think that was one of the reasons you got trump was playing out that populism. then you have the unsettling nature of his president the . almost all of the muscle memory of our politics was scrambled . the weird think about this , the one thing it did was a raised any sort of stories or anecdotes. you can't say if you had picked josh shapiro it would've been different. you could not do any of that because it was a systemic secular trend that went the

other way. >> she does not know how to speak to the working class. if you listen to her talk it sounds like she's running for the faculty senate somewhere. that's why you saw her lose ground with hispanics, working-class blacks and asians. it's all because they sold an identity politics message that was aimed at coastal voters. >> there is plenty of soul-searching to go around here. we talked about the hidden suburban woman about . it was the prices in the store. the lack of control of the border. we did not spend enough time talking about it. >> the one thing we kept hearing in the final days of the campaign, republicans acknowledged it which was outsourcing your ground game to elon musk and charlie kirk was a really bad idea because they are paying people to knock on

doors and that's why he was going to fail. you had democrats coming in with 2000 doors knocked in the past hour . you had all of that passion but what happened? to those people just not show up? >> i think it is a combination of it. it's not just one isolated thing. i know it would make people feel better because on the democratic side you can focus on that to fix it. it has to be a comprehensive approach. there repaid canvases but they were turnout canvases. a lot of the folks that came as volunteers were hitting the same doors over and over to try to persuade. i think it helped with donald trump but i also think -- you said this earlier. both campaigns were bright about their electorate. trump is just a little more right. the way he was able to run up 100 votes here and there it

really did hurt her. the spread in some of these states is not so massive that a couple of tinkers here and there might have shifted it, but the fact that in these rural counties he ran up the score and she could not run it up enough in some of the population centers where she really thought about it. i'm about to say and i know i will get a lot of hate on twitter for saying this but it's not just working-class people. it's a conversation you need to have with white women . for hillary clinton 53% of white women voted for her -- for donald trump. this year 57 % voted. there was a belief that white women would come over to kamala harris because they did do that in 2020 but it was not at the presidential level . the final thing i will just say is that there is a lot of talk about soul-searching. when you lose you study the

tape and what you did wrong and i think democrats should do this. i just have to say i don't inc. republicans did soul-searching after they lost in 2020. they lost, trump denied the election results and people were like january 6 is awful and we slowly and surely saw people fall back in line with the narrative . >> ron desantis and nikki haley did make the case that he was not going to win the election and why he should not be the nominee. when they started he was 11 points down . he was losing the nomination. republican voters came to a different conclusion . i think there are tactics that could be questioned on both sides. neither of these races are perfect. i think we do have to say that it was the economy and the border. the campaign that

got to those places won. >> it is also what we were hearing from the democrats. look at the goldman sachs report that shows kamala harris's economic policy . they were given this data and saying this is the best economy. wall street journal it's a they say her policies will be better for the deficit than his. it did not matter . that was not where the emotional connection was. >> the single best thing about the runaway inflation is that it has reminded a whole new generation of politicians how terrible inflation is politically. it is bone cancer politically because it affect everybody. you can't run away from it. a few years ago there was all of this insanity about modern military and inflation is no longer a thing. same the inflation was actually metaphorical and not actually about gas prices. >> then mortgage rates started

going up and people send -- >> i think the original sin of this administration was that inflation is transitory. i think republicans said this is not your priority. vice president harris had a chance to say we did not take inflation seriously enough. neither of these campaigns were very humble. the race to become humble was one that could have separated. if she could say we did some things wrong and i will do them differently. if he said i know you threw me out four years ago and i will do things differently. >> you can only imagine had he said that these results would have been. then he would've lost the democracy vote also. i will stay. don't go anywhere. special coverage continues. we have a very short break and we will be back.

welcome back to continuing coverage. donald trump returns to the white house today. the president-elect with a sweeping

victory i quoted him now saying the greatest political movement of all-time . as for vice president kamala harris she is expected to address the nation later today at 4:00 p.m. eastern. we will have live coverage. president trump is also on track to do something he has never done, actually win the popular vote. no republican has accomplished that since george w. bush back in 2004. cnn just projected that trump has won michigan. we are also following two other battleground states that have not yet been called. standby for that right now. let's take a look at arizona . trump is ahead by more than 100,000 votes. 51.9% to 47.2%. 63% of the estimated vote in arizona is now in. in nevada, 89% of the estimated vote is in. trump is ahead by

almost 65,000 votes. 51.7% to 46.6%. i want to head over to john berman at the magic wall for more information even as we speak. >> i want to give you a sense of how broad-based this victory was. how much of an improvement it was for him over 2020. i will put in a filter here. every state that donald trump over performed his 2020 performance. this is not a glitch. it's america. he over performed in every state except maine . if you take a little deeper and look at the counties where he over performed, it is almost all the counties. all these counties red and blue across the country, he over performed his 2022 -- 2020 results. these counties he over

performed by a fair amount. more than 3%. all of these counties he did substantially better. if you want to compare that to vice president harris this is where vice president harris over performed by more than 3%. almost nowhere. you see almost no counties colored in here. to go back to donald trump for a second just the diversity of some of the counties he had large improvements of greater than 3%. i can look at idaho . uc boundary county which is all the way up north in idaho. he over performed by more than 3%. you have boundary idaho and then you have chicago. he over performed in chicago by more than 3% as well. you can see kamala harris won substantially by about 54% but four years ago joe biden won by 66%. i can give you one more measurement of how much better donald trump

did than he did four years ago and where the country is right now. take a look at texas. this is estate democrats have been hoping to turn blue for the last 20 years or so. you can see that donald trump won by 13.8%. member that number. let's look at new york. this is a blue state nobody thinks about . the marching in texas, 13.8%. that's how far it is from being blue but in terms of how far new york is from being read, it is not that far. you are looking at 12.6% by my mouth. may be off by a % or two but you can see this is awfully close. new york and texas don't look so different in terms of how close they are to flipping and that is pretty remarkable. >> all right. thank you very much. excellent analysis.

>> while republicans will now control the executive branch and the senate so they have two of the three ? obviously we know how the supreme court is right now . in terms of where voters have a say the house is still unclear. there are still votes been counted and this one is not clear which direction it may go. when you boil it down to what will determine who controls the house, what races are you watching right now. >> there are several races that have not been called yet but it is a complicated path to the house majority for the democratic ready at the moment. they had to pick up annette at four seeds to be back in the majority in the house. right now republicans have five pickups that we have called so far. two democratic pickups. the republicans have annette of three at the moment. the

republicans are ahead in democratic districts including three democratic districts. so why are they having problems? let's take a little deeper into some of these key races. democrats thought they would have a really good chance of flipping this seat in iowa. she is hanging on by a thread. 799 votes ahead against the democratic challenger. with 99% of the vote republicans feeling they can sneak away with that one. also in nebraska, don bacon the incumbent republican that represents a district that joe biden carried in 2020 and kamala harris carried last night. 8300 votes ahead of his democratic challenger with 95% he is feeling very good about hanging onto that seat. there are still some pick up opportunities including arizona . the freshman seen as

vulnerable going and he is down narrowly. that is 4100 votes behind her. there is still a lot to count. 59% is in. there are still some opportunities in new york. one of them is in the house congressional district 19 where the republican incumbent is trailing his opponent josh riley by 3600 votes. now they believe they can pick up that seat because there is 94% of that vote that is in. so why is it so important? as you mentioned, democrats lost control of the senate. they lost the white house and at the senate right now 52-42. there've been three pickups so far. they could potentially get another one in pennsylvania and they are leading in another one in nevada. up to 54 seats potentially as a handful have

to be called. that's what makes the house so important but a difficult path. >> if republicans get it, it is a mandate especially if trump does secure as it seems he will the popular vote. the urban-rural divide was as clear-cut as ever. although it is important to emphasize that harris underperformed and that is part of the reason for the loss as well. the win was also boosted by voters in the suburbs. let's dig through the exit polls. there is so many layers to this onion. that's how you get a landslide. when you go through, peel back the layers, what trends are you seeing right now. >> in the lead up it was all about kamala harris. she's going to outperform joe biden in the suburbs. look what happened in the suburbs. donald trump won in the suburbs. by a small margin but it is a flip from four years ago. donald

