this is gps. welcome to all

of you in the united states and around the world. i am fareed zakaria, to live from new york. today on the program, donald trump wins the presidency again. i talked to two great political experts, ezra klein and david, about how it happened and what lessons democrats can learn. then one of the intellectual godfathers of maga discusses what to expect for the next four years. i will get the view from overseas with the economists editor in chief. >> this is a magnificent victory for the american people that will allow us to make america great again. >> first, here is my take. at

first glance, it would seem easy to explain last tuesday's election as part of a 2024 global wave against incumbents is that by post-covid turmoil and inflation, and the uk saw huge tory parliamentary majority turn into his thinnest minority in the particle is nearly 200 year history. germany's governing coalition has collapsed amid soaring in popularity. emmanuel macron's party was crushed in france's elections for south korea's opposition party dominated in a huge parliament, even in japan, where the ruling party has governed almost uninterrupted since 1955 i'm at the party lost its house of representatives majority. so, it might have been preordained that kamala harris representing the incumbent administration lost decisively as well. but harris could have a bucks the trend. the american economy is doing better than all these other nations. employment is

strong. wages are up. inflation is down. activity is soaring. more importantly, donald trump has many strengths as a political figure , but he also has many weaknesses. let's recall that after january 6th, 2021, his approval rating was down to 34% in a cnn poll. in another matchup, your later, president joe biden was beating him by 10 points nationally, 43 to 33. then came the overturning of roe v. wade and the 2022 midterms, in which the republicans did very badly for midterms and maga candidates in particular got crushed. trump's visibility ratings assigned to 31% in a cnn poll with an on favorable rating at a staggering 60%. even republicans were disillusioned with him. at this point, trump have led a republican party that lost its house majority in

2018 and its senate majority of the presidency in the 2020 cycle and then fed his historically badly in those 2022 midterms. in december 2022, ron desantis was out pulling trump easily among republicans in a wall street journal poll. that was the democratic party's strongest moment since trump's arrival on the political landscape . but they blew it. the new york times estimates that harris will lose the national popular vote by about 1.5 points, first for democrats since 2004. global inflation is something that was hard to shut down. but there were other issues that democrats flopped, which inflamed the opposition and depressed their base. i'm will talk about them here because it is the right time to do a postmortem, but to avoid appearing to have 2020 hindsight, i should say that i have noted each of these

mistakes at the time, often promoting angry responses from the left. the first big error was the biden administration's blindness to the collapse of the immigration system and the chaos at the border. an asylum system that was meant for a small number of persecuted individuals was being used by millions to gain legal entry instead of shutting it down. liberals are branded anyone protesting as heartless and racist. they missed a massive shift in american public opinion in just a few years. in 2020, the percentage of americans who wanted to decrease immigration was just 28%. by this year, it was 55%. one kamala harris went on the view and was asked how she would have differed from biden, instead of basically saying nothing different, she should have said, i would have shut down the border early and hard. the second error was an overzealous misuse of law to

punish trump the most egregious of the cases pursued was alvin bragg's in new york, one he was skeptical of, but was reportedly pressured by some on the left into pursuing. some cases like the georgia one were legitimate, but the host of them piled on in rapid succession gave the impression that the legal system was being weaponized to get trump. it confirmed to his face what it had always believed, that over educated, urban liberals are hypocrites , happy to bend rules and norms when it suited their purposes. it is worth noting that in this week's election, cnn exit poll found that among those who believe that democracy in the u.s. is threatened, a majority supported trump. they turned him from a loser into a victor and as his indictments grow, his contributions surged and his poll numbers solidified.

the final error, identity politics on the left, which made it push for all kinds of di policies that largely came out of the urban academic bubble, but alienated many mainstream voters. there is an irony in claiming to be pro-latino by insisting that people use the term latinx molly discover that latinos themselves think the word is weird. this kind of obsession may democrats view people too much through their ethnic or racial or gender identity and made them miss that working-class latinos were moving toward trump, perhaps, because they were socially conservative or liked his macho rhetoric or even agreed with his hard-line stance on immigration. one of trump's most effective as on trans issues had a tagline. >> kamala is for they/them. president trump is for you. >> the problem is deeper than one about nouns and pronouns. the entire focus on identity

has morphed into something deeply illiberal. judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. similarly, universities with cancel culture and speech codes have become the way they censor the most cherished of liberal ideas, freedom of speech. one simple way to think about the lessons of the selection is that liberals cannot achieve liberal goals, however virtuous, by illiberal means. go to cnn.com/for read -- fereed for a look at the poll. in 2016, when trump won the first time, much was made of the fact that hillary clinton actually won the popular vote by two percentage points. electoral college may have

