Bloomberg Radio Special: President-Elect Biden

Hagar him maybe Morris. The accounting continues, but the election is over. Joe Biden is now the president elect. Let's bring in Emily Wilkins. Now. Emily is Bloomberg government reporter who's been with the Biden campaign in Wilmington, Delaware. Emily, want to thank you for taking the time with this um. Just first of all, set the scene for us. What is going on at the Biden campaign headquarters in Delaware. So we're it's a different bit of a campaign because

everyone is socially distanced. It's a really positive atmosphere both out here and inside the hotel where Biden campaign offers are finally being able to celebrate the fact that Biden will be the forties six president of the United States, I've gotta think, Emily, there's not just a feeling of celebration on the part of the Biden team, but relief that they've finally gotten to that electoral College count that guarantees them the presidency and the vice presidency. Here what

about that? I mean, the Biden campaign has had this very narrow line to walk in disregard. On one hand, they wanted to project compidence that Biden would be the next president even before the race was called. However, because Biden has spent the last several weeks warning Americans that if Trump tried to call the race early that that wouldn't be valid, he also put himself in a position

where he could not declare himself the winner. And so Biden has had this very, very very careful message of sort of everyone needs to wait, but we're up domestic. So I think the Biden campaign has just sort of slowly started to embrace us, and with the APIs call not only for Pennsylvania but also for Nazada, they can now say with confidence that Biden is going to be the next president and they're going to go forward Emily.

What is the work ahead? The Vice President elect Kamala Harris is tweeting that there's a lot of work ahead for them to do. What's that gonna look like? When does that begin? What do they start with? Oh, it has already begun. Biden has been working on this transition team for months. Uh. The other day, both he and Harris were briefs on both the state of the economy and the state of COVID nineteen in America. I mean, look, we're having a giant biking cases right now of COVID

that we're seen. We still have unemployment far down from where it was at the beginning of the year. There's a lot of work to be done here. And perhaps the most challenging thing is that Biden has promised again and again that he will be unite the country. But this has been ammenseally decisive election. We have seen an America that once again came out and we saw Donald Trump once again very similar numbers and very similar percentage to what we saw in and we're creaking a bit

of further division. If Trump continues to push and saying that this was a fraudulent election and deny the results of it, and so I think one of the big things that finding is going to have to do is really find a way to start uniting Americans. Is it going to be made that much more difficult, though, emily by the fact that at this point it does seem

as though President Trump is not ready to concede. Shortly after the calls were made by the major media organizations, the President came out and said this election is far from over. He's promising to begin legal proceedings as soon as Monday. It probably does make it a little more difficult for the fighting campaign, but I'm thinking that the fighting campaign. I don't think that the course of direction board is going to be determined by whether or not

Trump and the election. I think that's going to be more of affection for those within the Republican Party senator, lawmakers, top official on whether they want to continue Trump's message that's the election legitimate, or if they want to begin to accept the results as we've seen them called. We're also looking ahead to see how the president elect is going to be able to work with what appears to

be a Republican held Senate. Uh, is there any optimism that they'll be able to you know, cross those party lines and be able to sit down together and get things done, not just be all grid luck all the time. Obviously, Joe Biden would probably rather be working with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer instead of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Biden was in the Senate for a number of years, he has worked with these Republican lawmakers before. He has

worked with McConnell before. I mean he and McCombe do have a relationship that transcends the work one a little bit. McConnell was one of the few Republican senators to come to the funeral of bo Biden, and so he and McConnell do have the sort of repertoire that we might not have necessarily seen between Shay McConnell and Barack Obama. So there is a sense that Biden might be able to work with a Republican Senate and a House where

the Democratic majority has shrunk. It does mean that a lot of the big picture plans that he might have been hoping to pass, big things on Texas, big things on healthcare, those might have to be scaled back because they're going to have to pass in either a Republican Health Senate or a fifty fifty Senate. Are you starting to see, Emily, any tailoring of expectations in terms of the kinds of policy proposals that a Biden presidency could pursue with the kind of government it's going to be

facing come January. Just an extent, yes, I think everyone realizes that Democrats are only going to be holding two of these chambers, uh, and that Republicans are still either going to hold the Senate or have a very strong way in the Senate if it is divided. And so I think everyone does realize to a certain extent that, yes, things are going to have to be different than what they might have been if Democrats for going in with the White House. Thank you for this, Emily. That's a

