You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It's a KFI election desk mo Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. And just to give you an update, the electoral map is coming into focus and it's not looking good for Harris supporters. Former President Donald Trump, who's on the verge of becoming President Trump again, leads Vice President Harris two forty eight to two sixteen. I'm following Fox News and their projections and the races that they have called. Most recently, Georgia has been called for former
President Trump. And if you were listening, when I was sitting in with Mark Thompson and Tim Conway Junior, I was making the point that for each state the Kamala Harris would lose tonight that Joe Biden won in twenty twenty, she would have to make that up elsewhere. Georgia, we all know how important it was in determining Joe Biden's victory back in twenty twenty.
Joe Biden took Georgia.
Losing it tonight meant that Kamala Harris would have to replace those sixteen Electoral College votes somewhere else. Earlier in the evening, they said, well, it would probably have to be North Carolina, which is also sixteen Electoral College votes,
but Donald Trump took North Carolina. At this point, without getting into all the different scenarios, Kamala Harris would have to take Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania just about every remaining state for her to have a sniff of the presidency. But if you look at the numbers, she is trailing in Wisconsin by four points, trailing in Michigan by about
seven points, and trailing in Pennsylvania by four points. And in Pennsylvania, ninety percent of of the reported votes are in Long story short, there really is not a path for Kamala Harris. This is just me talking, is not an official projection by anyone, but just looking at the map as it is, there's real no path to victory
for Kamala Harris. That said, most recently, Centric Richmond of the Harris campaign recently addressed supporters at the campaign headquarters tonight at Howard University and inform the crowd in a very solemn way that Vice President Harris would not be addressing supporters tonight, but she would tomorrow. She would not make any statement tonight, either concession or acknowledgment anything like that.
Any statement or speech would be tomorrow.
And if you know anything about politics, you understand why that is. There are some states conceivably where they would finish within the margin of a mandatory automatic recount, which could, I don't know, maybe prolong the process if like, for example, if they were to finish within one percentage point of each other in Pennsylvania, there'll be a mandatory recount and that would prolong the process, and then you'd have Vice President Harris address the specifics of that moment in that moment.
And it won't be tonight, It'll probably be tomorrow. I have not seen well actually no CNN is reporting that former President Trump is going to address supporters tonight. We don't know exactly when, but they're saying it is soon and if it should be in the next forty five minutes or so, we'll bring that to live here on KFI AM six forty. And beyond the presidential race, if you look at the Senate map, it's pretty much locked in that the Republicans will have control of the Senate.
And that means that if we are talking about a forty seventh President Trump, he will be able to confirm, at least on a party line vote, all of his appointees, let's say his cabinet, let's say federal judges, any Supreme Court justices, if there's an opening, any of his cabinet secretaries, all of that will be They will be able to confirm without any opposition from the Democrats whatsoever. Even if it were a close vote, they would be presumably a
Vice President jd. Vance, who would be the tie breaking vote, So the Democrats would not have any leverage. There the remaining hope for Democrats, and that is not it's unclear as far as what's going to happen is in the House of Representatives. In the House of Representatives, obviously you control the power of the purse, You control a lot of bills that would get to the floor, in fact, all the bills, and you would have the Speaker of the House. Right now, the Republicans lead the Democrats one
eighty three to one fifty three. But the Democrats have a lot of races that they stand to win on the West Coast where they're much more left leaning.
That gap is going to close.
They need a total of two hundred and eighteen to control the House, and we may not know who wins the House, possibly for a number of weeks, that it may come down to California. We were talking earlier to Corbyn Carson talking about some of the races which are hotly contested in Orange County, surprisingly enough or maybe not so surprisingly, and those races may directly impact who has
control of the House. And if you have control of the House, you get determined the Speaker of the House, and you would be able to provide some resistance if you are a Democrat and would want to provide resistance against an eventual president Trump.
But that's where it all stands right about now.