trump winning in an area that kamala harris thought she could dominate and make up for losses in the rural areas and they were tremendous. they were tremendous . what do you see? donald trump with a 27 point margin. that is a double digit gain from how he did four years ago. a big reason why he was able to run at the margins was because he was able to run up the margins with his own base. finally, you mentioned the urban areas. the bottom line is yes, they went democratic but kamala harris did no better than joe biden did four years ago. the bottom line is if you are doing worse in the suburban areas, worsen the rural areas and no better in the urban areas i don't know how the math works. that is why donald trump is the president elect of the united states. >> wolf, you have some breaking news? >> we have learned vice president kamala harris has

officially conceded the 2024 presidential election calling president elect donald trump to offer her congratulations . the senior white house correspondent mj lee is here with me in the studio to give our viewers a little more information. >> this was a phone call we had been waiting on all day. we are told the vice president did call the former president to concede the 2024 race. she congratulated him on his victory. we are told she talked about the importance of the transfer of power being peaceful and also about being a president for all americans. of course, as we've been talking about all day long the next time we expect to hear directly from the vice president is that howard university. this is where she was expected to be last night. she ended up not appearing at her own election night party. this is not surprising that she ended up

making this concession phone call. we got no indications whatsoever from democrats and the harris campaign that she had any plans to contest the race in any way. i think watching for the tone that she is is and exactly how she talks about her loss in this moment in american politics is going to be so significant. there will be millions of americans, many of whom are disappointed, even despondent about the results that will be looking to her for cues. had a move on? this was an election that was so divisive, so ramped up in the rhetoric . i think a lot of people are wondering now that the vice president has conceded the race one of the cues we can take from her on what moving on actually looks like and how to process the prospect of donald trump coming back for a second

term at the white house. >> it is important to note that she is now doing what trump refused to do for years ago when he lost the presidential election. he refused to concede . haec -- he refused to congratulate. she is doing that right now to her credit. >> so much of her campaign had been about emphasizing the norms that had been in place in our country and in politics the former president so often refused to go along with something as simple as a concession call. you are absolutely right that was one of the many ways in which donald trump was just different. >> we remember what happened when he refused to concede as he should've done. still ahead, now that donald trump has been reelected, what happens to the

criminal and civil cases against him? we will discuss when life special coverage continues right after this.

we now have some breaking news. this is very significant. for those looking at what is the next huge stack -- step. the special counsel is in active talks with the justice department about how to end the federal prosecutions of federal is -- president trump. this is according to a justice department official familiar with discussions. the person breaking this is our excellent chief foreign affairs correspondent paul reed. this has been a huge question hanging all of this over the whole election and now the aftermath. what are you learning? >> we knew there was a few options. the former president, now that president-elect returned to the white house there was a few ways his cases could be resolved. one, he said he would try to fire jack smith. unclear if he could do that because he's not an appointee but unclear if the justice department would drop these cases. it is clear if he

was elected he would never face trial. there's another option. the biden justice department to try to resolve or wind down these cases before he takes office. a lot of this stems from an office of legal counsel that is a department within the justice department that gives advice to lawyers who work there. this memo that talks about prosecutions of a sitting president ? they are looking very closely at that memo to try to determine how does that apply in this case. we have two pending cases against a president-elect . can they continue to move forward? can they take additional steps? they are in discussions. jack smith talking with top leaders at the justice department about exactly what this looks like. jack smith is somebody that understands he has to follow the rules and regulations of the justice department. they are looking for ways to wind this down. it is unclear when this will happen and what it will look like. >> can i ask you in terms of your reporting, given how the polls showed this would go,

given that the trump campaign did not think this would go this way. given that the harris campaign did not think this would go this way, did jack smith have this as a possibility prepared? or his he also reacting to this in the moment to try to figure it out? >> speaking with my sources they were not aware of any discussions that had happened prior to today. they said this is the first time there had been formal discussions but everybody looking at the polls knew that this was a possibility. trump has been asked what would he do regarding jack smith if he was reelected. told the formal discussions have begun in earnest today and it will take several days to figure out what this looks like and what to do. we are not likely to expect any court hearings at these will likely be filings if anything to try to resolve the cases. >> we have been talking about this for years now. we have sat

in courtrooms . he is scheduled to appear in a new york courtroom in just under three weeks to receive a sentence for his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. what happens to all of those cases? does that even happen as a sentencing or is it just gone? >> i do think the state sentencing, now we are getting away from the doj federal cases. i do think it will proceed on november 26. the reason is the judge in that case, merchan, scheduled before the election and he said i don't want to do anything that will impact the election so i will put it off until after the election. impacting the election is no longer a concern but this will be a surreal moment. we will have the president elect, not just the former president, but the

president-elect going into a county level court to receive a sentence. no one -- matter what the sentence is it is almost entirely symbolic . there is no way that the president elect will be locked up even in an ordinary circumstance. he would probably be allowed to appeal before he had to serve a sentence. it would be important but anybody thinking donald trump will be locked up needs to let go of that fantasy. >> just consider what a different world we were living in than we were six months ago on all of these stories. paul and ellie, thank you so much. our special coverage continues in just a moment. we will be right back.

hello, i'm wolf blitzer alongside erin burnett and i want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. we are 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 continued. we have a projection for you. take a look at this. cnn projects that tammy baldwin, the senator from wisconsin, the democrat, will be elected, reelected. she will defeat the president trump challenger. tammy baldwin, the democrat incumbent will win the senate seat in wisconsin. tammy baldwin has been a fixture in wisconsin politics since 1992 when she was first elected to the legislature. this was a tight race. 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%. a big win for the democrats in the state. tammy baldwin reelected to the senate. an important win for the democrats. let's go right to our chief who is tracking the balance of power in the senate and the house. how does this impact things. >> 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. getting you more of a margin to pass some bills if they were to move along straight party lines or confirm supreme court nominees or more importantly for democrats to get back in the senate majority. each seat makes it harder to do so as republicans pad their majority. where do things stand?

republicans have 52 seats. they picked up three last night in red states, ohio, montana, west virginia, and they have five seats we still have not called so tammy baldwin's victory prevents them from expanding to 53 seats. however, they could still get up to 54 seats because in two states right now, republicans are leading. both in nevada and in pennsylvania. pennsylvania seems increasingly likely. but here in wisconsin, let's take a look a little bit at the numbers here. tammy baldwin defeating eric hovde in the race. it shows you the difference. 27,000 votes ahead of eric. the republican. owner

of a multibillion dollar bank. one of the nastiest senate races in the country. what we have seen is a bit of a phenomenon happening. kamala harris losing in wisconsin. tammy baldwin, the democrat, winning there. you are seeing it in places like arizona. the democratic candidate in the senate that ruben gallego is leading. similarly in michigan. >> all right, 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 at harris' campaign headquarters. give us details about what kamala harris will say in her concession speech. >> reporter: what we are learning in the last hour, the vice president did call former president donald trump and congratulated him on his win. according to an aide, she also discussed what they called quote the importance of a peaceful transfer of power. and being a president for all americans. behind the scenes,

there has been a state of shock and disbelief along her allies and sources close and in the campaign. of course, remember, wolf, over the course of yesterday and to election night, campaign officials had been projecting privately and publicly, confidence and optimism in their internal data and their belief undecided voters would support the vice president. that is not what the results showed and now they are contending with that. there has been finger pointing and whether it was wise to go after the disaffected republicans or whether they did enough to lock in their base. but certainly those are the questioning they will continue to grapple over, over the next several days and weeks. ultimately, she has conceded and called the former president and will be speaking to her supporters later this

afternoon. >> priscilla alvarez, thank you very much. right now, i want to go to cnn's kristin holmes. over at the trump campaign headquarters. what are you learning right now? >> reporter: donald trump has been on the phone talking to allies, advisers. we know some foreign leaders have reached out to the former president. all of this will 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. i can tell you, wolf, that the lives are already out. not just among donald trump's campaign but his entire orbit. people have been calling me all morning. 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 if they endorsed him for 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 he didn't want to have these conversations until he won the election because he is superstitious. he himself has floated various names at various 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 in his larger orbit as to who gets an administration position. all of this is starting now as we are looking forward to january. >> thank you very, very much. >> 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 those are the federal ones separate from the state. but this is huge news. can we take a step back? it is huge news because you had classified documents misuse hanging out in the bathroom. at mar-a-lago. black and white case. you had the january 6th case. now into what was an official act and what wasn't. day in and day out. now what happens? >> first of all, this is about astonishing result. neither of them will get to trial. neither of them will get to a verdict. here is what jack smith i believe will be discussing. he will not be able to have a trial, but will he issue a

