>> vaughn, in terms of what happens next, one of the things that's been sort of an unusual, like a thing to get your head around, and the reporting has been really fuzzy, is that the trump campaign didn't participate, at least didn't seem to participate in any of the standard transition things that, that campaigns are supposed to do. the way the transition process is structured, it's supposed to be set up so if either candidate from either major party wins, each already has plenty of runway, plenty of onramp, plenty of ability to integrate their transition team seamlessly into the government so they can take office on inauguration by one seamlessly. the trump campaign has refused to do any of that. and in fact, trump has refused intelligence briefings throughout the campaign itself. and so part of the question here is how well stood up are they as a professional organization in order to take on the responsibilities of government if that's what's in

fact going to happen here? >> reporter: the two co-chairs of the transition project insisted to me just the other day that they've been engaged in phone calls with a litany of not only top executives, but other political allies as donald trump will make very clear who he intends to surround himself with in this administration. but you've also seen members of congress, but also people like tulsi gabbard and robert f. kennedy jr. traveling with him on the campaign trail. i covered him last year, and a great many people came up and down the elevators at trump tower to meet with him. there's a similar operation taking place here out of mar-a-lago, effectively serving as the transition office. i talked to one potential staffer who said they could envision sort of half the operation being here, the

other half being in washington dc. i think that this is, rachel, a transition that one, donald trump has been very keen and very specific that he would intend to only have loyalists around him. of course johnny mcentee, they were building a database where they were taking essentially applications from potential maga, political appointees. there's about 3,000 political appointees in the executive branch that are appointed by the president of the united states, and i've been told that that database still exists to the extent that the transition team would like to use it. it could be made available to them. and when you're looking at vance as being the vice president pick, it was back in 2021, i remember listening to his podcast while he was running for u.s. senate in ohio. i remember listening to the

podcast, and he talked about the federal civil work force. and his intent believing that most of the civil work force should be fired saying that in his words that 95% of them were liberals, and that they should be replaced with individuals who pledged to uphold the trump agenda as he was foreshadowing a second trump administration. of course, j. d. vance has been a little cagey about the previous statements, but there are allies of project 2025 who want to ensure there are more loyal civil servants. there was actually an executive order by donald trump just before he left the white house in 2020 that would have effectively allowed potentially thousands if not tens of thousands of federal civil servant jobs to be turned into political appointments. so the anticipation is that donald trump would sign a

similar executive order to give his executive branch greater authority to make more federal career employees political appointees so they could be more easily removed. there's a lot of layers to this, rachel. i know you guys are not naive to the conversations of what the executive branch under donald trump could look like. but they've made the case, people like jeffery clark and steve bannon that everything from the department of justice on down should be directed by the president of the united states. the president is the chief executive, and therefore what the departments and agencies that fall under the president, that he should have greater authority over, for example, the prosecutions that take place. this is if donald trump is declared the 47th president of the united states, it's going to be a very intense several weeks as we ask questions about exactly whether people like robert f. kennedy jr. are actually going to be tasked with overseeing the u.s.' 13 different health agencies and hhs and

potentially vaccine policy. and those are conversations that would begin immediately just a couple miles from where we are theoretically over at his mar-a-lago estate. >> vaughn, thank you very much. i would be interrupting you if you had not just concluded your remarks because nbc news has a projection to make in the presidential contest in the swing state of pennsylvania. nbc news now projects that that presidential contest has been won by donald trump. now, i believe that means we are at a 266 electoral vote count for donald trump. kamala harris at 194 electoral votes. so to be clear here, this is the third of the seven major swing states called. but georgia and north carolina

and pennsylvania, as those three states, um, presents an ominous, it presents an insurmountable future here for kamala harris and for the democratic ticket. um, in terms of what's going to happen here next, we are expecting that donald trump is going to speak to the palm beach convention center. you could see the backdrop there while we were speaking with vaughn. they're waiting for donald trump. we don't know exactly when trump's remarks will happen, but we expect it could be any moment now. chris hayes with the projection. >> yeah, i think it's pretty clear. i think the writing has been on the wall, and, you know, one of the jobs that we all have in the media is to be

truthful with people and transparent. we're very transparent about the process that brought us to this point. i'll just say this as we're preparing for trump to take the stage, you know, steve is going through the numbers. we have this very funky and terrible system called the electoral college that decides elections in a way that's totally different than any other election in the united states is decided and the way anything is decided anywhere else in the world. we should scrap it. from the perspective of basic democratic legitimacy, which is something i'm concerned about and something we talk a lot about on this network, it looks possible that donald trump might emerge with the popular vote majority -- >> we won't know for a long time. >> we won't know for a long time, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. the electoral college looks strongly in his favor. and if that is the case, um, if he has won the election, then he has won the election. and the reason i say that is because we've spent many years talking about democracy, and it's vibrancy, and the importance of the peaceful

transfer of power. we had a violent insurrection stage bid the man we're waiting to speak here where his followers assaulted police officers and attempted to essentially steal power away from the majority of the country that voted for joe biden. it's really important to note that while i believe that institutions have failed dramatically in putting us in the position we are, including the supreme court and other institutions, the republican party, um, that if he won, then he won. that's what the constitution says. it's what the current constitutional order says, and the electoral college has said, and that means we're in, we're in a new world for this country, but the sort of preservation of american democracy and the constitutional order begins as an ongoing process anew tomorrow. >> steph, go ahead, just keep your eyes on the monitor because we expect remarks at

any moment. >> but unlike 2016, there are no surprises. in 2016 many people in the country said i'm sick of the system, i want something different, let's see what this gives us. when you talk about what happened in 2020, this whole country, this whole world saw it. people know exactly who they're getting, and they chose this. so as we go into the next phase, i actually, i'm sure for the next month it will be an autopsy of kamala harris' campaign and what she did or didn't do. i don't actually think this is about kamala harris or donald trump. i think this is about the american people. we know exactly who he is, and we, or the majority of the people who voted for him and created this outcome chose this. >> and i think that's the important point, right? to elect is to choose, to vote is to choose. and you were never given, i think in the modern era, a clearer choice than voters were given in this election. in 2016, trump was at least,

as a politician, an unknown quantity. people knew him as a television star, and that's all they knew. but now they know who he is, and who he closed as. calling a powerful woman the b word. his running mate calling kamala harris trash, we're going to take out the trash. vowing to, um, arrest his supporters. you know, talking about liz cheney being shot in the face. it's not like this was a surprise pulled on the american people. it was a clear message. it was not done through a ground game. this was elon musk doing a fake lottery in pennsylvania. this was not a ground game situation. it was nothing to do with kamala harris' campaign, which was again flawlessly run in 100 days. so that wasn't the reason for the choice. so whatever the reason for the

choice was, a choice is made, and you get what you chose. so if, if the, if donald trump then does what he has promised to do, people need to understand that he didn't pull one over on the american people when he does it. if he does the things he said he was going to do, it was chosen by this country. at least by a majority. >> and the immediater didn't get snookered on his policy or elon musk. just two nights ago, rachel laid out for our audience, the national security risks and conflicts elon musk poses. all of it has been laid out. >> let's just say one thing i think. one of the weird axis that

developed was a sort of pro system anti system idea. like, you bring rfk into your coalition to get his voters, right? like, the, the sort of, um, you know, the the conspiracy theorists or skeptics who say it's all corrupt and rigged and wrong. and that axis has ended up, i think, being a potent one. i think we see it in the realignment figures we're seeing. but i would also say that should also be viewed in the context of a international situation in which we've seen incumbent parties in just about every developed democracy across the ideological spectrum. left, right, and center, get their butts kicked coming out of the period of post-covid ation. the, the, the labor party in the uk, which couldn't win an election for 20 years, it was

completely one of the most sort of deficient parties since tony blair finally took power. >> massively. >> massively in the context of, and when you polled voters in the exit polls, in the election that labor won in the first time in basically two decades, they said they didn't like the cost of living and the economy. it's true in a bunch of countries across the world. so there's a context here that we've seen from democratic republics and publics across the country. and the last thing i would say is it was a four point swing from 2020, and majorities matter because they matter for democracy and matter because we care about democracy and care about all of us choosing together what we do. but it's going to end up being a four or five point swing. >> but it's a four point swing and not even across the board. >> no. >> because it does appear that vice president harris did really well with young voters. the voters with the most at stake, who will have to live with the consequences of this

in a way that they can do the least about. at least if these early exits are accurate, it's 18 to 29-year-olds and 30 to 34-year-olds with whom she did the best. and she also did well with seniors that understand the consequences of losing something like roe. unfortunately my generation, the generation that grew up under trump, the gen xeres who are his fan base for the apprentice. they're a big group, a larger share of the electorate than seniors. >> i mean, i would just say i remember when obama was reflected in 2012, and for both our president and the people that work for him, in many ways the re-election was much more meaningful than the initial election because it was, it was basically an

affirmation that, that it wasn't an aberration. he was someone the country wanted and wanted again. but if donald trump is re-elected given the entire history you outlined and we've talked about a lot on this network, it suggests maga needs to be considered a real movement with potentially legs. j. d. vance is 20 years old. not really, but he's young. >> just turned 40, yeah. >> there's a real question about the tenets of maga that exist beyond donald trump and the pull on american democracy. >> one thing i'd add to that, which i totally agree with, is that if things go the way they appear to go, we'll be inaugurating a lame duck president for the first time since grover cleveland. now that's the strange thing. it's the only other time we

did it, and the political dynamics around that are completely new and untested because of if question of political capital and the question of history. the people in that room right now, the vivek ramaswamy and rfk will read this as an enormous mandate to do whatever they want. they'll read it as a mandate on abortion, which the coalition of the right will push extremely hard for because they'll show up tomorrow and say see, push on abortion. they're going to read this mandate broadly. and i'm telling you to the extent the seeds of their own political destruction are planted, it is in that, which i'm telling you right now in that room they're feeling it and thinking about it. but again nothing in politics is permanent. nothing in democratic politics are permanent, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. and trump sometimes is the

action and sometimes the reaction. and he's neither a complete idiot nor a genius. and that's where we find ourselves tonight. >> while we've been talking, we have some results i can share with you. just mentioned some of the abortion referendums. we have projections on those in three states we haven't talked about already. in nevada and arizona and in missouri we've got the abortion referendums, the abortion ballot measures and they have passed in all three. this is nevada. you see the yet vote here for right to an abortion. question 6 on the nevada ballot was 62 to 38. so that passes in nevada. that's the projection. in arizona we have similarly, the arizona abortion rights measure. similar margin there. 63% vote in arizona. stunning result there. and also a third one in missouri in deep red missouri

where they've both elected donald trump president tonight and also, or cast their electoral votes for donald trump and re-elected josh hawley. even in missouri, a 52-48 win, a majority win and a yes for the right to an abortion in the missouri state constitution. >> but is that not a greater incentive because you did hear j. d. vance, i believe it was vance who said that you can't have a state, you can't have different abortion rules in california than you have -- >> he said he'd like to see. >> a national ban. so i think those that want a national ban will push that more because the idea of women in missouri being able to protect themselves, um, you know, and not, i just do not see the, the forced birth movement being satisfied with the idea that the states get

to decide. so i think the conversation about a national abortion ban just not a lot more important. >> i think it's actually much less likely because of these votes tonight because these republicans can count those votes, and they can count 57% of the vote in the state of florida. they know how to count that. the, the senate will have a new republican majority leader. he is not going to want to bring an abortion ban through the united states senate. very unlikely they'd try to even get it through the house. donald trump will tell them don't do it. we've seen the way donald trump plays the abortion game. he says what he thinks the right wing really wants to hear to the extent that he needs to to get those votes. but we've also seen him be very afraid of the consequences of this and very afraid of what's happened, and that trump chant all year which is it's gone back to the

states, that's what you want. i believe that would be the trump white house position on this. i think he's made himself, i think clear enough. >> i will say, i agree with you that i don't think they'll try and do it through legislation, but i think his right wing commitments will be he'll do it through executive action saying okay, you can no longer have abortion medications. they'll use the comstock act and others so it doesn't have legislative fingerprints on it but they can still tell the right wing that they've done it. >> because to your very point, there's a midterm that will be coming shortly, you know, two years from now in which evangelical voters who stood down on the abortion issue could come back up. if those republicans want to be re-elected, there will be a

demand, those votes will demand a national abortion ban -- >> you have to understand, both the republican speaker and the republican majority leader of the senate will both know that the way for us to lose both of those bodies is to pass this bill. that's the way to lose it, and they won't do it. >> you also said this weird phenomenon of these states are red states in large part or elected donald trump or gone for a republican senate candidate and also enshrined the right to an abortion. what that tells you is a, the mixed messaging from republicans and donald trump worked to some degree, but also potentially that the abortion referendum acted as a permission structure for voters who maybe understood i know trump says a lot of controversial stuff, this is a way for me to have my cake and eat it too beyond the record supporting abortion rights -- >> and also securing them. >> securing them. and then also voting for trump because potentially,

theoretically -- >> i'm not defending it, but the other things that seem to matter to a lot of people, right, were the economy, immigration, and again, i'm not saying it's my view, and woke-ism. and many felt like their voice wasn't getting heard. so immigration is no longer just an issue at the border. and obviously no one is eating dogs and cats in springfield. but there are many people in communities around the country that do feel like their cities and towns are strapped. their resources are at capacity. and while they don't want mass deportations, they're saying i'm going to roll the dice and see what trump is going to do because not enough as happened. but be careful what you wish for because you just said i don't like the system, so you chose someone who will blow that system up. well giddy up. >> and can i just say something about the uncharted territory we appear to be on

the precipice of. one of the things we saw from joe biden who was when sworn in the oldest man to be sworn in as president of the united states. we all knew this, but we'd seen the before and after pictures, we know the job ages you. that was very clear with joe biden that the job aged him, and because he was already at an advanced age, it really took a toll. we've never someone this old about to be sworn in. >> certainly one that's not released any detailed medical information since 2019. >> so we are in, again, there's a lot of uncharted territory, but this is one of the places, we all heard him in the campaign, and i have to say at 78 it was somewhat remarkable to me he was doing four rallies a day, even if he sounded at the end like a record player that was out of whack. but i just don't know what

that is going to mean for how he does the job. the big concern that he ran on in the spring about joe biden was that he was, that he had lost the capacity to do the job. that was the argument against joe biden, and fundamentally i think what ended up being reaffirmed by the debate performance so we had the switch. that didn't just disappear as a fact because joe biden left the ticket. the exact same reality of aging exists now with the man who appears will be the oldest man ever to -- >> and then, you know, the questions becomes how much of the responsibilities get outsourced to people like elon musk. tremendous power to people like peter teal, bill ackman. these oligarchs and men that

bankrolled this effort. the idea of rfk jr. having tremendous power, and even tremendous leeway because donald trump was not exactly an involved supervisor of the federal government the first time. you know, he wants the office because he wants the accolade of the office. he wants the respect and the power and wants to be lauded, and now it's clear he can pardon himself because the supreme court has made it clear he has broad power. so he's gotten out of that potentially. but how much power is he seeding to the oligarchs? >> let's watch as donald trump takes the stage in palm beach, florida with his wife melania at his side and baron, his youngest child addressing his supporters.