And when we come back next segment, I'll be joined by Mike Dubuski, who will be talking to voters in Pennsylvania. We were just talking about that how presently former President Trump is up about four points and that could be the official end of this presidential race if Pennsylvania is put in the column of Donald Trump. So we'll check in with Mike Debusky of ABC News. Next, it's the KFI Election Desk on mo Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI Election Desks. I'm o Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. And joining me right now is Mike Debusky, ABC News reporter and Mike is on scene in Pennsylvania getting the temperature and the lay of the land.
Mike, how you doing this evening or morning?
D Yeah, good morning, I think is the appropriate thing to say here. Good evening to you. The latest from Pennsylvania is that we have about ninety three percent of the vote in in this crucial swing state, nineteen electoral votes up for grabs here in Pennsylvania, and Donald Trump leads by about three percentage points, at a little bit more than a two hundred thousand vote margin. Here in Pennsylvania. Right now, I'm sitting in Bucks County, in Newtown, Bucks County.
This is a.
District just north of Philadelphia, County, just north of Philadelphia, and it is a county that has gone blue since the late eighties. You have to go back to the George H. W. Bush Michael Dukakis election to find the last time that this particular county went to the Republicans.
But right now, though, I can tell you it is a Donald Trump held election with sixty nine percent of the vote in Donald Trump has one hundred and forty one thousand votes just over that actually, and Kamala Harris has one hundred and thirty seven thousand votes approximately, holding a slight lead here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, again a crucial county in a crucial state.
As it stands, it seems like if it holds, it numerically holds, this would be outside the margin of point five percent, which would before a mandate to recount.
Is that correct, right?
Yeah? And recount rules here in Pennsylvania are pretty interesting to pay attention to. So automatic recounts are triggered if a margin is less than are equal to zero point five percent of the total vote. So that is certainly in play as the remaining votes are count are counted. I should say, I'm talking with elections officials here and in these counties where we are still waiting on a pretty substantial amount of the vote to come in. They're saying there's a lot of votes left to be counted.
We're not having that conversation yet. And of course, if you think back to four years ago, we were waiting on Pennsylvania for a little while five days. As a matter of fact, it took for Pennsylvania to be called for President Biden at the time, and that is something that elections officials here have been trying to tamp down on.
They don't want to repeat of twenty twenty because that time frame, that five day period, allowed conspiracies to flourish and then for a general deterioration in trust in the system of counting votes here in the state of Pennsylvania. So elections officials have been saying that they have you know, trained their you know, vote talliers in a much more
robust way. They have better machines and more machines they can do this, and they expect this process to go a lot more quickly than it did four years ago. What that means on the ground, it's still sort of unclear. An election official told me yesterday that we could be you know, getting a final total around midday tomorrow. But you know, things change in a day, and that's certainly the case here in Pennsylvania.
Speaking of things changing from four years ago, please correct, please correct me if I have this wrong. Is it now that Pennsylvania was allowed to process and start counting the mail in ballots earlier than four years ago.
Right, so the absentee ballots are counted at the same time, that was seven am on this morning, or i should say, yesterday morning here in Pennsylvania. That it does extend the amount of time that it takes to tabulate those absentee balance. It's a big part of the REA and why we weigh around oftentimes for votes in Pennsylvania. There has been a number of lawsuits filed around mail in ballots. As
of right now, undated ballots are not going to be counted. However, voters in this state had until eight pm or depending on your county, potentially as late as ten PM to submit a provisional ballot in case you've mailed in your ballot and forgot to write the date on it. That also, all this extra stuff, these sort of edge cases, is going to prolong the amount of time it takes for vote talliers to make sure that the vote is accurate
and processed correctly. Means we might be sitting here for the next couple days or so.
Thanks to the Internet or blame the Internet, everyone kind of knows what is happening around the country. I know that you have been talking to Pennsylvania voters over the course of the day into the evening. What has been the general feeling about, not necessarily just what's happening in Pennsylvania, but according to Pennsylvania voters, what are they thinking about the larger picture.
