Fox News Sunday 11-10-2024
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I'm Shannon Bream. President-elect Donald Trump begins preparing his new administration with an historic pick for chief of staff after a sweep of all seven battleground states with a late Saturday call for Arizona.

Together we're going to unlock America's glorious destiny. Donald Trump goes from former to future president, declaring an unprecedented mandate. Now the guessing game in full swing over who will get plum positions in his next administration as Republicans retake control of the Senate and hold a narrow edge in the fight for the House. Congressman Byron Donalds joins us exclusively to discuss the GOP's roadmap with a potentially unified government.

Then... I have a concern that the far left is pressuring the party to take policy positions that are deeply unpopular. Deja vu. Democrats taking stock of what went wrong and what comes next. Congressman Dean Phillips, who challenged Biden in the Democratic primary on the debate over the party's path forward. And where do Trump's legal cases stand ahead of his second term? Our Sunday panel on what his political comeback could mean for his challenges in court. All right now on Fox News Sunday. ♪

Hello from Fox News in Washington. Here's a quick look at your headlines. A firefighter has been killed battling wildfires about 50 miles from New York City. Severe drought has created dangerously dry conditions in the Northeast, and the resulting fires have led to an air quality alert for the Big Apple and surrounding areas. Republicans need just five more House seats out of the remaining 20 undecided races in order to maintain control of the House. Democrats need to win 16 to get to the majority.

And Arizona becomes the last battleground state. It's been called for president-elect Donald Trump, giving him a total of 312 electoral votes. That's compared to 226 for Vice President Harris. Trump leads in the popular vote by more than 4.5 million votes.

In a moment, we'll talk with Republican Congressman Byron Donalds on the new era for the GOP and also former Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips, who mounted a primary challenge against President Biden after repeatedly warning Democrats that Biden's decision to run for reelection could be disastrous.

But first, we turn to team coverage. Rick Judson at the White House on President Biden's final months in office. But we begin with Lucas Tomlinson in West Palm Beach near President-elect Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Hello, Lucas. Shannon, President-elect Donald Trump will return to the White House Wednesday to meet with President Biden to cap what some say is the greatest political comeback since Richard Nixon. It was a historic realignment, uniting citizens of all backgrounds around America

A common core of common sense. Trump is the first candidate in 40 years to sweep the key 2024 swing states. Voters firmly rejecting the Biden-Harris agenda. Here are the frontrunners to join key cabinet positions in diplomacy, national and homeland security, law enforcement, and energy to carry out Trump's mandate. I'm a soldier. The president of the United States calls you to serve, then you have to take that very seriously.

very seriously. He is a reformer, he is a disruptor, so if asked I would certainly be willing to serve again. I think it would be an honor of a lifetime. I'm going to work with the Trump administration whatever capacity they feel is best. I'm not presumptuous to say they're going to pick me. Every position he has there's 20 qualified people banging on the door.

Helping Trump vet the candidates will be his newly appointed White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the first female to hold the job. Some Democrats, perhaps with an eye on 2028, appear willing to work with Trump. I want our president to succeed. And our job, my job is not to wake up every single day and get a crowbar and try to put it in the spokes of the wheel of the Trump administration.

This week, expect more candidates being vetted for cabinet positions to come to Palm Beach. Two will not be coming, Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo. President-elect Trump says he has not invited them to join his administration. Shannon. All right, Lucas Tomlinson in Florida. Lucas, thank you. Joining us now from the White House, Rich Edson. Hello, Rich. Hello, Shannon.

71 days left in this administration. Officials here say President Biden has plenty left to do before Democrats turn control of the White House and the Senate over to Republicans. Officials say the president is focused on keeping the government open, approving hurricane relief money, passing national defense policy, confirming judges and overseeing an orderly transition.

We want to have an effective, efficient transition of power. And so we are ready, ready to provide that. As you know, the president invited the president-elect, Donald Trump, to come to the White House.

Well, before Trump moves in, the Biden administration is trying to send more weapons shipments to Ukraine. Officials are also working to approve pending environmental regulations, though a Republican Congress could overturn many of the more recent rules. A source with knowledge of the Trump transition tells Fox News that the incoming team is ready for any effort to Trump proof new policies contrary to the incoming government's plans.

and that the current administration could largely only slow the new one. In the remaining days of the Biden presidency, there have also been calls for the senior liberal Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, to step down. At 70, there are concerns among Democrats about keeping that seat liberal. Democrats who oppose the idea say the Senate may not have enough time to confirm a replacement during Biden's remaining weeks, handing yet another court vacancy over to Trump. And as Hunter Biden faces sentencing on tax charges...

The White House maintains the president has no plans to pardon his son. Shannon. All right, Rich Edson reporting from the White House. Rich, thank you very much. Joining me now, Florida Republican Congressman Byron Donalds. Welcome back to Fox News Sunday. It's good to be back with you. All right, let me start with this. Did you going into Tuesday imagine it would be quite as decisive as it was not only at the top of the ticket, but the Senate, the House races as well? Still waiting on the House.