>> thank you very much, wow. i want to thank you all very much. this is great. these are our friends. we have thousands of friends on this incredible movement. this was a movement like nobody's ever seen before. and frankly, i believe this was the greatest political movement of all time. there's never been anything like this in this country. and now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal. we're going to help our country heal. we have a country that needs help and needs help very badly. we're going to fix our

borders. we're going to fix everything about our country. and we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that. we overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it's now clear that we've achieved the most incredible political, look what happened! is this crazy? but it's a political victory our country has never seen before. i want to thank the american people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 75th president. and every citizen, i will fight for you and your family and your future. every single day i will be fighting for you. with every breath in my body.

i will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous america that our children deserve, and that you deserve. this will truly be the golden age of america. that's what we have to do. this is a magnificent victory for the american people that will allow us to make america great again. and in addition to having won the battleground states of north carolina, i love these places. georgia, pennsylvania, and wisconsin. we are now winning in michigan, arizona, nevada, and alaska, which would result in us carrying at least 315

electoral votes. but it's much easier doing what the networks did or whoever called it because there was no other path, there was no other path to victory. we also have won the popular vote. that was great. thank you. thank you very much, thank you. winning the popular vote was very nice, very nice i will tell you. a great feeling of love. we have a great feeling of love in this very large room with unbelievable people standing by my side. these people have been incredible. they've made the journey with me, and we're going to make

you very happy and very proud of your vote. i hope that you'll be looking back some day and say that was one of the truly important moments of my life when i voted for this group of people beyond the president. this group of great people. america has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. we have taken back control of the senate. wow, that's good. and the senate races in montana, nevada, texas, ohio, michigan, wisconsin, the great common wealth of pennsylvania were all won by the maga movement.

and in those cases, every one of them, we worked with the senators. they were tough races. i mean, the number of victories in the senate was absolutely incredible. we did telerallies with each one, and sometimes did two or three. it was amazing to look at all the victories. nobody expected that, nobody. so i just wanted to thank you very much for that. and we have, you have some great senators and some great new senators. and it also looks like we'll be keeping control of the house of representatives. and i want to thank mike johnson. i think he's doing a terrific job, terrific job. i want to also thank my beautiful wife melania, first

lady. who has the number one best selling book in the country, can you believe that? she's done a great job and works very hard to help people. i just want to thank her. but i want to thank my whole family. my amazing children, and they are amazing children. now, we all think our children, everybody here thinks their children are amazing, but that's a good thing when you think they are. but don, eric, ivanka, tiffany, baron, laura, kimberly, michael, jared, thank you all. my father-in-law victor is

tremendous, and we miss very much melania's mother amalia. we miss her, don't we? she would be very happy standing on this stage. she'd be so proud. she was a great woman. beautiful inside and out. she was a great woman. i want to be the first to congratulate, our great now i can say vice president elect of the united states, j. d. vance. and his absolutely remarkable and beautiful wife. and he's a feisty guy, isn't he? i've said go into the enemy camp. you know the enemy camp is certain networks.

a lot of people are like sir, do i have to do that? he just goes okay, which one? cnn? msnbc? he's like the only guy who really looks forward to it, and then just goes in and absolutely obliterates them. say a couple of words! >> wow! well, mr. president, i appreciate you allowing me to join you on this incredible journey. i thank you for the trust you placed in me. and i think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the united states

of america. and under president trump's leadership, we're never going to stop fighting for you, for your dreams, for the future of your children, and after the greatest political comeback in american history, we're going to lead the greatest economic comeback in american history under donald trump's leadership! >> thank you very much. he's, he's turned out to be a good choice. i took a little heat at the beginning, but he was, i knew the brain was a good one. about as good as it gets. and we love the family, and we're going to have a great four years and turn this country around and make it very special. lost that little, lost that little, that little thing called special, we have to make it. we're going to make this so

great. it's the greatest country, and potentially the greatest country in the world by far. right now we'll just work very hard to get all of that back. we're going to make it the best it's ever been. we can do that. we just, if we had to wait longer, i don't know it was going bad and going bad fast. we'll have to seal up the borders and have to let people come into our country; we want people to come back in. but we have to, we have to let them come back in, but they have to come in legally. they have to come in legally. let me also express my tremendous appreciation for susie and chris. the job you did! susie, come here! chris, come here chris. susie likes to stay sort of in the back, let me tell you. the ice man, we call her the

ice man. chris! come here, chris! susie likes to stay in the background. she's not in the background. come here, seriously, say something. >> this was unexpected, but i just want to thank obviously president trump for this journey. it was a great one, and he's a hell of a candidate, and he's going to be a hell of a great 47th president. and this team that we had, the best team, and of course even my boss, susie wiles, the best. thank you. >> thank you, and thank you, susie. look at this, i've never seen her be shy before! susie! they're great. everybody up here is great. everybody up here is very special. but the trump, who did you say? oh, let me tell you. we have a new star.

a star is born. elon! he is. now he's an amazing guy. we were sitting together tonight. he spent two weeks in philadelphia and different parts of pennsylvania campaigning. you know, he sent the rocket up two weeks ago, and i saw that rocket, and i saw it coming down and saw when it left. it was beautiful, shiny white. when it came back down it didn't look so pretty. i said what happened to your paint job? he said we never made a paint that could withstand that kind of heat. but i saw it come down and turn around, and it was, you know, like 22 stories tall, by the way. it looks a little smaller than that, but it's big. and it came down and down, and you saw all the fire burning and only elon can do this. i told the story last night, i

had a man on the phone, i had the screen muted, no sound. i was talking to a very important man who happens to be here tonight. very important guy. one of the most important people in, i would say the country, actually. but, you know, i was president, and now it looks like i was going to be president maybe again, so i figured i could ask him to hold. so i asked him to hold, and because especially because you'll be president again, they hold. so i took the phone down and looking at the screen and seeing this crazy thing going around and coming down ask the looks like it's going to crash, and i said oh no, and i said do me a favor, do you mind holding, i want to see this? i thought it was a space age movie or something. i put the phone down, and didn't pick it up for 45 minutes and he was holding. but the spaceship came down, and i saw the engines firing, and it looked like it was over and going to smash, and i saw

the fire pour out from the left side and put it straight and came down so gently, and then it wrapped those arms around it, and it held it and just like you hold your baby at night, your little baby. and it was a beautiful thing to see. i called elon and said was that you? he said yes, it was. i said who else can do that? can russia do it? no. can china do it? no. can the united states do it other than you? no. that's why i love you elon. and when we had the tragic hurricane helene that hit in particular north carolina, they were really devastated. it was a big water, as big as we've ever seen, water hurricane. built lakes out of nothing. fieldsbecame lakes. the people of north carolina came to me and said would it

be at all possible for you to speak to elon musk. we need star link. i said what's star link? it's a form of communication. so i called elon, and i tell you what, people had no communications. all the wires were down. i called elon musk and said elon, you have something called star link, is that right? yes i do. what the hell is it? it's a communication system that's very good. i said elon, they need it really, really badly in north carolina. he had it there so far it was incredible. and it was great. it saved a lot of lives. he saved a lot of lives. but he's a character. he's a special guy. he's a super genius. we have to protect our geniuses, we don't have that many of them. we have to protect our super geniuses. you know, we have up here today the u.s. open champion. he's a fantastic guy, slightly longer than me, hits the ball

longer than me. bryson dechambeau is up here somewhere. what happened to him? where is he? bryson? oh, he was shy. he's hitting balls. oh, he's on the way. he's hitting balls. bryson! oh, look at him! he had a great, he's got a great career going. great u.s. open. that's a fantastic job. and we also had a man, dana white, who's done some job. he's a tough guy. dana started ufc and came to

me. nobody wanted to give him because they said it's a rough sport, a little rough. i helped him out and went and said this is the roughest sport i've ever seen, but i began to like it, and he loved it, and nobody has done a better job in sports. and he's a very motivational day. he gets the fighters, and they really go at it. it's become one of the most successful sports enterprises anywhere at any time. it's doing so well. i'd like to ask dana to say a couple of words because people love to hear from him. >> nobody deserves this more than him, and nobody deserves this more than his family does. this is what happens when the machine comes after you. what you've seen over the last several years, this is what it looks like. couldn't stop him, he keeps

going forward, he doesn't quit, he's the most resilient hardworking man i've met. this is karma, ladies and gentlemen. he deserves this. they deserve it as a family. i want to thank some people real quick. i want to thank aidan ross, theo von, busing with the boys, and the mighty and powerful joe rogan! and thank you, america! thank you! have a good night! >> listen, that is a piece of work. he's really an amazing guy. but most of all i want to thank the millions of hardworking americans across the nation that have been the heart and soul of this really great movement. we've been through so much together, and today you showed up in record numbers to

deliver a victory probably like no other. this was something special, and we are going to pay you back. we are going to do the best job. we're going to turn it around. it's got to be turned around and turned around fast, and we're going to turn it around in every way, so many ways. but we're going to do it in every way. this will forever be remembered as the day the american people regained control of their country. so i just want to say that on behalf of this great group of people, these are hardworking people. these are fantastic people, and we can add a few names like robert f. kennedy jr. he's going to help make america healthy again.

he's a great guy and really means it. but bobby, leave the oil to me. we have more liquid gold, oil and gas, more liquid gold than any country in the world. bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. other than that, go have a good time, bobby. we're going to be paying down debt, we'll be reducing taxes. we can do things that nobody else can do. nobody else is going to be able to do it. china doesn't have what we have. nobody has what we have. but we have the greatest people also. maybe that's the most important thing. this campaign, this campaign has been so historic in so many ways. we've built the biggest, the broadest, the most unified coalition. they've never seen anything like it in all of american history.

young and old, men and women, rural and urban, and we had them all helping us tonight when you think. i mean, i was looking at it and watching some great analysis of the people that voted for us. nobody has ever seen anything like that. they came from all corners. union, non-union, african-american, hispanic-american, asian-american, arab-american, muslim-american. we had everybody, and it was beautiful. it was a historic realignment united citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense. you know we're the party of common sense. we want to have borders, we want to have security. we want to have things be good, safe. we want great education. we want a strong and powerful military and ideally, we don't have to use it. you know we had no wars for years. no wars except we defeated

isis. we defeated isis in record time. but we had no wars. they said he will start a war. i'm not going to start a war, i'm going to stop wars. but this is a massive victory for democracy and freedom. together we'll unlock america's destiny and achieve the most amazing future for our people. yesterday as i stood at the last stop on my campaign trail, never doing a rally again. can you believe it? i think we've done 900 rallies, can you imagine? but the rallies put us in this position to really help our country. that's what we're going to do.

we'll make our country better than it ever has been. and i said that many people have told me that god spared my life for a reason. and that reason was to save our country and to restore america to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together. we're going to fulfill that mission. the task before us will not be easy, but i will bring ever ounce of energy, spirit, and fight that i have in my soul to the job that you've entrusted to me. there's no job like this. this is the most important job in the world. just like i did in my first term, i had a great first term. my great, great first time. i will govern by a simple

motto, promises made, promises kept. we're going to keep our promises. nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. we will make america p safe, strong, prosperous, powerful, and free again. and i'm asking every citizen all across our land to join me in this noble and righteous endeavor, that's what it is. it's time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us. it's time to unite, and we're going to try, we're going to try, we have to try. and it's going to happen. success will bring us together. i've seen that. i've seen that. i saw that in the first term when we became more and more successful. people started coming together. success is going to bring us together, and we'll start by putting america first. we have to put our country first for at least a period of time. we have to fix it. because together we can truly make america great again for

all americans. so i want to just tell you what a great honor this is. i want to thank you. i will not let you down. america's future will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer, and stronger than it has ever been before. god bless you, and god bless america. thank you very much. thank you very much. >> former president trump speaking to supporters in west palm beach, florida. i should tell you while he was speaking, we had a little bit of news to make. nbc news can make a projection for the presidential race in the great state of minnesota. nbc news projects that minnesota has been won by vice president kamala harris. so donald trump, at this hour,

donald trump has 266 electoral votes. kamala harris has 204 electoral votes. the speech donald trump just gave was essentially a victory speech. at this point nbc news has not projected a winner in this race. obviously a commanding lead for donald trump with victories in the swing states of georgia, north carolina, and pennsylvania. but he does not have 270 electoral votes. as i just mentioned, minnesota was just called for kamala harris, and we continue to watch the still outstanding swing states and a few non-swing states that remain outstanding. may i check in with steve kornacki at this moment or am i not allowed to? am i allowed to check in with you? >> let's go. >> great. >> so michigan statewide 80% of the vote is in. trump with a 7 point advantage, more than 300,000 votes. couple of things, a lot still

to come in wayne county. the big core democratic county, a quarter of the vote of the state comes out of there. wayne is detroit, but it's a lot more than detroit. but as a benchmark overall it's a county biden won by 38 points in 2020. currently with what's in wayne county, this will vary by the cities that report, but the democratic number needs to get up to that biden level and above because what i'm about to show you. we said at the start of the night one of the key tests for how this day would go would be a tale of two countyings. the counties are oakland county, the big, suburban county. high income, high concentration of college degrees, democratic growth area. so we have oakland county in right now, and harris wins by about 10.5 pointings. that's down from what joe biden was able to do in

oakland county in 2020. he won it by 14. it comes down by about 3.5 points. now, we said at the start of the night, the test would be oakland, the margin democrats get out of oakland county, would it vastly exceed the margin trump gets out of macombe county or would it basically be canceled out by macombe county. that's what happened when donald trump won the state in 2016. so 81,000 votes, with oakland in, that's the margin that harris gets out of oakland. now look in macombe county, still more to come, but donald trump is winning this currently by almost 70,000 votes with more to come. so the possibility exists here, the very distinct possibility exists here that donald trump's margin out of macomb county, there's an

extreme likelihood it won't almost cancel out oakland county, it's going to blow it away. trump will get far more out of macomb, a somewhat smaller county, than what month -- potentially gets out of oakland county. it was 8 in 2020, 11.5 for trump in 2016, and this was an obama county if you go back one election farther. these battleground states are filled with counties like this. big, blue collar suburbs. a lot of blue collar white voters and a lot of diversity too. in macomb, if you really want to zoom out and you're a political history nerd, ever heard the term reagan democrat? the blue collar voters who flocked to ronald reagan in

mid-80s, that term came around because of macomb county. it was the backbone of reagan's working class coalition he put together so. when obama game along, the democrats had finally broken down the reagan democrat areas and brought them back into the fold. trump comes along, goes up double digits, takes a step back in 2020, and we just took a big jump in macomb county, 84% in. trump is up almost 80,000 votes in macomb county. 80,000 for trump and in oakland county, it's 81,000. trump is now getting more out of macomb county than the democrats got out of oakland. we thought trump would get close for a good night, but he's surpassed it. and there's two big kinds of the swing counties. one is saginaw county, one that joe biden won narrowly in 2020. trump is winning it by 3

points. the other one here is just north on the coast there, about half is in, and again it was a very narrow joe biden win, and currently trump is ahead by 16 points. genesee county, where flint is. very significant as well. it's a divert, blue collar, enormous county. joe biden won it by about 9 points in 2016, clinton won it by 10 points. obama had that blue collar coalition still intact largely in 2012 and won by almost 30 points. coming into tonight, the trump folks were saying they could take a big step forward here. looks like they have. 4.5 points, cutting it in half from 2020. so still a lot of vote out of

wayne county. kamala harris may be significantly underperforming with democrats out of deerborn. we'll get more of the vote coming in. but you can see the reason why around the state, with 80% of the vote counted, trump is more than 300,000 votes ahead. it's that significant movement taking you through right there. >> steve, while you have been covering those results in michigan, we did get a little more news. nbc news does have a projection to make in one additional presidential race. this time in the state of new jersey. nbc news projects that the winner of the presidential race in new jersey is democratic vice president candidate, excuse me democratic candidate and vice president kamala harris. new jersey, believe it or not, was one of the states that the trump campaign was sort of bragging on. were they able to expand the map. they said that new jersey was one of those states they'd be

able to win. they said the same thing about virginia and minnesota. they've not been able to expand the map. 266 electoral votes for trump and 218 for kamala harris. >> the trump's beach head 12 minutes of teleprompter written speech in there, and another 15 of rambling and inviting other people to speak. in the 12 minutes they put in the teleprompter, was a very modest and non-trump speech. it had only two words of policy. those two words were reducing taxes. there was not another word of policy. nothing about mass deportation and nothing about trying to jail his opponents which he cannot do and will not be an doing. none of that political terrorism language he was including in his rallies.

that's gone from the person who stepped to that microphone tonight. remember, that's a staff written speech. eight group written speech and in the middle there's the understanding, you will talk about a golf guy and you will talk about some guy who runs a fighting show. you will bring your campaign manager up. the vice president elects say three words. it's a modest speech. that is the state of the trump policy going forward. i think i think it's probably extremely accurate that like the first term he was president, reducing taxes was literally the only thing he did. >> and it's the reason he was supported by so many billionaires. if you study enough of donald trump, more than i wanted to, the thing he leads with his neediness. his need for adulation. his need for adoration.

the reason he has enjoyed cultivating his personality. he needs the world to think of him as this amazingly powerful and smart and brilliant and whatever. that is what he wants. that speech said to me that it's a needy, elderly man, who wants to be president because he believes that finally he will get the respect and love and adulation of the country, and particularly of the very media elites he used as a cudgel to get himself back in. the threatening language, it is interesting that most of the threat he made was directed squarely at latinos, at people who the right fears will out produce them in terms of children. that is where he did the best. that's where he gained the most among the people who voted, despite having directly d insulted them.

and, he held steady, it seems, with the white american women despite having really insulted them and j.d. vance. he didn't lose much for being t insulting and cruel. >> i guess who he is going to be, we will see who he is going to choose. we noted his family members and saw dana white. an i didn't see stephen miller up there. remember last time he won't go, we saw steve bannon up there and stephen miller. it will be interesting to see whose cabinet choices are. howard let nick, his the guy who runs cantor fitzgerald. for trump it was moderate, it it only last so long. we will see what we are in for. >> i say to donald trump and the people around him, good luck having babic kennedy is your hhs secretary, anti-vaxxer running the country, three years after a deadly pandemic ye that created massdot that you donald trump grossly mismanaged. good luck doubling down a l fossil fuel and a fossil fuel

economy at the moment that the earth is heating to historic proportions and monster storms, supercharged by climate change, laying waste to red states. democrats cannot control the weather. good luck to you, sir, with your sales tax that will raise a tariff that will raise taxes on middle and working class income americans. good luck to you with all of it. it feels like the dog that caught the car. >>he the tariffs were not in th speech. i don't think he will do those tariffs. i don't think it will happen. >> i have invoked this clichi h before but it's a central one which is the future is unwritten and the thing we often do analytically as we see a.here and a.there and we draw a the line. i have never felt more of wide openness about what era we are entering into than i feel right now. particularly watching that speech. i don't know what we are about

to step into. the only thing i will say is i do know that the country that exists before tonight as a country we have right now. that is what matters is all the other stuff that is in donald f trump, and which group of his homey's are up on stage at any given moment. that is what we had on tuesday and it's what we have now on wednesday morning. >> into that point, i would say for all the americans who looked at the selection as a choice between different forms of government. between keeping the u.s. system of government are keeping whatever it is that trump is promising to do nsaid and is promising to turn us into instead, well, the way you fought to keep the u.s. system of government is that you fought to try to get the outcome you wanted in the election. now is a comes to a close, you have to figure how well she will fight because your country still needs you. we will take up quick break and our coverage will continue in a

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okay. it's just pass 3:00 in the east and donald trump is poised to clinch the presidency. thank you for staying up late with all of us. i am jen psaki at msnbc headquarters and with me at the big table as michael steele, tim miller, molly john fast. steve kornacki is at the big board, still at the big board. we will be with stephen a moment but let's get you caught up quickly on the state of the race at this hour. we just heard from donald trump moments ago and he claimed victory but votes are still being counted and we have not made a projection just yet at msnbc. here is the big picture. in the race to 270. kamala harris with 219 electoral votes and donald trump with 266 electoral votes. when msnbc projected donald trump won pennsylvania that put 4 votes shy of the presidency.

one of the outstanding states would put them over the top. in michigan the race is to week -- too close to call. we will bring updates from wisconsin and that race is also too close to call. in nevada, a state out west that is coming a little later, it's too close to call there as well. in arizona, the race is also too early to call. as for vice president kamala harris, we learn she will not come out and speak to her supporters tonight. earlier, here's with the champ a kercher had to say gathered at howard university earlier. >> we still have votes to count. we still have states that have not been called yet. we will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every

voice has spoken. so, you will not hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. she will be back here tomorrow to address not only the h you family and her supporters, but to address the nation. >> let's get to steve kornacki at the big board. as i noted in my rundown, there are some votes, some states we are waiting for more numbers to come in. where do we stand now? >> i think the question is at what point can trump get to 270 officially. look at what is left. great is the uncalled states. maine is uncalled. remember, maine they give at the electoral votes by congressional district, and this one, the western maine district 2 has been a trump district the last two collections.

we have a lot a vote in here and trump is leading by eight points in the second district. there is a lot of rural areas and small midsize cities. bangor, maine and that thing. large blue-collar population. trump, certainly right now looking like he will get the one electoral vote out of the second district of maine. maine as a whole is leading by eight points but of trump gets that one, that will put him at 267. i say that one because, look at this one, geographically big population small state of alaska and more than half of the vote is in in alaska. it reports in an unconventional way. alaska is where three electoral votes. trump has a sizable margin what's been counted so far. if that is something that continues, if that endures and we get more vote, that could be away trump reaches 270. the one electoral in maine and the three electoral votes potentially out of alaska.

we need more votes to get cleared and where that's going. you can see it's been red for a long time and you see where it is right now. it might be a question of when or something going to happen in wisconsin or michigan? wisconsin, here's the story. trump leads by -- one of the things we're waiting on is milwaukee county, specifically the city of milwaukee. they count absentee vote in one place where they release the results of it from one place hours after they count everything else. more than 100,000 votes at the facility, the central count facility. more than 100,000 votes and we expect this to be something like 80% democratic block of votes. we want to see, that's up a single chance, if you open this, the vesicle chance harris and the democrats have of eliminating the trump margin. there is a couple other places. the brown county where green bay is. trump is getting the number he wants right now and they have a central count facility with democratic feel manly -- mail

in votes. willoughby enough for harris to a race 122,000 vote margin. they aren't, big batches of votes, then clarity on wisconsin. that's 10 electoral votes and that would get trump over that number. michigan, the thing we are waiting on, waiting on wayne county. this is detroit but detroit is not the biggest part of wayne county. there's a lot of smaller cities of outside detroit. there's a lot going on in wayne county. you want clarity on the shape of what is to come. this is a 38 point joe biden county from 20 tunney where harris is ahead by 16 points. one of the questions in wayne county is about the arab- american vote. the issue with the gaza war and what that take a toll on harris's political standing. racing from dearborn, reports coming in from what's happening in dearborn. harris under performing

potentially significantly there. when you look at michigan, it's just the story we've been seeing in wisconsin, minnesota and pennsylvania. we sought down south earlier with north carolina and georgia, look at one county after another where we set a benchmark at the start of the night. it's a good night for trump for this and he could never here's if this. in almost every case, i can think of a few exceptions but the overwhelming number of cases, trump is getting what he needs. if he had a number in 2020 he is building on it. harris, a lot of the suburban counties running up the score, she's not running the score to the degree she wanted to. a good example in oakland county. she's winning by 10. macomb county, talked about this a few minutes ago. it's monster right never trumper and it may come down a bit is remaining votes come in but he only one go by eight

points. a massive county. this opportunity for trump, trump is in pretty good position to be winning back a state he lost in 2020 and carried this much in 2016. it's a question of timing and maybe wisconsin, that looks close with that put by mail absentee to come out of milwaukee. you see the margin in michigan. you see the possibility of maine and alaska getting trump. arizona and nevada, where at the point where we don't get a ton more into coming incrementally over days. new hampshire, they are very slow county with the remainder of the vote there. jump 4.5 points down. doan expected to hit 100% anytime soon. it's what we are waiting on to get to the official moment. one other thing i point out, flip this and show the national popular vote. donald trump has a lead of more than 5 million in the national popular vote. we have been here in 2020 and 2016.

california will take a while to come in and it will be massive for democrats. that's in doubt right now because we had big changes outside of the battleground in big states. i want to highlight a few. that are dramatic. new york is still blue but look at this, new york state, trump has this within 12 points with 94% in. he lost this by 23 points. he cut his margin in half. double digit gains for trump. new york city, we mentioned new jersey earlier. harris wins new jersey and it's on track to be the closest republicans came to winning new jersey since 1992. look what new jersey was four years ago. 60 but biden win it. heavily hispanic areas. leaves and strides gains for him. look at illinois. 91% of the vote is in in illinois and four points for harris. 17 points for biden four years

ago. big enormous blue state. trump not winning but look at the popular vote margin he's cutting in. another one that's not close but look at maryland. 60-37 for harris in maryland. it was a 33 point stay for joe biden. you are seeing trump flop off, those at a potentially to millions of popular votes that he lost four years ago but not losing tonight. the possibility that donald trump, even when california is county, ends up winning the popular vote. that's very real right now. >> that's a lot to digest. i want to go back to wisconsin since we are waiting on that one. that is a state we have been talking about for months that was within 1% the last two presidential cycles. i know we are waiting for a vote, but as you look at that state and where things have gone wrong, i should say for harris, tell us more about

that, and also, the margins and what are the possible margins in terms of what it could be? it doesn't seem like it's is within 1%. >> it should close considerably. the biggest, the most biggest sources of outstanding vote would be in the city of milwaukee and milwaukee county. 69% of the vote is in. overwhelmingly that's the absentee vote from the city of milwaukee. the most democratic friendly type of oh, absentee from the most democratic city, biggest most democratic city in the state. whatever happens there, harris will not tens of thousands of votes, more than that absentee vote is released there. look at brown county where green bay is, 90% in but it does the absentee late separate location. this may come down a touch. there's a few other places where she will benefit from the late absentee count.

is it enough to overcome what is a 120,000 vote lead for trump statewide? it's not impossible but it would be very difficult. to come down and land in that really tight zone, we know wisconsin likes to be in. that's possible. in terms of the big picture story, wisconsin is a continuation of the trend in the trump area in wisconsin and a transformation of wisconsin politically. it's not long ago you would've looked at this even in a close race in wisconsin and you would've seen blue all over the place, along the mississippi river. all sorts of blue-collar counties, democrats were winning through barack obama in 2012 and trump came along we could show you counties where he had net gains of 40 points over what barack obama was doing. take them one by one. small and rural in a lot of cases but trump made further gains tonight. they just add a. you can take

these counties and aggregate them together and trump made significant gains by adding two or three points in those places. at the start of the night, looked at allegheny county and winnebago county where oshkosh is. trump his 2020 number is taking his 2016 number? it's 12 right now in there some mail to come in. right now he is about both of those and the democrats, they did get ahead in the county where medicine is. that marks a bigger margin than they got last time. they might have wanted more out of your. with that mail to come in in milwaukee there's a chance for harris in this state. wherever it lands, it will be in that close zone and we see michigan and wisconsin and minnesota,, blue-collar counties trump squeezing more out of them. he turned them republican in 2016 and he sell them and he's

growing them further. >> the rural blue-collar divide is over again, watching all evening, so start. thank you so much. we will be back with you in a moment. let's bring in fun hilliard who sat trump hq in florida. we listen to trump speak earlier. tell us what it was like in the room and what you are hearing from his team? >> reporter: straightforward. it felt like the end of a trump rally. a similar rift including elon musk's rocket it was landing. he noted this was a great american come back. it was the likes of dana white, the head of you is see that he introduced to the microphone who called this karma. for the room, it was a confident crowd that donald trump was going to win. he did exactly that. last night, i was talking with the producer colleague who i traveled with on the road and

we were talking the extent to which we didn't understand the own country despite traveling to all 50 states and back and talking to as many voters. this was a moment of reckoning to understand just how far the maga movement expanded. cover donald trump's realities or his proposals that an american government under his executive power would be able to benefit lives of americans who didn't vote for him in 2016 and 2020, how far reaching with that play? he was able to get elon musk on board. we watched x, town hall with falsehoods and conspiracy theories and pro-maga content and material and all that amounted to this moment, and what you saw on stage is a small campaign brass. 20 campaign managers who were with

them from 2022 when he announced his presidential bid until now. some other key staffers that left the white house in 2021 with him after the january 6th attack, moved to palm beach, and were loyal to donald trump even at a moment when he was isolated even from his own party. it was those very campaign staff that led donald trump to allow him to run the campaign he wanted to run. it was an unvarnished and uncensored one in called name- calling and no apologizing. proposals including putting tariffs on all goods coming into the united states. having elon musk cut one third of the federal budget. just this weekend he suggested he would put herschel walker in charge of u.s. defense, missile shield system. even in the closing week, this was donald trump in his purest form. tonight, you could say it seemed like a surprise donald trump. it was called so quickly. one in talking with his

campaign advisers over the course of the last months, they believed there was an american electorate that was buying into what donald trump was selling. so far, based off the ballot count, that is what america delivered for the former president and based off where the account stands the likely next president. >> we have not called it here. we -- nbc news has not called up but i want to ask, one of the things i noticed was ivanka trump was on the stage and we haven't seen her around the trump campaign. were there others in the room, former advisers, people who haven't been around the campaign who reappeared tonight? >> reporter: corey lewandowski was on stage, stephen miller was on stage, stephen chung who is the spokesman who usually puts out derogatory statements on behalf of the former president. he was on stage. you had tucker carlson in the room. elon musk was at mar-a-lago

watching the results. robert f. kennedy is here. he was at mar-a-lago watch the results. there is no nikki haley or ron desantis. members of congress who were urging trump to move beyond his political status are not run again. tim scott was not here. no asa hutchinson. we could go through the list of the primary challengers. mike pence was not here. this, donald trump is and howard let nick who was one of the transition co-chairs was up on stage. i was talking to him and he said they will make sure there are only members in the next administration who were truly loyal who they trust, noting the likes of mark milley and james madison mark kelly, they will do everything in their power to make sure they're vetted and know the entities that are coming in the next administration. i think this was a moment where

those people lifted trump up to the greatest resurrection and american political history. in just the last couple of minutes, you see president zelenskyy and netanyahu posting statements congratulating donald trump. a key recognition that this has major international repercussions that extend beyond american politics but one that has direct impact on two active wars going on. donald trump, if he is elected president wouldn't take office until january 20 but it doesn't mean there are not a calculated decision taken place in real time overseas understanding there is a likelihood for potential -- current republican candidate for president taking the white house again. >> it's such an important point. the national security differences between candidates are very important part of what the impact could be and one we

will be discussing. i know you have been standing there for 19 hours. thank you for staying up with us and appreciate you bringing insights. you know the trump team so well. let me turn to our panel. there's so many things to discuss. you and i of work together over the years. i was describing what a boiler room was earlier and you could probably describe it better. you are a data guy. as you look at this data, what surprised you, i want to ask what struck you as different from what people out there thought would be where things stand right now. >> -- i free doubt on sunday on your show when i said, look at the early vote numbers. the enthusiasm for trump in rural israel and that's what you saw. steve kornacki is going over it. he's doing better than he is

ever done and running at these things. the other thing was the latino number. you can't look at the exit polls and not think that is amazing. going forward, democrats have a real world problem and real medication challenges to a bunch of groups including young voters and latinos. that we thought we had a better message to and didn't at all. those are things that struck me so far. >> the world city divide is one that struck me as well in the evening. eight years ago a lot of the focus was on education. is education a part of that as well or is it more community, cultural and living in a rural area and a city. >> i think it's cultural. democrats no longer speak to a whole group of people. they were laying it out. barack obama did 40 points better than kamala harris in some of these precincts just 12 years ago.

we stopped being able to communicate with these people and they no longer feel seen by the democratic party, and that's a challenge going forward. i hope we take time and look at these things and do a comprehensive report and talk how to move forward. we got our butts kicked tonight and we have to move forward in a way that gets us back to being the majority party we used to be. >> tim, i hate it when people say is a communications problem. that is not what joe is saying neither. there is this question of how to reach. there is a reliance, there is been around lots of democrats of running of the city vote and the suburban vote and expanding the block, the blue block. you have worked in republican circles. what is going wrong on that front? >> i think the democrats have to reckon with the fact there's a fundamental brand problem as far as not reaching huge swaths of the country.

he listed a couple with rural and hispanics. if you look at the exit polls, trump gained with every group except college-educated women. black men, hispanic men, hispanic women, noncollege women. it wasn't even a race or gender thing. it was widespread and there is a brand issue. in your reference to my time with the republican party, 2012 when we lost with romney. afterwards we did the autopsy and we need to fix this or that and it might make the difference if we reach to this group more. the reality was the romney ryan party did not appeal to broad swaths of the country and did not appeal to black and brown americans and didn't appeal to working-class americans. obama headed to the margins. that's what the democrats are. when you say communiqui, we have to figure how to talk to them. it's not talking points. democrats have to think of how their brand is resonating

outside of college-educated, urban and suburban white america. >> it's bigger than a set of words. people shouldn't define it as words. michael steele, i just want to ask an open ended question of how you were taking in what we know now? we don't know everything. there is more votes to kaminski but what we know now. >> you know, there's a lot of stuff inside of my head that wants to rage at this but i really went back to what i wanted to do in 2010. that is what happened here tonight with the republican party or the maga party. what i learned in that period of time was the american people always tell you what they want. you just better listen to them. >> what do you think the american people are telling us? >> they don't like the whole

thing, the impression that their kids are being put through some type of deprogramming or reprogramming. imagined or real. they think the economy is not there friend. they blame joe biden for this economy. for their personal economy. they are frustrated, and you talked, jim, you hit on the cultural piece as did my friend here, tim. the cultural piece is a huge piece for the american people. what we learned tonight is not just the folks who live in the rural parts in the country, in the backwoods. it is people who live right over here off park avenue. the people who live off pennsylvania avenue in d.c. and the reality is, i think for our political system because i was set-aside the maga piece. those republicans, like myself

and cheney and others. the question is what is the other narrative you put up? once maga begins to do its thing, which it will. tonight was donald trump standing there basically reading everything on the prompter, looking like, okay, we got this. you know, and you could see, there will be a slide into something else. >> we have seen this movie 1000 times. >> here is the thing. the american people are okay with that. what is the countermeasure? what is the countermeasure to what we see donald trump do every day? clearly it's not enough to say democracy is at stake. the american people are like, yeah, i don't really feel that. even though, ironically, in our exit polling, folks were like democracy was important to them.