Bloomberg government reporter. Emily Wilkins with us from Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. Straight ahead on this Bloomberg Daybreak special report, we'll look at the path ahead for policy for a president elected Biden. Terry Hayes, founder of Pangaea Policy, joins us. Next. I'm Nathan Hager along with Amy Morris, and this is Bloomberg. This is special coverage of the election from Bloomberg Radio. This is a Bloomberg Radio special

report bringing you the very latest on the race. I'm Nathan Hager, I'm Amy Morris. Some counting does continue, but we can tell you Democrat Joe Biden has defeated President Trump. Biden will become the forty six president of the United States. We want to bring in now Terry Haynes, the founder of Panji a policy. Terry, it is always a pleasure

to talk to you. Thank you for taking the time with us, um and we do want to let our audience know that President Trump continues to challenge this vote count. He continues with his court challenges. Terry. What's the likelihood that the president is going to get very far with this? Thank you, Amy and Nathan. I think that at the end of the day, Biden wins after all the challenges and Trump does not. There are you know, there's six

states that still matter. Uh at Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada. Uh, there are a variety of challenges there. I could bore you with details on them, and I will if you'd like, But uh, at Root, Uh, you know, even if even if all those challenges went Trump's way, I think that he still loses Nevada. Let's look ahead to what policy could be looking like going forward with a President Biden. What do you see being accomplished in the lame duck? Uh?

Where the markets are looking for some kind of stimulus to come out before the end of this year. I think that the stimul us when it comes, will be in the one point five trillion to two trillion range. Uh. And I'll tell you why I think that. Uh. Fundamentally, a lot of analysts uh completely missed the idea that are completely missed the how receptive Republicans are to having a stimulus. They think the position is that of there are the current Republican Senate, which is about half a

trillion dollars. But that was a conversation starter, you know, to get the get the Senate in the game more than anything else. Uh. The sweet spot here, both politically and for in terms of the economy is one and a half to two trillion dollars. That's kind of where everybody was coalescing around. But before the election, there was really no really no political consensus around the need to get something done, and there's no economic consensus that you know,

something absolutely needed to happen after the elections. I don't think it happens immediately after the elections. I think it waits since Ole Uh, the President Biden comes in. The reasons that very simply is that there is a there now they're likely to runoffs in Georgia for the Senate that will determine whether or not the Senate is Republican

majority or Democratic majority. Now I think it's likely to continue to be Republican majority, but it's not out of the question that the Democrats take both of those seats. So the politics don't yet coalesce around doing something serious about stimulus before uh, the end of January beginning of February. And the only thing frankly that could change that would be if the economy takes some kind of steep dive

similar to that which happened in March. Uh. Absolutely, you know, not out of the question, but nobody thinks that's going to happen right now, so I think you don't see it until February. Do you see the GOP driving hard bargains assuming that it is a Republican majority Senate that would be dealing with a Biden White House. Yeah, I see them driving hard bargains across the across the board. Amy. Uh. What I see out of a Biden presidency really is

is three market positives. One is that uh, there's general generally, there's fiscal stability. Uh. Secondly, the you know again that you have a code next COVID relief package and then one and a half to two trillion range, something that the economy will respond very positively too. And Thirdly, they get no rollback of UH policies that the markets really liked during during the sort of the Trump slash Senate

Republican coalition presidency. So tax bill isn't get rolled back, regulations don't get reimposed fully, all that sort of thing, but you don't really get anything else. It's I think it's always a misnomber to think that that there's two political parties involved here, when in fact there's four coalitions. UH coalitions are left to right, Democratic Progressives, Democratic centrists,

