Why on Skynese. This is Sharry.
Welcome to our special live coverage on this historic night. Donald Trump will be the forty seventh president of the United States. And this is a political comeback for the ages from impeachment, the threat of jail, and even centimeters away from death in assassination attempts. And what an extraordinary night it's been. It wasn't close in the end. This is in fact closer to a landslide win for Trump. The President elect claimed victory before a euphoric crowd.
I will fight for you, for your family, and your future. Every single day, I will be fighting for you, and 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.
This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again.
Oh.
Speaking just over an hour ago, Donald Trump also welcomed his new VP, who he said turned out to be a good choice.
I want to be the first to congratulate our great now I can say Vice President elect of.
The United States. Job will.
Say a couple of words here.
Wow.
Well, mister President, I appreciate you.
Allowing me to join you on this incredible journey.
I thank you for the trust that you have placed in me. And I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.
This is an extraordinary night. It is one you will never forget. You have to watch the full coverage here on Sky News. And in that speech, Donald Trump also spoke about his near death experience.
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 greet this and now we are going to fulfill that mission. Together, We're going to fulfill that mission.
Donald Trump also credited Elon Musk. He described him as a new star, and in a unifying message, Trump said it was now time to heal the nation.
It has to be said.
Trump has tonight also won the national vote, and you can see he's won close to fifty one or more than fifty one percent of the vote. His victory tonight is decisive. This is how the electoral map is now looking. Basically, a red wave. Fox News is currently projecting that Trump will win at least two hundred and seventy seven of
the electoral College votes, and that's just so far. In his speech, Trump predicted that he might even end up winning three hundred and fifty of the electoral College votes. We'll see Kamala Harris is currently sitting at two hundred and twenty six states. The Republicans will also take control of the Senate and likely even the House of Representatives.
Now, about five.
Or six hours ago, this initially looked like it was going to be a close race, and that's what the polls were telling us. But then the seven battleground states all seemed to be going in Trump's favor as we got an air right now, here's where they all stand, the so called blue wave turning mostly to a red wave. And the only states that haven't been called by Fox News so far, I'm Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Alaska, those
four states remaining. The result was clear by one thirty am local time in New Yorker in Washington, and you remember at the last election in twenty twenty, it took three days before there was a decisive result. Donald Trump delivered his victory speech at two thirty am local time. It is a certain defeat for Kamala Harris, but tonight she refused to concede. She didn't even turn up to that or address her supporters who'd been waiting hours to hear from her.
We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every voter's counted, that every voice has spoken. So you won't hear from the.
Vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. Now, this was a replica of twenty sixteen, when Hillary Clinton also went home and only front of the nation the next day. For a while, the results were nail biting for many people watching, barracking for one team or the other. But here's the moment that the news broke on air that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States after he'd won Pennsylvania.
In what is going to be the biggest political phoenix from the ashes story that we have ever seen.
This is a huge historic moment in the United States of America as the former president Trump is closing in with just a few electoral votes away now from clinching to seventy as Pennsylvania is called for Donald.
Trump there is no path, brit Hume for Vice President Harris.
That was the moment.
The markets and cryptocurrencies reacted very well to the news that Trump would return to the White House, but not so much the TV hosts on MSNBC. They could barely hide their upset, and one called the whole of Florida an extremist, right wing fascist state.
It's a pure Project twenty twenty five in miniature in Florida. And that kind of extreme, sort of extremist.
Right wing fascist type government in Florida.
Does that make it a more attractive place?
There are African American women who know a little bit about being talked down to, you know, a little bit about having their economic dreams crushed, who tried.
To dream a big dream over the past couple of months.
The postmodern for what went wrong with the Kamala Harris campaign has already begun now.
Democrats tried to make this election about.
Identity and personality, but this result tonight is all about policy. It's about the economy, the cost of living crisis, the border and immigration crisis, crime, foreign policy, national security, and leadership of the free world. These are the issues that Trump fought his campaign on the Democrats couldn't fight the election on policy because Kamala couldn't distance herself from the current administration, which of course she was part of. Instead,
she attacked Trump's personality. She called him a fascist, a hitler, and Nazi, and the Democrats even claimed that democracy in America would come to an end.
If Trump won.
And here was Winfrey with that very message on election Eve.
If we don't show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.
And this was also an election about the elite and the well off versus regular Americans struggling to make ends meet for their family. Celebrities came out for Kamala Harris, while Trump's so called Bros Strategy seems to have paid off. And this has been an incredible night for Trump supporters and for Republicans. And we've got full coverage on the show tonight, starting right now with host of The US Report and Outsiders, James Morrow in North Carolina.