>> just to dig in to that, yes, but majority said democracy is under threat but among voters who believe that have went for harrison have one for trump. >> there you are. that's where i was going. you have this space where there is a lot to learn from tonight. the challenge is going to be how the democratic party learns what it needs to learn and deal with what will come beginning january 20. when the further deconstruction of all the administrative states , hold the union together, come under assault. at the end of the day, it may not be donald trump but a lot of people on that stage and a lot of people who will be in the oval with him, that's what they want to do. as much as they want to lie about project 2025, they laid it out. they're not gonna go, 900 pages of nothing. that's not how this works.

you are going to see two competing moments that the country is going to confront, one of which he will not care about which is all the stuff because they think trump is good, so they won't be concerned about the. the democrats will have to worry about that plus to jim prame point. how do you level up a message to turn around those numbers that they saw tonight. >> we will get together in a couple of things in the fact trump is a republican senate. house. we don't know a big factor. molly, went to west, there's a lot of data to dig through. one of the things you went i've talked about his women voters. trump gained, improved among women from how he did in the past, according to exit polls. the other thing that struck me as the ballot initiatives on abortion in florida and arizona and other states where the majority of voters voted to protect abortion rights and

there was a go overlap of people to vote for trump. to me, that means we capture or didn't discuss her accurately analyze the fact that people think about things in multiple ways that bend the mind but they can vote to protect abortion and vote for the guy who essentially killed them. give me your -- as you are looking at women voters, abortion rights. >> the only bright spot in this entire night is white college- educated women were not having it. that said, white noncollege educated women were all in. we are in a completely different media universe then we were in 2012 or 2010. that's an important point. we don't know where people are getting their news. donald trump in that speech said it was a huge win for

democracy. his people think he is protecting democracy which in itself is a huge communication problem. when you talk to the campaign they are like, are we reaching people? that's a media problem. newspapers, some of the reasons why newspapers are not endorsing are complicated and scary for some other reason is it doesn't matter. newspaper endorsements used to really matter like a decade ago two decades ago. we had a seismic shift in the way that people read news, watch television. all that information. i think we have to look at the level of disinformation, misinformation people are getting and what that looks like. >> i think this is a huge huge part of the story that it's hard to digest fully at this moment. you have elon musk who owns twitter, ex or whatever we are calling it. is a disinformation propagandist and has a, could potentially

have a direct line to the oval office. you have, to your point, the way people are receiving information, there are platforms that many people have never even heard of that are massive communicators to voters including telegram. >> on the stage tonight during the acceptance speech, he shouted out the boys, theo vaughn, joe rogan a one of their. i'm sure folks have heard of joe rogan but a couple of the other ones that trump did interviews with, niche outlets but have huge audiences. a lot of the people, not everybody, but people consuming those kinds of news environments, it's not like how it said 2012 or 10 it's not like they're watching the nightly news. they are not watching lester at night. they are in their own bubble. that's the majority of the news they are consuming and it will

be incumbent on democrats and it's kind of funny the boys got mentioned in the acceptance speech but you have to take this seriously and figure how to talk to those people and how to have a message for those young men because democrats have a message but a lot of times they were really trying to offer one. >> i want to come back to this because it's an important part of the conversation. it's how campaigns are run and operate. i want to bring in democratic congressman ro khanna of california. congressman, let me start by getting your topline reaction to what we know at this point tonight. >> obviously, i am disappointed. the rebuilding starts today. no political party in modern times is out in the wilderness for more than a few years. i remember 2004, was volunteering as a young guy for john kerry. i totally was opposed to the

iraq war. i was devastated that george w. bush did not get defeated. alan solomon was there and i remember they quoted dr. king. keep going. guess what? four years later we had barack obama. the singular political talent of our time, in my view, ending ushered in -- of america. we have to see where the house is going to go but i'm confident we will rebuild in 2026 and bring back the white house in 2028. we have to listen and go on some of these podcast. we should've done in my view joe rogan. go on all the podcasts and listen to what we need to do and have a message. i am hopeful about the party and our future. >> republicans are projected to control the senate as we noted and you noted trump is on the verge of winning the white house which will make the house

quite important. what are you hearing from your house colleagues of how things are shaking out tonight? in these key races, some of which have been called but some we are waiting for including a number in california. >> we are hopeful. we are hopeful are three pickups in california. it's a world of difference if we have hakeem jeffries as speaker of the house or mike johnson. a surfer four years in congress and the first trump administration. 2016 to 2018, we did not have congress, and that's when he had his tax breaks and handouts to the ultra-wealthy. that's when he had no check. when nancy pelosi took the gavel, that was the end effectively of the first trump term. getting hakeem jeffries would be a huge blessing. i think we have a shot at it. it will be close. >> we are going to be watching california. it could be time which doesn't mean anything is going wrong but ballots are still coming in.

that's how the state of california works. thank you for reminding us which i've been trying to do as well that there are lots of forces for good. lots of forces for democracy. we have a strong country so thank you for reminding us and for joining us at 3:45 eastern time. i want to come back to the table and continue the conversation we touched on. there's a lot of information we are getting. there is a question. the bro vote. trump got his high share of young man than it's ever gotten in his three presidential runs. north carolina humus double support from black voters from four years ago. the key demographics that, at this point from what we know the exit polls, everybody needs to be sober about. you have run a successful campaign jim. i say i had a palmpilot and a fanny pack when i did my first campaign.

things have changed. they change all the time. how do you think is people look to 2028, this changes, where things it. how people from the campaign? >> it's about two things. having a real message. listening. shutting up for a little and actually hearing people and hearing their concerns. the second thing is go to some of these things. tim called them noonish but if you look at their numbers, their mammoth. there bigger than some cable networks. >> i'm going to double down calling everything niche. when i was a communication director for barack obama, they say was an presidential duty something. the job of a candidate for president is to reach a public over there consuming information. it is not to write an op-ed in the washington post which no offense to them, nobody reads. >> tiktok is the most dealt with political platform in

america. as you know, democrats were enough for two years because of biden administration was fighting about it. figuring with the next generation is, it's both a message and it's a medium. you have to continue to grow with that. some of that is hearing these people. feelings seen. part of the rural vote numbers those communities didn't feel seen by democrats. the other one we haven't mentioned is the economy. if she was going to win tonight, she would've been the first in 50 years to lose the economic argument and win the presidency. we have an economic messaging thing and it has been donald trump's sweet spot. democrats have got to figure out how to take back the economic argument. when bill clinton and barack obama and joe biden were winning, they won't go the economic argument. >> why do you think that is on the economic? you are a messaging guy. >> bill clinton was good at

making people think he cared about them. this is not a particular critique of any democratic candidate themselves. to the people who watch the joe rogan podcast or do the people that live in winnebago county or whatever, do they think the democrats care about them? i don't think so and maybe that's not fair. you could do plenty of things but donald trump is a phony and pretends to care, but that is politics. actually showing up and actually being there and saying, i will talk to you like a normal person. i will demonstrate i care what you think. what trump is saying is bs and he is saying this but the economy is doing this. in my life, i have these concerns. i feel like the democrats have gotten into talking point friendly way a lot of times. it's not me giving them something to say. being more authentic in these,

we are not calling them niche, media outlets. when you go there and be more authentic. i think there are economic policy issues to talk about but the first step is being missed. we can be honest about the. >> can i ask a question? what do you think the culture war is? what do democrats think the cultural war really is? because it is economics. it is not just transgender. it's not just religious peace. for a lot of middle america, it's all of that for them. i think that is part of what trump has been able to successfully define and really connect with people. i said this earlier this evening, and i think it resonates for me even more tonight in 2016 cycle to hear a

white single mother, divorced, two, from new hampshire referred to donald trump as being just like her. right? why do you like trump? because he is like me. this is a culminating moment from that period to now, at least for me, that those underlying threads have still never been fully understood by the political class, by the media class, and meanwhile, middle america is you all don't even see me. >> i will point this back to you, michael steele. you referenced transgender rights and the ad the trump campaign put tens of millions of dollars behind. this is not an issue, to me to put my cards on the table, i am a orality issue where young

people are born when gender and are another gender. they have made it into a wedge issue. a cruelty issue. but they successfully brought people to their side is suggestion, which is ludicrous, that people will be sent to school and teachers will change their gender and send them home. that's not factual. it's not accurate. it is cruel and harsh. he is not at the same time put forward any economic plan beside tears that will raise cause. >> he doesn't have to. >> -- >> because absent anything else, right? everyone will believe that is -- >> isn't this a disinformation problem? >> you've got to go in and combat the disinformation. that's what i'm saying. >> thank you. >> any democrat go into a

conservative space and say, you are saying kamala harris is going -- donald trump is saying jimmy will go to school, jenny. that is not true and here's what we wanted to. here's how day share the protections we want them place. we want to respect everybody. did anybody do that? i don't think so. >> that's a criticism i might have about the campaign as they were very cautious. >> very. >> sorry. >> you don't have to be sorry. >> remember trump world through anything -- they have a different set of morals and values but they through everything against the wall with a harris campaign like the clinton campaign, very cautious. >> do you agree with that quick >> i don't agree with it. i think they were trying to be focused and stay on message. it was democracy and abortion and they ran that play and they were focused on it.

it turned out not to be the right play. i think one of the things they should get credit for his they had a theory and they prosecuted the case. >> they did but it goes to what tim said. their theory of the case is democracy and abortion and donald trump's theory was everything else. and, no one bothered to pay attention to what his theory of the case was. and so, when you couple that, and i was looking at some of the responses from some of my friends, they have been watching this and are aligned with trump. their view was, you completely missed what the country was saying. the country was saying, you know what? we are not about forgiving student debt because a lot of hard-working people out there spent a lot of money and, yeah, okay, you've got to pay your bills. you've got a be able to have an

answer for that mindset that believes that if you incur debt, right? i don't have to pay for it because that's what it boils down to. you incurred $100,000. nobody told you to go to harvard. my kid went to community college. paid his bills. now you are asking me and his two pay yours? that's part of the culture piece that often times gets misunderstood or mistranslated into something else, and there is a visceral reaction to it and meanwhile trump says they still don't get who you are, do they. meanwhile his marching down the road with folks, tonight is what you see. america will tell you what they want. you just need to listen to what they are telling you. he did and, apparently, the democrats, kamala harris campaign over the course of time and the shift to kamala and joe biden, although that didn't

matter to those folks in the middle of the country. >> i have one nitpick. did he listen to what they wanted? his five -- i mean in reality -- we should be on this. >> it's not what the reality is it is what it is for them. they believed he did and that's the bottom line. >> hold all these thoughts. everybody digest. come back and we have to sneak in a quick break. we have more live coverage coming up. here is the map at this hour. lots of states uncalled. steve kornacki is standing near the big board to share more information. donald trump is very very close. steve is crunching the numbers and we will be right back. bac.

okay, everyone. it is 4:00 a.m. here in the east, 1:00 a.m. out west, and at this hour we still do not have a winner, but donald trump is on

the brink of securing the presidency. thank you all so much for staying up late with us. we have lots to discuss, lots of results still coming in. i'm jen psaki here at msnbc headquarters. the great steve kornacki is still standing. he's also ready to go at the big board, give us updates on what's coming in and what we know. we'll be with him in just a moment, but first let's get you caught up on where the race stands. so here's the very big picture right now in the race to 270. you can see this right on the screen, kamala harris with 219 electoral votes, donald trump currently with 266, which is, of course, just 4 electoral votes away from winning the white house, and that means just one of these outstanding states could put him over the top. at this hour we are still waiting on michigan, wisconsin, nevada, and arizona in terms of battleground states, but other states still have not come in yet either. but donald trump did come out and address his supporters in

west palm beach, he claimed victory, but, again, nbc news has not yet made a projection and votes are still being counted. let's get right to steve kornacki at the big board. okay, steve, what do we have coming in? what have we learned in terms of votes the last hour? >> trump leading by 108,000, looks very imposing with that little left, but what is left is largely but not entirely we'll get to that democratic friendly vote. i just want to take you through. we expect in total in wisconsin let me take a look here about 140,000 total votes remain to be counted. now, the bulk of those votes are in -- i just want to see this updated actually and this is realtime. i'm just checking in on something here. yes, this just update. let me just look county by county. just adjusting on the fly. okay, we think the biggest

source of outstanding vote in wisconsin is in milwaukee county. most of that 120,000, probably about 105,000 of it of is absentee vote from the city of milwaukee. this typically breaks like 80-20 for the democrats, maybe even more than that. they count that, they tally it up from one place. so we're awaiting that hopefully very soon, and basically if the democrats get what they normally get out of that vote, maybe they would net let's say 75,000 votes, maybe being a little generous with that 75,000, the rest of milwaukee county there's some absentee ballots left, probably about 15,000. same deal, expect them to be more democratic. maybe the democrats get 80,000. they need a big number if they're going to flip wisconsin. racine county, we think we've got about 30,000. 2-1 for democrat, they could net

maybe about 10,000 votes out of racine. winnebago county, total what we're expecting is about 20,000 out of winnebago. i'll abbreviate that. and again, if this went well for democrats maybe 5,000 they net out of this. 80, 90, 95,000, you're trying to close a gap of 107,000 votes. milwaukee will be absolutely monster for them. because the other problem, despite all of this, there are a couple of pockets of republican votes left. so take a look. core republican county three quarers of the vote in, trump's winning almost 2-1. you can see, though, still votes to come in. so there are other places, the democrats you could give them very, very generous assumptions on those absentee votes in those places and maybe get them up to that statewide margin, but then you've got to account for there's a handful of places like this where trump can still net more.