Republicans centrists, and Republican conservatives. They assembled differently this time, how they assemble in the assembled differently in the administration and the Trump administration. Now in the Biden administration, I think what you get is a situation where uh, Biden has atacked to the center, because if he doesn't, he's not going to get any cabinet appointees. Republican Senate won't

confirm anybody that's a sort of a left progressive. So, to use a an easy example, you don't get Elizabeth war and a treasure, even if she wanted it, even if Biden wanted it. You don't get that because Republican Senate would never confirm her. Uh So that's gonna the Republican Senate has a great deal to say about how Biden conducts his presidency. But as we all know that, Biden has another problem, which is the challenge from the left.

There's already some progressives who are already starting to say, you know, it's time to start the opposing a Biden presidency. Uh you know, it's uh amazing how quickly these things move. But they want to start being frustrated with Biden for his inability to to do everything that they want, even though Biden has no political ability in a practical sense to achieve any of those things where he'd want it. Uh So, what you've got is you've got a very

splendord Democratic Party. Uh Pelosi will not be able to exercise any influence on her own coalition, because she's effectively a lame duck, this being her last term as Speaker, as already agreed to when she became Speaker this time now, and so there won't be any ability for this is Pelosi to exercise any discipline on our own House members.

President ELEC. Biden now has to deal with a very fractured party of his own, as well as a Republican Senate and a Republican party generally that has absolutely no interest in helping him move anything else along other than the three basics that I already mentioned. But even before there's this issue of appeasing all these factions within the

parties themselves. You have to think, Terry, that the overwhelming focus of a Biden presidency, at least in the short term even then the medium term is going to be dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, and a Biden presidency is going to be addressing this a lot differently than the Trump administration has. I think they do to some extent, but the Biden is going to have to proceed very carefully and very cautiously. I think, you know, the people have lived with this for the better part of a

year now. Uh, and their own opinions. I mean, I'm just talking about general citizens. What people in Washington are now calling normis right, normal people, I'm saying, and uh, you know, normal people are going to have to deal with or have been dealing with this for quite a while. And you know, they have their own opinions starting to

be baked in. And you know, if if Biden goes whole hog on, say a mask mandate, for example, uh, you know, there's a whole slew of legal and practical issues about whether he could do that, but let's still let's say that that's where they want to start anyway. Um, you know it's gonna send a very bad signal to a lot of people in this country who think that that's overkill. Thank you for this, Terry, great having you

with us once again. That's Terry Haines, founder of Pangea Policy and coming up next on this Bloomberg Daybreak special report, President Trump is vowing to fight the election result in court. Does he have a legal path? Bloomberg Law host June Grasso joins me and Amy Morris. Next. This is Bloomberg. This is special coverage of the election from Bloomberg Radio. This is a Bloomberg Radio special report bringing you the very latest on the race. I'm Nathan Hager. I'm Amy Morris.

Democrat Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump to become the forty six president of the United States, even though President Trump says the race is not over. Let's bring in June Grosso now. She is the host of Bloomberg Law and our resident legal expert. June, I want to thank you for taking the time of this and maybe bring us up to speed on the court cases that may be coming up. President Trump says this race is

not over. What recourse does he have now, Well, that's the big question, Amy, And we've seen lawsuits filed in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. And most of these lawsuits are about the counting of the ballots and whether or not the Republican campaign was given the ability to observe what was happening. And lawsuits have been dismissed in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania over these various questions. It's unclear what else President

Trump would be contesting. And you also have to remember that even if he contest these votes. This will be taken place after those votes were counted, and it becomes much harder for a court to step in and say, we're going to discount the votes that these people cast using the friend chise. They cast them in reliance on the rules of the state and county, and we're now

going to step in and say they're not valid. That's a really high bar for any court, and it's really unlikely in my mind that President Trump would be able to do that, and apparently some of his own legal advisors, according to the Wall Street Journal, the White House Council on Thursday night, told the President that a legal campaign had little chance, no hope actually of overturning Biden's lead. So I have no idea where they would go with that.