Well, I did. But before we get to that, I want to thank the American people for voting for Donald Trump, for allowing us the opportunity to go in there and get the job done and making our nation great again. We're going to get to work. But to your question, I did think it was going to be decisive because it didn't matter what state you were in. The same issues were

were bothering the American people. A terrible economy, high inflation, open borders, and conflict around the globe. Donald Trump is the person, the candidate, the man with the ability to fix these problems. The American people saw it clearly. That's why his victory was overwhelming. Okay, let's talk about his critics who have now ominous warnings now that he is once again president-elect. David French writing at the New York Times.

If Trump was telling the truth about his intentions, then he will attempt a campaign of retribution and mass deportation that will fracture families, create chaos in American communities, and potentially even result in active duty troops being deployed to our cities. Here's what your House colleague, Democratic Congressman Richie Torres, had to say. One of the fundamental differences between his first presidency and his subsequent presidency is the fact that he now enjoys absolute immunity. And he seems to be

intent on exacting revenge against his political enemies. How do you respond to Americans who say they now are fearful about a second Trump presidency? For the American people who've been listening to these lies from the Democratic left, I would tell you this is not something that Donald Trump has ever spoken to or he's committed to whatsoever. There's no enemies list. I mean, yeah, there are people who've been opposed to him, but he is focused on the American people.

Job number one is securing our border and beginning the process of deporting illegal immigrants out of our country. Job number two is getting our economy thriving again, get becoming energy dominant again. That's his focus. His focus is the American people, not some enemies list that only gets talked about in the Daily Kos or Salon dot com or any other place like that.

that. He's focused on making our country great. And what will happen in our country is success is going to be the measurement that he will use to demonstrate he's back in the White House and back in charge of running this nation. The metric is success. There is no other measure. Okay. To that point, Joe Rogan, who was a late endorser of President Trump, says he now does have to take this sweeping victory. He's got great opportunity to try to bring things together and get things done. Here's what he said post-election.

We got a real chance to make real change. He's got to not attack the left, not attack everybody. Let them all talk their but unite. Now it's time to unite everybody. There are a lot of skip decks out there who don't think President Trump is going to be about unity. What do you say to Joe Rogan's point?

I think what Joe Rogan is saying is absolutely correct. And Donald Trump's going to be focused on those things. Look at the announcements he's already made. One of the key things is he wants to support a constitutional amendment to bring congressional term limits. That is something that overwhelmingly the American people have supported for a very long time. Look at what's happening already across the globe. Qatar wants Hamas out of Doha.

You have the Chinese are signaling they want peaceful relations. You have the Russians and Ukrainians now saying they're open to talking. The European Union wants to buy liquid natural gas from the United States. This caravan that was building below our southern border is now starting to break up because they know Donald Trump's going to be the next president of the United States.

and we are not going to tolerate more illegal immigration. Those are the things that unite the American people. If you have talking heads on the left who still want to go down the line of their conspiracy theories, let them. Donald Trump's going to be focused on the American people.

places that he made up a lot of ground with was black voters, black male voters in particular. And I know that you hosted events specifically to have conversations with them. What did you hear at those events that gives you an understanding of why there was that shift in the electorate?

I heard the same thing talking to black men that I heard talking to anybody across our country. How are we going to get ahead and make more money, be able to pass something on to our children? How are we going to secure this southern border? It's not fair that you have illegals coming in, getting gas cards, getting hotel stays and all the like. That's not right. And actually, you'll notice that the city of New York is now announcing not giving out any more food cards.

these food carts, that's because of Donald Trump and the fact that he won. So what you heard from black men, you heard also from Hispanic men. You heard also from, in part, suburban women. They want a country that is safe. They want an economy that is thriving. And Donald Trump is going to deliver on all of those promises. So we're going to talk a little bit later in the show about the path for Democrats or Republicans to hold control of the House. And already the speaker is talking about an ambitious agenda for Republicans to control the House, Senate and White House.

Reuters points out this. They say the tax cut proposals that Trump made on the campaign trail from extending the 2017 tax cuts to abolishing tax on tips are

overtime and Social Security benefits could add seven and a half trillion dollars to the nation's debt over the next decade. They cite the nonpartisan committee for a responsible federal budget. Some of those things are on the to do list for Republicans. So what are the offsets to those cuts? And what about this issue of the national debt, which, frankly, a lot of folks think did not get nearly enough discussion, if any at all, in the campaign trail?

Well, two quick things. When anybody talks about tax policy from these foundations, what they never say to the American people is that when they talk about $7 trillion is the cost, that's using static modeling. I don't want to get too technical, but that is static modeling. It doesn't take into effect

the impact of lower tax rates and economic growth as a result. So, no, it doesn't cost $7 trillion. And the reason why we know this is because under his first tax policy, which is current tax law today, the Democrats and all these outside groups said it would cost $5 trillion. The truth is the federal government raised more tax revenue than was ever modeled or contemplated by any of these organizations.