James, great to see you.
What were the final issues here that was so decisive in some of these battleground states that really came in hard for Donald Trump.
Well, I can just tell you, Sherry about my experience here in North Carolina the last few days. Everything people talked about, you know, it was very uniform. All the Trump supporters said the same thing. Economy, immigration, these were the big things. They felt like the country was out
of control. And I'll tell you what. We were in California earlier in the week and there where we met Trump supports, they had very similar concerns, you know, And it's really interesting to me because once upon a time the Democrats got this. You know, Bill Clinton knew this, James Carville knew this. It was the economy stupid, they
knew this. And then somehow, over the decades they kind of abandoned that, and they got further and further caught up in their own sort of obsessions about things, and they became so unable to pivot back to where they used to be. They vacated the field for Donald Trump, who on so many issues actually would have been almost like a centrist Democrat thirty years ago.
James, the polls were predicting this was going to be a very close result tonight, and it looked like it was going that way for a while. But it looks like it could be quite decisive for Donald Trump. At the moment, Fox News has two hundred and seventy seven Electric College votes here and in need of the two
seventy but it could get higher than that. There's still four states where the votes are being counted as we speak, so in the end, this might actually not be the knife edge deadlocked result that everyone was predicting.
Well, I mean, in fact, the fact, Sherry, that we are talking about this result tonight and not saying, oh, gosh, well we're gonna start the counting again tomorrow in Pennsylvania
and Michigan. You know the fact that we're I even talking about that, and that where you saw all the numbers come in, Harris consistently underperformed everywhere across the map, so that even when you know they still had huge amounts of absite ballots to count in big cities like did and Pennsylvania or Philadelphia and places like that, you know, they're just mathematically weren't going to be enough in there to get Harris over the line. So that's what we're
able to talk about this tonight. The other interesting thing, Sherry, too is the popular vote, and if Donald Trump can eke out a real proper you know, fifty point five percent even when in the popular vote. This will shut down so many critics, you say, oh, well these illegitimate. The electoral college, is this threat to democracy? You know, we heard this so many times here from the left that you know, it is the electoral college that was a real problem. And you know, it just shows that
Kamala Harris failed to perform. But it's no surprise she was a failure to perform because she's never been a great performer in anything she's done politically in the past.
Yeah, the Democrats were relying on the youth vote, also the women, but those votes either didn't come out strong enough for her or you know, I mean, particularly when you look at the youth vote, yep, sew like the Democrats won college educated women, but not necessarily young men.
Young men absolutely ran a mile from the Harris campaign. And you know, I think the Democrats have to only themselves to blame for this. You know, and this happens every cycle, but it's been happening more and more recently. You know, the Left has become a very feminized party. You can say, you know, well, with a lot of their policies are concerned about abortion rights, reproductive rights and
all that sort of things. But also, you know, the talk about things like toxic masculinity, you know, and the sort of attacks on just sort of the male gender is kind of this sort of problematic sort of idea, and so guys picked this up. They're not stupid, and they feel like they're not welcome, and so you know, they look, what does Donald Trump have to offer. Well, you know, he's got Joe Rogan, Dana White, and you know, he's making them feel welcome. So it's like a no
brainer for young men. But also, you know, women also, I think felt fairly patronized by this, this whole campaign of Harris, because it sort of talked to them, talked down to them, like, oh, you know, you need our protection and so on, and I think it was quite
patronizing to some of that. We said, you know, actually, there are more important issues I'm not just concerned about, you know, your particular radical interpretation of you know, there's be abortion for all forty weeks of pregnancy, you know, which a lot of women find quite horrific. But also you know that like women, like everybody else, have to live in the real world with grocery prices and gas prices and food prices and everything else, and they said,
you know what, this is not working for us. We need to go back to where things were before.
I think, as I just said a moment ago, the Democrats tried to make this all about personality, all about Donald Trump as a man. That's what they fought against, whereas Trump was fighting on policy issues, and the most critical of which that we saw from the exit polling.
Was the economy.
And you know, just like in Australia, the United States is going through a cost of living crisis. There is a sense that the economy that people were better off under Donald Trump when he was last president. They're not happy with how things are going at the moment. You know, surely not all of that is necessarily the fault of Biden. But Donald Trump did lay out strong economic policy plan, and this was one of the main issues, the biggest issue that voters supported Trump over.