The President has said that legal votes, if they were counted, he would easily win. If you count illegal votes as he characterizes that, uh, they would steal the election. Is how the president has characterized And what does he mean from your estimation by illegal votes? I think he needs votes that are fraudulent in some way. However, every vote that's cast is a legal vote until it's proven that

it's an illegal vote. So what happens is if there's a vote, and there are observers from both campaigns, and if there's a vote that one campaign says, let's say it's the Trump campaign says, this vote, it doesn't look like the signature matches, or this vote didn't match the requirements in some way. Then they go before a judge who looks at the vote and says, well, let me

see what I think about this vote. So this would have to be done on almost on a vote by vote basis, ballot by ballot, And in all the cases that we've seen so far, the judges have found that there has been no evidence at all brought by the Trump campaign to show that these votes, that any votes are illegal. Not one vote has been declared illegal in

these big in these big cases. And another thing is that most of these lawsuits, the challenge has been to the observation by the Trump campaign, in other words, how far away they're able to observe the ballots. In fact, when Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, was was talking about more lawsuits in Pennsylvania on Saturday, he talked about not having access to the ballot. Well, those claims sort

of die away. Once the ballot has been cast, because a court is not going to, you know, set everything in reverse and and recount those votes because the president's lawyer says, we were only allowed to be ten feet away instead of six feet away. That was the big quote victory that President Trump tweeted about that the campaign had achieved in Pennsylvania, and that was that they got

to observe the vote a little bit closer. Uh. June, I'm just wondering, and I'm not sure that you'd be able to answer this, but let's just chew on this for just a second. You mentioned Rudy Giuliani, who has been advising the president, who seems really determined to move forward with any court challenges, whereas the president also has other legal advisors who have said publicly that this is over, let's wrap it up and call it a day. Who

would have the president's ear at this point. Who was the president more likely to listen to or or take the advice from. How is this going to play out?

That is a very difficult question to answer because I'd have to be inside the president's But what I will say is that it seems as if the president right now is listening to the people who are saying, let's pursue legal action, because from the Trump campaign that's really all we've heard, and from the President's tweets that's what we've heard, and from the President's son Eric as well as his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani that they're going forward.

And just on Friday, the Republican National Committee was sending legal teams to Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. So it looks like it will go on, even though I think that any lawyer who was looking at the scenario would tell the president that it's time to stop the lawsuits. Well, we'll see how long it goes. Bloomberg Law host June Grosso, thank you for this. Good having you on with us

on this special report for Bloomberg Daybreak. Just ahead, we'll look at how President elected Biden got to victory and the policy path ahead with Bloomberg Government reporter Greg Jarrou and I own a college political science professor, Genie's a No. I'm Nathan Hager, along with Amy Morris, and this is Bloomberg. This is special coverage of the election from Bloomberg Radio. This is a Bloomberg Radio special report bringing you the

very latest on the race. I'm Nathan Hager, I'm Amy Morris. Democrat. Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump to become the forty six president of the United States. We want to bring in Greg Darron now he's our Bloomberg government reporter covering Congress. And Jenniezno Bloomberg News contributor, political science professor at Iona College. And Greg, let's just very quickly start with you. Why now, why did they decide to call Pennsylvania?

What put Joe Biden over the top. Well, there's a trancher votes early Saturday counted in Pennsylvania, specifically Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Democratic strongholds that gave Joe Biden the uh an advantage in the in the vote total, gained a number of votes in those two communities that basically made Biden's lead in Pennsylvania large enough for Trump that Trump couldn't overcome.