special council result like we saw with the muller report? the special council regulations say he is supposed to file a written report when he is at the end of the case. i want to see are we going to see a jack smith report between now and january 20th? one other point i want to make about this new reporting we got from paula reid, donald trump is going to fire jack smith and he accepts that. four years ago when the biden administration took over, they inherited a special council i'm sure you were not fans of. john durham into hunter biden. he was a trump. and, the biden administration did nothing. they let him finish his job. there is a little bit of a difference. doj cannot prosecute the sitting

president. >> there is a report. of course, if there is a report, i'm thinking back, you mentioned the ben hurr report. they remember 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 stuck with the public. a report can have influence. >> it can. and i think the herr report fed into a preexisting narrative that was already starting to pull biden under. so i think we have to recognize it wasn't the herr report alone that generated this. when we saw a report from jack smith. we will see where trump is politically. these reports can have political impact. i think we were talking about this earlier this morning. the thing that concerns me, the political precedent set by the

firing, the dismissal of this special prosecutor. elected officials are above the law. the president-elect is above the law and the message that sends, the political precedent that creates. i think is really a dangerous thing. >> i'm laughing because the trailer for ben-hur is running on my phone. [ laughter ] >> let's talk about mar-a-lago . that was a black and white case. >> they have been adjudicated.

70% of americans thought the charges were politically motivated. the public, plenty of people have misgivings about donald trump. who voted for him yesterday. that's another thing we have to acknowledge. in spite of that, they felt that kamala harris represented a bigger threat. so jack smith should take his cases and go away. >> democrats were disappointed it didn't have more of an impact. they felt like it should. that trying to overthrow an election should be disqualifying. it took four years and we haven't even gone to trial on some of them. there was still a lot of, there were like, delays, but i also think we had the january 6th

hearings. people watched january 6th. whether we like it or not, we talked about this in the break. the decision ties democracy as the theme of why donald trump should not be elected. >> i took an article in the middle of 2022. before jack smith was ever made special council and i said it is already too late. merrick garland doesn't realize it. he already lost the game. he made a defense, immunity, that any defense lawyer would make. and he won. sure, he was trying to drag it out. it was a risky

strategy, it paid off. doj left it with no runway. so it is on doj. >> let's go back to the point. kamala harris' campaign made this too big of an issue in the campaign. candidates and political operatives like us make the mistake we think campaigns are about us. voters think they are about them. every time they talked about each other they were not talking about the voters. >> and there was the challenge democrats had. that was not something that fell on fertile ears. >> it always needed to be the yes end. democracy, yes, and i'm going to help you put more food on your table. keep the rent down. help you buy a house. and she made the arguments. the time she spent talking about these issues. >> if you look at the exit

polls, democracy was neck in neck with the economy. >> the actual vote was fairly split. so it wasn't that the issue of democracy wasn't relevant for voters. it was that trump was able to effectively muddy the waters. >> when we would do polling and say, the country is split on whether or not donald trump still even won the 2020 election. we are living in such different universes as folks who supported donald trump and kamala harris. we'll have to find a pathway forward. i don't actually know what it is. but this doesn't feel sustainable. peop on the left saying they e lost. you did get the way

people conducted themselves. the way people conducted themselves at the polls. with dignity and respect. that was a wonderful thing. >> here's the question. here's the question. >> did they decide they lost because the voter rejected the policies? that's a big question. >> we just talked about it. i don't think it is one thing. you cannot speak in absolutes on this election. we have never had a female president so we have to ask ourselves why. we also can say that you know, folks felt like the economy was better under donald trump. whether the facts say it is not. >> so many countries have had a female president and america can't get over that line. thank you all. don't go anywhere, stay with cnn. our special coverage of election day in america continues. wolf and i will be back after this short break.

cnn has projected within the last hour, president-elect donald trump will win the state of michigan giving him a clean sweep of the so-called blue

wall states. >> you can see donald trump 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 flip-flopped. and then, flipped back to donald trump. let's get a sense of where donald trump secured this victory. i can tell the story in three counties. right around here, you have oakland county. wayne county. and washtana county. oakland is the traditional affluent suburb. this is the type of place kamala harris was hoping to run up the score. outside detroit, around milwaukee. well, you can see she won by a little less than 11 points but needed to do better than that. four years ago, you can see joe biden won

by more than 12. so she won, but not by as much as joe biden. wayne county. this is where detroit is. the biggest county inmy my by far. you can see, kamala harris won by about 29% there. joe biden won by 38%. just a huge difference in wayne county. it could be the large arab and muslim population. that could have impacted harris' top line number there. if we move to the west, washtana county. they needed to do well. this is the place where kamala harris had

huge margins. nearly 100,000 votes in about 50% or so. this was a d, 40 plus. biden did a little better. that alone might explain what happened here in michigan. trump ahead by 83,000 points. still a democratic senate race. there is a senate race we haven't projected a winner yet. you can see the democrat trying to hold on. she is ahead. she is out-performing kamala harris. up by 16,000 votes where harris trails by 83,000 votes. she hopes to hold on there. we will see. >> all right. good explanation. thank you very much, john reporting for us. >> let's take a closer look at michigan. we obviously just

made the call. michigan going for trump. harry, early on last night, there were some commit polls from michigan on hispanic voters that sort of made me go, whoa, what's going on here. there are other things that stand out for you. >> absolutely right. you saw john talking about wayne county. voters of color. the most diverse of the rust belt. and look, you see kamala harris won by 34 percentage points. donald trump got 32%. four years ago, he got less than 20%. so a dramatic improvement. nearly doubling his vote share among voters of color. it is not just voters of color that donald trump did particularly well with in michigan? how about voters under the age of

30. i don't think i would have seen the day in which donald trump would tie among voters under the age of 30. they are very prominent around ann arbor. that slight movement toward donald trump. donald trump going in and doing well among a traditional democratic constituency. and finally, how about folks who didn't vote in 2020? normally democrats want the high turnout. we want the untraditional voters to come out. but those who didn't vote in 2020, donald trump got 50% to kamala'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 republican constituency. >> really amazing. especially as this could turn out if it is a sweep of the house and the senate and the white house. even when you are looking at 50/47. it raises a lot of real questions about just the

overall system. harry, thank you very much. still ahead, which party will control the house is the real question. we still don't know the answer. votes are still being counted and enough crucial districts we cannot make a call. we will be joined by a democratic lawmaker from pennsylvania who did just win reelection. stay with us.

this just in, cnn learned harris campaign chair has called on her team to begin the work of quote protecting america from the impacts of a trump presidency. end quote. let's get to our panel right now. let's talk about what you are hearing from inside the harris team. >> this was a concession phone call that we had expected all day long. we got no indications that the harris campaign wanted to contest this race in any way. importantly, we are told by a senior aide, on this phone call, with the former president

now, president-elect donald trump, she talked about the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and the importance of being a president for all americans which ironically, were some of the themes she actually ran on during her campaign. now, these ar of the things that i think we suspect she will talk about when she talks in the next hour or two at howard university. this is going to be a significant speech. both for the vice president and how she talks about this moment. and what tone she uses. americans disappointed are tuning in. and also just for her personally. it goes without saying. this will be a bittersweet speech for her. not the one she hoped to give. she wanted to be giving a victory speech and says she is having to in some ways console a lot of americans who did not get the outcome.