You know, that's the thing. He articulated plans, He talked about things he wanted to do. He talked about things that were unpopular, like tariffs with economists and you know, the sort of people who make opinion and things like this. But people understood what he was talking about and something the voter told me in California really struck me. He said, you know, one candidate doesn't tell you anything. The other one tells you what they're going to do or what
they want to do. You might not like it, but at least you know where they stand. And I think again, Kambala Harris just left the field vacant. She came out with beyond Cardi B and a bunch of you know, second ate celebrities and you know, big deal, but that doesn't affect anybody's praise of groceries. And it was from the start with Harris, it was a vibe election. It was.
It started out with joy and that oh jd Vance is weird and all of these different sort of emotional triggers and pulls, but nothing that actually was practical.
Yeah, indeed, And how embarrassing was that moment, by the way, when Cartie B got up there, she didn't have her speech and everyone had to wait for a full minute or more until she got her.
Speech because she just couldn't read.
She couldn't speak without having a teleprompter. So, you know, not even the celebrities work for Kamala Harris. James Murray doing a terrific job, and you've put an all nighter, So thank you very much for joining us.
All right for more coverage.
Now, let's bring in former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger and former labor minister Graham Richardson. Now, mikeel, I'm going to say it before you do. You were the very first person to call this election, even when the results were through. What time was it when you texted me saying that Trump had won something like one o'clock today?
Well, that was well, there was obviously at one forty four in one and to those good folk at Fox News in America, he won all the seven seats. There's not four in down. Trump won all seven. He's well into the three.
I haven't officially yet, but I'm just oh, okay.
All right, Well I'm officially I officially declared them at one forty four Trump had won. It was very obviously one and my only you know, as you know I've been saying for the last few weeks, I thought his favorite many hesitation was I didn't know whether the polls had caught up with a shy Trump Voto effect. And what is very clear that none of those poles in America had caught up with a shy Trump voter effect.
They still haven't got it right. Whoever runs the news poll in Australia or to open an office over there and start polling America, because these clots that poll in America have no idea. Listen to this, Shari. CNN published a poll two days ago. They had Harris winning by five in Michigan. She lost by six. They're eleven percent out. They had it winning by six. In Wisconsin, she lost by four, ten percent out. They all had winning the
popular of age. She's five million behind. And as Shawn Spison mentioned that this will go down history that the New York Times reported this Pole and Iowa by the they described her as the revered independent polster Anna Selsa, who had Harris winning by three. She lost by fourteen.
So what's the point of this. The point is none of those polls in America have ever been able to work out the shy Trump voter effect, which was why you know cn inn an MSNBC hoodwinked all those people into thinking that Harris was just in front or very competitive, when in fact, as we know now, she was four percent behind.
I think this.
Result says so much as well about the attitudes of ordinary people. They don't want to be told what to do by celebrities. They don't want it to be told what to do by the mainstream media outlets, by the political elite. You know, they're going to vote their own way. And it was just such a devastating result for the Democrats from that perspective as well. Now, Graham Richardson, I have to say to you commiserations because you were hoping Kamala would win. How devastated are you tonight?
I think shattered would be a reasonable description. No, I think it's I'm very sad about it. I thought it might go the other way. But you know, I'm full of admiration for Trump. It's not easy to lose the presidency, wait four years and come back. It's not easy to do. It takes semina and it takes that kind of of a character that will not ever take a backward step. And you have to admire that. Doesn't matter where you stand in politics, this is all Trump. He's had a
brilliant win. And I think if I was a Trump supporter, the sham playing corks would definitely be a popping tonight.
Yeah, you imagine that a lot of not just Americans, by the way, a lot of Australians would be celebrating watching television tonight as we speak now, I bet that your mate Albo will be just as devastated as you are.
Rich.
Oh but here he was tonight reacting to the news.
Have a look.
The relationship between Australia and the United States is an important one for our country. It's a relationship that's important to our national security, to our economic trade, but importantly as well, it's one based upon democratic values and I look forward to working with the incoming presidents. I have done with President Biden in Australia's national interest.
Michael Kroger, there is no question this will be a nightmare scenario for Anthony Albertezi and his government.
Very bad result for Albinezi because it shows that the working middle class that we talk about a lot on Sky not intimidated or influenced by the elites. Look at the Voice campaign if you want any more proof of that. They want to They've drained the swamp again in America and all those pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Springsteen and all these people
wallowing around in the swamp. When you're working three jobs and can't make ends meet, you really don't want to be elected to by a pop singer or a TV star.
You really don't, right, you really don't.