So President Trump's tax policy is actually going to be a net benefit to the United States because it's going to breed more economic growth. Number two, there are massive areas in the federal government that do need to be scaled back, that need to be cut. One of them that we have to take a long, hard look at are the Green New Deal tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.

We need to look at those because they told us in D.C. it would cost $276 billion. Well, if you go talk to Goldman Sachs and anybody on the street, the value is actually $1.4 trillion. So if you want to find money to pay for tax policy so we can grow our economy, so working families can get ahead with no tax on tips and no tax on overtime, how about we get rid of the Democrat spending boondoggles that came in under the last administration? I want

I want to make sure I ask you about something reported by the Daily Wire. They broke a story a couple of days ago about FEMA. My home state is as well as where you serve, Florida, and your district has been hit very hard by numerous big storms the last couple of years.

Daily Wire reporting that people were told when they're out canvassing in central Florida looking for people who may need help that FEMA workers were told to avoid homes that had Trump symbols or Trump flags. FEMA responded to Daily Wire saying this. We are horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation. Governor DeSantis says he's launching an investigation there. What extreme actions do you think should be taken? Is that something Congress gets involved with?

Anybody involved with that should be fired immediately, not asked to resign, not brought in front of a congressional hearing. It should be fired immediately. We are not going to have a country where we're going to decide who gets help and who gets who doesn't based upon who you support politically or what you look like or anything else.

Secondarily, when it comes to FEMA, my recommendation for the Trump transition team is that FEMA becomes a standalone agency that directly reports to the White House. You have to get it out of Homeland Security. That agency is a massive labyrinth with a bunch of different departments. FEMA should be a direct report agency to the White House because when disaster recovery needs to take place, we need quick answers out of FEMA.

not bureaucratic ones that go through the labyrinth of federal departments. My district dealt with this firsthand a couple years ago during Hurricane Ian. It was very hard to get answers out of FEMA, still somewhat hard to get answers out of FEMA. I think if you talk to any governor, they would agree with this.

FEMA needs to be a direct report agency to the White House. That way, the people of America, when disaster strikes, they know that this has the first priority of the president. The president has eyes on it and they're going to get the help that they need immediately. Well, we know folks in your area still need a lot of help, as well as the Helene victims all through Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee as well. We're tracking that, too. Congressman, thank you very much.

Thank you. And we're going to hear from the other side of the aisle. Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips, who challenged President Biden in the primary, joins us with his assessment of his party's crushing losses. Where do Democrats go from here? Fox News Sunday is sponsored by Pacific Life, creating financial security for nearly 160 years.

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Democrats with yet another loss to ponder now that President-elect Donald Trump has officially taken every battleground state on the map. The party is now assessing its future. Now, one Democrat who openly warned against President Biden running again a full year ago and actually mounted a primary run himself joins us now. Minnesota Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips. Good to see you this morning, Congressman.

Good to be with you, Shannon. Okay, I don't know if vindicated is the right word, because I'm sure you took no joy in what happened on Tuesday night, but do you feel like maybe your voice was ignored in a way the party should have given more full thought to? Well, Shannon, my voice, yes, was ignored, but tens of millions of Americans' voices were ignored and suppressed and disenfranchised. I think that's what, frankly, has led to Trumpism, people getting tired, being on the sidelines and their voices diminished.

I was not the only one that recognized what was likely to happen last week. I was the only one that was willing to say it live. And I think it is that culture of silence and perverse incentives in our political system that is really costing our country. And it's not unique to one party or the other. It's a real problem. And I'm on a mission now to expose the truth and

promote transparency, shine some sunlight on reality, and hopefully provide some competition for two parties that have a monopoly on our electoral system right now. And I think it's what George Washington warned us about in his farewell address so many years ago. We should take heed fast. Well, you are leaving Congress. That language makes it sound like, are you considering leaving the Democratic Party as well?

I'd like to try to help my Democratic Party. I think the values and principles that have been the foundation of the Democratic Party now for some generations are important. I think America needs a thoughtful, principled, strong, progressive party and conservative party.

But the parties are not serving American interests right now. And I am deeply concerned. I mean, think about it, Shannon. There's no party talking about fiscal responsibility. There's no party that is making its key platform element working together, solving problems. Our health care system is an unmitigated disaster. Our immigration system, a disaster. No party has monopoly on ideas. And I'm one of those getting sick and tired of it, trying to represent what I call the exhausted majority, center-right, center-left Americans,

who deserve better. But Congress can't fix this. President Trump, President Biden cannot fix this. We got to start setting aside the nonsense, coming back together and elevating people of competence, decency and integrity so we can get our act together because time is short and the needs are significant.

