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At around two point thirty on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump took the stage at his campaign headquarters in mar A Lago to claim victory in the US presidential election.
Look what happened? Is this crazy? But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your forty seventh president and your forty fifth president.
Earlier, as the campaign watch party for Vice President Kamala Harris wound down at her alma mater, Howard University, her campaign co chair Cedric Richmond, briefly addressed the crowd, so.
You won't hear from the Vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow.
When Trump spoke alongside his family, inner circle and running mate J. D. Vance, he'd already secured two hundred and sixty seven of the two hundred and seventy electoral college votes he needed, clinching wins in the key battleground states of Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and at five thirty am, Trump was declared the projected winner of Wisconsin's ten electoral college votes, bringing his total to two hundred and seventy seven.
As the results came into focus, markets reacted and the so called Trump trade searched. Bitcoin spiked, the dollar posted its biggest gain against major currencies since twenty twenty, clean energy took a hit, and Treasury bonds humbled. Today on the show how Election Day played out, reactions from around the world, and what we can expect from a second Trump term, I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. It's four am in Washington, d C.
I'm joined by Bloomberg Senior Washington editor Wendy Benjaminson. So, Wendy, for people waking up today and catching up what happened overnight.
Donald Trump has won the presidency. It was not as close as we expected it to be.
Well, Wendy, how does this year's Trump win compared to his path to victory in twenty sixteen.
Well, it's not that dissimilar. He took all of the South, he took a large swath of the Midwest, the Plain States, and this time again he managed to break through that so called blue wall. I think we're going to have to rename that now because in twenty sixteen, Hillary Clinton failed to get all of the Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, that industrial blue wall the Democrats have to win, and it appears that Donald Trump succeeded in that blue wall.
What was Trump able to do this campaign cycle that he failed to do in twenty twenty.
Well, this is one of those weird Donald Trump can get away with stuff sort of elections. He fared far better with Hispanic voters than he did in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty. And remember in twenty sixteen, one of his famous lines was Mexico is sending us their criminals and rapists, and a lot of Hispanic voters took events to that. The Sunday before October twenty seventh, he held a rally of Madison Square Garden where a comedian called
Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. And yet he fared far better, according to exit polls with Latino voters than he ever has.
That didn't seem to matter in the way that people thought it might.
Right, And remember Donald Trump allso so one this time against twenty sixteen, with thirty four felony convictions, a civil claim holding him responsible for rape, appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe versus Wade, and a number of other comments that he's made or proposals that he has put
forward that seem anathema to most Americans. And yet here we are, and while the gender gap and reproductive rights were the issues that were going to push her over the top, it failed to materialize against the popular support that Donald Trump seems to have had.
You mentioned some of these issues that didn't seem to face voters when it came to Donald Trump. But let's talk about some of the issues that did decide this election. We've been talking all election season about the polls, including the Bloomberg News Morning Consult polls that showed that voters considered the economy their number one issue. Abortion also ranked highly immigration. What do we know at this point about how those issues specifically impacted the results we saw tonight?
Donald Trump he pinned the economy, the post COVID economy, even though it has recovered by all measures. He pinned that on Joe Biden and by extension, Kamala Harris. He kept doing that over and over again, even though his rhetoric on immigration was authoritarian, talking about deporting millions of people, closing the border, building all those sort of things. Voters want a secure border, and he talked about it constantly, even down to the falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating cats
in Springfield, Ohio. It all spoke to voters deep fears about the other. In quotes coming in, Kamala Harris talked a little about immigration, saying that she would sign the bill that Donald Trump killed last year in Congress. She talked about a carrying economy and opportunity economy. But a lot of the time the Democrats focused on just how awful Donald Trump is, and people who think he's awful
already think he's awful the people. Then there are people who think he's an awful person, but they like his policies, and then there's the people who actually don't think he's awful. Donald Trump is awful is now a proven two time losing strategy, and yet the Democrats kept doing that over and over again. And here we are, well.
What about Trump's economic policies attracted voters and how much are we going to see the results?
Well, that's going to be the big question, Sarah, Because his economic policies he promised to offer, he offered so many tax cuts that if every single one of them were enacted, I'm not even sure the US government could function because there just wouldn't be enough money coming in. Some of those will be enacted, but it couldn't be all of them. The tariffs he is proposing, placing sixty percent tariffs or more on imports from China that many
economists say is going to raise prices for consumers. And his immigration policy if he carries out the deportation of twelve million undocumented workers in this country, an undertaking that I don't even know how something like that works or how long it would take. Nevertheless, that is going to put a huge hole in the construction industry, in the agricultural industry, and could possibly hurt the American economy. So we'll see how popular these ideas are after he begins to enact them.
Well, despite these long term concerns, and even before some of these key states we're talking about were called, we saw markets responding to Trump's lead. How did they respond?
Well, the dollar go stronger overnight in preparation for these tariffs to be enacted. It's very good news for bitcoin. He's a huge supporter of crypto and a number of markets rose and anticipation of certainty. I think it is not necessarily that they are happy Donald Trump won. It's they know who the president is and they are reacting to that.
After the break will dig deeper into the Trump campaign promises that could become the administration's policies and what it all means for the global economy. Wendy What if Donald Trump's promises on the campaign trail told us about what his next administration is likely to prioritize in office.
His priorities will certainly be the economy and immigration first and foremost. The difference this time is that in twenty sixteen, of traditional Republicans, because that was the only kind there was in twenty sixteen, joined his cabinet, joined his administration because they wanted to show this newcomer how government works and set up some guard rails for some of his more outlandish ideas. That's not happening this time. This time he is going to be surrounded by people who are
loyal to him. Loyal to him is the keyword, not the constitution, the rule of law, things like that. So I think there is some fear out there about the disappearing of the guard rails that were there in his first term.
What do tonight's results say about the future of abortion access in this country.
Well, it is certainly now a state's issue. There is not enough Democrats or pro reproductive rights members of Congress to codify Roe Versus Way to put abortion rights back into law, and so the Supreme Court decision to send it to the states and have a patchwork of laws all over the country seems to be now the way
it is. Remember also that there are still two Supreme Court justices who are nearing the age at which they might retire or pass on, and Donald Trump will have an opportunity with a Republican Senate, at least for the first two years, to appoint two more conservative justices on the Supreme Court, which would of course make the Supreme Court one of the most conservative in US history.
So if Republicans do maintain control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency, what will it mean for US spending on geopolitical conflicts like the war in Ukraine or in the Middle East.
Well, the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky put out a statement this morning congratulating Trump and looking forward to his decisive leadership, and that was the right thing to say. Diplomatically, Donald Trump is very much into making deals. He wants to make a deal with Putin. He wants Putin and Zelenski to come to a table and come to terms. Those terms would end up probably being more favorable to Russia than to Ukraine, and the US would no longer support
Ukraine and its fight against the invasion. It is also extremely good news for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kamala Harris had at least suggested some interest in the humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza, and what former President Trump has said is that bb Netanyahu's nickname Bib, needs to finish the job in Gaza. And so despite the fact that I think he got more Arab American support than one would have suspected, I think this is a very good day for Putin and Netanyahu.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by David Fox, Thomas Lou and Julia Press. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Wendy Benjaminson. This episode was mixed by Alex Suguia. It was fact checked by Thomas Lou Julia Press and Jessica Beck. Our senior producer is Naomi shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is
Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you like this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow