How 45 Became 47
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I'm Harris Faulkner. I'm Stuart Vonney. I'm Kat Timpf. And this is the Fox News Rundown.

Thursday, November 7th, 2024. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. How did 45 become 47? The campaigns examine who voted in this presidential election and what motivated them to cast their ballots. People remembered that things were more affordable. The border was more secure. The world was safer when Donald Trump was in the White House.

I'm Chris Foster. President-elect Trump did and went through a lot to win this race, and Democrats did their share to lose. Look, I think she ran a very credible campaign, thrown into a presidential race with almost no notice and 100 days to win or lose. And she comes pretty close. I mean, another couple of percentage points one way or the other, and she would be president today. We're speaking with Fox News contributor Mark Penn. And I'm Jason Chaffetz. I've got the final word on the Fox News Rundown.

Vice President Kamala Harris did not address her supporters on election night or early election morning, but by Wednesday afternoon, she spoke to her supporters and volunteers at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, D.C., telling them to continue the fight. You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair.

This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. She urged her supporters to continue the fight at the voting booths, in the courts and in the public square. Before she spoke, we got word she'd called the former president, now President-elect Trump, to congratulate him. She said she told him they would help him and his team with their transition and engage in a peaceful transfer of power. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time.

But for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.

President Biden also called President-elect Trump to congratulate him. And we expect to hear from President Biden at some point today as both campaigns examine what went right and what went wrong. Well, I think the fundamental problem was the fundamental problem that every vice president who is seeking to be directly elected as the next president has faced since the last 180, 90 years is

is that people have to want a third term, or in this case, a second term of the president. Mark Lauder was strategic communications director for President-elect Trump's 2020 campaign. It's only happened once in the last 188 years, if I recall, and that was George H.W. Bush, because people wanted a third term of Ronald Reagan.

you know al gore couldn't pull it off vice president harris couldn't pull it off because 75 of the american people think our country's on the wrong track exit polls show around 70 of the american people yesterday were angry or unsatisfied with the current state of where america is and when you're the sitting vice president of the united states you have a problem when you can't say what you would have done differently

Why you didn't do something differently because you were in office and then try to make the case that you are the agent of change that they want to change from. So incumbency kind of got put upon her in a negative way of something. A lot of times we talk about incumbency, the power of incumbency. In this case, it she she had to bear that as a burden.

Yeah, that's my general belief because every vice president who wants to be directly elected as the next president, you want the good things from the previous administration, but you don't want the bad. And when you have so many American people thinking that our country is on the wrong track, it's hard to distance yourself. And then because of her own bad answers when she was asked, what would you do differently? And she said nothing.

Well, that's a problem for people when they're walking into the to the voting booth. I know people like you were being peppered with questions about the president elects

comments that he made in the days up before Election Day, things like, you know, that the biggest threat is the far left calling them the enemy from within the comedian joke about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage. The criticisms that came along with that. I know you were asked about those as they were happening. Those moments don't seem to have mattered.

No, and I think a lot of the thing, you know, I think some of the exit polling and we'll need to see more details and more data as it comes in shows that most Americans made up their mind well over a month ago and not in the closing days, which I think was a fundamental problem for the Harris campaign is that they kept changing their narrative. You know, first it was joy and vibes. Then it was, you know, they're fascists, they're Nazis, etc.

Then it was, you know, trying to catch on to whatever controversy they could they could gin up every single day until the final three or four days. It was back to kind of a hope and vibes kind of an idea. And so you never really got a narrative from them where the one fundamental difference. And it's also the problem we faced in 2020 when taking on then Vice President Biden.

Biden, is that Kamala didn't have a record. We did. In this case, people remembered that things were more affordable. The border was more secure. The world was safer when Donald Trump was in the White House. And so he was actually running, in my estimation, an incumbent campaign, even though he wasn't the incumbent. She was more like the challenger and she was the incumbent. It was a very odd dynamic.

Because of the unique circumstances of that election. Yeah, it was so unique. We went from seeing people like Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Tim Scott on stage with the former president. Fast forward to seeing the head of the UFC, Dana White, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. surrounding him. How much did the coalition matter here in this in this election?

Well, I think it mattered greatly because when we looked at the numbers coming in as they were coming in Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, you were seeing that not only was Donald Trump – and I'll use a McDonald's reference because it was a great photo – supersizing his 2016 strategy of deriving more and more support out of traditionally rural areas or traditionally red areas, but then he was cutting into –

the traditional Democrat voting blocs. And it wasn't by a massive number, except with Latinos. It was 1 or 2%, 3% in Philadelphia, 3% in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It was cutting the margin in New York's state from, say, 5 million down to 3 million or 2 million. Those are the kinds of little things that you saw pop up in all of the battleground states where he was

Bringing out even more support in red areas and just slightly by a couple, two, three percentage points, reducing the margin, her margin in the blue areas. And that's what you needed to win the election overall. And what it looks like right now, likely to be the national popular vote. Yeah, he that was going to be my next question for you is he he.

Our Fox News voter analysis showed that 23 percent of black men went for former President Trump, President-elect Trump. He didn't even do as poorly with women as we were told he might. I think he did even I guess more women went for Biden than went for even Vice President Harris. What why do you think this happened? Does it go to your first answer about sort of the wrong track? Or is there something deeper that you guys are looking at?

Well, I think it's twofold. I think first off, I think the wrong track number is, you know, a dominant feature of the electorate. But secondly, I think we are seeing the and I'm going to say fingers crossed, hopefully the destruction of identity of identity politics that you no longer have to vote a certain way based on the boxes you check on the census form that regardless of your race, your gender, your background, that you

you vote for the policy or the person that you think will best deliver for your family, your business, your personal finances, or what your concerns are. And so I think we're starting to see that with, especially when it comes to Hispanic voters, we saw it obviously with black voters. And I do think we saw it with, with women voters, many in the Democrats and then left thought it was a single issue that was dominating the

And while, yes, there are single issue voters, women who vote solely on the abortion issue on both sides, I think the vast majority of women are nuanced on many different policy issues. And whether it was on the security concerns about the border or the inflation and the economy, I think those were the driving features. And once again, well, even if you don't like the way he tweets or somehow how many name calls,

You can't afford not to vote for him because things cost less. The border was secure. Well, let's talk about the future. What would you anticipate for a first 100 days of a second Trump term? Is he focused on the border? Is it are we getting a lot of must going with the whole government efficiency initiative? Like what's the big focus, I guess, in the beginning?

Yeah, well, I want to be very clear. I do not speak for the former president-elect or his transition or anything along those lines, but I think he's made it very clear. First and foremost, he wants to get American energy moving again because that is one of the quickest and easiest ways to deal with inflation. When you lower the cost of energy, you lower the cost of making things, harvesting things, transporting things, and that will be passed along to consumers. But Mark, wait, I got to stop you there for a second. I've been confused about this.

We're producing more oil and gas now this year than we even did in 2019. The production has been booming, right? Well, the production is higher, but the rate of growth slowed considerably. And so even though it is higher than when it was in 2020, it didn't keep up with the pace of growth that we previously had. And then we also have a refining problem. And so refining capacity is down dramatically.

because of overregulation by the government. And so even though we're pumping more oil, we're not able to as quickly and easily and cheaply transition it into gas and diesel. So there's a number of issues there. And I think even just the regulatory reform will give a signal to the energy companies that they can get back to exploring, get back to doing the other things, which will eventually lower costs.

So first and foremost, that obviously working with Congress, we don't know who is going to control the House of Representatives yet. So that will

likely change things. Obviously, the Trump tax cuts, some of them are expiring. They need to be extended. And then obviously, I think getting tough on the border, clearly the president has made that as a top priority. And in many of these cases, it's just taking the shackles that were placed on the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents to do their jobs. When you have millions of people who have already

Coming to this country, gone through the legal system, gone through their appeals in order to be removed by a judge, and yet they're not being removed. And then you also have the criminal alien that has been so highly talked about. They can take quick action on a lot of those things while we work on a longer-term plan to getting back to the secured border and dealing with the immigration problem overall.

OK, just a couple more for you. I'm asking you this question knowing that you are not necessarily part of a Trump transition team. You're not a part of the administration. I'm just wondering, based on your opinion, based on what you know of the former president and the fact that he has said that.

He believes he could solve the Russia-Ukraine conflict in a day, even before he takes office. Would you, based on what you know of him, expect to see him make this effort even before he takes office to try and talk to Putin and Zelensky and do something here?

Well, two things on that. Obviously, with that caveat that I don't speak for him. One thing that they know is that he is a known quantity. Whether it's Zelensky, whether it's Putin, they know the kind of leader they're going to get in President Trump again. And so this can be a highly motivating factor to get the two sides to a negotiating table to figure out what needs to be done to end this conflict.

Because they know that once he actually gets there on January 20th, you know, he has levers that he may be able to pull. And I mean, from a negotiating standpoint to, you know,

to bring them to the table and deal with this conflict. The same thing I would say holds true in the Middle East with Israel and then obviously Iran and its terror proxies. They know what they're getting with President Trump. And so it might be in their best interest to get these things taken care of before he has to get there and take care of them himself. Okay, Mark, interesting. Just your final thoughts about the trajectory here. We went from January 6th

All the legal cases, the indictments, the impeachments to this moment with not only the former president winning, winning bigger, it appears, than he did in 2016 with a Republican Senate, possibly even a Republican House. Are you is your head spinning?

You know, well, I'm not going to say it's spinning because, you know, the polls had indicated this for a while. I was naturally, you know, optimistic, but also cautious because the polls have been wrong so much. You know, you didn't almost want to believe it. And it might be too good to be true. The one thing I think it should send a message, though, is that.