So your party did coalesce around President Biden when he decided he was going to run again. One of the postmortems on this whole election this week comes from The Washington Post. They write this. Democrats began the campaign season by peddling the fiction that Biden was physically and mentally fit to serve another four years in one of the world's most demanding jobs.

Do you feel there's some blame that should be assigned to those close to the president who maybe did not give a full they didn't get full access and people didn't have a full picture? I don't know about for members of Congress, but we've heard complaints from many people that they couldn't get to President Biden. They couldn't spend time with him and that there was the shield that propped him up as being maybe more mentally and physically fit than he was for the campaign ahead.

The answer is yes. You know, encapsulation is a very dangerous strategy in American politics that thrives on transparency and truth. President Biden is a good man. Even my Republican colleagues will say the same thing. But he's an old man and his physical decline, his communication decline are real.

And an overwhelming majority of Americans saw that as evidence of an inability to serve another term. And it's not what might be real. It's what perception is. And that's what's reality in politics. And, yes, there are many people that I believe are accountable for making a terrible mistake in judgment. He was not the only one that could have beaten Donald Trump. He was one of the few that couldn't.

And sadly, we ended up elevating yet another candidate who was not positioned well to win. And Shannon, the answer is so simple in America. It's competition.

We are a country predicated on it. And when any party suppresses it, when state party leaders in Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin and others remove candidates from ballots, that's antithetical to democracy. And both parties have to do a little bit of soul searching right now. My friends on the Republican side, my friend Byron Donald, they've got a big responsibility, my Republican colleagues, coming up in the next four years to hold this president accountable and ensure that the Constitution comes first and

And I hope they're up to the task. And I just want both parties to do some soul-searching, leadership on both sides to prioritize problem-solving and demonstrate that democracy still works because there are a lot of people around the world, leaders in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, that are looking to us to fail. And the answer lies with all of us, not our leaders in Congress or the White House. And I'll call to action once more, all of us.

have got to stop the nonsense and prioritize competency and decency. And I'm going to do my very best to inspire it. So in the more immediate future, Democrats are doing sort of an autopsy on what happened in that shellacking on Tuesday night. You've said in recent days the party has, quote, good product and terrible packaging and distribution. But here's what Maureen Dowd writes about Democrats. She says the party embraced a worldview of hyper political correctness, condescension and cancellation.

They have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party. You've acknowledged that there are some positions the left flank of your party have taken that have alienated millions and millions of Americans. So is it more about the policy, the content, or is it about the messaging?

Well, I think it's fair to say, Shannon, Richie Torres has been saying this, I think, quite eloquently recently. The elements of the far left of the Democratic Party, far right of the Republican Party should be disenfranchised because they do not represent America. But those elements cast a shadow on both sides of the aisle. I think that's true. But if you look at some of the ballot measures just in this last election, Florida,

voting overwhelmingly to protect women's reproductive rights. Missouri voting to... Wait a minute, but Florida did not, just to be clear, Florida did not approve the measure that would have expanded abortion access there potentially. Shan, I said an overwhelming majority of Floridian voters did. Because they had to get to 60% there.

No, but they didn't get to 60. But a majority of Floridians voted to protect women's reproductive rights, yet they voted for a candidate who was opposed to them. Missouri, raising the minimum wage, paid family leave. Alaska. You look around the country, a lot of red states...

We're favoring democratic policy. So I would argue, yes, our product is not the real problem. Our packaging, our messengers and our distribution is a real problem. And I think it's fair to say if you ask people what the democratic brand stands for right now, it's real complicated. And that's a real important problem right now that we have to articulate what we stand for. And again, solving problems.

That is the issue that no one, no party, no leader right now is really addressing. And we have a political system, Shannon, that really has incentives that actually are working against us. And the corruption has to be addressed because we've legalized it in this country. Both parties are subject to it. And I'm going to start telling a lot of truths here in the coming months and years. OK, well, you can always tell them here on Fox News Sunday if you've got anything that you'd like to share, like to say.

I want to play something from David Axelrod, who said this early Wednesday as it became clear that President Trump was going to be reelected about partially at least what he thinks happened. There were appeals to racism in this campaign and there is racial bias in this country and there is sexism in this country. And anybody who thinks that that did not in any way impact on the outcome of this race is wrong.

But you know the numbers. President Trump improved his numbers with women, with black voters, with Latino voters. The radio host Charlamagne is out there saying that people voted for him because they wanted to feel safer. They wanted to feel better about their economics. And he's one of those who's warning against Democrats simply saying sexism, racism and the country got it wrong. And that's why they picked this man to be their president again.

Well, if that becomes our primary focus, we're going to lose perpetually because that's exactly, I think, what we've done wrong. We've used condemnation of Donald Trump versus invitation to Donald Trump supporters. I've never known any industry, political or professional, in which a strategy of condemnation works better than invitation. So there you have it.

