Already, and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It is Thursday, the seventh of November.
I'm Billy, I'm Zara, Zara.
The air feels different.
It was a big day yesterday. I'm still tired.
History has arrived on our doorsteps. The future is here. Donald Trump has been elected the next US president. It was a historical day, a historical moment, and it was a decision that will likely redefine the future of the Republican Party. This was largely seen as a referendum on the Republican Party and they kind of had two paths that they could go down from here depending on this result. And clearly the Trump era of the Republican Party is
here to stay. On today's podcast, we are sharing with you how yes today went and our reflections and analysis of one of the most important elections of our lifetimes.
Much has been said about how yesterday's election was, this real moment in time. As you said, it was a referendum on the Republican Party. Equally, it was a decisive loss for the Democrats, and so much to talk about and so much to learn from what we have found out over the last twenty four hours. Can you just tell me a bit about why it was so important, why everyone felt like there was this kind of unprecedented heir to the election.
Yeah. So when we say that this election was history in the making, that's because whoever won was going to make history. So if we take Kamala Harris, if she had won, she of course would have been the first female US president. On the other hand, we have Trump, and he is now one of only two presidents in US history to win a second, non consecutive term. So what that means is that usually when a president is elected for a second term, it is right after their
first term. So if we look at Barack Obama, for example, he was elected in two thousand and eight, and then he was elected again in twenty twelve, it was consecutive. In this case, Trump won in twenty sixteen, but then of course he lost in twenty twenty and now he's back in twenty twenty four and he is the second president in US history.
To have done that.
It's incredible, but there are more ways he has made history. So also he is the oldest president to ever be elected.
I think people will be quite surprised by this because so much was said about Joe Biden exactly.
Yeah, and so Joe Biden is older than Donald Trump. But when Joe Biden was elected in twenty twenty, he was younger than Donald Trump. Is now so interesting. Yeah, the last way that Donald Trump has made history, well, he had previously made history for being the first former president of the US to be convicted of felony crimes after he was found guilty of falsifying records earlier this year.
Now he's the first convicted president. All in all, very historic, a big moment and a lot to reflect on, Zara. Should we go through how the day played out yesterday?
It's all a blur, but yes, so, I mean, if we're to take the day as a whole, we came into the office, we'd sat down for a day's work. By mid morning, the first results were starting to trickle in, and then within an hour of that, it was quite clear that Donald Trump was ahead. It was that lead
that just continued to strengthen as the hours passed. And I think at the beginning, when we first started getting those numbers and first started seeing the numbers in those swing states emerge, people and especially the media were really cautious to say that this meant to anything that he
was in the lead very meaningfully. I think everyone is very burnt by what happened both in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, and so everyone was being very cautious about the that they were reporting Trump's lead at that time.
And when you say twenty twenty, it's because in twenty twenty there was a Republican swing at the start, but that ended up being misleading because Joe Biden ended up winning exactly.
And that's the conversation that emerges around the fact that red states are always the first to be counted, just by nature of geography, and you know, when polls close and all of that. So we saw at the beginning that Donald Trump was well ahead in terms of those electoral College votes, and we explained how that worked yesterday, But in twenty twenty that was made up over time.
The same was not to be said yesterday. But I think going into election day, a lot of us were bracing for a really really long day and really long night, and we weren't even sure how we were going to do this podcast, what was going to happen. But you know, as afternoon came an early evening hit. It was pretty clear that Donald Trump was home and host.
And it was at about six point thirty Australian Eastern daylight time that Donald Trump came out and did a press conference with his entire family behind him, also his vice presidential pick JD. Vance, and he declared victory.
This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before. This was I believe the greatest political movement of all time. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your forty seventh president and your forty fifth president.
Zara, I think it's about now that you can say I told you so. You did say on yesterday's podcast that you were very confident that Trump would win. Now that he has, what are your reflections about his victory.
Look, I always think that you want to let things run their course and let every ballot be assessed before you go and talk about sweeping trends. But if I'm to look at what we can see from the exit polling and from those early calls, two points that I thought were really interesting, and what I didn't pick up on when we spoke yesterday was the Hispanic vote and the Black vote in the US. So Donald Trump's popularity
among Hispanic voters increased exponentially from the last election. It's very interesting, given a lot of his rhetoric and the way that he has spoken about Hispanic communities that this would be the case. But we saw two major media exit polls showing him with at least forty three percent of the Hispanic vote, which was up considerably from the last time. And then another interesting point that I saw is that in North Carolina, exit polls showed that Donald
Trump had boosted his popularity among black voters. So in that state, which is of course a swing state, his share of the black vote was up to twelve percent from five percent in twenty twenty, so again a really considerable jump there. According to that same exit poll, he garnered the support of around twenty percent of black mail voters.
And obviously those were really early numbers that were coming out, and it might shift in the days to come, but I think those were just two really interesting demographics that perhaps wouldn't have been considered traditional. Trump voters still overwhelmingly got behind Kamala Harris, but certainly put a lot more power behind Donald Trump than people expected.
So interesting.
What were your reflections, Billy.