That's why Trump's people were working class people, right. Marck Evans in a different category. But Dana White, Hulk Hogan, Bryson, Deshambeau, Joe Rogan, the people he had behind him far more have far more in common with the working class. But Albow's biggest problem at the minute is Kevin Rudd. So he can't sack Rud, nor will he, but Kevin Rudd or to do the decent thing for his country and
resign as ambassador. He knows that Australia's interests are not best served by him being the ambassador, given the shocking and appalling things he said about the incoming United States President Trump should say Rud should say, listen, I'm going to damage Australia's national standing within America by me staying as ambassador. I'm tendering my resignation. Any decent ambassador, a Peacock, a Beasley or Hockey, anyone who said that about the US president would resign.
But you know what, you.
Know, I agree Rudd's remarks were so deeply offensive, but I do think he has been working very hard to try and build bridges with the Republicans.
You know who I think is going to really.
Struggle bit late, Shari.
Penny Wog.
Penny Wong will really struggle because already there was this schism opening up between Australia and the United States on various policy issues, Israel being one of them. All that with our United Nations vote, and that was under a Biden administration. Under a Trump administration, you've got climate change, You've got the Middle East, You've got so many other issues, China for one, where the US is going to be a lot more forward leaning.
And you know, how's Penny one going to handle that?
She will be truly devastated tonight, which quite delights me.
Richo, What do you think about that?
Yeah? I think it wouldn't be Penny's best night, that's for sure. But I think Trump worries me in one sense. He's always been an isolationist America first, second, third, fourth, etc. He's always had that view, and I just hope that view is moderated considerably in this term of his presidency, because we need America to not be isolationists. We needed to lead the world. We needed to try and stand
up against an ever more confident China. So, as far as I'm concerned, there are some really good points about Trump getting up. I can think of view and are not so good. But let's look on the right side.
What do you think about that point, Michael Kroger, You know, the isolationist leanings, which by the way, JD. Vance, you know, has worrying signs of. I think there are other very strong Republican figures who set the tone for foreign policy in the last administration, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Michael McColl a lot of those figures who really made sure that America still was the leader of the free world when Trump was president in twenty sixteen.
Yeah, I do agree with Graham, though I don't like his isolations approached best evidence by his position in the Ukraine. I mean, what is he thinking? I mean, this is another civilizational battle. So but look, you know, what do we know about Trump? He doesn't like wars. He likes American military power to be used to say when it's used, which you used against the ISIS leader, which he used
against ISIS back in twenty nineteen. I would expect him, as he has said, to get on the phone, to putin very soon and say this war's got to end. And I think he's going to put massive pressure on Iran. He knows that a solution in the Middle East can only happen, can only happen, This whole notion of the two state solution, peace in the Middle East, it can only happen when Iran are not funding the terrorist organizations
in Gaza, on the West Bank and in Lebanon. Trump knows that, and so I think Iran are going to be under great pressure sooner rather than later. I think he's going to be a success on foreign policy. The Abraham Accords, which we've talked about it for were a brilliant step forward, and I think he will probably more than any other president in the last twenty thirty years, he more than anyone as I hope, of bringing some kind of lasting peace to the Middle East.
Yeah, yeah, all right, let's hope you're right on that point. Michael Kroger, Graham Richardson, thank you for joining me tonight. All right, let's bring it now Sky News contributer Kosher Ghada Kosher.
Great to see you.
Look, firstly, what's your reaction to this result? There have been some critical states that have flipped in Trump's direction.
Were there any surprises for you?
I would say, Shari, no surprises in terms of the cautiously optimistic scenario that people were holding.
Nobody knew what was going to happen.
But there's a bit of a rising tide phenomenon, and once we saw which way the momentum was moving, everything was falling into place.
You know. For me, I just say, what a ride.
This has been the greatest story arc in American political history if you think about where it started, and it was always going to be a trilogy, knowing Trump with where it started in twenty sixteen, and this outside wrecking ball billionaire businessman came in, defeated the Bush dynasty, the Clinton dynasty, sixteen other handy Republican candidates, one delivered on a lot of his promises, got hit with COVID and a change the election system January sixth, all of that,
and then you look at where he was on rock bottom, sort of arc two of that story. Everything he faced from being kicked off the ballot, to getting shot, indictments, being raided, being indicted, convicted, all of that, and now to come and do this thing, which is really is a repudiation. I think of the entire machine against him that was going for that. Because he has swept all seven we think it's not official yet, but he's on track to sweep all.
Seven swing states. We'll see what happens.