It's really true. And by the way, listening, you know, traveling the country and simply listening to people is the easiest recipe for success. And I encourage my colleagues, Democrats particularly, to get out into rural America and sit with people, listen to them, have a cup of coffee and understand they're not racist. They're not bigots. They're not anti-Semites. They simply want what all of us want, security and safety and opportunity and

and a sense of some American unity as well, and get rid of imposition. I think both parties have a lot to learn on that subject right now, and we are desperate for leadership that will do so. I'm not certain it's going to come in the next four years for obvious reasons, but hopefully we'll see our better angels rise in the next election. Well, if for you that means venturing into a third party, and there were certainly strong arguments

about that this time around that didn't quite take hold. But whatever the future is, Congressman, keep us abreast. We'd like to know. Thank you. Keep the faith and appreciate the invitation. All right. Up next, the battle for control of the House. I'm going to break down some of the remaining undecided races that could determine whether Republicans score a clean sweep of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. And our Sunday panel is here with a closer look at what happens to all those legal cases now pending against President-elect Trump. ♪

Knock, knock. Number one. Welcome back. Days after the election, we're still waiting to see whether Republicans will hold on to the House or if Democrats will flip enough seats to assume control come January. Right now, 20 seats across the country still remain undecided. Democrats have won 202 so far, so they would need 16 more to flip the House.

Republicans have locked in 213, and that means they need five more if they want to hold on to the majority. So let's take a look at some of the races that have yet to be called here in Arizona. Let's look at their sixth district. Incumbent Juan Siskamani is in a tight race with Kirsten Engel. Siskamani and Engel went head-to-head in 2022. Siskamani won there by fewer than 6,000 votes.

Now, in California, which has gotten a lot of attention as well, the 27th district there, Mike Garcia, is facing George Whiteside. Garcia has been a member of Congress since 2020 and has defeated a Democratic challenger in three previous elections.

is in danger of losing his seat this time around. Let's take you to another really close one. That is in Iowa. And there it is still yet to be called. In this district, Christina Bohannon in the first district is challenging incumbent Marionette Miller Meeks, who has served two terms in Congress. Abortion has been a very hot button topic in that race. Now, if Republicans retain the House, they will hold the majority of both chambers of Congress, giving the party a clean sweep of Washington.

So let's talk about with our Sunday group, Howard Kurtz, media critic and host of Media Buzz on Fox News Channel, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, Molly Hemingway, former State Department spokesperson Marie Harf, and Jeff Mason, Reuters White House correspondent. Welcome, everyone. So 20 of those races still undecided in the House. We'll see. But if we're

Republicans end up in charge. The Associated Press notes this about the speaker's plans if he is speaker again. Tax cuts, securing the southern border and taking a blowtorch to federal regulations are at the top of the agenda if the GOP sweeps the White House and Congress.

Jeff, if they do, there's going to be a lot of pressure on them to actually deliver on a lot of big promises. There absolutely is. And that's been one of the problems or the challenges that the Republican majority in the House has faced this year is not being able to get a lot done despite having a majority. That majority was very slim. And if they get it again, it may be slim, although 20 seats up, that's, you know, they could certainly...

make that a bigger majority than they had. But there will be pressure. And, you know, I think if you watch the market reaction over the last few days, there's also an expectation among financial markets that those tax cuts are going to come and that those regulations are going to go away.

OK, so while we wait to see how the House settles, President Trump is working on his transition back into government. And there are a number of reports that there are people in these agencies planning to Trump proof the situation before he gets there. Politico says this about immigration advocates. Some are already preparing to push current leadership at the Department of Homeland Security to take steps to stymie the oncoming Trump.

incoming Trump team Politico also in another report says it's about State Department despondent Biden administration officials are mulling how to protect their national security priorities. Discussions about what to do next come as Trump's defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday sent waves of fear through federal workers. And Howie, Washington Post has similar reporting about the EPA. It's a lot of doom and gloom. Yeah, well, good luck with that, because every outgoing administration tries to

put tax in front of the incoming tank. And it rarely works because the new president has sweeping powers to come in and reverse. We saw this when Joe Biden came in. We saw this in Trump's first term. But I do want to emphasize, because I think the House, by whatever margin, will go Republican. They will do basically what President Trump wants because of his sweeping mandate. And it is a mandate. But it's more fun being in a minority. What happens is any

Anything that happens that it screws up is your fault. You can't just kick Kamala around anymore. And so you're left with competing factions within your own party. So I think the tax cuts are too expensive, that kind of thing. So it's nice to win, but then you've got to deliver. Well, and Molly, in the interim, we've got this lame duck session where there's a lot of stuff they want to get done. We're going to run out of government funding again, just to warn everybody before Christmas.