So according to exit polls that we've put together here at ABC News, there are four main issues that voters voted on this election cycle. This is across the country, but it's absolutely reflected here in Pennsylvania. Number one, protecting democracy. That was an interesting issue to be seen at the top of this list. Under that the economy, which we're seeing show up in house races across Pennsylvania or down ballot races i should say, across Pennsylvania and across the
country as well. Below that, abortion and immigration. And I'll just say anecdotally and talking to voters of the last day or so, you know, we saw Vice President Kamala Harris hold that big rally in pencil in Philadelphia on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. Talking to voters going into that event, you could not find a single person who did not list abortion and women's rights issues. As the top reason they were voting this election day. That was the thing they had in their minds as
they cast their ballots. And similarly, on the other side of the aisle, right here in Bucks County where I am right now, less than a ten minute drive from where I am right now, JD. Vance held a rally at an athletic club here in town, and you're talking to voters going into that event. All of them listed the economy. They were concerned about wages, they were concerned about inflation, and generally unhappy with the economic policies of
the Biden administration. Saw Democrats over the past several years tout, you know, major economic gains that really didn't show up for a lot of people, at least here in Pennsylvania. That's what they've been saying that, you know, this sort of disperture between what they're hearing from the top estralons of government what they're actually seeing on the ground. Just they couldn't square that circle.
There's something that I personally want to know, and we may not know for a number of days until we get all the exit data. But there's a question of whether it was the issue that animated voters or whether it was the candidate, and the only constant between twenty sixteen, twenty twenty and twenty twenty four is Donald Trump. And if we look at Kamala Harris, she has been running behind Joe Biden just about across the country, from what the states that she was winning to even the states
that she was losing. Donald Trump is performing better in twenty twenty four than he did in twenty twenty. Is there anything that we can take away from that in the sense of was it something wrong air quotes with the candidate or was it the Democrats were talking about the wrong issues or both right?
And you're absolutely right to the site the comparison between how Kamala Harris is being received by voters from what we understand versus both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, we're seeing, really Kamala Harris only outperformed Joe Biden's twenty twenty performance in two main sectors. One is women and the other is college educated voters. And that's kind of the only two areas in the electorate where she is outperforming her predecessor.
And that is an especially star comparison. When we consider the talk about Kamala Harris just mere months ago that she was the more energetic can candidate, that Democrats had this sort of momentum and energy around them. They had been touting the word weird to describe their opponents, and they had memes and all these sorts of things that were floating around the campaign, sort of indicating a certain youthful energy and momentum to the campaign. In the months since, we've seen a shift in that.
All right.
We've seen the Harris campaign try to cater to median voters a little bit more. We've seen Republican endorsements be touted by the Harris campaign. Yeah, that is a different sort of strategy from the initial part of the campaign that we first saw kind of take off in mid summer. And you know, maybe that is part of the reason that resonated with voters or that showed up with voters.
It's really unclear. Again, a lot of the vote tally left to be counted here in some crucial areas in Pennsylvania, you know, here in Bucks County, as I said, about sixty nine percent of the vote is in, so we got a good chunk of that left to come. I was texting with a local elections official here just to kind of get an idea of exactly where are those votes are left, and he hasn't gotten back to me.
He may have very well gone to bed, which you know, reasonable a little jealous at this point, but you know that is kind of the nature of the game here in Pennsylvania.
Mike Debuski, ABC News reporter joins me and Mike before I let you go, one more question. We know that the Republicans are going to be taking control of the Senate and that is due in part to what it looks like is going to be the Democratic incumbent, Bob Casey losing in Pennsylvania if the results hold true. Is there anything that we can take from that?