All right, let's bring in Jennie's a know of Iona College. Obviously, Jennie, the former vice president is over the top now, but President Trump does not appear as though he's going to concede. So what happens now, at least politically so the president has indicated. President Trump said he is going to go ahead with litigation and that he is not conceding this race.

That would be quite unprecedented, as no president in modern American history has refused to concede a race, and in fact, many of those concessions are you know, I was just watching a taping of many of them, and they are absolutely moving, very difficult moment for the individuals involved. President

Trump may, of course change his mind. I think we're going to see some pressure increasingly from Republican leaders for him to do that unless there is real solid evidence that they can bring into court to show that the election was stolen or that there was some kind of problem at the polls, which would result in not just

a recount, but an overturning of these results. And need to stress, very unprecedented in America, at the presidential levels certainly and at other levels for a recount or this type of litigation to result in overturning an election unless the election is just within hundreds of votes, and at least at this point, what we're seeing now is we're talking thousands of votes in the states that are under question.

So I think we may the litigation. We don't expect we're going to see a concession at this point, but I think going forward there's going to be pressure for President Trump to concede. And then, of course, on the Vice President Elecs part, we're going to see him and his team start to think about the all important issue of transition and creating a cabinet. First on the agenda is of course dealing with the issue of COVID, healthcare and the economy that's been devastated by what's happened over

the last year. Jennie, I just wanted to ask you about some of the historical perspective. You just addressed the historical perspective of challenging this outcome. But let's remember President Trump was the first president whoever had never run for

office before until running for president and then winning. Also, we now have Vice President elect Kamala Harris, the first black person, the first person of South Asian descent elected to the office, also the first woman elected to that office, and Joe Biden, I believe, maybe the oldest president ever

elected to office. If you could tie all of that together and just tell us about the history that we are witnessing as it unfolds, now, yeah, it's absolutely really just an important point and I was going to say also emotional for many people you mentioned, in particular Kamala Harris, the first woman. You know, women have been waiting so long to get in the upper echelons of leadership in this country. She has broken the glass ceiling at you know,

one step away from the presidency. And she is an Africa woman of African a woman of Asian descent, I should say, in an African American woman. So this is you know, historic by you know, all of those marks you mentioned. Vice President Joe Biden the first person since Ronald Reagan to run for president unsuccessfully as many times as he did, and then to win as he has at this point being being president elect, So that is historic.

His age is historic. And of course we're in the midst of a pandemic, and we've also seen on the part of the American voter historic turnout. So you know, there's just so much history being made here. I think it's important that we all take a step back and

think about this. And I think that you know, depending on what happens in terms of a potential concession from Trump, um, we also are seeing you know, a really uphill battle for president elected Biden as he begins to make good on this promise about bringing the American people together after a really, really tough campaign, and we have to remember that, you know, half of the people who voted are almost half of the people who voted. This is not the

outcome that they wanted. And so we may also see some protests. Hopefully we don't see any violence, but that is also, you know, not something we commonly see after a presidential election. And Greg Guro of Bloomberg Government talk a little bit more about how difficult it could be to bind the nation's wounds together from a policy perspective, given that we are likely to see a continue divided government in this country if Republicans, as it seems to

be indicating right now, continue to hold onto the Senate. Yeah, that's right. I mean, Joe Biden won a clear victory in the presidential election, but more than seventy million people will have voted to re elect Donald Trump, and so Biden is trying to forge unity in togetherness in the country because there were a lot of people who did not vote for him as president and he will be serving as president. And Kamala Harris as Vice president with a Senate that more likely than not will be controlled

by the Republicans. At the moment, the Republicans have the advantage in fifty seats and the Democrats and forty eight. And the only way that Democrats can forge a fifty fifty tis if they win a pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia in January, defeating two Republican incumbents, and that would make Chuck Schumer majority leader in a fifty fifty Senate. But the Republicans could control the Senate with fifty one

or fifty two seats. But whatever the number is, it's going to be very difficult for Biden to get a lot of his sweeping progressive legislation enacted because in the Senate you often need sixty votes to advance a lot of the signature legislation. And in the House, the Democrats still hold the House, and that's a plus for Biden, but it's with the reduced majority, and so it's not going to be easy to get big legislation through a