what do you think you will hear from her? >> she has to be conciliatory. we are certainly, i shouldn't say, who knows nowadays. i do not believe we are going to see her use the same language that o'malley dylan used. basically, the resistance begins. i think that is really the first sign we have seen from the democratic party starting to wake up from this knock-out punch that they have taken. realizing you know, that they have to wake up. this comes as the people for american way. they were going to put out a project called resist project 2025. and, they are trying to pull together all these liberal entities to come together to try to put a restraint basically. mainly on president trump's judicial picks and trying to put some

reforms into the supreme court. which mind you, they will have a tough time of on both of those. >> they certainly will. there are examples of where so-called down-ticket democrats performed harris in michigan, arizona, and wisconsin specifically. what does that say to you? >> in the trump era, split ticket voting has become almost non-existent. just one out of 69 senate races have actually gone the way the other party. it would rarely be a split ticket situation. that is different than last night. and it will be interesting to dig a little bit deeper in the numbers. a lot of it goes to her weakness atop the tick. the ones they lost, sherrod brown who lost. john tester. ran

ahead of kamala harris. leading in michigan. tammy baldwin is a long time incumbent senator. in the cases of those other two in arizona and michigan, they didn't have the dangers of necessarily being an incumbent . the split ticket voting is why democrats, they are the minority. it is not as bad as it could have been. >> interested exit polling was released on the issues. 66% among latino voter ace among trump supporters said the

economy was the number one issue. did the harris camp miss this economic message to this very important voting block? >> i think that the proof is in the data. i think when the harris campaign came out with their economic vision for latino voters a few weeks ago, one of the things that struck me was it seemed like it was copied and pasted from their plan. their economic plan targeting african american voters. and when i talk to democratic operatives about this, they dismiss that. they essentially said that this was a strong plan. they touted everything that was in it. a promise for new small businesses. and loans and et cetera. but when i spoke with friends of mine across the country. latino men specifically, they didn't know that it even existed and that is despite it getting substantial coverage on this network and others. contrast that with what you are seeing from donald trump and the prosperity a lot of working class folks felt. the lower prices they paid for everyday

goods and the persona he built for himself as this successful entrepreneur whether it is merited or not who exaggerates his wealth and exploits and it resonates with the working class communities when you compare that to a message that doesn't really get across, when there is no compelling counterargument, you get what you saw last night. >> it seems as though the madison square garden rally had no impact on the latino community. >> presenting them with the comments made at the madison square garden rally, they argued well among latinos, we use a crude sense of humor with each other. they were skeptical this was going to cause a serious disruption in votes and you see it in the numbers. i want to show you numbers from

three different counties. with large latino populations. harris won. donald trump closed the margin there. he won in burks county in the redding area. another largely predominantly puerto rican area by a larger margin than he did in 2020. and that speaks to this point more than any other. a majority latino community. largely puerto rican. look at the margin joe won it by. 14 points. this time around, donald trump flipped it. winning by a point-and-a-half, wolf. >> very interesting indeed. boris, the harris campaign worked hard to get a bunch of latino celebrities out there on the campaign trail. is this a miscalculation from the harris

camp? >> i think it may be something for politicians across the board to consider moving forward. especially in light of the populist appeal donald trump has. i think for a lot of these folks seeing these celebrities up there with harris reinforced the idea that there are elites that are out of touch for them and that look down on them and talk down to them so i don't think that necessarily helped her where she hoped that it would. >> interesting point. thanks very much. to the whole panel, thank you very much. i want to focus on pennsylvania. the state we were told would ultimately decide this election and it did. president-elect trump didn't just win there, but substantially. the harris campaign was counting on a massive turnout. we are joined now by democratic congressman

brandon boyle of pennsylvania. congratulations to you on your reelection last night. i want to get your reaction to not just trump's overperformance in pennsylvania but the fact that harris under performed. what did your country, what did your party miss? >> it is a systemic loss here in pennsylvania. it was about four to five point swing to the right in philadelphia. >> congressman, i'm going to interrupt you for a second, we got a little technical issue with your audio. we will clean that up. we will continue this conversation right after a quick break.

we are back with brendan boyle of pennsylvania. we fix that audio issue. >> do you think president biden would have fared better than

kamala harris has? >> one thing i don't think is constructive is to get into the blame game, blaming certain individuals that could have been done or should have been done. what i would like to focus on specifically is that we have to be honest. >> this started to emerge about a decade ago. and it was focused on white working class areas. that is now spread. it is not just white working class voters. it is black and latino. and unless we democrats address that issue from heavily working class parts. working class parts all across the country. and we will not be able to win as many elections as we want to. and we need to.

>> that's an important point. democrats as you know, they lost control of the senate. what do you expect the balance of power will be in the house of representatives when all of this ends? >> there are yet to be called seats from new york state to iowa to california, and many states in between. we are talking more than 40. it will be yet another term in which whatever party controls the house, will not have a large mayorty. house democrats will be able to respond to the needs of the american people. we have a track record on this. we served in the minority two years and the mayorty two years. i think that we are up

to the battle. >> congressman brendan boyle of pennsylvania, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. and erin, back to you. >> all right, wolf, so you know, we mentioned we are following the markets which surged after donald trump won reelection. and gone up a little bit more in the past couple of hours since we have been sitting here, the dow is up more than 1,400 points. an all time record. i want to bring in julia chatterly. there were a few individuals heavily responsible. they were right. and, the market is having this huge surge. that is not how the market sees it. >> this is a palatable sigh of relief. a decisive swift

election result compared to the alternative, what people were talking about weeks of delays, counting, potential protests. we didn't get that. what you are seeing is a positive reaction to that ultimately. it is positive for the economy and financial markets. that's what we are seeing today. early days will be my first point to make. deregulation. there is today a palpable sense of business optimism there will be a lighter government touch. you can see that. they are soaring. energy stocks, oil and gas players, the difference on the downside. solar having an appalling day. bucking that entire trend. renewable energy

stock, tesla. richer and more powerful as a result. what we cannot price is tariffs. >> i want to ask you about tariffs. elon musk says he will take a role in the government. be head of the department of governmental efficiency. we'll see what happens and how that plays out. do people in the markets that you are speaking to believe that elon musk will come in and have a palpable influence? this is a much more easily said than done thing. >> there will be some moderating force as far as business is concerned. he understands the impact of massive tariffs. do i believe elon musk will be saying to the president-elect now, that probably wouldn't be a good idea? the threat is really palpable. do the threat bark,

not bike? yes. >> drunken sailors. so let me ask you, then, about the tariffs. you mentioned them. everybody says tariffs are bad. they are just like a straight task. does the market believe that trump is actually going to do the tariffs or are they betting this is just a negotiating strategy with china and it won't actually happen? >> i think the general perception is that the bark is worse than the bike. goldman sachs is a big example. he will do 20% tariffs on china, not 60. inflation will continue to come down. it won't change the tact of the fed. i expect a lot of bark over the next 12 months. i expect less bite than he was talking about. remember this is a president who loves the stock market rise. he loves the strong economy. >> he loves to talk about that. >> he will not do anything that risks those things. >> all right. so i like how we are, tariffs are not 60%. they are 20%. talk about relative

value. you know. >> it could be a lot worse. >> so what about the housing market was such a central part of this campaign. kamala harris with a specific plan for that. trump not with one, but saying trust me. what are you seeing in terms of what ultimately drives the housing market first and foremost which will be rates? interest rates? >> it is a great point. not only is stock market going up today. the cost of government's longer term borrowing is rising today. and it has been for a number of weeks. some parts of that is stronger growth. great. some other parts of that is the risk of higher inflation. also the risk perhaps of high spending. he has promised $7.5 trillion worth of spending the next ten years. the problem is mortgage rates are more sensitive to that than the federal reserve bringing rates down mortgage costs are going to stay high. credit cards are an interesting one. he has promised a 10 percentage point credit card rate. that is less than half of

what we have today. he will need congress to do it but the banks won't be acting like this. >> that is not something set by the government at least now. so much for lack of regulation. thank you so much. this shows you the complexity of all this and how important. we have breaking news just coming in right now. we have learned that president joe biden has spoken, what if i hadn't gotten off the ticket? he has invited trump to the white house. and biden is planning to address the nation tomorrow. so we are breaking all of these details and we have more. so tell us everything you know. >> well, a very significant call this afternoon as the white house is saying that president biden did in fact speak with president-elect donald trump. and has invited him here to the white house. i want to read to you what a white house official said. president biden expressed his commitment to ensuring a smooth

transition and emphasized the importance of working to bring the country together. the officials said that staff would be coordinating for a date for biden to visit, for trump to visit the white house in the near future. now this comes when you think back to 2020, it is a pretty remarkable turn of events when former president donald trump did not concede the race to joe biden and put up many roadblocks in joe biden's transition process. as he was prepareing to come here to the white house. president biden has made clear that is not something he plans to repeat with trump as he is preparing to host him here at the white house. the transition teams with the white house and the gsa have been in contact over the course of the past few weeks, with the potential transition teams for each of their candidates. now a lot of work will begin to try to make those transition processes move smoothly. now, president biden we are told also spoke today with vice president kamala harris and congratulated her on her victory. this is the first known conversation that we know between the two of them. and it

comes as harris is getting ready to speak with her supporters in the coming hours. the white house says he will address the nation tomorrow. regarding these election results as well as that transition process. it comes at a time when there's been a lot of democrats grappling with why exactly they lost this election to donald trump. just yesterday. and much of that finger pointing and blame game has been directed toward president joe biden. who had sought election for a second term for well over a year. and then pulled out of the race, abandoned those plans after that faltering and halting debate performance against trump in june. the white house is trying to make clear that president biden is going to try to work with trump to ensure this is a smooth transition unlike what we saw play out in

2020. >> all right, thank you very much. and stay with us, our special coverage of election day in america continues right after this short break.

hello, i am wolf blitzer alongside erin burnett. i want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. >> we have breaking news. in the next hour, we will hear from vice president, harris. she will be delivering her concession speech after losing the race to 270 electoral votes to now, resident elect donald trump. this is cnn special coverage of election day in america, continued. >> let's begin this hour in washington, d.c. jeff zeleny is on the campus of howard university in washington, where vice president kamala harris is due to deliver her concession speech. jeff, based on everything your hearing, what should we expect?