Yes, so that is a huge race here. Now. It is worth mentioning that as of right now, ABC News has not projected a winner in the Pennsylvania Senate race. But if I can just pull up the numbers here and give you the latest, Dave McCormick, a former hedge fund manager, is leading in that crucial Senate race against Bob Casey, the incumbent Democrat who has held this position since two thousand and six, by a margin of two percentage points just about one hundred thousand votes. To separate
these two candidates. There is ninety two percent of the vote reporting in that particular race. This is a real big upset. Again, Bob Casey has held this Senate seat for a long time, and we've actually seen Dave McCormick take a run at the Senate seat in Pennsylvania before and fail. Back in twenty twenty two, he lost the Republican primary to doctor Oz, who then of course went on to lose the race to Democrat John Fetterman here
in Pennsylvania. Five point thirty eight analysis that this particular race leaned Democratic clearly does not seem like that shakedown in the actual vote tallies here. Still a little bit of the vote left to be tallied, but again it's not looking good for Democrats here in Pennsylvania.
Mike, after we get off the phone, do you get to go to sleep? Maybe soon.
I'm I'm not gonna in a similar way, We're not going to make a projection.
Mike Deboski, ABC News reporter, Thank you Mike.
So much for coming on tonight, of course, but take it. It's the KFI election desk. I'm mo Kelly. We're not done yet. We have more information on the local races, propositions, the measures, and also the national races and what is shaping up to be possibly a return to the White House by former President Trump.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It's a CAFI election Desk. I'm Okelly.
We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app or monitoring Trump Headquarters as the former president is about to address his supporters is a huge venue where it seems like it's eminent that he's going to speak, if and when he takes the stage, will bring those remarks to you live. I just want to give you a few anecdotes while we're waiting, and if you take a step back, and if you take the emotion out of it, I think it's fair to say that the Democrats did the best
with what they had. What I mean by that is, can we all agree that Joe Biden probably loses no matter what, and if it's not going to be Joe Biden. As far as the nominee, it was going to be most likely Kamala Harris. There was no one else out there. Yeah, there were plenty of people who probably wanted to be nominee.
But it was going to be.
Kamala Harris, and whether you like her or loathe her, how she ran her campaign, it was about as good as I think that she could do in one hundred days as far as generating an excitement within the Democratic Party, galvanizing people around her, turning out the vote.
It just doesn't seem to be that it was enough.
And there's a real question of whether it was possible, given what we're seeing tonight, whether it was possible for her to win at all. And if you asked me personally or privately have had this conversation with a bunch of people, I was always skeptical, always skeptical, but we're seeing at this point whereas well, Actually to Wala and I know you remember this, I had a big problem with believing whatever the polls were saying, especially in Iowa.
I was saying, like, you know, they had this outlier poll that she might win Iowa said, M, I.
Don't think so. And also these exit polls.
You know, it was like, Mmm, I don't know if people are telling the truth. And I think it is boring itself out that people were saying one thing as far as Polly not necessarily that the pollsters got it wrong. I think they took the data that they had and tried to make sense of it, and it said that the race was tight, but that was based on what people were telling polsters, Whereas I think it's more evident that people were telling polsters what they thought polsters wanted to hear.
Absolutely absolutely.
Unfortunately, we are seeing right now that anyone who thought, anyone who believed that Trump had gone too far and there's no way he could win. He said too much, done too much, look at him, this, that and the other. We heard you. We heard you loud and clear, and I know many of you believed that it was impossible. You're forgetting last election, he lost by just under one hundred thousand votes. That means half of the people in
this country voted for him. Right now, what we're seeing is every single person who voted for him last time coming out again, and then some those who are all hype in the streets over Kamala. I'm with her, I get it. Unfortunately, not enough of you were with her. I'm sorry. Well, math is math.
It comes down to it where people said that or believed that former President Trump had reached his ceiling, and maybe that was true. Maybe he did reach his ceiling, and maybe Kamala Harris did have a higher ceiling, but Kamala Harris on this night did not meet her ceiling or what was thought to be her ceiling.