Taking the majority in the Senate, the House looks quite strong, and possibly even the popular vote, which hasn't happened in twenty years. So that's a huge moment I think in US history to look back on. And in that sense, I guess it is surprising if you look at the whole story arc of the trilogy that has been Trump's political career.
I mean, we talk about his political comeback as you just have when you reference the impeachments, all the civil and criminal cases against him. At the political law fair, he's near death experience where that gunshot just came centimeters away from his brain.
He could easily be dead, but kosher.
We also forget that the seventh of January twenty twenty one, half of his party had abandoned him. He was politically toxic. Not just his party, but a lot of Americans turned away in horror. So even from that perspective, for him to win back the confidence of the people to be elected in such a decisive results tonight is quite astonishing. What do you think were the most successful tactics that he used in his campaign?
Used that made this happen.
One hundred percent? So I think it's three things. The message, the messaging, and the mechanics. The message, which you talked about at the top of your show. The policy positions where he always was trusted as somebody who was a strong leader, had a different way of looking at trade and migration, different economic things, culture wars and all of that.
So he's always strong on that and.
He just never relented on that, and he really had his finger on the pulse of where the gap was frankly in the Republican establishment as well as the Democrat Party on that issue.
Set.
The second is the messaging, where he has always been the king of media, and the breadth and range that he showed where not only traditional media, which is the industry he grew up in, but also embracing podcasts and TikTok and social media and rallies and all of that, he was just able to cut through against very adversarial
media and get his message out. Also, I think attracting these endorsements from very high profile, serious people in their fields, from Musk to Rogan to RFK and others helped with
that messaging. And then the last thing I think is the mechanics, which is probably the most underreported story Shari, but I think we're going to hear more about that in the analysis to come, which is the ground gain that the Republicans were always behind the eight ball on the Democrats were always so much more superior to that, especially under Obama, and the way he did it kind
of under the radar. He outsourced a lot of it to these outside grassroots groups rather than having it all done by the campaign or the RNC, and the way they were able to get Republicans from race early voting and rack up these leads coming into election age, which positioned them so strongly.
Something that had never happened before.
I think is probably the untold, secret ingredient of you know what put him over the edge tonight.
Yeah, so fascinated, all right, So much more to come on this, Koshagada, Thank you for joining me. Tonight our live special coverage tonight, and it is an historic result. It continues after this quick break, and Paul Murray will join me live from Washington.
So don't go anywhere.
Welcome back well for more of our coverage. Now, Donald Trump has been well, not elected, he has been voted in the forty seventh president of the United States. I'm joined now by Sky News host Paul Murray, awake in Washington, DC.
Yet another old night of pol. Now. One of the.
Most extraordinary things about tonight that so many people are furious over. And I tell you what, I bet you Democrats will be ropable about this. Kamala Harrison didn't bother to appear, not gracious enough to stand up and say to Democrats and to her supporters who'd been waiting there for hours, thank you for your support. You know, if she thinks the results were clear unclear, she could have said that, but she didn't.
She went home. She was a no show. What do you think of this, Paul.
It's a disgrace and it's an insight into her true personality. You know, the truth is now. Look, I can sort of loosen it up a bit now because we're sort of out of the news time, and we're now into the opinion time, and obviously in about half an hour, I'm really going to want to let loose. But the truth is that when you lose an election, you can often see the true test of somebody. We saw that Stephen Miles failed that in Queensland, and we saw that
Kamala Harris failed it here. If this election was traveling the way that it was, but in the opposite direction, like at ten o'clock here, which was about two o'clock Sydney time, it was so clear, it was obvious that he was winning, that he had won at that point in time. So I think the networks would have started to rush towards the doors to say that Trump hadn't been defeated, and she's on our way, and we'll let
the numbers trickle in. But the fact that she didn't look the people in her eye who believed in her so much that they were willing to dawknock and to debate and to call and to fight with their families and to stand in what can be colder times in Washington was just it was really it was low. I can't come up with a more creative word that doesn't start to move into the ones that I get in trouble for saying sometimes on.
Two and you know, I was flicking all day between Fox News and CNN, and the CNN reporters at first said, up, the Kamala Harris team has gone silent. We haven't heard from them. Then they said, we've got a memo, a memo from her campaign manager. And they're still holding out hope for the blue wave for Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And before long that was clearly heading in Trump's direction.
He decisively won Pennsylvania. But the fact that they were still briefing this out, I mean, they accused Trump of not accepting results, but this is where they were heading. Quite late at night, Paul Mario, I want to ask you what you made of Donald Trump's speech. Do you think he said enough to unify what is a divided nation?