chosen trump, but the majority of americans did not. in 2020, he lost the popular vote by more than four points and he lost the election . this year, he is projected to have narrowly won the popular vote. if projections hold it will be the first time a republican has won the popular vote in 20 years. i am joined by two smart people of -- ezra klein, the author of why we are polarized, and a staff letter from the atlantic. ezra, first, fundamentally, how much of this was incumbency penalty ? it seems to have affected every election in the last 18 months. how much of this is something special that we should analyze? >> if you chart how every incumbent government has done in elections and over the past 15 months or two years, virtually every one of them gets annihilated in election. more than democrats did. the tories do that. you look north,

justin trudeau is incredibly unpopular in canada. the government in germany is falling apart. we are seeing center-right and centerleft government go down. look at the coalition. one simple way of thinking about it is in 2020, in 2024, you have similar collisions in the election and trump is doing better in 2020 among hispanic and black voters than people expected. in 2020, trump is up and come in and there is a pandemic and people are angry at him and he is not good at being president. trump has a -3 point incumbent penalty. democrats win by four and they win the election. this year, biden is president. the biden harris administration of incumbents and people are mad. the inflation period -- again, -3, -2 incumbent penalty. democrats lose by one to two points in the popular vote, which is what projections show. you do not have to explain much, but here is why i do not just take that and throw it around myself like a shawl and comfort myself to sleep. they

lost by 1.5 points in battleground states, right? they were able to keep it very narrow compared to a lot of other incumbent governments. >> it could have flipped the election. >> and 81.5 points. that means strategic decisions could have really mattered. when you're talking about a swing of two percentage points of a vote, that is not something that only structure can explain. it is actually -- they were able to keep it close enough that they could do something different that could have mattered. >> the point is not that it was a blowout and that is why they should be soul-searching. it was not. they could have won this. david, what about the economy? why is it that with what is arguably the strongest economy in the world at this point, that it did not work? was it a time lag? was it inflation matters more than we thought it would?

>> if president-elect donald trump had presided over this economy, as he soon well, he would have said, this is the greatest economy since the 1960s and things are great and unemployment -- the democrats are inhibited. if there is someone who is sad it is impossible for a democratic president or democratic administration to speak positively about what they have done. i am not a democrat. i marvel at this because they have so many beetle points in the party. this creates a very dangerous situation now. what do democrats love on this earth more than soul-searching? i do not know. they love it. maybe mutual accusation and mutual recrimination. blaming each other. they hate each other. it is a very messy coalition and they are about to turn on each other. should we have gone left on populism? should we blame this part of our coalition or that part? meanwhile, the emergency is going to start immediately. president-elect donald trump will come to all of this and immediately pardon

the january 6th criminals. he will abandon america's commitment to ukraine. he has already signaled to the chinese taiwan is yours if you wanted. of course, the floodgates of corruption will be massively open. how will he pay the half billion dollars he owes in civil judgments? will he sell truth social to somebody? elon musk, the saudis? the crisis is going to be here and the democrats are going to be looking inward when the country needs protection from what president-elect donald trump is going to use his flimsy margin to do. >> do you think -- how much is it worth for democrats looking at the two key factors -- the loss of the hispanic vote and the loss of the youth vote. they overlap a bit because hispanics are younger on average, but those are the big shifts almost endpoints in both cases. >> there is one key factor, an educational realignment. democrats have gone from winning working-class voters, right? that is the history of

the democratic party. the party of the working class. they have lost them. democrats have a significant margin around those who went to college and a significant loss among voters who did not. it is that structure, right, of the electorate that is leading them to use -- was a black voters and hispanic voters. the polarization has reached racial walls. the fact trump is a multiracial coalition -- this is part of why they lost women -- they did not have the margins among women they wanted to. >> why? >> because it is the same thing. the democrats are alienating a working-class electorate. year by year, worse and worse. they need to win. the working class is big in this country and it is the core of the democratic self-identity. i do not agree with david on what democrats need to do with soul-searching -- look through three elections. 2016, 2020, 2024. in

each of these elections, the win in either direction is very, very close. end 2016, trump lost the popular vote and won on a butterfly's flap of its wings in wisconsin and pennsylvania michigan. james comey does not send that letter and he loses -- in 2020, as big as it was, the swing state margin was quite narrow. this year, the state margin is quite narrow. if you want to end what feels like a growing emergency in american politics, and i do agree that trump is very dangerous and many dangerous things are about to happen, the democratic party does not need 50 or 51 or 52% of the vote. they need to build something more durable. they need to stop bleeding voters that it is bleeding at an accelerating level, who are supporting a candidate that is so anathema to democrats that they cannot even imagine, they can across the gap to what would make trump appealing. when that is happening, when you have that cultural distance between you and people you need to represent, you have to ask, what will close that cultural gap? i thought that they were

more culturally comfortable with liz cheney than with joe rogan, right? that is showing you something that has really changed. >> when we come back, we will ask what is the democratic strategy to do just that when we come back.