Republicans are going to have a lot to deal with once they are in control. And presuming that they do take the House, this will be the first time that's happened since the first Trump administration. The first Trump administration saw resistance not just from unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in these federal agencies. They also saw resistance from fellow Republicans. And even you saw Mitch McConnell earlier this year claim he was going to fight Republicans more than he was Democrats.

I think with this election, what we've seen is there's zero appetite for this type of resistance from Republican establishment figures or those unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. And a lot is expected of Republicans. And there's a lot to do to save the country. The people voted...

overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and other Republicans, and so a lot will be expected of them. Well, and there's a lot of hand-wringing about how that voting went. Marie, we were together on election night for eight hours of this. We were. Axios says this about the finger-pointing. One person involved with Harris' team told Axios the 107-day Harris campaign was nearly flawless.

The Biden campaign that preceded it was the opposite. Well, former Biden staffer dismissed the Harris team's criticism as making excuses for the vice president's failures. Quote, how did you spend a billion dollars and not win? What the bleep? Yes, the Democratic circular firing squad is churning out on all cylinders today. I mean, look, Joe Biden never should have run.

And his administration should have told a more compelling story about the things they did to lift up the middle class, to bring back jobs, including manufacturing jobs. I think Kamala Harris ran a very good campaign given the limited amount of time. And given that there is globally this post-pandemic, post-inflation sort of anti-incumbent sentiment that is sweeping around the country, around the world today.

Democrats are also wrestling with the fact that in many states that went red, voters voted for an increase in the minimum wage to protect abortion rights. That just happened in a state like Missouri that is reliably red. So they're voting for some of the core tenets of the Democratic message.

But not for Democrats. Democrats also held on to Senate seats in Michigan and Wisconsin and Arizona and Nevada. So we're also trying to figure out, is Trump singular? Right. Is he just a cultural phenomenon that tapped into this incredible anger at the current administration where Kamala Harris could not run as a popular incumbent because the administration was not popular and she couldn't run as an outsider because she works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

So the Obama coalition is over. It's done. And Democrats have to figure out how to rebuild the next new coalition in a way that we did after 2004 when George W. Bush beat John Kerry and then we got Barack Obama. That's our work we have to do now. Well, and there are questions about who the leader is going to be moving forward. That's right. There's a lot of job vacancies right now.

I just wanted to briefly add that for all of the journalists, and I've never seen such tilted coverage towards one candidate, Kamala Harris, who told us that it was a great campaign. And look, maybe nothing she could have done given the magnitude of Trump's appeal to more black and Latino candidates as one example. Suddenly, as soon as it was over, they said, oh, it was such a muddled campaign by Kamala. She made so many mistakes. And

That suggests that they knew this all along and were covering for her because it turned on a dime. Well, and it makes you think about the fact that they weren't being fully honest with us, potentially about President Biden either and how he was doing. And that led to him running again. The media were wrong about basically everything this entire campaign season, and they have really lost their ability to drag a candidate over the finish line. But there are these really big issues with the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.

The Republican Party, we were told that Donald Trump was damaging to that brand, that he was going to destroy the Republican Party. Instead, he has delivered the biggest electoral college victory since the 80s, since the Reagan era. And he has also done something that the Republicans had really wanted, which was to create a multiracial, multiethnic, really broadly appealing party. So that's all happened. But also the Democrat Party.

party is in a really bad situation. If they want to moderate, they might be able to have a way going forward. But voters clearly thought their views, whether it was on the radical trans agenda, their lack of concern for the economic situation, it was just way too radical. So if they need to improve going forward, they're going to have to moderate quite a bit.

Jeff, I want to bring you in on the the part of this about the legal cases with President Trump, because part of the blame game that is going on are those who say he should be convicted and already in jail. And if you guys had done a good job on that, then he wouldn't have been on the ballot. Politico magazine has a piece there blaming the attorney general, saying Trump got away with it because of the Biden administration's massive missteps.

It is now clearer than ever that Garland was a highly questionable choice to serve as attorney general from the start. A lot of folks did not feel that way at the time. From the outset of the Biden presidency, it was readily apparent that Garland had little desire to investigate and potentially prosecute Trump. And, of course, the signals this week that the federal cases against him are going away. I think you'll be hard pressed to find any Democrats in town who will be praising Merrick Garland in the coming weeks and months.

And I think that applies to people at the White House as well. So certainly there's some some consternation with him. There's consternation in that article, at least with people who believe this is how it should have gone with Mitch McConnell and Republicans for not having voted to impeach or to convict former President Trump, then former President Trump.

in his second impeachment, because that would have prevented him from being able to run again. Of course, the alternate view, which I'm sure Molly's about to jump in on, is saying is all those charges weren't fair in the first place. It doesn't matter. He won, and those cases are going to go away, with the perhaps exception of the case in Georgia. There's some state things going on. But in general, Democrats, I think it's fair to say, are going to be frustrated that a Democratic administration didn't move fast.