Look for those I mean, let's be honest, the people that sort of can be one over or at least after an election, when they let the air out and say, look, all I want is the best for the joint It's not going to be everyone who didn't vote for him. There's obviously going to be let's say you know half three quarters of people who understandably going to be heard or rage for all the rest of it. Look, he can always do a better job at this stuff. He can always do a better job at sophistry, He can
always do a better job at a tighter message. But when you think about what this bloke was playing with during this entire campaign, and they talk about the stakes on the future of democracy, this bloke had two options. He was going to become president or he was going to go to jail for the rest of his life. At no point did he look like a man who
was playing with that level of stakes. So I think that what people eventually saw in Trump, when at some point in the past year or so they started to make the decision about are we going to go back to this bloke? They saw a guy whose reaction to being shot was to save, fight, fight fight, whose reaction to being charged with things that, let's be honest, at the very best in some scenarios, they were a bounce of the ball that always sort of went the other way.
Was not to cave, was not to crumble when the media was going wild because there was a joke at a rally. He found a way just to keep pushing on and if he's willing to do that for himself, I think the most important thing that he said in his speech tonight was that I'm going to re breath that I have. I will fight for you, and we know how hard he can find for himself. And if
he's promising to do that for the entire country. Look, the word unity mightn't be there, but the message was pretty clear, which is I'm taking care of you now.
Yeah, and he did have that line about he wants to heal the nation now as well. Paul, I think another very big outcome of this election is that, really, pretty much since Barack Obama, and it's reflected in Australia as well, we've seen this progressive wave of identity politics.
You know, really going very woke.
The Democratic Party used to be more mainstream.
Do you think this result.
Maybe this has been too hopeful, will kill off some of those more radical ends of the woke agenda that the Democrats were pushing on America?
Well, see, don't forget Unlike Australia, where we've got say the Greens or One Nation or or Victorian Socialists or whatever it happens to be, there's lots of different places that you can put your vote depending on where you are on the spectrum. When essentially this is team Red, team Blue, it means that the entire team is at
times defined by the furthest parts of their coalitions. Now, if they want to win again, you've got to come back to some form of the center, or at least come back from the perception about how hard left you're going to go. But that said, and again, let's not talk about the next Grand Final while this one is still echoing through the streets. But there are policies the Democrats have that are wildly popular, like many care for all. There are policies that are wildly needed in the country,
like mental health care, like dental care. Now these things, because of the size of spending, will be referred to as lefty. But the stuff that normal people reject is when we have to go through sort of the performance that much of the modern left is involved with. So I think, whoever, the next the next most successful senior Democrat is going to be somebody who doesn't just pretend to be a little more normal. They're going to actually
have to be a little bit more normal. And I think that economic populism which is being championed by Trump. I think it'll be echoed by the Democrats into the future. But if they want to keep banging on about you know, pronouns and pretending that you know, Columbus Day isn't a public holiday and all of this stuff, well then good luck, you're same thing again in four years.
Yeah.
I mean it was even more extreme than that the ads that the Republicans were running, which were just Kamala Harrison our own words. We're talking about tax fair funded gender transitioning for prison inmates. I mean, you know, it's just bizarre stuff.
All right.
Paul Murray will see you back here at nine o'clock for more, and Paul will certainly fire out, fire up, I should say, stick with us on this extraordinary night.
I'll be back after the break. Welcome back.
Well, if you're just joining us now, Donald Trump is the new president of the United States, and this is where the figures are looking. Donald Trump, according to Fox News's latest results, is sitting on two hundred and seventy seven of the Electoral College votes Kamala Harris at two twenty six. Trump, of course, needed two hundred and seventy to win there are still four states that have them in cold and in terms of the popular vote, Trump has won that as well with fifty one point two percent.
All right, for more analysis. Now, let's bring in.
The Hudson Institute Senior Fellow John Lee and the United States Center Senior Fellow Stephen Loosely.
Welcome to you both. Stephen, first, I want.
To get your reaction to this result tonight. Why do you think this has been a greater than expected loss for the Democratic Party.
I should begin by saying, cherry On no longer with the US study set apology.
Stephen, that is fine.