we are back with ezra klein, from the new york times and the atlantic's david frum. how did the democrats to widen their base and get beyond their base and what should they say in that circumstance? david, what do you think? >> the democrats have not only one base like the republicans do. they have a bunch -- black women, the most loyal voters. is it educated professionals? is it the old unions? they all want slightly different things and they -- the republicans have a failure of their leads because one of the things we all need to learn from this 2024 election is you cannot expect people paying for groceries to care about the

fine details of institutions in washington. those have always been protected by agreement among the leadership of both parties. you do not try to overthrow the government if you lose an election and president-elect donald trump has consolidated not just the republican base, but the donor class and leaders say trying to overthrow the government is acceptable. >> if that is the case, it is the institutional us versus the anti-institutional people. does it say that they actually are for the institution? >> most do not care, right? i do not know if it helped -- i do not know if it helped harris that she was campaigning with liz cheney and at the end of the day, it was sort of these institutions . they misunderstood the salience. this was built on 2022. democrats have this midterm election in 2022. in retrospect, it would have been much better for them if they

had annihilated -- as they had expected, but because they did not, the unusual thing that happened with democrats is instead of having to pivot after the midterm defeat, like 1994 and 2010, to think about the voters you were losing, they pivoted to think more seriously about the voters they are winning. why are they overperforming in midterms? why are they overperforming in national elections? there are winning high information, high political engagement voters who turned out in these midterms and special election votes. >> large turnout now helps the republicans . >> it is full of people who do not care about the institutions and how they are connected to politics. >> this is a message . we are

back to a world in which high information voters count and people care a lot about institutions and those institutions are going to be in enormous danger. if you are someone who is watching this program, do not disengage. do not engage in acrimony. do not start finger-pointing. there is an emergency about to break over american institutions and you have to focus there. >> to extend that point, is trump and what he will do, you think is it enough temporarily to unify the democratic already? >> it is not about them because that is many people who care about groceries. they need to confront and unify everyone who cares about american institutions. they say he will pardon people and cut off the ukrainians and sell taiwan. he is going to try to pardon himself. you will create a new doctrine. presidential immunity from crimes. the investigations are already being wrapped up. the pressure is on the states to cancel the state investigations. he will look for ways to pay his civil judgments that are going to look to a lot of bribe taking. >> we have about a minute. do you feel as though when you listen to all of this, the democratic party needs, in very broad terms, and it is trying to move left economically a

lot, but it has never really tried to move right on social and cultural issues. what is the right strategy? >> this is not as simple as right and left. i think they need to become more pluralistic and be better talking to many kinds of people and going to many places that it does not find comfortable. it also needs to govern better and with more of a laser focus on the issues that people do not always agree with that. the swing and blue states and blue cities was about inflation and disorder and high home prices. there are a lot of governments -- if you lived in new york city or san francisco or l.a., do not think the swing was such a surprise. talking to people day-to-day, there needs to be a focus on actually delivering in places that they govern. >> final thoughts, 15 seconds. do you think that there is going to be a crisis in the republican coalition? >> unfortunately, i think it

will be saluting one bad action after another. there could be some foot dragging and slowdown and some attempt by some senators to get something for ukraine, but as we have seen, they are broken on the inside. they will conform. >> thank you both. this was absolutely terrific. when we come back, if the republican party becoming the party of the working class and what does that mean? i will speak with the founder of a conservative think tank when we come back.

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for much of the 20th century, the democratic party was seen as the champion of america's working class. this was a legacy shaped largely franklin d roosevelt, who is primary social policies lifted up millions. this week's election proved president-elect donald trump's broad appeal among working-class voters. joining me now is the founder and chief economist at american compass, a conservative think tank. i am so glad to have you because you really have been in some ways the intellectual foundations for trumpism. let me start by asking you, is the republican party now firmly a kind of working-class party because i think it does seem to

get the majority of working-class bows and yet the big thing that republicans do whenever they come in to office are these massive tax cuts that -- if you look at the transition team that they have appointed, it is two billionaires, while from wall street. they're talking about extending the trump tax cut, which is $2.5 trillion over 10 years. what is going on? >> i think you have captured the tension very well. the republican party, the voters of the republican party at this point are squarely centered on the working-class and it is important to define what we mean by that. i think the best way to understand it is it is the majority of americans who still do not have a college degree and experience, especially the economy, and also the culture through that perspective, they have turned away from the democrats. they find president trump's message much more appealing , but then

as you have said, if you look at the institutional republican party, the think tanks, certainly a lot of elected officials, certainly president-elect donald trump, said to some extent there are some parts of it that are the legacy of what i would call the old right, so i think you're seeing the transformation in progress and maybe the best marker to think about is the distance from mike pence to j.d. vance, right? that is a very good, concrete marker of the transition. it is not complete, but it has come a long way. >> when you think about the appeal, you said -- very interestingly, it is that they are attracted to the republican party of trump for economic and cultural reasons. what i am struck by is the degree to which it seems to be a more cultural phenomenon, at least in the sense that the -- biden has been very pro-worker, very pro-blue-collar workers, you know, but culturally, that working-class base seems alienated. is that the key to

white rock appeals to them? >> i would disagree with that characterization of the biden administration and the harris campaign. i mean, it is fine they said things about workers, but where did you really see the biden administration focus? obviously, it was on a catastrophe at the border that led 10 million migrants, many of whom are low-paid workers, undercutting american workers. if you think about education, they say nice things about apprenticeship and the trades, but what was their main focus? giving student debt while doing nothing to reform higher education. you know, they talked about industrial policy, but the vast majority of their industrial policy investment was on fighting climate change, and so i think -- certainly, if you look at the harris campaign, it struggled mightily. i think it is especially interesting to look at its attempt to reach young men. their outreach -- the

opportunity agenda for young black men, one of the five points was about cryptocurrency and one of the five point was about legalizing marijuana. >> if -- he made this point in a piece, which i thought was fascinating. trump advisors try to show him how his tax cuts head helps the working-class and they fudged the numbers when the real numbers came in. it found out they had not helped. if you plug biden's numbers in, his policies did help the working-class. why -- i am trying -- i know you don't want to give advice to democrats, but why is it all that money that went into red state, two non-college educated workers, why did -- i believe that class has been alienated from the working party. >> i am happy to give advice to democrats. i spend a lot of time trying to get them to wake

up because i think our political system would be much healthier if we had two political parties that were genuinely trying to speak to and address the interests of working and middle-class voters. i think the point, in my mind, is there not clean buckets of cultural versus economic issues. you know, we did some polling recently at american compass that looked not at what you think about this policy or that policy, but what are you really values and priorities? what you find is we have this idea of the american dream as opportunity and entrepreneurship and moving to the big city and what most americans want is stability, security, and an opportunity to build a decent life in the community where they grow up. i think what you start to see in the way trump and j.d. vance speak to american voters, in the core of their agenda, that

does focus on bringing good manufacturing back to the united states, that focuses on tightening the labor market, making sure employers have to actually hire american workers. it is a real commitment to building and really going back to the kind of the economy that supports most americans in their aspirations. there is a lot of work to be done in translating that. >> stay with us. you all stay with us. we will be right back with our program.

i am back with oren cass, the founding chief economist at the conservative think tank american compass but i want to ask you about trunk governing going forward. in some areas, he might move fast and the party will be united against the "woke" agenda. the republican party is united on tariffs and against free-trade. but it feels to me that the two big issues are going to be the tax cut and the deportations. let's talk about the tax cut. that is $2.5 trillion added to the debt. if you take social security, which he says he is going to exempt from taxes, that is another $2.5 trillion. that is $5 trillion added to the debt. will that all happened? what are your thoughts on that? >> well, i do not think it will all happen. i think one of the many shifts you have seen in the republican party over the last decade is the idea that tax cuts just pay for the elves and we should just do them and

we should just do them and i worry about the deficit. it is really gone. what you are seeing, especially in the house , with a more fiscally conservative republicans, is a belief that we should extend tax cuts where we can, but they will have to be paid for. so, i think there will be a lot more negotiation. there will be a lot more, okay, what is in and what is out? that is where tariffs become a big part of the discussion because one of the things tariffs do is they do raise a lot of revenue, but i do not think we will see a repeat of 2017, when it is just a grab bag of everybody's favorite task at without concern for the deficit. >> and social security? >> that is an interesting one. i think that is in a big pile of proposals that trump put out. it is frankly hard for me to envision it actually making it across the finish line, given the trade-offs and some of the other things on the table that are going to be better for the economy and better for workers as well. >> let me ask you, finally,