>> reporter: the supporters are gathering here in the yard of howard university, of course, the alma mater of vice president kamala harris. i can say it's a much smaller crowd, as of now. people are still coming in, certainly, a more subdued crowd than yesterday, when thousands gathered here in jubilation , and they arrived in defeat. it was not until overnight when it was declared that donald trump was the president elect, that this truly set in, but we do know that vice president kamala harris has spoken to donald trump. they had a brief conversation. i'm told it was a cordial conversation. he thanked her for calling to concede. president biden and former president trump have called, so all the formalities are out of the way. we are anticipating a speech from vice president harris. i am told that she is going to thank her supporters. she is going to urge her supporters across the country to accept the results of this election and find

common ground, even as they hold onto their own ideals. one of her closing messages in the final days of the campaign was seeking to find common ground. i'm told that will be one of her messages, but also, it will be one to stand her ground on certain issues. this is not how any of her supporters had realized this, but when you step back, we are just 108 days, and she ascended to the top of the democratic ticket, so this is something she never anticipated, and now, she just has a short time, a matter of weeks in the office of the vice president. for now, supporters are eager to hear her. i'm interested to see how much she leans into history. during this campaign, she rarely talked about how she could be a barrier breaking candidate, unlike hillary clinton eight years ago, who talked about that considerably. now, we know that history will not be made in this election. that is front and center on many people's minds today. >> looking at the crowd where you are, howard university, it's in hbcu, historically

black college and university. she had gone to school there. it's her alma mater. is the crowd that is gathered there, mostly, students or folks from d.c., virginia and maryland , and they have all come in to watch this important speech? remake it is absolutely in mix. yes, there are many students here. there are not classes at howard because of this, but it's also many supporters from washington, from the area, and others that have come to washington in anticipation of what they thought would be a victory last evening. certainly, a broad tapestry of supporters. we saw mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. certainly, a smaller crowd, but when you talk to people, there is disappointment, but there also is pride in vice president harris's candidacy. she used to walk the grounds here. she wrote in her memoir, how important this very place was to her rise, so i will expect she will talk about that homecoming here and push to the future. of course, that future

will not include her, at least, for now, as the president. >> we also just heard that president biden, actually, spoke with president trump as well. what do we know about that conversation? >> reporter: we know that president biden invited former president donald trump to the white house at some point during this time of transition. we know that president biden will be addressing the nation tomorrow. president biden is at the center of all of this. it was his decision in july to not seek a second term, well after this campaign was underway. that is going to hang over this entire election as a central part of his legacy. so many questions. what if he decided earlier to not seek a second term? what if there had been a democratic primary? would vice president harris had emerged stronger? for now, at least, president biden is front and center in this. i'm told that he has also talked to his vice president. there is no doubt there is some healing to do inside the democratic party,

indeed, inside the white house as well. there are many hard feelings that have not healed over how he was removed from the ticket. of course, it was his decision on july 21st, but when he did very reluctantly. this period of history, this summer, during this historic campaign of 2024 will be inspected for many years to come, but for now, this is vice president harris's final moment on stage before she recedes back to joe biden's running mate. >> jeff zeleny at howard university in washington, d.c. thank you very much. when you think about hillary clinton, she gave that speech. she was, really, emotional. was not ready to do it the night that happened, she did it the next morning. kamala harris is waiting until the afternoon. she's going to have a massive crowd. but, you know her. you know those around her. what is going into this moment for her? and, what is she prepared for to walk out on

that stage? it's going to be emotional. it's going to be a big crowd and she is going to have to say something that nobody can imagine how hard it is to say. >> one of the things that i know about her, because she said it to me before, is that she always thinks that every moment , you have to talk to people, it should be a teachable moment, and that you should use it to share a lesson. i suspect she will talk about the lessons that she has learned in this moment, and then she will be speaking at her alma mater. she said the first time she ran for office was when she was running for freshman rep at howard. she is going to be speaking to students, and she always talks about how she loves gen z, and she is going to be talking about not giving up. because you did not win, it's not time to throw in the towel. i think it's really important for those students to hear that, because remember my first election was 2000, hanging chads, and it did not go the

way i wanted to. that may be get into politics, get into journalism. moments like this can really inspire a generation to be the leaders of the future, and i think she will take that time to talk to the folks that are present in the room, and talk to the country and try to bring us together. >> this was a close race. it was projected to be a close race. i think the polls in america -- i don't want to over use a word that has been used a lot in the past week, but the reality of it is, she is going out and she did not expect to be giving the speech. this is not what she expected to be giving. so, how does she handle that? >> look, i think we can all imagine what the emotional whiplash of this moment feels like, when she and her campaign felt, based on the data they had, that they were , absolutely, had a chance to win this election. frankly, i think they thought they were going to. >> the night before, they said, can you went all seven, and she said yes. they believe that.

all of the substantive pieces that ashley is talking about are so important. having to manage your own disappointment and emotional drop off in this moment , incredibly hard, and incredibly hard from a public speaking perspective. she is dealing with all of the emotions of having come up short and what that means , while also having to go through, what do i want this speech to say? presumably sitting there with her speechwriters, going through. i think it requires a sense of focus and discipline and emotional management that would be very hard for most people. >> i have written a lot of concession speeches. two more than i wish i had, frankly, and i have to tell you, they can be some of the best moments of a politicians career. they are emotionally spent. the race is over. they have given everything they can, so there is no more attention. you are not nervous about anything.

most people that run for office do so out of a commitment to public service. it's a sacrifice for most of them, and that comes through in a lot of concession speeches. the real desire to lead people comes through in a natural way that it doesn't in the heat of the battle. i might look forward to one of her better speeches of the year. >> gosh, if you talk like that, maybe things would've gone differently. >> this is a point you've made about the campaigns not having enough humility. in concession speeches, peoples humility comes through. that's why they feel human and that's why people connect to them, go humility comes weight -- through in a way it often doesn't. >> biden and trump have a conversation. i have been with biden a few times in the past year, and you don't need to have been with biden to have heard this, and i don't want to use nasty words, but he really dislikes donald trump. it's personal. it's deep. yet, they pick up the phone call, they have this phone call, biden invites him to the white house, come and visit.

showing, basically, this is how you should behave. the real question is, can trump reciprocate? can he rise to that moment and be gracious? >> i think it's a chance for a clean start for donald trump. we've had two elections, one of which he won in 2016 and democrats immediately put 200,000 people in the streets and acted like this one was illegitimate. 2020, we all know how that happened. this is a chance for donald trump to have a different experience this time. i think it's a good chance for democrats to grant that he won legitimately -- >> which they have done. >> they need to not come to the streets on january 20th. the parade permits need to be taken off and we can go back to having an all girls be a celebration of democracy, where everybody grants that it's time to start new. >> what do you think the biden trump meeting is going to be? >> i would love to be a fly on the wall. >> we were in a wide shot and

could not quite see your eye roll. >> i just remember the meeting, kate and i were at the white house in 2016. i was right outside of the roosevelt room. the cleveland cavaliers were there for their celebration. it was a somber day. donald trump was in the oval office meeting with obama. it's a discussion. there is no bonding of a friendship. it is an active leadership , and i think they will have a cordial conversation and they will never speak again. >> that's probably the case. >> i listened to a conversation that joe biden and donald trump had in the 2020 campaign, april of 2020. and, it was very -- you might expect there would be fireworks. it was very civil. it was very matter-of-fact. they kind of exchanged the information they intended to exchange. i remember donald trump talked about boris johnson, because he had just gone to the hospital with covid, so donald trump was talking about his concern for

boris johnson. it was a very normal discussion. i would expect this meeting will be similar. >> at least, from biden's standpoint. >> i'm just thinking of all the things out here, the pardons and the scenarios, if harris won, do they pardon trump? does trump say on the call, hey, i am going to pardon hunter biden? did he say anything like that? >> no, i highly doubt it. >> does he do it? >> i don't know. he likes executive power and the pardon is the ultimate executive power. >> there is a part of him that would love that. >> it might be healing for the country if joe biden preemptively pardoned him before jack smith drops the case. the whole country can start over. >> i think it's possible. i don't think that's out of the realm of possibility. i'm not sure that this conversation is where he would drop that. >> no, he would want to do it -- you would want to time it more strategically.