Well, it's if you look at it like this. These numbers for Trump, I believe are comparable to his numbers for the last election. Unfortunately, numbers are not Joe Biden. They are just under where Joe Biden was. And you pointed this out on I believe it was Facebook where she is trailing under right under where Joe Biden was in every one of the battleground states. That math was not going to lead her to victory. Maybe she started
too late in the race. Who knows what the reasons are, But when it comes down to people getting up and voting, I know there's still some ballots still being counted, but it's too little, too late when you are calling these major battleground states.
Now.
To her credit and I mean this to her credit, given the circumstances of being put in a race one hundred days before the election, she did far better than I think anyone did. Because if you remember, we were trying to get her on the show back in twenty twenty, and she was ducking us and refused to come on. And I didn't think that she was ready in twenty twenty, and so the nation took a different look at her
in twenty twenty four. As far as fundraising, as far as excitement, as far as voter enthusiasm, it was far better than.
Whatever Joe Biden was ever going to lead to.
I don't believe Joe Biden would have performed even this well, well, I don't.
I absolutely don't want anyone to walk away.
I know.
Partisan politic politics aside, I know we vote for who we want to vote for, we vote for who we like. I hope no one walks away from this election thinking that she did bad. She did not win, but she did not do bad.
She is literally.
Still just just a few numbers short, just a few stayed short.
When it comes to voting. This is a great show. I'll tell you.
She will probably finish with more Electoral College votes than Donald Trump did in twenty twenty. That part the math is the math, and it just is not turning out in favor of Kamala Harris or the Democrats tonight. But she will, if I remember correctly, I think Donald Trump had two hundred and thirty two in twenty twenty, and according to Fox New she's sitting at two hundred and twenty six.
She'll probably win at least two or three more states.
So it's in an electoral college sense, it's not a blowout. It's not like that Donald Trump will have what they call that mandate. She did better than what Donald Trump did for you years ago, but not good enough in the same way that Donald Trump did not do good enough four years ago.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty and.
Fox News has called the state of Wisconsin for Donald Trump, and with that, they are projecting that Donald Trump will be the forty seventh president of the United States. And I'll say the the acknowledgement is making its way through Trump headquarters and they're beginning to celebrate. We're told that Donald Trump is supposed to take the stage momentarily. We don't know exactly when that's going to be. We'll stay with you until he does take the stage, and then
we could turn it over to him. I think that the Democrats obviously have some soul searching to do, and I can say, just personally, this is just me personally. I was disappointed that the Vice President Kamala Harris did
not address her supporters tonight. I think as a matter of course, you owe your supporters that they showed up, they voted for you, they came out to celebrate you, and even though it may not have turned out your way, I think you have a duty to acknowledge them and address the wider country as far as the moment that even though you may have come up short or you didn't necessarily reach your goal, at least the people right there and the supporters who have ridden with you for
the past one hundred days, I think they deserve to hear from Kamala Harris. That was a mistake, and hopefully she'll learn from that and we'll hear from her tomorrow. But I think she owed it to her supporters to address everyone and the nation tonight, but we're not going to hear from her. According to Cedric Richmond of her campaign, and we're still watching the Trump headquarters, We're waiting for former President Trump to come out and I.
Would say addressed the nation.
Yes, he's going to address the people in the room, but I'm quite sure he's going to address the nation as well. I can say that we still don't know about what's going to happen in the House, and we may not know until tomorrow or maybe even in the coming days, depending on what happens in California, but we do know the Republicans will control the Oval Office and
the Senate. So if you're a supporter of President Trump, he's already in a very good position to be able to affect his agenda, at least in terms of his appointees, at least in terms of how he may want to get the ball rolling on his legislative agenda, appointment of his attorney general, appointment of his cabinet, appointment of federal judges. There will not be any Democratic opposition, and to that, with exception of the Senate filibuster, and that just delays
the inevitable. But this is where we are. This is what it's going to be in twenty twenty five. Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. And with that you can address the elephant in the room.