waiting to see those numbers, they have to be massive if harris is going to turn this around and flip this over state-wide. it will get significantly closer to this 51, 47.5 carrying over right now. for democrats they need something we haven't seen before from milwaukee from them. >> we're watching wisconsin so closely. it's a state that's bip so narrow in the last presidential elections. what else are we waiting for in the other battleground states? what the big holdouts? >> in michigan we're talking about wayne county, and we did get a pretty big count out of wayne county that takes us to over half the vote in wayne county. harris was running under 60% now, she's getting close to where democrats want to be here. compare this to 2020 joe biden won by 28 points, now it's inching up on 30. again, this needs to be higher for the democrats trying to piece together exactly where in

wayne county it's left. all sorts of different suburbs, detroit is in here as well, so we're trying to get a full sense of that. what we just got in there from wayne county is heavily democratic. that was north of 300,000 the last time we looked in, now over 200,000, and there's still a significant share to come in from wayne county, and i stress the democrats need to get a big number, back to over that biden level just because we've seen elsewhere in michigan, all these places where trump, example saginaw, we said coming into the night saginaw county was one of the swing counties in michigan. as goes saginaw, maybe so goes the state. the other we identified as a swing county the other night was miskeegan. take a look at this one, this is ottawa county. this is still a core republican

county. you're in the western part of michigan here. a very complicated thing with the dutch reform church, basically culturally conservative, extremely republican, and it's been averse to donald trump. donald trump's done -- this a very big vote producing county, and you can see the hit trump is taking since he came on the scene, won it by 30, came down to barely 20 in 2020, and this is kind of a win tonight because it didn't go down any further. places trump had been slipping, he didn't slip any further and that includes places like iowa county. when that happens, when he's swinging the swing counties -- oh, wow, okay. basically all of genesee county, 500 people here. 2.9 points, harris over trump in genesee county. this was 9 points for biden over trump. big, big gain for trump there.

taking a look here at macomb county, trump won by this by 8 points, he's more than doubled so far. with all the things happening around the state for trump, it becomes all the more important if democrats are going to overtake that sizable lead. she has to win this by like 40, and we have to turnout levels as well here, too. that's what she's up against there. you see up against there the democrats in wisconsin. seeing what else is on the board here, we mentioned are we getting close here to some kind of clarity in maine, too, 7.5 point lead for donald trump here again, one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district in maine. this is the blue collar, heavily rural and no reason to not believe that's not happening right there. alaska, we checked in on earlier, and the klondike up to 70% now being counted in alaska.

trump trump officially hitting 270 officially become mathematically president-elect, 16 point lead here in alaska. three electoral votes there, one in that congressional district in maine. if he gets those in the near future, one there, three there, that would be exactly 270 electoral votes, and then he would mathematically be the president-elect. in nevada and arizona we reached the point we're not going to get much more, that's going to come out over subsequent day right there. trump has made more of a gain out of this than some expected. got it down to 4, it's going to be very slow to get the rest of this. again, i don't expect that to get anywhere near 100 tonight. look at this jigsaw puzzle, all these little cities, towns, villages, hamlets where they report out individually. that's going to take some time. in terms of 270, is it going to

be the maine, alaska rot that puts trump there, or wisconsin, this one may be imminent -- we're waiting on that absentee we're talking about from central locations. if democrats don't get the monster numbers they need from that, there's not going to be left from wisconsin. again, if wisconsin were to be called officially for trump, he's well over 270 at that point. michigan, democrats trying to dig themselves out a very sizable hole. some real damage they've taken throughout the rest of the state tonight. >> i know as you said many times we're very close to getting to the 270. i can assure everyone -- and steve our information desk continue to crunch the numbers and as soon as we get any update we'll bring them to all of you immediately. thank you so much, steve kornacki. we'll be back, rehydrate. we need you. let's dig into a cup of these states here and wisconsin i keep asking about because it is a state that has been so close in the last two presidential cycles.

it also has an incredible state party chair. it has an infrastructure that is well-funded, well-organized, so it kind of bends the mind a little bit but it's also a very white state. it has a lot of rural parts. jim what should we understand about wisconsin and where it sits, which is still very close. we don't have the outcome yet. >> i believe this is the most interesting state of all because to your point wiflk is one of two places left to the democratic party. las vegas and wisconsin have democratic machines. there's no better machine than america in the wisconsin democratic party run by ben wickler, and they were sure. they were saying for the last 96 hours we have this, this is ours. and i really think it's a conversation michael and i were having. i think this is above ground operations. i think it's culture. i think is really is. they did not see this coming. >> and culture because -- michael asked this question but

it's the right one i think. what does culture mean? what do we mean by culture in wisconsin? >> i really do think there's a whole bunch of voters to tim's earlier point that do not think the democrats see them, that do not think we represent their values. and the traditional machine got to the numbers they had to get. you saw steve talk about it in dane county, it wasn't the traditional voters that were used to voting, they just didn't see this coming because it was bigger than this, and i think that's the story i'm learning tonight. >> to me the more interesting thing in wisconsin maybe trump improves by 2 points, maybe 3 points in wisconsin which is decisive in a swing state, but look at what happened in the big states that weren't swing states where the campaign wasn't waged, texas it goes from 15 to 16 in

favor of trump. florida, i couldn't see what the number was it kept going higher and higher. the florida trump number was off the charts. new york goes the other way down to 12 points, we haven't seen california yet. those are big diverse states that hit on all these big demographic groups. i do agree we can focus on that rural group the democrats need to talk about that and heard that in wisconsin. but, man the numbers are actually uglier in the big, diverse states. >> the texas piece -- texas is a state as jim maseena and i can assure everyone, maybe we will get texas. one of the things that has struck me is this assumption that demographic groups are monolithic, and this is one of the things i think you look at texas, every latino -- i'm saying the obvious here just like every black voter is not the same, just like not every

woman is the same. i think we're seeing that in texas. it's gone farther away. >> it pains me to say this, but this is similar to 2016, the similarity here is a woman at the top of the ticket. as a second wave feminist who like wants nothing more than equality, it pains me to say this but we're seeing a lot of the same things and we have a woman on top of the ticket. and i just think that does not exist in a vacuum. >> i think it's an important thing to talk about. >> well, particularly considering women didn't vote for her again for the third time. so you really have to sort of contextualize what -- what that means, whether it's clinton in '16, biden in '20 or kamala in '24. in each of those instances particularly white suburban women had a different agenda. >> non-college educated.

college educated -- >> non-college educated had a different agenda, and i think that requires some further digestion and understanding. i think if nothing else what trump has opened up, yeah, it's a pandora's box of madness and hell, hellscape, we get that. but he's also opened up the american electorate in a way that no other presidential candidate has, and that includes reagan and clinton, who had that sort of, you know, like it was said before, clinton felt your pain and people connected with that, right? and reagan, i mean, my goodness, brought so many people into the space, you know, and gave them a voice, if you will. trump is different from all of that. and he can trash the historic leaders of the republican party and people applaud him. >> and he can trash latinos and

women. >> he also has a machismo and a masculinity that he uses very aggressively, and just for whatever reason he seems to be very good at beating women. and harris did this thing she was traveling all the time and doing tons and tons of rallies more than he was and she still couldn't, you know -- >> i think this is a very -- i know it's painful to talk about but an important thing to talk about. >> it's how he's opened the country up and what has he opened it up to? >> i want to bring in nbc news correspondent yamiche alcindor standing by at our headquarters in d.c. she was at howard university earlier tonight. i think people saw her on television where the harris campaign gathered. we all watched campaign cochair speak and said he said we would hear from her later.

what else are we hearing from the campaign? >> some of them are already asleep so might not get those answers until earlier today in terms of the details, but we do expect her to speak later at howard university. i want to walk people through what the harris campaign and people close to her have been like in the last few hours. they didn't really start off the night thinking 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. sounding very optimistic, very confident. the vice president saying she had the momentum. she was telling supporters in rally after rally she believed she was going to win. and i was picking up on that cautious optimism. but right around 10:00, 10:30, when it was clear former president trump was overperforming in places tat were crit criminal for him to wip specifically in north carolina and georgia, i started to really sense a real shock and a real anxiety and a real worry from the harris campaign and harris aides.

and that really just got darker and darker in terms of sort of their mood at howard university. people started to have blank stares. they started not to be celebrating and dancing as they had at the middle of the night. then later on when it became clear donald trump was getting close to 270, i started getting text messages from harris aides pivoting not talking about how she could pull this off but talking about how they would deal with a second trump presidency. one aide telling me he believes he's going to try everything to push back on these policies but also figure out a way to love the people he disagrees with. it's really interesting of course the vice president hasn't conceded. nbc hasn't called this race yet, but we are in this situation now where harris aides and people close to her are definitely making the move toward how are we going to work with the trump administration, how are we going to deal with these policies? i think it's interesting in these wee hours and morning, and

it is a wednesday morning there are a lot of democrats waking up shocked, going to bed shock but also dealing with the reality, which is they expect donald trump to be the president of the united states come next year. >> i've been thinking a lot about all this campaigning and been through a lot this year. a change at the top of the ticket, tumultuous campaign. it sounds what you're saying, you mooegs, and vice president harris right now unless she wins the presidency, she's going to be -- she's not going to be in elected office anymore in a couple of months, but her aides are talking about how she will work with the white house or how they will work -- tell me more about what you mean by that. >> yes, so in talking to aides they're talking about how they're going to deal with these policies. these aides are organizers, they're grass roots organizers. some of them are people who work with big donors, who put their money in things they think is important whether it's climate change, reproductive rights,

whether that's immigration. what i'm hearing is not the vice president would be working with president trump if he were to be re-elected, but all the apparatus, all her aides are going to be ipdifferent sectors of society, that they're trying to think through how hay deal with a second trump presidency. so if he has a mass deportation policy, what does that look like, how do they push back on that, if he pulls back on climate change initiatives what are they going to be doing to figure that out. in some ways it mirrors what happened back in 2016. there are a lot of democratic organizers who started putting their heads together, but they were trying to figure out where to put their resources and time. i think the thing i'm sensing now because a lot of democrats have ptsd from 2016, one aide was telling me in particular i need to figure out thou to love people i disagree with. also how do americans when they're waking up and half the country is feeling like

democracy is in danger and all the different things the vice president was saying about former president trump, how do they wrap their minds around the fact this is a country they love and they have fellow americans they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. so a lot of this is how do i deal with this country overall. >> thank you for that clarification. it's 4:20 in the morning, so i wanted to make sure i understood it the right way. a lot of them have come from climate groups and equal justice groups and civil rights groups and abortion rights groups, and these are people who are advocates for democracy in many ways in their souls, so they don't go away. in many ways it's encouraging to hear they are thinking about where they will be. thank you, yamiche, so much. i think you've been up for 1,000 hours. this is a big -- nbc has not called this race yet, but tomorrow kamala harris is going

to -- as cedric richmond said it, speak to the country and speak to the howard university audience there, of course her alma mater. it's a big moment, and there's a lot of things i'm wondering does she need to say, what is the right thing to say, does she indicate she wants to still be a part if she's not the winner of this race of this fight? what do you think, tim miller? majority first. >> boy, it's going to be a real tough speech for her so i feel really bad for the vice president and for her family and for the aides that worked really hard. we can all sit here on this panel and nitpick this thing or that thing they did, but they really got caught up in a huge ground swell, a global ground swell of incumbent parties that got pushed out and in this country this cultural thing we're talking about, so i feel for them. i think what she has to do tomorrow is not worry about fixing the democrats brand problem in 2028. that's not a job for tomorrow.

like tomorrow her job is to do what donald trump didn't do in 2020, assuming that this race ends as we all expect it to, it's to concede gracefully, to say she's going to uphold her value on reproductive rights and continue to fight for them, and she'll certify that election on january 6th and do it proudly, and i think probably speak to young -- young people in the country as well. i know she's really passionate about that. i think about tonight i think about my daughter and it's going to be tough. we talked about the big wave for trump, tens of millions of people voted for kamala harris tonight and they have children, and there are going to be a lot of people disappointed and speaking to them is going to be a tough job. >> a tough convo especially with my daughter. jim, what do you think she needs to say tomorrow? >> i think two things. one is bring the country together, heal the country, what trump didn't do in 2020.

and there are a whole lot of people especially women who are suffering today who now to molly's point look to this and said we've now had two women in a row lose. like, this is beyond bad. this is every -- people who saw themselves in her, minorities, young women, like the numbers were huge. and so there's a bunch of people that are waking up tomorrow saying this is still my country, i don't understand how to move forward, and i think she needs to help them process that. and that is insanely difficult. and i think as the future and where the party goes and all that stuff, that's not for tomorrow. tomorrow is about trying to bring this country together, and that's what she can do really, really well, and then speak to these women who are waking up tomorrow saying where do i go. >> michael, i just save all the easy questions for you. does the country want to be brought together? >> you know me too well. >> i do. >> i love the kumbaya at this

end of the table. i don't think the country gives a damn about that. i think you're looking at a lot of stuff on various platform and there are a lot of self-satisfied folks out there who are just loving rubbing it in right now. so how do you get up and heal the country when a significant portion of them want to put salt in the wound? and that's the challenge. that's the challenge, and it speaks to the moment we're in. it speaks to a lot of the conflicts that have arisen. there's something that's driving the wedge deeper, and there's not a lessening of that wedge right now. i mean at least not from what i'm hearing. people are sending me texts and sure they're na, na, na, na, na.

the expectation is for her to be the gracious one. what if she got up to tomorrow like you know what, i think he stole the election from me. i know she's not, and that's my point. it goes to what jim and tim were saying, she's not because she's better than that, because she believes we're better than that. but there are a lot of people out there who would probably understand it if she did. >> and who might want her to say that. >> and might want her to say that. i think that's going to be the challenge from here forward because it's going to be harder not easier to pull away from the cliff we just went over. i mean, and that's the reality of it. we just elected a man who said he wants to be a dictator. he wants to tear up the constitution. he wants to, you know, do all these other things with the federal government, and the country said, okay, by a big number. so that's the space we find ourselves in.

and how does she then go out and address that? >> i'm going to come back to you, but we're going to let jim messina go in a moment. we have to end on a positive note with you. is there an element of data that you saw tonight that should give democrats any encouragement? should they keep at it in georgia? should they keep it at in north carolina? >> yeah, like in the end these growth communities, georgia, north carolina, we're not going to say the "t" word because you and i are sick of talking about texas, but arizona. if she loses them, it's going to be incredibly close. arizona and georgia were two places barack obama couldn't even play, where the growth is, where the future map is, is moving towards the democrats. we're just not there yet. so demography i totally agree. i just don't agree, michael. i get you on the na, na, na,

naplateical class and voters who six out of the last seven elections have voted for change back and forth between the two parties, they desperately want both parties to work together. they're sitting and screaming at americans especially in the midwestern states just fix the economy, fix some of these things, we want you to work together. and i think if she can hear that moment, i think that's important. >> i agree with you 100%, but i wanted to put that piece right there. we can revisit it later. >> tell me what do you want to hear? >> i think she has an opportunity here to talk to my daughter and your daughter and tim's daughter and say, look, you know, this is a setback for girls and for women and for feminists and for people who just believe that women should be able to do jobs that men can do, and it really hurt. and i think a lot of us feel like it's just -- it hurts to see that our country is like, no thank you to a woman leader

twice. but i also think she has an opportunity. ro khanna was on earlier in this program and he just said tomorrow is first day of the rest of your life, democratic party, and that's kind of what i think harris can do. and she can talk to all all of our daughters and be like, you know, part of this is -- america is changing, right? we are moving towards a more -- but there are setbacks. there are backlashes. >> we're going to talk about more of those. we do have to sneak in a very quick break. we have more exit poll numbers to dig into. steve kornacki is hydrating, caffeinating. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. einating don't go anywhere. we'll be right back.