>> okay. i'm not sure about the pardons, but to your point about starting over, there is an opportunity. i think the start -- we have seen donald trump and we have seen them in certain circumstances, and we see him an hour later, and they are different. i think with starting over, there has to be -- i believe he will be on this phone call with the president and it will be cordial, but i think people want to see it consistently and feel like he is leading all of us, even though, we may not have voted for him. >>'s speech last night was very late and i was barely awake. it was a pretty helpful speech and he shared a lot of credit. he brought chris lacivita up to the podium. and -- >> he said he was going to fire chris lacivita the week before, but gracious in that moment. >> republicans, you are now the president-elect. to start a new

, kamala harris will talk about this in her concession speech. there are a lot of americans that are skeptical. we need to see and hear that from donald trump as well. >> pause here, but thanks to our panel. stay with us. our special coverage of election day in america. we will be back in a moment.

welcome back to are continuing special coverage. donald trump back in power, elected the 47th president of the united states. vice president kamala harris formally conceiving the election in a phone call with president-elect trump. in a few moments, she will be speaking live. you will see her, the first time she has spoken since the loss. she will be speaking to the american people. this is the crowd already assembled where she will speak, at her election headquarters at her alma mater, howard university. a massive crowd there. it will be a difficult moment for them, for her. an emotional moment, but an important one. joining me now is republican congressman dan music. he also was one of those in charge of leading the state for trump's re-election effort. let me just

ask you, congressman, trump won the state and you worked hard to make that happen. when you look at the details, whether it's the exit polls or anything under the hood, did anything surprise you? did anything stand out to you? >> well, we went at this in a very strategic manner, if you will. campaigns tend to be a lot of advertising, a lot of fundraising, a lot of handshaking, certainly, grassroots, but we took an approach of embracing the early voting and getting the registration done in a heavy way, and we improved by over 500,000. we really build the foundation to win. we made it very, very difficult for anybody to beat us with the type of manpower and contacts and everything else that we engaged in. so, now, there

really weren't too many surprises. certainly, it met my highest level of expectations, the win, the percentage that trump had, as well as other races. david mccormick, we won two house seats. we really fired on all cylinders. we seem to do a lot right. >> two of the three pickups in the gop are in pennsylvania. mccormick winning, that is not something most people had on their bingo card. when you talk about firing at all cylinders, can i ask you, so we can understand better, because what we have heard in recent weeks was that democrats had this massive ground operation, and i understand there were concerns about how they were doing in philadelphia with your knocks, but massive, volunteer driven, on the ground, the bus is ready, everything there, and the gop was outsourcing a lot of it to super pacs, like elon musk, they did not have the local knowledge. they were paying people to do or not, as opposed to having passionate supporters do it, and it was

seen as weakness. now you look at it, and it seems like the perspective completely missed the mark. what do people not see? >> well, we are just taking a page out of the democrats machine, playbook. it's a good one. doorknocking and meeting with folks and pushing them on sending in a valid and registering, and such. that is all legal. everything that is legal, we engaged in. ballot harvesting and things like that are not legal in pennsylvania, but i think you are missing anything. we have been doing this over a year. we had thousands and thousands of the trump force 47 and other groups going out. scott pressler, maybe you heard of him. it was really an orchestrated effort that was endless. >> can i ask you about scott pressler? we did a report the other day on the amish, and

160,000 or 180,000 registered amish, he was talking about, and he is a social media cult figure. did not move the needle, when you look at specific groups? for example, did registering the amish move the needle? >> you know, he and his team have the eye of the tiger. they work really hard when they get going. and, yeah, our focus was on the amish throughout pennsylvania. latino americans. i think you know. president trump, they came over to us by 20%, 25% better than joe biden had. jewish americans for various reasons. the youth. these things were very targeted. it was very strategic, and i'm not giving away any secrets. these are things that democrats have done, but we did it very effectively, and i will say, between the rnc and the gop, working together, we had people that were responsive. i have

been in some presidential campaigns, and other statewide campaigns. this one was very responsive. when there was a problem, people were jumping. we had a very diverse group. we had latinos for trump groups. we had african americans for trump groups. >> when you talk about responsive, is that a direct -- i'm just trying to understand this, because i think everyone wants to understand what happened. was that susie wiles and chris lacivita, their ability to run an effective campaign? that you had somebody that you could call that would give you what you need when you needed it? or, was it names that we might not even know? >> it was, certainly, them, and their teams in the field, particularly, throughout pennsylvania, but also, michael whatley and lara trump. they were great. i have never seen anything -- heads of the rnc working with our state gop in that manner before. it just really all came together.

everybody embraced it. everybody knew what the goals were and what the tactics were. >> before we go, i want to ask you one other thing. you mentioned latinos. let me ask you about that, because that is an area that , it appears, at least, from talking to the trump campaign, that they did not anticipate the dramatic swing they had among latino men. you are saying you had targeted that. were you surprised by the magnitude that you saw among latinos? >> yeah. yeah, because it was profound. nearly 100,000 registered latino americans in pennsylvania alone, that we think we picked up , that were eligible voters. that in itself could turn the election. that is why president trump was smart. he was in reading, big latino area, allentown, a couple of times. high percentage of latino americans. so many of them are small business owners. workers, of

course, manufacturing. you name it. and, look, they want low taxes. they liked our message. they like low taxes. they want us to go after inflation. they don't like the open borders. certainly, the policy debate was important here. >> more so than what we saw from a comedian at madison square garden? congressman, i really appreciate your time and thank you so much. >> i agree with you there, but that was one comedian and none of us knew what was happening there. we did our best to overcome it and we denounced it. >> we appreciate your time. please stay with us, because you're watching special coverage in america, continued and we will be right back.

in just a few minutes, the vice president kamala harris will deliver her concession speech to the nation. she has already spoken and officially conceded. president biden has also spoken to trump and also invited trump to the white house. joining us now is frank

luntz, the pollster and communication strategist. thanks so much for joining us. when you have seen the exit -- i know you have taken a close look at all the exit polling. what are your top takeaways right now? >> most important is the latino, the hispanic vote. i was shocked to find out that trump won a majority of male latinos. trump was able to win a majority. that's the first time i know of that any republican has been able to do something like that in more than 30 years. that was number one. number two is that young women, under age 30, only represented 7% of the sample. for harris to be successful, they needed to draw a major turn out, because the spread was almost 2-1 in favor of harris. they had to make that something bigger. third was the fact that in the end, abortion was a relatively low priority

issue. she was dominating there, but if it doesn't matter to voters, then it doesn't matter if one candidate has a tremendous lead. those are my three great takeaways. >> very important takeaways, indeed. frank, what is your biggest lesson for democrats today? >> it is, tell people where you stand. tell them what you are going to do. she did a wonderful town hall meeting with cnn. she should've stopped anderson cooper at the beginning and said to the audience, i want to tell you exactly what i'm going to do in the first hour, the first day, the first week, the first month, 100 days, the year, all of that. then, when she runs out of time and anderson wants to move on, she says to the crowd, do you want to hear but i'm going to do or do you want me to answer questions? they would've cheered for her, and that would have put aside all of this doubt about where she stands and what she wants to do. she could've done it at your town hall. she paid a big

price for it. >> a senior harris campaign official tells cnn and i'm quoting, " biden will hold a lot of blame for it, and frankly, he should." do you agree? >> in the end, she decided not to differentiate herself, and you can be supportive of someone and still say, i am someone different. i don't look like him, i don't sound like him. we have complementary points of view, but they are not identical to that she could've gone off and differentiated her cell. once again, it was her choice to align with biden that tightly. was she loyal? absolutely. did it hurt her in the campaign? absolutely. >> when she was specifically asked if there were major differences that she had over the years with biden, she basically said she could not think of any. you think that was a big cost to her? >> there was no reason for her to do that. the two most important issues in this campaign, one was

affordability, not the economy, because in the end, people's jobs were okay. they were secure. people making more money. the issue of the economy were the prices, the cost of everything. and, the other issue was, immigration and overall personal security and safety. on both of those, she had to get involved. she could not push it off. it's not enough to talk about healthcare. it's not enough to talk about women's health. she had to address those issues. she didn't, at least, not until the end. it was a big cost to her. she did not want to differentiate between herself and the president. >> frank, you are a pollster, highly respected pollster. how reliable are these polls right now? so many people have been shocked by what has happened over the past couple of days , once the votes were actually counted. >> the pole that changed the entire narrative for the last