The abuse of law was one of these underrated issues that motivated a lot of people to vote for Donald Trump. Having Democrat prosecutors up and down the eastern seaboard trying to imprison their political opponent, bankrupt their political opponent, remove him from the ballot. And he committed a bunch of crimes, Molly. This was viewed as an assault on democracy at the same time they were trying to push that message. This is the problem.

And people are hoping that they will have rule of law going forward and no more of these political prosecutions designed to go after not just Donald Trump, but people who were challenging school boards, pro-life activists. This was the underrated story because our media are so in favor of Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party in general, they have failed to tell that story accurately. The reality is that Donald Trump was credibly accused of dozens of...

felony charges, was convicted of many of them. And Donald Trump has stood on the campaign trail this campaign cycle and said he wants to go after his political opponents and put them in jail. In fact, he was talking about the threat posed by this abuse of rule of law. I let you talk a lot here. My point is that for Democrats and Americans who look at the litany of charges Donald Trump has been charged with, some of which we saw him do with our own eyes, the fact that you can be elected president and

all of that criminality and possible convictions just goes away and you are held above the law. To many Americans today, that feels deeply unfair about our system. The way the Democrat Party treated it was as if he and other Republicans were below the law. And that period is over and a lot of people are happy about it. Well, now he's above it, so congrats. I agree that I think it was an issue for a lot of people that connected and that maybe was, you know,

It's not showing up on our list where economy, abortion, immigration. But I do think for a lot of people that was a big issue. OK, stay with us because we're talking about a lot more of this. The media praising Vice President Harris's, quote, flawless campaign as Democrats do their post-election autopsy. Is the media due for an autopsy, too? We'll discuss that straight ahead.

The votes are in. Kamala Harris ran basically a flawless campaign. I think because she ran an incredible campaign, it's been very telling about who we are. Because her campaign did focus on the threat to democracy. She ran a flawless campaign, and I maintain that. I cannot use...

her failed run in 2019 and hold her against her after watching this incredible campaign she's run now. This really was an historic, flawlessly run campaign. She had, Queen Latifah never endorses anyone.

She did this time. OK, many in the media praising Vice President Harris's, quote, flawless campaign, despite the fact that it ended in an electoral landslide for her opponent in an election year when it seems podcasts sometimes leapfrogged over traditional media outlets. We are back now. Luckily, we've got our own expert. So, Howie, I mean, how much of this was.

Clearly a lot of mainstream media outlets, Harris was their favorite candidate. We saw that in a number of different ways. Is it time for the media to do a little bit of self-reflection as Democrats are doing that now too? Yes, but don't hold your breath.

Soul-searching is not the media's strong suit, and they're already going on to, oh, look who's going to be in the cabinet. And I guess Kamala's campaign was a little, a smidgen less than applause now that we look at it. But look, this is the most massive media failure of this century, just a humiliating debacle on so many levels, not blowing the forecast of the campaign, but misjudging the country, misjudging the people that there would be a majority of people, including minorities, including children.

even people in urban areas who would support now President-elect Trump. And I think if you look at it in that sense, there's really very little good to say about the fact that they were largely in a bubble. Look, there are always exceptions.

didn't understand why people would support Donald Trump, just viewed him as, you know, danger to democracy and all that. And then finally, Democrats, at least those who are not in their therapist's office right now, are mouthing the right words. Well, maybe we moved too far left. Why did we alienate our working class base? But actually carrying that out is very difficult when you're leaderless and when you're kind of shell shocked and when you're still tied, in my view, to identity politics.

Well, something the New Yorker wrote about this. This is how they view this vote. It says America has now twice elected him, President Trump, as its president. It is a disastrous revelation about what the United States really is.

So, Molly, they're pointing the picture, the finger back at Americans. Well, it's a good example of the kind of contempt that a lot of people in corporate media have toward average Americans. They clearly do not understand the country that they purport to represent. You're seeing actually less self-reflection this time than we saw in 2016. And you might remember that in 2016, they went on to create and participate in the Russia collusion hoax and have

have these elaborate conspiracy theories about how Republicans were able to take control of the presidency that year. So there is much that needs to be happening with the media. But the most important thing probably this cycle is how unimportant they became relative to podcasters.

You had Donald Trump not even appear on 60 Minutes because of their corruption and how biased they are. And they also had that situation where they didn't release the unedited transcript and video of their 45-minute interview with Kamala Harris. We still don't know what they're hiding. Instead, the Trump campaign effectively used podcasts to reach out to a different audience than the one served by corporate media. Three hours with Joe Rogan.

That counts for a lot. It does, especially when one candidate does it and the other, for whatever reason, they can't reach an agreement and that doesn't happen. Elon Musk, early in the hours of November 6th, when it looked like President Trump had locked this thing in, he puts on X, you are the media now. Jeff, as a member of the media, how do you take that? I mean, he wants to talk about democratizing free speech. He has a lot of critics who say what is happening on X includes all kinds of things that are not so palatable to people.