His federal cases will probably disappear. Jack Smith his federal cases the January sixth, that will disappear, the state cases as far as Georgia, that may continue, but it was not on track that it was going to come to fruition because of all the problems with Fannie willis the New York case, the civil case that remains to be seen as far as how much money that he'll have to pay. The thirty four felonies, the state criminal case,
he will still be sentenced for that. I don't know how that's going to be impacted, if only because he may be considered a sitting president by the time. I don't know when the sentence was supposed to take place, so that is unclear.
I'm not so sure about that.
But he's still that's not something that he can pardon himself for because that's those are state charges, not federal charges. But the but the federal cases, we can assume that they're they're gone.
At this point.
We're still waiting to see if former President Trump, Donald Donald Trump is going to be coming out to the stage or I should say, when he's going to be coming out and addressing his supporters and also the nation. You know, we're always say how we're living through history. This is one of those moments. It's kind of amazing, it's kind of amazing, if only because given the turmoil of the Trump campaign, given the turmoil in America, he has triumphed once again and you can't take it away
from him. There's other state races, excuse me, senate races which are coming in that we're waiting to see. You may have heard my conversation with Mike Dbuski of ABC News. We're watching Pennsylvania whereas Senator Bob Casey, the Democratic incumbent, is trailing. I mentioned that because if Bob Casey does go on to lose, that would give the Republicans another seat in the Senate and make it even more easy for Donald Trump to enact his legislative agenda with even
a stronger majority in the Republican now Republican Senate. If he were to able to get the House as well, he would in effect control all the levers of government when you count the Supreme Court with the Conservative majority, and it's rare that you would have a president who would have the House, the Senate, and such a strong majority on the Supreme Court. But that's all depended upon
whether the Republicans take the House as well. And if you're just tuning in, Fox News called the state of Wisconsin for Donald Trump, and with that, Donald Trump is projected as being the winner and the next president of the United States.
That's Fox News. CNN is not there yet.
They're still showing the electoral map is Trump two forty six and Kamala Harris won eighty seven. But I think it's a fate of complete at this point. It's a foregone conclusion that it's just a matter of time before the other networks will catch up to Fox in that regard. Now, there's still ballots which have to be reported and tabulated in states like Pennsylvania, but as far as the path goes, there's no path for Kamala Harris to become president at
this point. And we're going to keep it right here. I don't know, Hey a second, we're going to talk across the border? Are we going to keep it right here? Are we going to go to the hour news break? We're going to newsbreak. But if he starts talking, we'll just jump right into it, all right, Vian, That's what we'll do. It's a KFI election desk. I'm mo Kelly. If you're just tuning in. Donald Trump has been projected as the forty seventh president of the United States by
Fox News. No other networks are projecting that as of yet, but that's where all of this is headed. KFI AM six forty We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
CAFI Election Desk.
Mo Kelly here, We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. And still former President Trump has not come into the room.
He's not approached the stage.
We are waiting for him to approach and address his supporters. I suspect that he has plenty to say. I'm quite sure he has some scores that he'll want to settle on the stage. He will lay out I'm guessing don't know this. I'm he'll lay out what his next four years may be like, and maybe some people that he wants to bring with him. He's made overtures that Elon Musk will be part of his cabinet. He has said that Rfk Junior maybe part of his cabinet as well.
We'll see if he'll follow through on that and what a new Trump administration may look like. And so, you know, all of this is going to be unclear. Maybe we'll see a softer side of Donald Trump now that he's one. I say, presumably he is one, and maybe he will not take the road that many expect him to take.
We'll see, We'll see, or maybe he'll.
Take it exactly in the direction that he said on the campaign trail. And we'll have to watch whether a second administration of Trump will be different from the first one. Hopefully it'll be different in which we won't have COVID or some sort of major issue to deal with. But this Trump administration is going to have to deal with what's.