I think the Democrats lost the kitchen table issues. If you had to point to basic issues of concern to average Americans, you'd begin, I think with the cost of living. I think grocery store prices had more impact than anything that the Federal Reserve was doing. I think the next issue would have been border security, where It's true the Biden administration had proposed a bipartisan measure in the US Senate which Donald Trump takt p date, but that only
came over the last few months. And really this issue has been allowed to fester in American society and in American politics for some time. In the third issue, the FBI says the crime rate in the United States is dropping, but that wasn't how it was perceived by lots of ordinary people in American cities. So, if you ask me, I think the Democrats lost the kitchen table issues on which Donald Trump and the Republican campaign was able to capitalize.
Yeah, and you're right.
Crime has just taken over so many major cities like San Francisco. John In terms of the impact of a Trump presidency on Australia and on foreign policy, how do you see this, Well.
Let's put aside the personality clashes. The Trump cabinet will find it quite difficult from personality point of view to deal with some of the urb and easy people. Let's put that aside. When Trump gets in, he'll conduct an audit of allies. He'll look at how much are they spending on defense, what are they spending it on, when are they spending it, and what are they prepared to commit to. Now, I've spent a lot of time in DC.
I spent quite a bit of time speaking to potential Trump cabinet nominees in the national security space, and I can tell you they are very well aware that in their view Australia has not is not doing and spending what it's brought to. Now Trump will come in. He takes the lines of seriously, he's not an isolation list. He wants allies to pull their weight and Australia is not one of these allies that he thinks at the top of the list when it comes to pulling our weight.
So that could be a problem for the oben Easy government.
And that's going to be another exciting thing.
Of course in the days and weeks ahead, will be who Trump picks for some of the key positions.
He's already floated that.
Elon Musk is going to have some sort of role in his administration, at least as part of his agenda. Stephen, how do you think that alban Ezy government and now but Easy personally also Penny Wang will have to try and respond to this new administration.
Well, it's not a matter of a standing start the Australian Embassy in Washington for a very long period of time. I'm thinking Andrew Peacock, Kim Beasley right true to Arthur Sinadinas and Kevin Rudd, They've got very strong links both in the administration in State, the Pentagon and the like, and perhaps even more significantly, in the United States Congress. Now I'm just back recently from the Australian American Leadership
Dialogue in Honolulu. Nonpartisan, strong links with the United States military, good representation from a variety of policy players in Australia. There is a considerable consensus, particularly within the US Congress, that Australia is a very reliable ally, is a contributor, and that even with Vice President Elect Vance just recently saying UCAS is a good idea, there is a fair amount of sentiment that the alliance relationship with Australia is
more than worthwhile. Donald Trump will also look John John's right to look at defense spending, will also look at at trade relations, and Australia of course runs a trade deficit with the United States, and that has had an impact upon Donald Trump before, which has been positive for Australia. So there's a number of things to weigh up there. I am not as pessimistic as some. I think a lot of spade work's already been done, a lot more needs to be done, and we really have to build
some bridges. But if people like Mike Pompeio, for example, the former Secretary of State would have come into a second Trump administration and defense I think that would be a relatively smooth transition.
Yeah, and I think that would be an excellent appointment. He's a strong friend of Australia. I've interviewed him before twice, but he is very strong on national security issues as well. John, I just want to turn to the historic nature of this result, and Trump becomes only the second president in United States history to serve non consecutive terms.
The first was Grover Cleveland.
He did two stints in the White House from eighteen eight until eighteen eighty nine and then eighty ninety three until eighteen ninety seven. So this is quite extraordinary, and in a sense, he probably was only voted out in twenty twenty because of his poor handling of the pandemic.
Well, what this tells me, I'm not a historian in American politics, but what this tells me is that Trump might have lost in twenty twenty, but the issues that Trump raised, trade issues, defence issues, societal issues, law and crime issues, those issues haven't gone away, and they didn't go away Underbiden. In fact, they got worse Underbiden. So I'm not at all surprised that Trump has won this election.
He ran on issues that people cared about. He didn't run on identity, he didn't run on some sort of social elite type issue. He ran on the sorts of things that white men, Hispanics, women, African Americans actually cared about. So this result doesn't surprise me at all.
I mean, Stephen, there are lessons from Australia to be learned from this as well, because economy was such a vote changer in this election, and we saw that in the exit polls. You know, this should be cause for concern for the Labor government here in Australia.
Oh, it's a concern for governments in all Western democracies. And I'd also underline, Shari that immigration constantly recurs in Western elections. We saw it most recently in the UK, for example. It's certainly been an issue in this American election. So there are lessons to be learned for people in active politics in Western democracies everywhere. I make this point Donald Trump, I'm certainly no fan of the gentleman, but
his resilience has been extraordinary. It is astonishingly difficult to come back to the White House and non consecut gative terms. Grover Cleveland did it in the eighteen nineties mainly because of a very poor performance by Republican administrations. You can see that in this win by Donald Trump. So what he's powered through would have filled many another man or woman in the political game. And I think that's worth acknowledging.