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as we wait for more vote from the outstanding swing states and with donald trump on the verge of victory, i want to take just a look at some of the exit polls and what we're learning from them. we're seeing that donald trump improved his support among latinos this time around. he received support from 45% of that group nationwide compared

today 32% a year ago. that's a jump of 13 points since 2020. take a look at nevada. the exit polls show they were evenly split between trump and harris. that is a dramatic shift from four years ago when zwroe biden won latinos in nevada by more than 25 points. our co-host of "the weekend" here on msnbc, alicia menendez is bringing fresh blood to the table at 4:00, 5:00 a.m. it's not a surprise he did expected with latinos but that is quite better than many people expected. what do you make of those numbers in nevada and the numbers overall? >> i was on 12 hours ago and a thing we said was be a little suspicious of these numbers. they gave us a snapshot. two things can be true. you can have some of these

numbers that are absolutely eye popping and that does not mean that latinos are responsible for the fact that kamala harris did not win this race, which is some of the discourse you are not seeing on "x" and in other places. not suggesting that you said that -- >> no, that's a crazy thing to suggest. >> correct. for example, there's 5% of the electorate in pennsylvania. that's not the reason she lost pennsylvania, and yet sometimes these conversations begin to converge. so if you are coming to this from a place of curiosity, which you are but not everyone is -- >> we're definitely coming to it from a place of curiosity. >> these numbers were won hard by inflation. that is where you start seeing president biden's numbers absolutely tank with these voters. they were hit hard during the covid shutdowns, and those numbers for biden never rebounded. in fact, it's not until harris enters the race democrats even begin approximating their numbers from 2020. so she had had a lot of ground to make up. these are voters who have

complex concerns as is the case with all voters, and i think there's a question here of how much of this is trump himself, right? if you all of a sudden take a generic republican candidate and put them in that position, do they continue to have these level of pull and success? how much of this is about trump himself? >> my question -- he did and i don't know a generic republican maybe they would, but i don't know they would be calling for mass deportations and some of these very extreme policies that didn't seem to have an impact, and maybe there's a misunderstanding of what the electorate cares about. >> because of their economics. >> i think it depends how you measure that empath because there were certainly -- this is what was showing up in the polling. there were republicans that voted for him in 2020 that were dissuaded from voting for him

again in this election because of his immigration policies, because of child separation. but what you're hearing from latino voters was, one, you had folks who hadn't heard what he said, which i know was sort of mind-boggling for us. two, they heard what he said but did not feel what applied to them because they were multigeneration and didn't have someone in their family because they were nervous and under the risk of deportation, but they didn't believe him, and he said he was a businessman. clearly he understands the economic impact of deporting this number of workers. that's why you start seeing these numbers because they are simply prioritizing other issues. >> and nevada is one an incredibly diverse state. i think about 40% of the voters there are from a range of diverse backgrounds. also, a majority of voters in that state are non-college

educated. most states are not like that, so there's some interesting demographics at play there. that could be an economic factor as well. let me ask you the same question we were just discussing right before the break, which is that kamala harris is going to give this speech tomorrow. we don't have details yet on what time or we know at it's howard or what it will contain, but there are a lot of people who are going to be -- who voted for her, who are going to be looking for encouragement for her. there are going to be a lot of people who didn't vote for her who may be watching that speech. what do you want to hear from her? >> i think tim's pitch was pretty perfect, which is not the not the point you rectify the democratic party, you say to people who want to keep fighting, this is how you come together, how you do this thing. it really is where she steps in sort of more like a moral voice in this moment and a voice of reassurance i think and a partisan voice. >> it's a big speech, it's a

hard speech. if we learn more, we will share with everyone what we learn. let's go back to steve kornacki who is continuing to crunch numbers. i saw him writing things on a notepad. that's always a sign of something. what have we learned, steve? >> well, it's a development that's not in the board but i can tell you about that's crucial. you know, look, i think we know where we're going here, it's just a question of how we're going to get there in terms of this 270 electoral votes to officially make trump the president-elect. we talked about can trump get that one out of maine, the three out of alaska. if that happens he's at 270. he's at 266 right now. what's happening on the ground is in wisconsin. we've been talking about the city of milwaukee, all its absentee vote. we're talking about 105, 110,000 votes all going to be released at once. what happens is they have their

memory cards, memory sticks this is very technical, but they have the absentee votes on them. what they do is bring them all from the city of milwaukee to one central facility, and that's where they officially release the vote. i can tell you in the last couple of minutes the caravan carrying over the memory sticks with the absentee vote for the city of milwaukee has arrived at the official central count facility, so it may be within an hour or so we officially get word on how those votes broke. again, it's going to be more than 100,000. you see trump is leading in a statewide count. there are only a couple other pockets doing something similar to what i just described with that absentee vote. they aren't nearly as big as the city of milwaukee. the vast majority of what's to come out is going to be out of milwaukee and a couple or places. when that vote is announced, democrats are going to wip that vote, they're going to win it overwhelmingly, it's going to have to be massively overwhelming to erode this

enough with the remaining vote they could actually leapfrog donald trump, but not impossible. and it's interesting because if you look at wisconsin as a whole those three northern tier states of pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin, wisconsin was the closest in 2020 by far. it was only 20,000 votes, 154,000 over in michigan for biden, about 84,000 votes in pennsylvania for biden. i think if you said coming into the night trump was going to have all the success he's had and then said where's he going to win the biggest in the northern tier, and yet this thing is going to end up very, very close in the presidential race. take a lot for harris to get over the top there, but likely or very well could be the closest of all the northern tier battleground states. and the question now becomes will it get so close with what comes in that the senate race maybe goes differently than a presidential race? trump leading by 110,000 in the presidential. take a look at the senate race

right now. the republican his margepen is about half in the senate race, his margin over the incumbent tammy baldwin. all that we're talking about with the big batch of milwaukee votes how democrats need to win by 80,000, they're going to need that kind of margin to flip a 52,000-vote deficit in the senate race. if you're tamally baldwin's campaign you are really waiting on what we just told you about in terms of thal central count facility in milwaukee because that's going to make-or-break you. it's very possible there's enough votes there to get baldwin over hovde in that senate race. high draum law there. if you zoom out here -- i'm trying to put the presidential race on. go back to the presidential race, 110,000 statewide. we identified at the start of the night i just want to close the loop, a bunch of tests in

these battleground states. i'll tell you where trump's not had a great night in wisconsin and it's interesting to me. we talked about the bow counties, brown, green bay, appleten, winnebago, that's where oshkosh is. the question coming into tonight was trump's numbers going to look like 2020 when he lost wisconsin or going to look like 2016 when he won the state? basically in the bow counties he's at 2020 levels here. take a look now you see trump is up in winnebago from 2020. but in winnebago you're waiting on the city of oshkosh. that's going to bring that number down, could end up looking like it did in 2020 at any step forward. that's one of it reasons why wisconsin is not moving as dramatically as some of these other states in the northern tier. one of the other things we're learning about wisconsin is a lot of it really is now since

donald trump came along and scrambled all the lines in wisconsin, he's still finding new pockets of votes in the rural areas, but a lot of it is really, really dug in and you're not seeing any movement at all from 2020. so, again, trump did get that in the rural areas of the state. the wow counties, the big suburban counties outside milwaukee, compare this to 2020, this looks basically like 2020, a little bit better for harris in the biggest of of the counties, washington county, again, what does that look like? almost to the 0.10 point like 2020. might have needed a little bit more, but, again, 20,000 votes in '16, 20,000 the statewide vote in 2020. i think we're going to end up in that ballpark again tonight statewide. it's a hail mary pass for harris to actually overtake trump. but, again, you see the senate race there could absolutely

swing on milwaukee. possible the state could get called. we'll see. and if and when that happens, truch would be over 270 and would mathematically be the president-elect. >> any other human being would be stumbling more than you over the last 100 hours you've been standing on that board. can i ask you while you're standing there to pull back up the popular vote because this is a part of the story that for many presidential cycles democrats have been arguing, i have said, too, that the electoral college should not be the prime determinant of the outcome, but this is looking different than what many would have expected. weeks ago, days ago, whatever it may be. where do we stand at this point in time in. >> i preface it by saying it's going to be long. california is the overwhelming contributor to that. you can check in just over half the vote there in california. the vote by mail still arrives.

some of these counties are very, very slow at counting it. it could take weeks to get the full picture, and a lot of that times that remaining vote by mail chat slowly comes in does tend to lean democratic and boost the margins. but take a look at california. 30 points for hillary clinton in 2016. 30 points for biden essentially in 2020. look at a state as enormous at california what that adds up to. that's a margin of more than 5 million votes joe biden beat donald trump by in california four years ago. that's the clear majority of joe biden's entire popular vote lead -- win nationally in 2020, a majority of it comes from california alone. now, look, if anything like this ends up being what the final result is in california, we're a long way from knowing, but harris is running 5.5 points behind biden's number, trump is running 5 points ahead. in a state that big, it lops off a lot of that deficit.

not enough to put the state in play and be competitive but maybe trump loses california by 1.5, 2 million votes fewer than he lost it in 2020. if numbers like this we continue to see, you have that prospect. you talk about the national popular vote, where it stands right now if harris is going to catch trump in it, she's going to need something like joe biden got in 2020 out of california. because, again, the slippage we've seen for democrats in big, blue states tonight you know we spent so much time in the battleground states understandably and we know this, new york state it's about a 12-point win. new jersey a huge blue state, down to 5 points with most of the vote in there. again, this was a 16-point win for joe biden four years ago. i think we showed you maryland earlier, if you didn't see that. we still got some to come, but

22 points in maryland. this was 23 for the democrats. democrats get with a popular vote margin for the democrats has really come from that big popular vote margin we talked so much about for biden in '20, clinton in '16. illinois more than 90% of the vote is in. 4-point race there right now was 17 -- it's a massive state. look at this that's a million vote margin joe biden got of this state in 2020 right now with more than 90% of the vote is in it's about 225,000, 223,000, that's harris' margin. that's how trump takes the popular vote lead and potentially builds it up enough where california might not be enough for democrats to win the popular vote. i think if you're the trump campaign and trying to win the national popular vote you're feeling better than probably the harris campaign looking at everything comes in here. you talk so much about the popular vote, very decent chance he could end up winning it this

time. if he does, that would be the first election since george w. bush in 2004 where the republican candidate won the popular vote and potentially getting an outright majority. we'll see. there's still some wiggle room there, too, but another question would be is would it be an outright majority. that would be settled a long way from now. >> steve kornacki, thank you for explaining all the nitty-gritty details to us. i'm going to bring ipashley parker. i want to say the trump success in the past years in some of these bluer states, house, senate, it is all important. okay, let's bring in ashley parker. thank you for staying up with us although you've just been up the whole night pretty much. she was at trump headquarters in west palm beach earlier this morning. ashley, tell us what was that like? what are you hearing from trump world right now?

they're enthusiastic and feel vindicated. they'd been saying from about three weeks ago they believe they would not just win but potentially sweep the battleground states. we'll see if that will happen, but as of now, obviously, the vice president has not won a single one of those battleground states. it's interesting i spent all of monday 24 hours flying around the press charter with donald trump, going to his four rallies. and then you saw a president who who was not fully confident. he thought he was going to win but he was grappling with himself and voicing out loud the message his aides had given him sort of a little bit prior,

which is that this is yours to lose. but the caveat, of course, was but you can lose it, right? and you need to stay on message, and you need to be disciplined. that last rally in grand rapids where he starts to call former speaker nancy pelosi a crude word for a woman, and he says i want to say it but i'm not going to say it. you saw that kind of push and pull with him. to that point my colleagues earlier today were talking to people in trump's world and they said, which he did, start the night at mar-a-lago at his private club because they expected it to be potentially so close they wanted him to have a private, safe space of which to process the results. one advisor told us, quote, away from the outside world. so where this night has ended up was not necessarily despite what they said publicly and privately where they thought it would end up, it was where they thought it could end up.

but if they're being honest, this is sort of more extreme, if it keeps trending the way it has been trending, then they might have dared to expect. >> is there -- i'm sure there are many examples of this because talking about we were just watching steve kornacki go through the numbers from illinois, and we were sitting here saying holy cow, that's my best way of saying it. what were their biggest -- as much as they thought this is where it could end up, what have they been surprised by? >> i would say less surprised, frankly, and more they feel vindicated. when trump had a rally in sort of the final days in virginia, he also stopped in new mexico and he did madison square garden in new york. there's a sense of skepticism what is he doing in virginia, and again virginia has been

called for believe for the vice president, but they were happy and sort of vindicated these states they believed like a virginia would be closer, was competitive like illinois. they felt like they could really be competitive in a lot of states and not just they could win but potentially win by sweeping the battleground. there was a period i was told a couple weeks ago, maybe 2 weeks ago where they thought actually they could affirmatively win virginia. that didn't happen. again, these were all things for them tonight icing on the cake and delightful for them. >> ashley parker, you just flew around to many states. you've been up all night. thank you so much. nothing like having little kids to repair you for covering political campaigns, that's what i will just tell everyone. thank you so much for joining us. we have to sneak in a very quick break. we are still waiting on several calls in several swing states. we've got many more friends

stopping by the table. steve is continuing to crunch the numbers. grab a cup of coffee. it's almost morning. settle in. we'll be right back. be right ba.

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okay, everyone. it is 5:00 a.m. here in the east. good morning if you're waking up with us. there's a lot we're going to catch you up on. it's 2:00 a.m. out west. we are still here, and right now donald trump is on the verge of winning the white house. whether you're just waking up or haven't gone to sleep yet or you took a little nap in there, thank you so much for being with us. i'm jen psaki at msnbc headquarters in new york. with me at the big table we have flesh flood in here, fresh legs, and tim miller is still here. anthony coley, tim miller is still here, steve kornacki is also still here still standing, crunching things over there. you can see him at the big board. we'll be with him in just one moment, but i want to get you caught up very quickly. so here's the big picture right now in the race to 270. kamala harris with 219 electoral votes, donald trump with 266. that is just 4 electoral votes

shy of the presidency, and that means just one of these outstanding states, and this is what steve keeps telling us could put him over the top. in michigan the race is too cloche to call at this hour. in wisconsin, a state that has been incredibly close, steve just gave us on update about the caravan of votes we're waiting for. that race is too close to call. more updates to come in soon. in nevada it is too close to call there as well. in arizona, a state that often takes a little bit longer, that race is too early to call. now, donald trump spoke to his supporters in west palm beach early this morning, and he claimed victory, but, again, votes are still coming in. we're giving you updates as we get them. nbc news has not yet made a projection in the race for president. and as for vice president harris, we have not heard from her yet this morning. but here is what campaign cochair cedric richmond had to say to her supporters gathered at howard university last night. >> we still have votes to count.

we still have states that have not been called yet. we will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken, so you won't hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. she will be back here tomorrow to address not only the hu family, not only to address her supporters but to address the nation. >> let's go back to steve kornacki at the big board. a caravan of votes from wisconsin. we may not know anything more there. what more have we learned? >> in wisconsin not much. looks like it's 3.5 points for trump, you see 90% in, 110,000 votes. you're saying why on earth

hasn't this thing been called? trump is certainly in a good position right now, but the remaining suspense is here about in milwaukee county, in the city of milwaukee in particular you see it's only 40% in, and that's because the absentee vote in the city of milwaukee, which we expect to be overwhelmingly democratic, typically it's about 80%, 85% democratic. there's a little more than 100,000 of those votes. we're awaiting word from that facility about how those votes broke. this is how they do it in milwaukee. they choose to do it this way, don't ask me why, but here we are waiting on it. if it's incredibly massive, i mean maybe even bigger than 85, 15, it's usually about the high end for democrats there. that could potentially get harris in a position where there's just enough votes like this, absentee votes being counted in central locations. there's a few other places where that's taking place, give you an example, though, of what harris

is up against here. so racine county is another place where they're doing the central count absentee. there's about 30,000 votes here. this is the second outstanding set of votes in wisconsin. they do this where democrats are going to gain, where harris is going to gain a lot of votes. but only half of that 30,000 is absentee. the rest of it is election day votes that hasn't been counted yet. it's possible in racine county they cancel each other out and that 30,000 votes doesn't add up to anything. so to actually surmount this 110,000-vote deficit, it's going to take something -- i'm trying to find the right way to describe this. absolutely kind of bonkers for harris at this point, but because there are so many in milwaukee and they are so heavily democratic, you want to see that before you make any formal declarations there.

and, again, there are some other pockets of the state here where there's democratic vote to come. could harris stitch together just enough to get over trump, it's very unlikely, it seems, but it's not impossible, and it is true that wisconsin, whatever happens, it's going to gings very, very tight here. even if trump does win this thing by 30,000 votes, it's not going to be much, not going to be 30,000 points like you're looking at now. over to michigan here about 30% of the vote is in. that margin was sitting at 300 something thousand, and now 117,000. why is that? slowly but surely in wayne county the biggest in the state like 25% of all the vote in michigan, we're getting wayne to come in now over 80% of the vote is in, harris is now leading this by a 2-1 margin. her plurality here is up to

230,000 votes. the opportunity left in wayne county we think there's about 170,000 votes left there in wayne county. if those votes are coming in about the clip they're coming in right now, what would that be? 120,000 to 50,000, a 70,000 vote plurality for harris. if she were to gain 70,000 votes out of wayne, okay, that would still leave her almost 50,000 votes behind trump, that's a lot still she has to climb past, and what else is left in michigan after you get all of wayne, so some of kalamazoo, but it's election day vote in kalamazoo. there's some election day vote there it looks like in kalamazoo, which is trump friendly. macomb county, trump winning by 17 points. i'm looking at this a in lot of smaller counties, this is going to tighten significantly as wayne county comes in, but we've taken you through tonight. i won't bother anyone with it

again here, but we've taken you through some pretty dramatic shift in the state tonight towards trump but places like saginaw county, places like miskeegan. both of them land in trump's column. macomb almost 90% of the vote is in with trump 70,000 vote lead here, 17 points. our big test coming into the night was with macomb, which is gigantic suburban, blue collar county but not as big as oakland the gigantic white collar suburban county. would trump be able to cancel out oakland with this margin, trump gets 75,000, and it's 81,000 all for harris now as the vote is pretty much in oakland county. right now that's exactly what the trump campaign would have wanted out of macomb and there's a chance still to grab more with that remaining vote there.

again, wayne county here where detroit is and a lot more than just detroit will bring this down, but it is going to take a pretty big lift for harris, but more volatility here with more vote outstanding. waiting on the caravan arrived at central count in milwaukee, waiting for the plumes of smoke or whatever they do when they're ready to tell us those numbers. >> maybe plumes of smoke. before we let you get more hydration in your system, you've been telling us it's formal electoral votes. anything elsewhere there's been movement where we last talked about it? >> yeah, i don't think so. good reason to take a quick look here. in maine second congressional district of maine, this is where we left it. look, there's no reason to think it's not going to land somewhere around here. trump won this thing handily both times. he's ahead by 7 points here. we haven't had a new vote since the last time we checked in. let's go to it klondike. alaska, we're exactly where we are the last time we checked in. 50% of the vote is in.