Going on in the Middle East.
This Trump administration is going to have to deal economically with what's going on. We won't know how the stock market will respond to this. We don't know how economically the world will respond to this. There are a lot of unknowns, and we'll see what happens, and then we'll have to see how Donald Trump and his eventual administration will respond to it. Because there's nobody who's more popular than a politician the night he or she is elected.
And even though Trump has a very solid base, as we've seen tonight, there are still expectations, there are still things that he's going to have to do to satisfy people who push the Democrats aside and who are unhappy with the direction of this country. And joining us on the phone right now, we're watching what is happening at the Trump headquarters, and if Donald Trump should approach the stage,
we'll go right to it. But joining us right now is Loyola Law professor Jessica Levinson, also ke cou nine CBS contributor Jessica Levinson, Professor Levison.
How you doing this evening.
I'm so much better now that we get to talk. It's nice to be on air with you again.
We were going back and forth literally the whole day in the hopes of being able to connect. You are watching all this unfold. As I've been watching this unfold, part of me is surprised. Part of me is not surprised. But for you, I don't want to take it away from you. What do you make of this moment?
I think I feel both surprised and not surprised. I mean, I looked at the polls and it looked like it was going to be a coin toss. I then fell into a trap that probably a lot of your listeners do, which is I went on social media today and I probably curate my thread without even knowing it. And I saw a a bunch of Polsters who I trust, say, look at these lines and look at the early voting numbers, and this is going to be a landslide for Harris. And I thought it's not going to be a landslide.
But I did think, given the midterm elections, that the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs to overturn Rosy Wade was going to motivate a lot of women to go to the polls and vote for Kamala Harris. But what we have to remember is that we heard something and I'm sure you've been talking about this all night over and over again, which is that the economy was number one for the voters and that they felt that Trump would be better on the economy. So, I mean, I think
anybody who says this came out of nowhere. I didn't see it coming at all as somebody who just wasn't looking at the poll Yeah.
I never first and I said this to my listeners, I said, I take the polls with a grain of salt. I have always taken the polls with a grain of sault, if only because people I think are savvy enough, especially now in today's world, to know that they can manipu public perception by answering pole questions a certain way, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes intentionally, And the polls are reflection of the pollsters the questions which are being asked. And let's be honest,
some people just outright lie. They lie because they kind of know. If it's rass music, okay, I know what they're looking for. If it's gallop, I think I know what they're looking for, and they say what they think is best for whatever their circumstances are. That's why when I saw that it was a it was going to be a close racist, I don't I don't feel that.
I don't get that.
And yeah, we all curate our social media a certain way, but I never and anyone who knows me personally knows that I never really bought the idea that Kamala Harris was going to be elected. My question was was there going to be a repudiation of Donald Trump which was going to impact the Senate and the House.
That's what I was looking at.
But as far as President look to Kamala Harris's credit, let me see, here's the question I think she ran a near perfect campaign given what she had as far as fundraising, generating excitement, what have you. And she probably did better than a Joe Biden, and her ceiling probably was higher than what people thought Donald Trump was. But evidently, you know, her floor was lower than Donald Trump.
Am I wrong?
Well, no, I think you're not wrong. I mean, I agree with everything you said. I think this is if we're talking about repudiations, it feels like it's a repudiation of the current administration. And again, you know, I think that when it comes to the economy, perception feeds into reality, and we all know this when it comes to things like the consumer price index, that the more we feel the economy is not doing well or you know, consumer sentiment in general, that that actually has a real effect
on the economy. And people felt very rationally during the period of high inflation that the economy was not doing well for them, that they were paying more for things than they used to. And I think that Donald Trump did a very good job of saying and that is the Biden administration's fault. And you know, whether or not Karmala Harris could have done anything more, I think you're right to point to the idea that maybe that's not the question here. It's not the question of should she
has visited Pennsylvania one more time? It seems to me, you know, it's a very different question than the one we were asking twenty sixteen after Hillary, where I think that was not a near perfect campaign that she ran then. So, yes, it feels like I agree with everything you said about the polls. I think people tend to also not want to tell the truth that they think Upholster is going to judge them for saying, either in voting for Harris or in voting for Trump. I think people know they
can manufeulate the polls. Think a lot of people don't respond to the polls. It's clearly not a representative sampling. But the polls did hold in the sense that all of these states where they were in play, it looks like happened to break for Trump, but it looked like that was possible given the polls.