No, indeed it is. Stephen Looseley, John Lee.
Great to have you both on the show, And don't go anywhere, because after the break we're going to look at just how the stock.
Markets have reacted to this news.
Aaron Patrick would join me more of our coverage on this historic night. Welcome back, and if you're just tuning in, Donald Trump will be the forty seventh the president of the United States of America. This is an historic night. The results in the end were decisive. It wasn't the close, potentially drawn out results that we had been told to expect. We were told the polls were very close, that this
was deadlocked. That's not the case. You can see the latest figures on the screen now, Donald Trump has one According to Fox News, he's projected to win two hundred and seventy seven of the Electro College votes. We have it a bit higher at two eighty, but we'll see how that changes over the next few days. Joining me now contributor to the Nightly Aaron Patrick. Now, Aaron, I want to start by speaking to you about the reaction in the stock markets and the cryptocurrencies to the news.
This was very well received when it became clear that Trump was going to be the president, not Kamala.
Harris Well Sharry, there's been being quite strong rally in the futures training in chairs because it's nighttime, of course, to you at share markets aren't open, but they indicate that when the share market's do open tomorrow, we expect a pretty strong rally of approximately one to one and a half percent across the board, particular in stocks which are correlated to strong economic performance. There was a selloff in bonds, indicating that some investors do expect inflationary pressures.
I guess as the Trump administration it goes through and delivers big tax cuts.
And cryptocurrencies as well did very well they did.
Bitcoin is now very close to its all record high of seventy five thousand US dollars. A few years ago, it was down sixteen thousand dollars, and that's because Donald Trump has said that he wants to make America the crypto capital of the world.
It's interesting how during the campaign, Wall Street really swung in behind Donald Trump, believing that he would be better for the economy. This was reflected in things like the All In podcast, very popular in the United States.
I mean, the only concern really was.
About his policy of putting high tariffs, which could lead to higher taxes on the higher cost of actual products and goods.
But really Wall Street did swing in behind him.
Yeah, that's aoksually one of the really interesting and slightly counterintuitive factors of Trump's whole victory, which is Wall Street generally hates tariffs and is very much for free trade. Donald Trump clearly has promised basically a pretty big global
trade war. But I think Wall Street was just absolutely convinced that he would be good for business and he's going to push pipelines through, he's going to lower personal taxes, He's basically going to be He's going to do the things that Republicans really like, which is good for business.
Look, I want to ask you about this election also brought in the culture, was it was mostly about the economy and immigration, the immigration crisis, the border, et cetera. But it did bring in the Culture Wars, and it was a thorough reject of the most woke, left leaning instincts of the Democrat Party.
What do you think about that?
Look to me, to my mind, the culture Wars where I put more emphasis on the importance of the culture Wars than the economy. Even though a lot of Americans are pretty pessimistic about where the country's going. It's actually the American economy at the moment is the envy of the world. It's just a lot of Americans don't feel
that way. I think they feel that the country's heading in the wrong direction, in part because of the rise of this phenomenon that we've seen, which a part of the culture wars, diversity, equity inclusion, transgender rights, views, defund the police. And I know you've been talking about these issues for many years. And I remember a couple of years ago you spoke about there was this push to get rid of the words breastfeeding, and I think what you're seeing now.
Replace it with chest feeding.
Yeah, And I think now you're seeing sort of the political consequences, a backlash towards the towards what's been happening in the US and around the world. So to me, this is sort of this is a sign that politics is fundamentally shifting and culture is perhaps becoming a bigger determinant of how you vote then your views on how the economy should be structured.
A lot of the themes that were major in the US election, with the exception of the Mexican border, but the other themes really resonate in Australia as well and will be issues for the Albanezi government at the next election.
To my mind, this is a huge philip for Peter Dutton. I think Peter Dutton has struck a lot of similar themes to what Trump has done, mostly not to sort of the extent that you've seen over there, but you know, Peter Dutton's raising concern about, say, competition from immigrants, housing, national security issues. I think this is good news for Dunton.
Yea, it is indeed, Aaron Patrick, we'll keep reading your work in the nightly. Thank you for joining us, and thank you everyone at home for joining us on this amazing night. It has been an exciting day of results and to continue this coverage live from Washington, DC, here's Paul Murray