Democratic controlled House. Senate that will probably be controlled by the Republicans but very closely divided, and be signed into law by a Democratic president. And we are talking with Greg durow, Our Bloomberg government reporter covering Congress, and Jennie Zanno, Bloomberg News contributor and political science professor at Iona College. Greg, just to follow up with you, what happens next? It's over, but it's not over because the states still have to

certify the vote counts. Right, what's the process next? Yeah, So the state certification processes are kind of vary by the jurisdiction. You know that. I think Trump has asked for a recount in Wisconsin where the lead is about twenty votes, and you know, you can ask for recounts if the margin depends on the margin in the state and under state law. But um, as Jennie mentioned, um, the recounts rarely reverse the outcomes of elections. Maybe, if the vote was the margin was two hundred votes or

two thousand, you'd look at a recount process closely. But when we're talking about twenty votes or by half a percentage point or percentage point, recounts do not reverse that. So, you know, the the certification process will basically basically confirm what we know now about the totals and people they'll finalize the totals. It will increase the vote numbers, and once, once we get a complete count of votes, will definitely confirm that this was the largest turnout we're all turnout

in the history of presidential elections. And with the kind of turnout that we've seen, Genie's a know of Iona College, what kind of mandate does that give to President elect Biden to pursue the agenda that he ran on. He don't have a mandate, and we we expect that then actually his his vote totals may increase a bit from what we're seeing now, but again can't forget that, you know,

President Trump also had historically large support as well. So the President elect Biden goes into this the highest vote getter of any presidential Canada in history, and President Trump gets number two on that. So that is something to keep in mind in terms of how divided we are. And as much as Biden is going to claim a mandate, um it is something he's going to happen negotiate. Then also,

you have a divided American public. So his number one task is going to be to make good on this campaign promise, to bring the American public together, to try to pursue so many important policies he has in his agenda Number one being COVID, dealing with that in terms of getting a stimulus package through which is very important to him, re establishing the economy, and figuring out what he can do to negotiate with Republicans in the Senate

on things he promised, whether we're talking about tax restructuring, which he talked a awful awful lot, about healthcare reform, or things like infrastructure, which I suspect will have more luck getting an agree amen on out of Congress. And Je last question just wanted to ask about what happens next as far as President Trump is concerned. He would be the outgoing president, presumably with Joe Biden as the

new president elect. But what if the president does decides he does not want to concede, which is what it sounds like right now. Yes, certainly what we're hearing. And again, you know, unprecedented in the modern era. We've never had a presidential candidate in the moderate era refused to concede

concessions or something. You know, we've had a peaceful transfer of power since eight hundred of bitterly contested election in this country, the first in history where you had a transition from one party to another, and it was of course peaceful concessions then later became part of sort of the way that we do things in the United States, and we've never had somebody lose and not concede. But we need to keep in mind concession isn't required. President

Trump does not need to make that phone call. He does not need to graduate Joe Biden in order for Joe Biden to be president. But it would be unpresident if he didn't. And I would just say, in history, we have had candidates who are not you know what we would call gracious losers. You know, people like Charles Evans Hughes, people like Thomas Dewey, very goldwater. They have not been as sort of graceful in their concessions and in their acceptance of the reality. Thank you for this.

Genie's a no Bloomberg News contributor and I own a college political science professor. Our thanks as well to Bloomberg government reporter Greg Arrow covering Congress for us so admirably in these months of watching this campaign, and you have

been listening to a Bloomberg day Break special report. Stay with us through the weekend, and again, first thing, Monday morning, as we continue to track what's happening with the election, the legal battles that have been promised, as well as the path ahead for White House policy for a president elect Joe Biden. I'm Nathan hey Girl along with Amy Morris and this is bloomerm