Yeah, I mean they were within the margin of air.
You're talking about four points in most of the states in which the polling showed it it was a toss up, So to be fair, they were within the margin of air. I just think that margin can't be manipulated to a certain degree and gives people a false sense of insecurity or security.
Well, I think that's right. I mean, and I think people look people in America as you know. I mean, we all live in bubbles. We live in geographic bubbles, we live in our own kind of ideological bubbles, and I think we tend to talk to and interact with people who agree with us. And so you know, it's that old joke the day after Nixon was elected, like, how could he have been elected? I don't know anybody who voted for him. Well, of course not, because we're
not particularly good at talking to each other. And I don't know what to say other than I think it will be fascinating to see how our balance of power plays out in the next four years. And what I really mean is the separation of powers. Will the Senate act as any sort of pushback against a Trump administration? What will the judiciary do? I mean to me, that's fascinating because we know that there is a difference between conservative judges and judges who are reviewed as Trump loyalists.
And one of the things I'll be watching is how much the judicial branch acts as kind of a safety valve against some what I would view as potential overreach.
Well, you talk about that potential overreach.
We know that if you're looking as a safety excuse me, if you're looking at the Senate as some sort of safety valve or some sort of bulwark against whatever Trump may do as far as his worst impulses, Well, the Republicans are going to be controlling the Senate, so less likely if at all, then right, Well.
I think that's right, And I mean, all indications are that the Republican Party plans to stand united behind Trump and that there are no real plans to have an intra party fight and push back against Trump's legislative agenda. I mean, we have to see what happens in the House. I was traveling home from a studio, as you mentioned, so I don't know currently what's happening in the House.
But if Republicans do control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, you can imagine that at that point the only pushback would come from potential legal challenges. And again, there are a lot of reasons to believe that those, depending on obviously the challenge that those might not be successful.
What about this and this is I'm going to play the other side of the conversation. How about the idea that this is just who we are as America. This is what we've chosen, this is who we've chosen, and there's not going to be any pushback because this is what we want.
Well, it's clearly what a majority of those voting in terms of translating to the electoral college want, and not being particularly articulate, just to say that it's not just a majority of those voting, it's under the electoral college. I mean, I don't think at this point there's a question that Trump won. And so having said that, I think there's a pretty big percentage of people for whom this is not what they want. But look for people who either voted for Trump and stayed home and supported
but support him anyway. Yeah, I mean, this is clearly who we are. And I don't know that those who voted for Trump, you know, fully support all of his policies or know what all of his policies would be. And I would say that for any candidate. That's not a slam on future president Trump. That's just to say that I think he can be kind of unpredictable and so I guess what I'm saying is in terms of this is who we are. I think this is who we are in the sense that we know who he
is and we re elected him. But do we know exactly what we're supporting. I think the answers no, because that's somewhat unpredictable.
Well, we're going to find out in short order. Loyola Law Professor Jessica Levison, thank you so much for staying up late. I know it's been a long day for you. It's been a long day for me and all of America. We're coming to the end of this presidential election cycle one way or the other, but I appreciate you spending some time.
With us this evening.
Thank you for having me.
We'll talk soon. It's the KFI election desk on mo Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Okay, so half of us don't like the numbers, but we're doing this election thing. Can we just get to the suing part now before Christmas?
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