48 hours was the iowa poll, giving harris a three-point lead, when, in fact, trump won the state with double digits. that is not good. it changed how the campaign was being talked about. in the end, i know this is a shot in my profession. we should do a little less talking about the polls and a little more talking about policy. in the end, that will help the public, it will help the candidates and it will make our democracy stronger. >> frank luntz, always good to get your analysis. thank you very much. to our viewers, stay with cnn. our special live coverage of election day in america, continued, and we will have much more after this short break. >> election day in america continues, at the magic wall is brought to you by aura. it may be a big day, but your health matters every day. check your

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welcome back. we are moments away from vice president kamala harris's first public remarks since her loss to now president-elect, donald trump. my panel is with me. mj, i know you're doing a lot of reporting. what do you anticipate she will say in this speech at her alma mater, howard university, in washington, where a huge crowd is now gathering?

>> if you have been following the harris campaign, in some ways, this will sound like a familiar speech. she is going to talk about respecting democratic institutions, like last night's election, finding common ground, the need for the country to come together, all things she talked about on the campaign trail. i'm curious to see how she talks to the american people about accepting, as an ex-president, somebody that she herself has called a fascist, someone that she herself said did not respect the american democracy. and, has been taking the country backwards on everything from reproductive rights and other freedoms, writing that needle is going to be in some ways, a tough act for her, because of how forcefully she has been speaking out against donald trump. i'm also looking out for any clues that she might offer about her own political future. maybe today is not the day, but does she say, i plan to be at the forefront of democrats fighting back against donald trump and the republicans extremist

agenda, which is what she talked about a lot. >> i think mj is right. she has to come out. she has to sound presidential, no matter what happens. whether or not she has any hope of running again, she has to show that she is a leader, someone, who again, that democrats pillared for so long, and said donald trump is somebody that doesn't understand how to transfer the power of government. she has to deliver that message in a way that is accepting to the nation , but also in a way that democrats know that she has not given up. it is an incredibly tough tightrope to walk, and honestly, in the days ahead, the reaction from democrats to everything that donald trump says and vice versa is really going to give us an idea of how difficult this is going to be to govern in washington. >> this is going to be a difficult speech for her to craft, right and deliver, given the pain that she has been going for over the past 24 to

48 hours. what do you anticipate? >> president biden is also talking tomorrow as well. i expect this to be what you are saying, pretty gracious speech. the question, though, to mark's point, what is the strategy after today? yes, today she will reinforce the importance of a peaceful transition of power. a graceful exit from the scene, and talk about the issues she cares about. i don't think she's going to call him a fascist. i would be surprised about that, but what is the next step for the democrats? while they will be the majority in the senate, they will have power to scuttle an agenda. the minority in the senate is very powerful. the republicans will not have 60 seats in the senate. will they try to fight everything at every turn? will they try to cut deals? even if they are in the house minority, you will have a robust minority. mike johnson is the speaker, he will have a small majority, which means that he may have to rely on democrats. hakeem jeffries,

is he going to fight and everything will turn or will they try to figure out a way to connect with voters they lost? those are all huge questions in the weeks ahead. >> huge questions, indeed. standby, we have another cnn projection for you right now. in the important state of michigan, cnn now projects that democrats elissa slotkin will be in her senate race against republican mike rogers. this is a critical win for democrats, who lost control of the senate. in any case, she will secede democratic senator, debbie stabenow, who is retiring. elissa slotkin, 48.6%. mike rogers, 48.3%. 16,494 votes . elissa slotkin is ahead of mike rogers, that is 97% of the vote in. this is a big win for the democrats.

>> she was able to appeal to trump voters. this is an open seat which he represents a trump district, a district that trump carried in the house. mike rogers, he was pretty critical of donald trump in the aftermath of january 6th. he changed his course completely, aligned with trump through the course of the campaign, try to ride donald trump's coattails. it only went so far, and slatkin was able to succeed there. another sigh of relief for democrats, while they are in the minority. it could have been a lot worse. this went with the top of the ticket. now they are looking at a 58-48 minority, at the least, but it could be 53-47. the pennsylvania race is looking good for the gop. they are clinging onto a lead. 54-46, and in future election cycles, it's going to get worse and worse. the map is going to be difficult for democrats to get back into the majority, which is why each seat is so significant. one seat can make all the difference. >> congratulations to elissa slotkin. mj, you reported

earlier that president biden invited former president trump to the white house for a meeting. this is pretty extraordinary too, given the bad blood that exists between these two people. >> this is all part of the peaceful transfer of power that we are talking about for the current sitting president, to invite the incoming next president to the white house to meet and go through all of those processes that are, typically, in place. clearly, the white house and this president is trying to send a message. it doesn't matter what happened during this election. it doesn't matter how he did things were. it doesn't matter that democrats, largely, ran on the other side. donald trump, having been someone that completely ignored in so many ways , all of these traditions that are in place. we are going to stick to what we believe are the democratic norms in washington, d.c. and in our country, and that, again, is for the current president to accept and welcome, in some ways, the person that served in the white house after him, and the person

that he ran against in 2020. >> they are doing the traditional way, honoring the election process and doing it right. it's interesting, mark. there are some trump supporters, who have lined up outside of mar-a-lago. i want to listen to what one of them had to say. >> if vaccines are working for somebody, i'm not going to take them away. people ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information. i'm going to make sure , scientific safety studies and efficacies are out there, and people can make individual assessments. >> reporter: would you eliminate any of the agencies? >> i might. >> that is not the sound bite we wanted. >> but, that's going to be a very important one. >> he is going to be a major player. >> there is going to be discussion about, rfk, he will never be confirmed by the united states senate. he doesn't need to be confirmed

by the united states senate, just like elon musk is not going to serve in the administration in a way that he pulls a paycheck. he doesn't need to put all the us to do is have donald trump's ear. you can put anybody in these cabinet positions and have them parrot what the president wants. you will see the likes of bobby kennedy. obviously, elon musk, even the likes of dana white from ufc will have influence. >> they will have all these unconfirmed desires, what they call, to oversee policy. republicans used to criticize that. >> thank you very much. stay with cnn. our special live coverage continues with anderson cooper and dana bash, right now.