mass deportation. one of the tightest labor markets in history, you deport -- they talked about deporting 24 million. even if you deport 2 million, won't that be hugely disruptive and you think trump will do something on that scale? >> i think you will see an effort of significant removals, particularly focused on those who have arrived most recently. estimates are as many as 10 million people have come across under the biden administration. many are under temporary protected status, abuse of the parole system. i would expect to see a lot of that repealed and also, hopefully, a lot of enforcement on the employer's side. a big part of the picture is telling employers, if you are employing people who are here illegally, we will crack down on you. i think that will

absolutely have an effect on the labor market, but i think it will be a very positive one. tight labor markets are markets that are good for workers and what we saw in the first trump turn for that matter is when you do have a very tight labor market, the result is not inflation necessarily. it is rising wages and ideally investments in product pity. that is the secret sauce of capitalism. tight labor markets with employers, investing to make people more product. that is what we not have had and we need to get back to. >> oren cass, a pleasure to have you on. thank you so much. next on gps, world reaction on trump's reelection.

the current cover story of the economist discord welcome to transworld. so, what will a second trump term mean for the global economy and for geopolitics? touring the is editor-in-chief of the economist. what do you think -- they say the world reaction. it is a big thing, but what strikes you most about how people outside america are reacting to the selection? >> it depends on what country

you're talking about and what leader you are talking about. if you're amongst the autocrats, you probably welcome this. many people around the world were expecting it. there are two people in dread, mexico. i think mexico is in real trouble. but because president-elect donald trump's deportation determination is going to really had mexico and, secondly, mexico will be hit hard by any protections. the other is europe because i think that they are really in trouble. firstly, again, the eu has a huge trade surplus with the united states. president-elect donald trump will not like that. secondly, it depends on the u.s. security. i think the europeans, when president-elect donald trump came into the first time, their father was bit of an aberration, then they went back to sleep. we thought that with the korean war, they're going to come together into an extent, they did, but there is this huge reliance on the u.s. i think europe is going to be a place that is really going to be hit hard and

will see it very soon because the decisions he makes on ukraine, in the next 100 to 200 ways will determine the future of europe in an important way. >> this will be a big shift from trump one. he had a lot of european people and international people and by signaling -- i will not take pompeo or nikki haley. it tells you the people who will influence his views are people like j.d. vance, who are, frankly, basically anti-ukraine and think the u.s. should pull out. i think if you were a ukrainian looking at this election, you would be terrified. >> i think you would be, having heard up until the election, the interesting view in kyiv was people were getting so fed up with the self deterrence of the biden administration, the unwillingness to allow the ukrainians to use long-range weapons, the summer saying -- was throw the dice. trump will be decisive and hopefully he will want to win, so we will not want to let russia win. they were talking themselves

into a view that perhaps, actually, a trump administration would bring the conflict to an end, but in a way that ensured ukraine would give up some territory but be able to stay secure with the territory it still holds. >> the key is the nato guaranty. >> now, you are correct. was it the pompeo trump or the j.d. vance trump? what has happened to the last day suggest it is going to be very much more the j.d. vance trump. i think that i would be worried. >> could all this unify the europeans and make them spend more in defense and get more strategically oriented? >> if it does not, europe is finished, to be honest. because europe needs to spend more money on defense. europe needs to come together to support ukraine if president-elect donald trump ensures the united states does not. europe is way behind on the cutting edge technologies of what a.i. does.

europe has been sleepwalking in this mess. if you look at what is happening in european politics, the day president-elect donald trump was elected, there was a crisis in the german government. french president macron is impotent. you made a big mistake according to the election. giorgia meloni -- i think europe has always come together in a crisis. we saw that again and again. maybe this time it will. as of now, unfortunately, europeans will sense they have to do something and they just will not do it for us. with ukraine and putin, there is real pressure, pressure to do something fast. >> when you look at the gulf states, they generally like trump and they like trump. are they looking forward to him? >> i was in the goal. probably, yes. this is a man they can do business with. the saudis have a very close relationship with president-elect donald trump, but i think there is also -- they are welcoming it, but they feel a little scarred by the

upper debility. i think the saudis will be looking to get a defense deal signed as soon as possible. this could me that there will be movement in the middle east. i think heart rate what many think, i think president-elect donald trump could push israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu to do something that will allow the saudis enough to have a defense deal. >> finally, what about china? >> that is a big question. short-term, china gets hit by whatever tariffs there are. they have been expect that. they have been decoupling. it will hurt them. their economy is in trouble and slowing. broadly, i think this plays into their view of where the world is going, which is a u.s. you cannot rely on and a u.s. -- that is good for china. not only does that play into their view that it is china-centric, but it is good for them geopolitically. >> zanny minton beddoes, thank

you for all that in such a brief amount of time. it is good to see you. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you, as always, next week.

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