I think the one thing that I was thinking about a lot yesterday is the power of celebrity endorsements.
And so much has been said about those celebrity endorsements.
Yeah, and who has a genuine political influence in the US. I think the style of the people who endorse Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump are very different in many ways, but one way is in their style of communication with
their audience. So if we think of the people who endorse Donald Trump, I think of Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and also Jake and Logan Paul, the Paul brothers, who are influencers, and all of them have very direct styles of communication with their audience, so on owned platforms, exactly on their own platform. So if you think of someone like Elon Musk, he is talking to his audience every single day. And if someone in his audience says I'm not sure about Donald Trump, because of this reason, he
can directly respond to them, he will. Yeah, I say, not only can he he does, and he does it a lot, and he is speaking to his audience every single day, whereas they think if you think of the people who endorsed Kamala Harris, and the people who got the most attention it was people like Taylor Swift, Beyonce Oprah. To me, those people are so big and perhaps so
inaccessible to their audience. Even if you just think about Taylor Swift, who got so much attention when she endorsed Kamala Harris, that was one moment and he never heard about it again, whereas with again Elon Musk Joe Rogan, it was something that kept coming up because they kept talking about it with their audience.
And had multiple touch points as well.
Yeah, and they directly addressed the concerns of their audience multiple times.
I mean, it's it's fascinating, and I think that especially when we talk about you know, we said yesterday about the young male voters, those are squarely the people who are listening, reading, watching a Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, Paul Brothers.
So it will be really.
Interesting to see if there's analysis that's done afterwards about what actual influence looks and feels like and whether that has a changing face in twenty twenty four.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that that is the entire picture or the entire reason why Donald Trump has won.
And an interesting point.
Yeah, I think that there will be so many contributing factors that there'll be so much analyst about, and I just personally think that that is perhaps one contributing factor.
Really interesting. But Billy, that's only one part. You know, The presidency itself is only one part of what Americans were going out.
To vote for yesterday.
They were also going out to vote for what they want the Congress, the future of Congress to look like, and what the makeup of that looks like.
What do we find out yesterday?
Yeah, I think this is an often forgotten part about US elections, that voters are not just electing the next president, they are also looking at the Congress. If you're wondering what Congress is, it is the House of Representatives, which is the lower house, and also the Senate, which is the upper house.
And just to jump in here, it is often forgotten and often overlooked, but I would say it's as important, if not more important, as to what the makeup of Congress looks like, because a president that doesn't have support in either house has a very tough time in getting their policy agenda through and so what the makeup of today's Congress looks like will very much influence what a Donald Trump presidency looks like.
Yes, and what we know at the time of recording is that Donald Trump will have the support of the Senate. So we know that the Senate, there are one hundred seats there and the Republicans have won fifty one of those seats, which means that he will be able to pass legislation with the support of the Senate. However, they will also need the support of the House of Representatives. At the time of recording, the Republicans are ahead, but they haven't security yet.
Yeah.
And Donald Trump said when he got up and spoke last night that he expected that he will get the support from the House, but we'll have to see what happens there. But yeah, really can't stress enough how important it is when a president has two houses that sit on the other side of the political spectrum to them. We've seen time and time again the bills just get blocked and stalled in Congress, and it looks like Donald Trump will not have that problem at all with this session of Congress.
It's often a point of conversation of you know, if we look at what Joe Biden's policies were and people will say, Joe Biden, you said that you wanted to cut student loans for young people. Why didn't you do that? Often the reason is because he didn't have the support of the Congress.
Yeah, always a form of negotiation to happen there. Now, Billy, I think the one thing to just explain and to zero in on is that just because Donald Trump has won the presidency does not mean that from today he becomes president.
No good point. So it's not like in Australia where you are elected the leader and then literally the next day you are the leader. In the US, the election is in November, but whoever wins that election is not actually inaugury into the presidency until January.
Yeah.
My fun fact is that I was at Donald Trump's last inauguration. I was studying in DC and thought that that was, you know, a moment in history, and so I went and look fair to say, I don't think anyone predicted back then that there'd be a different president in the middle, but that Donald Trump would be back with a vengeance for a second time.
US politics is nothing if not unpredictable.
But just on that, Billy, can Donald Trump have a second term now if he has already had a term that wasn't consecutively linked to this term has been said many times.
Do you get my drift?
No? So this will be Donald Trump's last four years as president of the US, and that is for a very big reason. That is because the US Constitution prevents any president from being president for more than two terms, so very explicitly says that no person can be elected to the office of the president more than twice. Donald Trump has now been elected.
Twice and counting will continue in the days and probably weeks to come. But what we can know for sure is that we will be hearing a lot more from President elect Donald Trump.
That is a word. We'll be hearing a lot of President elect Donald Trump. Zarah, it has been a pleasure to go through the US election with you.
What a journey.
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for listening. So many of you have been tuning in to the daily ods. Our numbers have been higher than they have ever been before. And it is not lost on us that there are so many places that you could be choosing to get your coverage of the US election from.
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feed on Spotify. It really helps our podcast grow and it helps new listeners find us. Thank you so much. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines. We will see you then. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuton woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
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