welcome to cnn special coverage of election day in america. i am anders cooper. we are standing by for vice president kamala harris to speak after conceding the presidential race to now president-elect, donald trump. >> i am dana bash. harris will be speaking at howard university here in washington, d.c. we are also learning that harris just spoke with trump and congratulated him on his win. according to a senior aide, discussed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power. >> this is, opposite, a decisive win for president trump, with 291 electoral votes. harris, 223, we still have four states to call, including arizona and nevada. we will bring you harris's remarks when they happen in just about 15 minutes. but first, i want to go to abby phillip and jeff zeleny at howard university. >> reporter: anderson, let me set the scene, because jeff and i were sitting in these very safe last night as the night

wore on. it was packed. there were thousands of people here, students, supporters, and the vibe was energetic, and it was happy, until the results started to come in. today, this is the exact opposite. both jeff and i have lived through another version of this , when hillary clinton conceded the next day to donald trump. kind of like this. you see supporters here really coping in real time, with what they went through last night, but there is a sense, i think, today, of resignation , that was not there eight years ago with donald trump and hillary clinton. almost everyone here understands what donald trump is and what he means, and they are sad . they are upset, they are moving forward. >> it's so interesting, talking to voters and supporters, it breaks down on their age. i was just talking

to a woman, who has lived through a lot of elections, and she made that point. eight years ago, she said it was unclear what type of president donald trump would be, but now america knows, and america chose this. there were a lot of recriminations for what hillary clinton could have done. she believes me, she told me a few moments ago that kamala harris did everything she could have done and was really starting this race in the fourth quarter. we will unpack this for many months, and perhaps, years to come. president biden, his decision, his timing sits at the center of all of this. that phone call that resident biden and vice president harris had earlier today, so interesting, but when you talk to be supporters, they are dejected, and they arrived yesterday in a jubilant mode. >> i should note, anderson, that phone call that jeff was talking about, harris and trump, they only meant that one time on the debate stage, and they have almost never spoken to each other in a setting like that, and for someone, who ran a very strong campaign against

trump's character, that phone call would've been quite difficult. i was talking to some harris supporters, they are all milling around here. they're going to be front and center for her speech , her campaign volunteers, aides, their staffers, they've all come in giving each other long hugs. there is a sense here that this is not the end. this is, perhaps, the beginning. vice president harris is young, relatively young, and she was -- is the vice president now. this race did not work out, but there are a lot of people here that do not think this is the end for her. >> you have any sense of what message she intends to convey in her concession speech? i'm sure we will hear about support for a peaceful transfer of power. >> reporter: i was told she needed to take the time, frankly, to gather her thoughts. this is not just about her and about trump. this is also about all of these

people gathered here. all of the millions of supporters, who are looking for someone to lead them in the way forward in a new trump era. i do expect it's not just going to be about the passing from one candidate to another, or one vice president to the incoming president. it's also going to be about what the future of the democratic movement looks like going forward. >> there is no doubt. anderson, this is not the time for the deep introspection, but there will be soul-searching. there is no doubt, yes, vice president harris is young, but a question hanging over all of this, was she the best candidate? i think she was put, largely, in an impossible situation with 107 days. talking to her advisers, they will say that it was president biden, who sort of left her in the situation. pointing back to that one interview, she said on the view, would you change anything about your administration versus president biden? that became an ad, and

that was a singular moment. i'm told that she is going to tell her supporters and asked them to accept the decision and to find common ground and to move forward, even as they stand their ground on basic democratic principles. >> jeff zeleny, abby phillip, thank you. we are going to bring vice president kamala harris's remarks live. cofounder of lift our voices, gretchen carlson. i know you have been talking to sources in the campaign. >> the first thing is, they say, absolutely, they misjudged this race. they misjudged donald trump. i think we all know also, the donald trump did not think he was winning this, so there was a lot of misjudging. >> when they say misjudging, do you have a sense of what they think? >> they thought that what mattered was the gender gap. their ground game, january 6th, democracy, and what one source said to me was, it was, as

james carville said, it's the economy, stupid. it's the inflation, stupid. the other thing that both harris campaign sources and democratic sources have said is, the donald trump cuts through with his message. he connects. we may talk about madison square garden , about the rhetoric, about insults, about violent rhetoric . voters didn't care about that. one source , democratic, very senior democrat said to me, voters wanted the guy with the bat, not the woman with the joy. >> yeah, i was just going to say, i think the numbers speak for themselves, and they are startling. if you look at gen z, 18 to 29. biden had them buy a 25 point margin. last night, harris only had a 13 point margin. that is a dramatic slip, especially, after roe v. wade and the discussion that so

many young women on college campuses , or not, were going to be going out in droves to vote for harris, and that, apparently, did not happen. when you mix that in the trump up 10 points with young men in that same demographic, that is where you lost a lot of votes. then, you can go to white women. harris got less than biden did four years ago. that is startling. was there a misunderstanding about the impact of roe v. wade? i can understand how you would get there, because look what happened in 2022. >> there was also so much talk about the ground game by democrats. none of that, in the end, mattered, no matter how many doors were knocked. dana, let's go back to you. >> i want to now go to caitlin collins in west palm beach, florida. i know you have been talking to your sources about that phone call between vice president harris and now president-elect, trump. what are you hearing?

>> reporter: yeah, to be a fly on that wall for the phone call between the two of these people after the campaign we have seen playing out over the last several weeks and months, ever since harris became the top of the ticket. i'm told it only lasted a matter of minutes. harris was calling to congratulate trump on his victory, to say that she looks forward to working on a transition, peaceful transition of power. in turn, i'm told that trump was quite complimentary of her. the trump campaign is saying, on the record, in a statement, that he praised her tenacity and professionalism. i'm told by someone familiar with the conversation that he was quite flattering to her during that call. that is not totally surprising, given how trump has acted towards other former rivals, once they are no longer his rivals. even the republican primary, people like governor ron desantis. just a remarkable call between the two of them. i think it's worth noting that she is affording him one thing he did not afford the incoming

biden harrison ministries and, which was saying that he would commit to a peaceful transition of power. president biden inviting former president donald trump to come and meet with him at the white house during their phone call, and harris pledging to work forward on that transition. as far as what is happening in palm beach today, they are on quite a high from that victory last night. bigger margins than they ever expected, just over 24 hours ago. the jockeying process is underway when it comes to a trump transition. he has been on the phone all day long with business leaders, tech leaders, and a lot of republican lawmakers and some democrats, even, talking about what this next few weeks is going to look like, as part of this transition process. one thing i will note, they have not signed these ethics agreement. the incoming transition team usually signs them before. we will see if last nights victory changes that, because that is a very critical process that has to get underway. if you

remember, when trump won in 2016, that was quite a moment. they had this plan ready to go. organized by chris christie, and in the days after that surprising 2016 victory, they threw it all out the window and started from scratch. we will see if that is the case here. just a remarkable moment to have that conversation between donald trump and vice president kamala harris, even if it was just a few moments. >> if my memory serves correctly, i think they threw chris christie's transition plan in the garbage can. thank you so much for that reporting. i appreciate it. i want to move here to talk about what we expect in moments from vice president harris. boris sanchez, former republican congressman, adam kinzinger, who supported vice president harris. jamaal simmons, former communications director for harris. thank you so much. >> it's great, thank you for having me. we are happy.

>> can you sell it a little better? >> i want to go to the beginning of what caitlin collins was reporting and sit on that for a second, and that is, we cannot take for granted anymore the notion that a person, who loses the presidency picks up the phone and calls the person who won to concede and say, i wish you well. we will hear more of what she will say in public, but that phone call, not only did it not happen, as you know better than any of us, because you investigated what happened on january 6, it led to so much disinformation, so much misinformation, and actual bloodshed. talk about this moment now for us as a democracy. >> this is really important. look, it was, obviously, very tense campaign. kamala said some things about trump that were hurtful to him, he said things about her that were hurtful, but for her to pick up the phone and make that call,

and say, we respect this transfer of power. you will have full cooperation from the by the ministry she could i think it's really important, and around the world there are a lot of scared countries right now looking at donald trump coming back. they can look and say, we know that transfer of power is going to be peaceful, and i think it puts a lot of people at ease and helps to heal the country. we can disagree with donald trump winning. we cannot want him to win, but we should all agree that we want to heal the country as much as possible. >> on that note, you know the vice president well. you worked for her. as we are a couple minutes away, we are told that she is there, she has arrived at howard university. what is, not only going for her mind right now, and what, more importantly, do you think she is going to want to convey? >> she is very businesslike. she can be very businesslike, not sentimental. i imagine that conversation was very businesslike and she got it done. one of the reasons that is true, she was a prosecutor.

she dealt a lot with families that were in crisis and turmoil. >> i'm sorry to interrupt you, nancy pelosi, former house speaker on camera. i think it's pretty safe to say that kamala harris was the nominee, and not joe biden, because of the work that she did behind the scenes and even in public, to change the top of the ticket. >> is a prosecutor, she would talk about conversations with families in turmoil. in a moment like this, she puts herself back in that space of having those tough conversations. i imagine this was very businesslike. democrats are still trying to maintain normalcy, to act like this is something that is regular. people have to wrap their minds around the fact we are about to have an administration that is not going to be normal. at least, if they go along with what they said in the campaign. while we want to have the trappings of democracy,