Well, I mean, I think that's a shift we've been seeing for years now is that everyone is a journalist. Anyone with an iPhone can take video. Anyone with a social media account can put out their own views and, for that matter, their own reporting. I don't think, obviously, as a journalist, that that means we are moving into irrelevance. I think we've got a really big job. We've had a big job for a long time. But

we're competing with a lot more different people than we used to. I mean, when I first joined Reuters more than two decades ago, the wire services were the first ones to get everything out. I mean, we weren't we didn't even feel like we were competing with newspapers then. And good grief, that's changed entirely. So, you know, he's not wrong that everyone out there with with

an ex-account, former Twitter account, and other social media has a way to get stuff out the way reporters do. But the world's richest man has turned the ex into a pro-Trump platform. Obviously, that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. It's actually more important that it's a free speech platform, and it's the only social media platform that is for free speech where people can debate and enter, and they've got community notes where you can fact-check people. That is factually inaccurate, my friend Molly Hemingway. He has turned it into a pro-Trump platform where people on the other side

are being, their accounts are being suspended, their posts are being taken down. He is now using it in the way that Republicans used to accuse Democrats of using social media. And look, as someone who's worked on campaigns and who's thinking about how campaigns should deal with the media going forward, to sort of what we were talking about about podcasts, right?

Kamala Harris actually was talking about things that help the middle class. She was talking about housing. She was talking about child care tax credits. But she wasn't doing it in the as as Molly rightly. I agree with this. The bro podcast, the reaching people where they are trying to get to voters, not just by traditional door knocking. They knocked on so many doors in Pennsylvania the weekend before the election that by traditional didn't connect exactly by traditional campaign standards.

it didn't work, right? The things that when I worked for Barack Obama's campaign, the things that worked aren't working anymore. And that's organizing. That's how much money you raise. That's what media you engage with. And so for Democrats, look, after 2004, we felt the same way we do today. It's a better comparison than 16. George W. Bush won a second term when we knew what he was like as president. And we never, let me

And when we got to 2008, nobody would have predicted four years earlier that Barack Obama would win states like Indiana. So a lot can change in four years. Democrats have a lot of work to do. We have lots of young leaders in our party. Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg. We're going to be fine.

But we have to address this question of how we engage with voters and how we reach them and through what media platforms. OK, so while that is not true that free speech is necessarily pro-Trump, although Republicans do seem to be better on speech than Democrats right now, it is a big situation that social media continues to engage in censorship, sometimes with the help of the government, through this censorship industrial complex. Elon Musk is doing it to liberals, Molly. Does that bother you? Does that bother you?

When Elon Musk doesn't tell liberals? Go ahead, Nancy. Does it bother you? We're seeing Google in particular doing a lot to suppress news. Oh, my goodness. To suppress news and information as it relates to all the issues that people vote on. And so censorship is going to be a major issue going forward. And hopefully other social media platforms will also engage in more free speech. There's litigation involving a lot of this, too, that is going to flesh out a lot of these conversations.

I thought this piece in The Federalist was very interesting, saying culture did a way better job of signaling Trump's wins than broken polls. Talked about the success of Maverick Top Gun and this rise of anti-woke comedians and podcasts. And the author of this piece, Molly, for you guys said, you know, they could have sensed it through the culture. Did we miss that?

To a large extent, although when Donald Trump was clever enough to go to McDonald's and those images, I mean, he sort of won the day in that politics is often about images. Got the apron on, scooping out the prize. I'm not as optimistic as Jeff Mason. I think the media have lost an enormous amount of credibility. Ratings are in the toilet, distrusted by both sides. Joe Biden didn't love the media. He didn't like giving interviews either, and that was part of the problem.

His presidency. But I think there's a bubble there. And the soul searching you mentioned, I'd like to see more of it because podcasts have taken over. They're more fun. They're obviously often partisan. And we're seen as the dull dinosaurs. Who's got a podcast at this table? I was just going to say, I think there'll be some soul searching amongst Democrats as well. Reuters broke the story. I broke the story with a couple of colleagues that they were talking to Joe Rogan, but then it didn't happen. And I spoke to at least one aide in her camp afterwards. He said we should have done that.

that. Well, there'll be a lot of should haves as people look at everything in the wake of this and as we still wait on the House and see where that dust settles as well. Panel, thank you very much. By the way, a very special way to salute our veterans as the country prepares to honor our service members. That's up next. How you can get involved. So what do you think about these?

All right, we here at Fox believe all of our veterans deserve to live with dignity and independence. So we want you to join us and make camo your cause. In support of the U.S. Vets campaign, which aims to eradicate veteran homelessness, you can visit usvets.org slash fox forward. You can donate, find some cool camo gear. You can also post your camo pics on social media.

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