55-40. they do these by legislative districts, not county. there are surprisingly in anchorage so much of the population in and around anchorage, again this has been a republican state for a long time. trump with 15 points. there's no reason to think it's not going to end up something like this, but you've got to see more to be able to make that call from our decision desk. along with maine, too, it's three electoral votes, that would be four, four on top of what trump has. again, mathematically would make him the president-elect. would that come together first, or, you know, is trump going to hold on? first of all, he's got to hold on in either wisconsin or michigan and then actually reach a level here where the returns are in, and i don't know how to describe it. get both of these states officially called, that's what i'm trying to say. >> i know we're waiting, we're getting close on everything. you're going to come back to us and we'll get updates as we have

them. okay, ali vitali, we have again some fresh blood here. i want to get all your thoughts. ali, you've spent a lot of time on the trail this year. a lot of time with suitcases and hotel rooms covering candidates in the republican primary, and i think a lot of people as much of the race has not been called, are digesting what is happening right now. what light can you shed on what is happening in the country, what people, perhaps have missed about some of these margins steve is walk s us through. >> i think to me, yes, the story was written in part in the 2024 republican primary when voters were given a slate of alternative candidates. they were given senator. they were given former u.n. ambassadors and they said, no, we're good, thank you so mu. we like the guy we've been with the past eight years. i think the ark of this story starts when i got on the campaign trail 2015. it's actually been for the last eight years, and the story in

2015 and '16 was sort of the surprise rise of trump, the way he remade the republican party. you and i were working on various sides of that at different points throughout that primary and general election. 2020 then seemed like the reassessment moment. does america want to continue this? does he know how to work the levers of bureaucracy during a massive national event like a pandemic? and then 2024 should have been a rereckoning, but instead it's like january 6th wasn't playing in the minds of voters, and i think there was a real nostalgia factor for trump. maybe people were thinking about pre-pandemic time, but then the fact he was also de-platformed off of places like twitter where he typically sowed his chaos and people remember, yeah, i remember this person had a lot to say at weird hours of the night and i don't know i love that a president or presidential candidate is doing that. instead, he went quiet and i

think people were able to forget. to me the first sign of that was in the nbc news poll in october where it showed a retroactive grade report for him, the fact they were getting them then i think to me was an early light bulb of, okay, people are metabolizing his legacy differently now. >> the nostalgia is such an interesting part of this story. again, if this race is called for him, there's only been one other president -- grover cleveland -- who ran on nonconsecutive terms and won. you're the only person sitting here who's ran for office and won. all this data, all these exit polls, all the margins surprising and disappointing to some, what are your big take-aways on what we know so far? >> i think trump helped that along, right? if he has asumer power, it's

marketing. in every single speech over the last few years, he would say we had the greatest economy, we had the greatest economy. and i think a lot of people really believed that in the end. and they remember those times more fondly probably than they were, right, and compared that to high inflation over the last couple of years. so there's that. it's an extraordinary comeback. i don't know if we can call it the greatest american political comeback, but certainly it is an extraordinary comeback. and i think this calls into question a lot of the identity politics, right? traditional identity politics that's going to -- this election is going to help rewrite -- i mean, take the latino community, right? there's a still a majority according to exit polls for democrats i think it's 53-45. that's just one exit poll, so you can't put all of your stock in that.

it's clear he made significant gains. this is going to rewrite how the parties approach latinos and other groups. and then the last thing i would say is i do think that we have to reckon with the deeper forces that play a role. what role does misogyny play? what role does still existing racism or bias play? it seems like these days we almost don't want to ask those questions as much, and i think that's part of the problem that allows somebody like donald trump to get elected. >> we have to ask the questions. i think that's one of the things i think everybody should reflect on. anthony, a lot of people are going to say this is a messaging problem, which to me it's much bigger than that. it's not about words on a page. you have had the forrest gump of jobs in administrations. not to give everybody a bio, your worked in southern politics, you were in the communication of justice, also department of treasury. i want to pull off something

youed here which is very interesting, which is donald trump went out and said the economy is great, the economy is great. he kind of ignored data, he ignored reality. democrats often get fragile in some ways in a good way you could argue about being accurate. accurate is good, but about ow they describe the state of things, right? what are you as you're looking at that particular big question, what is your take away? in this moment, i know we're all digesting what we know at this point. >> well, the secretary just described essentially was trump making this is a referendum on the incumbent party. and i think back to the last presidential campaign that you and i worked on together. that was 2004. it was kerry, right? and what george w. bush did effectively was not make the race a referendum on him, but he made it a choice between two distinct visions, two distinct ideologies, and that's how george w. bush won re-election,

and that's the same thing that happened with barack obama after 9/11 happened. so the issue here, i think, if she ends up not getting over the top is that she did not -- she did not separate herself from joe biden enough, and she allowed donald trump to really make this race a referendum on the entire campaign. i will say one moment where this crystallized for me and i've seen you report on this, it was her interview on "the view," do you remember this? where she was asked by sunny hoston if she would do anything differently, and the vice president said she couldn't. she circled back a little later and said she would add a republican to the party. and i think when you step back and look at nbc's own right track, wrong track numbers, 72% of the country believe that the

country is headed in the wrong direction, and she got saddled with that if she ends up not being able to -- >> it was a very -- her answer did get better. to get better over time, it's very tricky to figure out how to walk the tightrope. >> she was a loyalist to joe biden and i give her credit for that, but it was in joe biden's interest for her to create some distance. >> we're going to come back to this. i just want to bring in vaughn who's been standing -- you know how this is, standing for a long time. he's in west palm beach, florida. i know you were at trump headquarters this morning. we talked to you a bit earlier. do we have any expectation or indication, at this point, what we should expect from trump and his team this morning and later today? anything you're hearing from them. >> reporter: i was told by one source that they're going already planning and looking at having a potential another trump rally, quote, soon what this one

source who was at the festivities tonight told me. look, we're looking at potentially four more years if he does, in fact, take the white house in 2025 of donald trump's road show. i appreciate you guys are extracting on the conversation here on around the differences of reality that americans have lived in and the extent to which that propels donald trump to a victory -- potential victory tonight. because going around this country over the course of the last eight years, donald trump time and again he exploits his biggest vulnerabilities to try to turn them into political advantage and gain. and we have seen him do it quite effectively. the examples are plentiful. when you're talking about the hurricane that hit puerto rico back in 2018, 3,000 people died. what did he do? he denied that 3,000 people died. when covid hit the united states, he denied the mass deaths that americans, families, communities faced and said

claimed he was the one who was effectively able to save america from the pandemic. when january 6th took place, what did he do? he said it was an inside job. the fbi and polling from this year showed 25% of americans believed that the fbi was behind the january 6th attack and instigated it. and when we're talking about the prosecutions that was faced, i can't tell you how many people traveling around this country over the last two years believe donald trump was politically targeted, and these charges had noimator, and they were being directed by the like of barack obama, hillary clinton, and democrats. americans believe that. and this is what has led to this moment, a maga movement -- let's be very clear turned out a record number of voters in 2020. joe biden got more. but here in 2024, over the last four years despite an insurrection, despite donald trump being found liable for sexual abuse, despite his company being found to have repeatedly engaged in financial frauds, tonight was a clear

indication that americans believed donald trump was the victim. in his version of reality, in his version of facts made him a sympathetic figure in the type of person, perhaps some americans with their own vulnerabilities, but one in which donald trump made himself to amass this electorate despite a lack of organization on the ground from the trump campaign and rnc a source telling me half the resources they did four years ago, it was that organic grass roots following of low propensity voters that didn't even show up in november 2020 that here in the weeks preceding nine years after he announced his bid for the presidency, nine years later making the biggest resurrection of a political figure ever in american history and one that you could very well lead him here if one of these states falls further back into the white house come january 2025. >> vaughn hilliard, i have to say you have been so tireless,

so informative, so direct. you brought us inside of these trump rally and what's going on with the electorate in a way so insightful to me and many people watching. thank you for doing that for us again tonight, this morning i suppose. thank you, again, so much, vaughn, for taking the time. we have to sneak in a very quick break. we've got a lot more to talk about. steve kornacki is still here. we're still waiting for numbers in swing states, and we're going to be right back. in swing states, and we're going to be right back can neuriva support your brain health? mary. janet. hey! eddie. no! fraser. frank. frank. fred. how are you? support up to seven brain health indicators, including memory. when you need to remember, remember neuriva.

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okay, let's take a look at the big map at this hour. we are still waiting on michigan. we're still waiting on wisconsin. we're still waiting on nevada, and we're still waiting on arizona. but as you can see, any one of them would put donald trump over the top and clench him the presidency. let's get right back to steve kornacki still at the big board. steve, i know we're waiting for votes in wisconsin. anything else new we have learned we can update people on at this hour? >> we think that momentarily -- take this with a grain of salt, but we think that very soon we're going to get the rest here in racine county. this is the second biggest outstanding piece of real estate here in wisconsin behind milwaukee. about 30,000 votes or so yet to

be counted in racine county. we believe they're all going to be released at once. this is one of those counties where you have that central count facility for the city of racine. they have all the absentee vote and send it out all at once. and there's election day vote going to be released, too, about 30,000 votes in total. again, the democrats trying to erase 110,000 votes statewide. once we get that, we'll readjust that number, and that will clarify really the big thing left in wisconsin at that point, which will be -- which will be milwaukee county where the city of milwaukee's absentee vote will be released all at once. going to be more than 100,000 votes, and exactly how much harris needs to win that by, i think it'll be a lot clearer if and when we do get this racine vote. again, we got a heads up it might be coming soon, but keeping an eye on it to see if it happens.

i think updates from racine and milwaukee that will leave wisconsin pretty close to done, a race that hangs in the balance, here, too. you've got the presidential 110,000, but you've got the senate race. i think what just happened -- i think something pretty dramatic just happened there. okay, did we just get central count from milwaukee? i'm asking my producer here. i think we just got central count from milwaukee. zooming this out statewide, yes. it just came in. this was the biggest outstanding source of votes in wisconsin. central count meaning city of milwaukee takes all of its absentee vote, it's like 100,000 votes, and all the votes gets released at once and that basically completes the county. that's what just happened. that's why wisconsin now has 99,000 votes reporting. and take a look here in milwaukee county, the city of milwaukee is what just came in here. basically done in milwaukee county right now. that's what harris' margin is

going to sit at, and it brought that trump down lead substantially, but it only brought it down remember it was 110,000 before, now it's 40,000. so it was a 70,000-vote margin. that's what harris won the absentee vote by in milwaukee city. by far that was the biggest remaining source of votes in wisconsin. that's done now. there's a scattering left perhaps in racine county, which i was just talking about a minute ago. city of racine, milwaukee about 30,000 votes. trump's margin statewide is about 40,000. if trump is declared the winner in wisconsin, that's 10 electoral votes, he will officially mathematically cross the 270 threshold to become mathematically to become the president-elect. if you bear with me a second, i'm just going to check in and

see where exactly vote is left now in wisconsin. this is big, big batch of votes that, trust me, we have been waiting hours for in wisconsin. i think it's clarified the situation. certainly our decision desk, which is behind the scenes here you don't see, but certainly they are interpreting this as i speak in realtime. and let me just update my chart here of what is still to come in wisconsin. it's not much. yeah, it's that vote in racine we've been talking about -- i think we just got it. yes, we did. okay, racine just came in. we're pretty much done in racine county here. there is a boost there. what just came in was democratic, it was harris. and there it is, that statewide margin that was sitting at 40, harris shaves 9,000 off that of what just came in out of racine county so harris still trailing by more than 30,000 votes.

i do want to show you at the same time in the senate race this is dramatic, those two developments were enough to push tammy baldwin into the lead. a pretty substantial lead in wisconsin. tammy baldwin is now leading by 30,000 votes in the senate race. tammy has been running better than harris. so those two big updates brought harris to about 30,000 down, still a long way for her to go -- >> steve kornacki, i just have to jump in. you've been predicting this, we've been waiting for it, and we do have some breaking news from the decision desk. nbc news can now project that donald trump has won the state of wisconsin, which means he's the winner of this race and will return to the white house as this country's 47th president. and for so many of you watching right now that news is to say the least a lot to digest. i understand that personally. after he lost four years ago he refused to accept the outcome and incited a violent insuregz on our nation's capitol. he's campaigned while facing

criminal indictments related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 results, and he's run as a convicted felon. during this campaign he has also promised to essentially by an authoritarian leader, to use power like no american president ever has before and wield that power to go after his political enemies. this is a man who's also bragged about overturning roe v. wade, and stripping away women's bodily autonomy. he's promised to conduct mass deportations to crack down on the rights of millions of americans. donald trump is an anti-democratic force, but he's just been elected democratically in our country. and here's what might be the hardest part to hear, but we have to talk about and we have to say, and it is a hard part to digest for all of us, but we have to be honest about what we saw in this election. donald trump was elected by expanding his support over a number of key groups that we're going to -- we've been digging

into this night, all night tonight as we anticipated where this was headed, and i know we're going to dig into it throughout the course of the day today. and there will be a lot of time spent on how and why he won and what this will mean for the country over the next four years and beyond. but in this moment it's also important to remember that our democracy is not built around one person or one job. and i have every confidence that pro-democracy forces in this country will continue to stand up and make their voices heard. that's what we saw after 2016 as well. some of those voices will be governors. some of them will be elected officials. some will institutions and organizations standing up for rights and standing up for women's bodily autonomy and standing up for our climate. some will be citizens. and many of you sitting at home right now digesting this at home right now, some of them will be you. i wish i had better news for my daughter later this morning. i know tim miller and i were talking about this earlier when she and so many others wake up to this news.

i wish i could have called her and told her hat the first woman president had just been elected. i wish that. i won't be able to do that, but what i can do -- what i can tell my daughter and what i will tell my daughter is that our roles as american citizens have never been more important than they are right now. i can tell her that there are still lots of good forces out there, forces for good in this country, and that they are going to be getting to work. we have to sneak in a quick break -- okay, i'm going to come back to the table right now. this is a lot to digest. we've seen where this has all been headed. one thing i wanted to raise here i was the communications director for president obama when donald trump won in 2016, and one of the conversations we had that night that i'm certain the biden team is having right now is about inviting donald trump to the white house. i think that joe biden will do that, and i think he should do that. that is about the continuity of government, but it's 8 years

later. and we know a lot more. and that, i think, is a thing that's going to be hard for a lot of people in that building to digest, but it's also an important part of our democracy and how we operate. and being a model for that is an important part of lifting that up and protecting it. ali vitali, we've been talking a lot about republican voters, what you observed on the trail. what is your reaction to this news, and how are you digesting -- what should people expect? i mean you're reporters out on the trail. >> i think this is to me as we were talking about earlier this is a campaign not about one person -- this was very much about one person. the republican party itself reoriented itself around donald trump. it was not a campaign about policy. it was a campaign about personality. it was not a campaign won on the doors or won by phone banking because if it was about get out the vote, "a," you probably would have elected elizabeth warren as the democratic nominee in 2020, but you definitely

would not have seen donald trump win the presidency if it was solely about a get out the vote feet on the ground operation. instead you end up here, and i think the nostalgia factor that we talked about earlier is key. i think the fact that americans listened to the very sober assessments of this man being a threat to democracy and said we're concerned about democracy, too, but just not in the same way, that's the story the exit poll told. >> i think tim miller, one of the things that might be hard for people like yourself to digest, but you've been digesting it, if there's any doubt the republican party is the party of donald trump. i don't know what the coming back from it is. >> no, it was probably long gone already but certainly gone after donald trump's victory tonight. to me when i think about this and him being declared the president-elect, i look at what happened with the republican party, he restructured it in his

own image. he blew it up in a lot of ways. they're talking now about tearing down the administrative state, like that's what he did with the republican party. he tore it down and built it back up in his own image, and that kind of conversation and debate is kind of over really. and as i look ahead over the next four years that is at least what they're planning on doing, we'll see. that's at least their stated plans for the country, and i think they're planning to dramatically change the way the government interacts with us domestically, dramatically change how the u.s. interacts with its allies and foes in the world. when you talk about the intro in this fight for democracy, that is what is ahead now. there will be some people fighting against that and fighting against ways to roll back things that we've become accustomed to and used to in this country, and there are going to be others i think democrats in congress i think tammy baldwin trying to work with him to modulate. >> hold your thoughts. i just want to go back to steve

kornacki. a lot of people are waking up right now this is big significant race to call. a lot of people are digesting it. i want to go back to steve kornacki and share with us how donald trump won this race looking at the ends you've seen where harris overperformed, underperformed, what can you tell us? >> sure. i think a lot went into this for trump. you see the scoreboard there 276 over the top. big picture is the national popular vote and you see right now donald trump more than 5 million votes ahead of kamala harris. one thing i'm going to show you is trump even in states he hasn't won has made tremendous strides forward in some big highly populated democratic states. so what goes into this national victory for donald trump tonight, so far you see one, georgia, two, north carolina, three, pennsylvania. four battleground states that have been called. trump has swept them all. so far arizona, nevada remain to be called. michigan also outstanding here,

but trump with 95% of the vote count in michigan continueds to lead by over 100,000 votes. a bit of what we saw in wisconsin likely to play out in some point here in michigan where we're waiting for a ton of vote in wayne county where detroit is, see if harris can erase that, but she's the underdog to do so given the other things that happened in michigan. where did this trump win come from today? i'm going to point to a couple of places. first of all, we look at georgia, one of the states that was called several -- i can't remember how many hours ago. one of the questions we had at the start of the night was looked at this atlanta metro area, big suburban in many cases, fast growing. democrats have been getting more and more votes out of here. they wanted to expand, they needed to expand further tonight. one place we've been looking at is fayette county.

democrats needed to carry this tonight and make another county in the atlanta metro area blue, they didn't. what speaks to this is we saw this a lot of suburban counties like this where democrats had been advancing the ball the last couple of elections. it seemed the voters were moving against trump more and more in each election. trump sort of stole that. he stole that in a place like fayette county tonight, and he stole that in key suburban areas in these battleground states. so democrats were counting on making even further big gains in places like this. all too familiar for them, they didn't make those gains. he can move up to north carolina where trump is leading by 3.5 points with just about all the votes in. a couple of places we can look to here, i'm going to give you a different example in north carolina so you get a sense of the different ingredients that went into this nationally. one thing you can look at in north carolina we talked about was there's a lot of of rural counties in north carolina with large, black populations. democrats wanted to get higher turnout to improve on how they did in those counties in 2020.

they've come close in 2020 and felt that was a way to do even better. in county after county like that tonight, donald trump improved over how he did in 2020, and democrats simply didn't get those numbers in an area like eastern north carolina, a lot of rural counties with large, black populations. you move up north what happened here? here's one we talked about as the test coming into election night. where scranton is this is a county let's show you the trajectory here over time. if you went back to when barack obama was elected back in 2012 an overwhelming blue county. obama won this thing by 28 points. along comes donald trump in 2016 and he almost wins it. comes within 3.5 points. four years later when donald trump loses pennsylvania, look, he didn't win it tonight but he got closer than he got in 2016 in these big blue, collar counties that not long ago were

overwhelmingly democratic. they dot the midwest, they dot pennsylvania. this was the kind of result trump got tonight. if he'd given back ground in 2020, he won that ground in some cases and he moved the ball further even still. another ingredient in pennsylvania for donald trump, a lot of small, mid-sized working class cities with large hispanic populations. trump -- here's a classic example here, luzerne county, hazelton is here. trump finished with 67%. huge story we saw tonight throughout the country, jen, hispanic voters. donald trump making massive gains in places where there are large hispanic populations in particular working class blue collar populations. >> so much to digest, steve kornacki. we're all going to be digesting it. i wanted to ask you again about where we sit with the house, if there's anything more we know about the house and i'm raising this because we now know

republicans will control the senate. we know that donald trump will be sitting in the white house. who controls the house of representatives and we'll not know for some time and it's going to be a big factor moving forward. >> in terms of cold seats here, republicans with 200, democrats with 175, 60 uncalled. 218 the magic number. i think one thing to keep in mind it looks like it's going to be very close on the house side. there are a number of districts in california. depending on how things shake outlet, i think that's where a decent chance we're going to be waiting on a number of districts in california. and california for those who don't know is an extremely slow counting state. i mean it can take a week, it can take longer to get full results. i'll give you an example in 2022 house control, republicans picked up the house in 2022 from democrats. it took eight days after the election in 2022 for republicans to hit that number.

they did it in california eight days after election day. we'll see how some of this shakes out, but if it is coming down to california like it did in 2022, that could take time. >> everyone's got to be patient on that one. it is the big factor, it is the difference between jamie raskin being the chairman of the house oversight committee or not, hakeem jeffries being speaker of the house or not. steve kornacki, i know you're not surprised. you study the data deeply. let me ask you of the data you've seen in these battleground states, is there any data that surprised you or you didn't anticipate with the polling we've seen going into the night? >> well, it's not that i didn't anticipate it but it was a question because the polling had been telling us for years now that donald trump seemed like he was making big gains with hispanic voters. we saw in the 2020 election how that became a story. he made some significant gains with hispanic voters. the idea he would only lose

hispanics by single digits, make the competitive overall, the exit poll has him losing hispanics by 8 points nationally tonight. and some of the numbers that came in outside the battleground, i think this is what surprised me the most, i'm going to show new jersey, big, blue new jersey harris wins this. she only wins it by 5. look, four years ago joe biden won new jersey by 16 points. trump took more than 10 points off the democratic margin in new jersey. and where did he do it? take a look at hudson county. hudson county had some large hispanic population, cities -- one union city that's 80% hispanic in hudson county, new jersey. look at this 46 points is what joe biden won hudson county by four years ago, tonight only 28 points. 18 point gain for trump in a core democratic county, in a core blue state. take a look at passaic county, the city of patterson, new jersey is here. biden won this by 16, almost 17

points. democrats always win passaic in big races in new jersey. tonight it looks like donald trump is going to win passaic county. new jersey doesn't -- electoral votes don't change, this is closer than any republican has come in new jersey in 32 years. and the reason it's that close, it's those counties and those cities with huge hispanic populations that has such a big -- a such great deal to do with this here and something we saw all throughout the country tonight. not necessarily we saw it in some of the battleground, but i think the thing most surprising to me was outside the battleground. donald trump doing things like that, making gains like that often in some big, blue states. and it's why he's leading the national popular vote by 5 million-plus votes right now in the national popular vote, and it will take some time to sort that one out. there's a real chance, you know, a good chance donald trump ends up winning the national popular vote this time around. >> which you reminded us earlier has not happened since 2004 when

george w. bush won the national popular vote. i know this is something we know from exit polls primarily, but one of the big topics coming into this election was the gender gap and the women's vote and maybe the quiet vote and where that might turnout. what do we know at this point? what have you seen in the data on that front? >> yeah, our exit polls, it's showing a gender gap but it's not showing the kind of gender gap that some of the polling was suggesting. so our exit poll is showing trump winning men by about 10, harris winning women by about 10. total that's a 20-point gender gap and not the highest but it's on the higher end of what we've seen in presidential elections before. we had polls saying this could be 30, 35 points, something in that area the gender gap, so it comes down relative, again, to what the polling expectations were here. and i think just less of a -- less of a factor than, you know, i think some of the buzz was

heading into the election. i'll show you one thing that really in the final days of this campaign that really got people talking about the gender gap was for those who follow closely may remember that poll in iowa over the weekend. we thought, oh, iowa that's a safe trump state. he won it so big in 2020. there's a poll that came out over the weekend showing harris ahead in iowa on the strength of an enormous gender gap, senior women, i think that spurred a lot of the talk about this. this is what iowa looks like, donald trump doesn't just win it, he wins it by 13 points, and that 13 points is actually an improvement by about 4 points in how he did here four years ago. so this whole idea there was this massive gender gap in iowa, it was netting out to a wild degree of the democrats benefit, there was nothing to that. donald trump actually does better in iowa easier than he did in the two previous elections. >> steve kornacki, so much data we're going to continue to dig through. thank you so much for walking us

through each of these pieces and i think we're all trying to understand what happened here, why? lots of time to do that. thank you so much, again, for just walking us through all of that as we got that race call. anthony coley, you and i grew up in democratic politics together. we were part of the kerry campaign when we lost. you know a lot of things about politics, but you also have an expertise in all of these legal cases having been the former communication director of the department of justice. and i think one of the questions that's going to start to become real for people sort of digesting this is what happens to these legal cases, and that seems pretty clear to me. donald trump has made very clear he's going to get rid of the legal cases by getting rid of jack smith, but let me ask you what you think is going to happen with this this sentencing. that's scheduled in new york. for just a couple weeks from now. >> yes, i don't think he's going to be sentenced to jail. >> do you think the sentencing

will still happen. >> i think it will happen. i don't expect judge merchand to sentence him to prison. age is a factor. he hasn't been -- is not a criminal conviction in terms of he's more of a civil type of case. can i say one thing about this moment we're in. >> i had to ask you that because people -- that's going to come quick with the news. >> we're at a moment where we're going be digesting this for a while. the headwinds she faced are real. right, when i think about the right track wrong track number. the economic anxiety that people around the country feel, she couldn't overcome that. i have a question the role of race and gender played in these results. here are the facts if we pull back the layer. she's a person of color, she's a

she and in an interracial marriage. i have wonder, i have this question mark in my mind over whether all of those things combined was too much for pockets of this country. and it's a stunning -- this says more of who we are as a country this overqualified african american mixed race woman did not win this race, and she lost it to a man who's a felon. who tried to overturn the will of voters in a free and fair election. you talked about the house. i think that's going to be the next line of defense. >> yeah. >> hopefully, i'm not confident, though, i suspect and i hope hakeem jeffries is elected by

his peers to be the leaders of the democrats. they'll have a conversation about this now, because he's a democrat from new york and this is what you were talking about in a earlier segment, who's going to be the face of the resistance, i think it should still be hakeem jeffries. he has sport from the largest caucus. democrats will have a real conversation about who should be the face of resistance. >> first of all, we've been friends in a long time. i think i would disagree on you. hakeem jeffries i think will if the democrats win the house he'll be the speaker of the house, if the democrats don't win back the house he'll still be the leader. in my view, he's been an incredibly effective, astute,

disciplined leader of the caucus and what i mean by that he's not knee-jerked in moments with people would have knee-jerked. he's been able to build that caucus. >> he should be, too. people in the middle of america -- they'll have this conversation. >> i'll come back to ali. what do you think, where does -- the house, the house piece of this trying to articulate now becomes very important in terms of the balance of government, in terms of standing up for democracy, standing up for people's rights, where do you think this question of leadership sits in the house. >> you're right, democrats take control, it's still speaker hakeem jeffries and we've watched the way he's led this conference. i asked him out on the campaign

trail, what kind of protile do you cut in a house washington, we want to work with work with traditional republicans. donald trump isn't traditional. we want to work with traditional republicans. where are those, mike lawler, i said to him, what kind of profile do you cut in washington with donald trump. with mike johnson still the speaker a very different washington, you never longer have the guardrails of democrats. do investigations. you have what you had in the 2017. >> real quick, it's going to be more aligned with trump than in 2017. >> we've seen that over and over again. he asked about the immigration

bill. lot of questions to address here. one of the big one i have for people out there who are thinking, there will never be a woman who's elected president. there's racism. there's sexism. it's an important part of the question. you've been elected before, how should people be thinking about what their role can be if this is not who they're voted for. >> it summons the need for all of us to be active participants in our democracy and i think there's going to be a lot of resistance, if there's a benefit now a silver lining, if you're searching for one, we've seen this movie before and people are more prepared for this in 2024/2025 than they were in 2016/2017. i think all the organizing that went into groups that stood up to resist donald trump, to push back, many of those folks are

still out there and i think like donald trump is coming with more knowledge and experience they have that knowledge and experience, too. to all of the folks watching. i have a daughter who's 15, i remember when hillary lost, i told her the night before we're going have the first woman president, i'm sure hoping this time that would happen. that we have to acknowledge that we still have to progress to make as a country it's not them, they have the opportunity to change that and this should make them even more ambitious about changing that and breaking that barrier. >> i hope that's a part of the message tomorrow and i think it will be. ali, we know now that vice president harris is going to be a very difficult speech today at her alma mater. i think it's probably going to be an emotional speech for her, a raw speech, and it's one where

there's a lot of things that she may want to get done in the same speech. what do you expect to hear, what do you think the country should hear. >> we've seen a version of this speech not soon after, you know, 2016 when hillary clinton had to do this version and having written the book why america hasn't elected a woman to the white house yet, kamala harris knows she's speaking for any woman who's going to come after her, the first thing i thought, i feel confident she's going to win, of course that hasn't happened, if she doesn't it's not because she's a woman and i hope that we as a parse through that, the intangibles the x factor of gender and race is the hardest part about this. the fact that harris put another notch getting close it norm

leadses the fact that women can compete. that's the optimistic way of looking at. millions of americans voted for a woman because she thought she was qualified. >> that's an incredibly important note. i have a 9-year-old daughter and my conversation with her is going to be about my hope for her generation and what you can take away from this. i'd also say one of things -- and we don't know what harris sees as her future -- but there's an incredibly large bench of democratic leaders out there, governors, we talked about hakeem jeffries, people who are running organizations, i spoke with yamiche earlier, lot of staffers and people who were there working for different organizations they saw where

this was going and how they could be activating the groups they've been involved in before. very easy in this moment to lay on the couch and curl in the fetal position and that's powerful if the harris, people working for kamala harris can think about what they can do to stand up for people's rights and for climate change and for women's rights, then other people can also do the same thing. i want to thank you all for staying up late with me and help people watching digest a big piece of news that's going to be digested throughout the course of the day. the big breaking news at this hour, donald trump is the president elect of the united states. whole "morning joe" team is standing by. pick up our coverage right now.