I think this is the American people, and they said it in 16. I think they're saying it again in 2024, that they do not want the elites from the Acela Corridor in New York City, in Washington, D.C., to stop telling us who we have to support. Stop telling us that we have to reflect your views, that you are a representative, an elected representative of us.

And that we, the people, want our leaders to reflect our views, not the other way around. Mark Lauder, former special assistant to now president-elect Donald Trump. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for having me.

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I'm Emily Campagno, host of the Fox True Crime Podcast. This week, I'm joined by Fox News senior correspondent Claudia Cowan, who covered the case at the time for a look back at the murder of Chandra Levy. Available now on foxnewspodcast.com. This is Jason Chaffetz with your Fox News commentary coming up. This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country. Yeah.

A lot of Trump supporters felt like their country had been taken away or was being lost.

America is ready for a fresh start. Now it's time to turn the page as we've done throughout our history. And what most Americans wanted to turn the page on is the Biden-Harris administration and move forward again with President-elect Trump. I think he came back from oblivion. Mark Pence, the chairman and CEO of Stagwell Inc. and chairman of the Harris poll and a Fox News contributor. Ran a heroic, unprecedented, one in a million campaign campaign

crushed in the primaries, crushed President Biden in a debate, then had to deal with a second presidential campaign. So, yes, he won. You write in this op-ed on FoxNews.com, I'll quote you, Trump's victory is a victory for the Americans who feel abandoned by the elites and a Democratic Party that moved too far from mainstream America. Do you want to get into specifics there?

Well, I think it's very clear when you look at the map of who voted that the working class and mainstream America told the elites, no dice on your policies. That meant that typical Americans want a border that is secure. They want government spending that doesn't trigger inflation. They want police that's effective in reducing inflation.

in reducing crime. I think that they had just a number of basic kitchen table issues that kind of drove them to bring Trump back. Vice President Harris tried to back away from some of the more progressive stuff she said when she was trying to win the nomination in 2020. It didn't seem to it didn't seem to matter. You know what I mean? Like that anti-trans ad ran nonstop, for example, and it seemed to be effective.

Well, I think that the Harris campaign made a strategic decision that they were not going to really take a lot of positions on issues because issue positions might split their coalition. And so they kind of tried to make, I think, their campaign about identity as opposed to issues.

And I think they were courting, say, blacks and they were courting women and they were courting identity groups as a strategy if they could put together a coalition of them. And I think ultimately the more issue oriented approach of Trump won out against those two campaigns. It was an actual strategy of hers.

really not to say exactly what her position was. And you saw that in the final days when people asked her about like a California proposition that she had just voted on. Yeah.

Trump's going to end up with about, give or take, the same number of popular votes as last time. But I mean, so he lost some people that he had and he replaced them with new people in about equal numbers. And there were some demographic shifts that you talked about a little bit. What happened there? Well, I think that the Trump did a couple of percentage points better than.

uh than he did last time and it was a pretty diverse set of people because as i said they we can measure them and whether or not they were they were in the midwest or working class or college educated but the truth is there there were a lot of people who felt hard-pressed about inflation and he gained particularly among latinos for example but i don't think because they were latinos i think he gained because they're largely a working-class population that felt

that felt that the inflation really ate into their disposable income and ability to kind of feed their families. And so I really think that you see that he did better with men. He did probably better than expected among women because there was a gender gap

but still not as big as I think the Harris campaign was really planning on. And he did better with young people, right? And I don't think anybody really expected overall that he would do better with young people who were looking for a better future. Losers in these elections tend to want to find blame so they can explain things to themselves. I mean, there's going to be people looking to blame

Joe Biden for not dropping out a year ago or just saying the whole time he was going to be one term or that Harris wasn't specific enough or that she should have chosen chosen Josh Shapiro as a running mate or whatever. But I mean, honestly, is there anything this was just such, you know, a broad loss? Was there anything realistically the Democrats could have done to win here campaign wise, not not looking back policy wise? Sure. I think she could have affirmatively taken a perhaps a full throated decision.

position in the center rather than leaving people to guess where her positions were because she wanted to keep the left and then try to get some centrist voters at the same time and reach over to Nikki Haley voters. But I think that wasn't credible in the way that the campaign approached it. And look, I think she ran a very credible campaign thrown into a presidential race with almost no notice.

and 100 days to win or lose, and she comes pretty close. I mean, another couple of percentage points one way or the other, and she would be president today.

This is not, say, when I did, you know, Dole, President Clinton against Dole, where we won by, you know, eight points or anything like that at all. So I think she ran a credible campaign under a difficult situation. But I do believe that Joe Biden never should have tried to run. And when he did, his advisers and people around him should have told him not to. And he was always intended to be a transitional leader.

a one-term president at his age, and he really was not up to his second term. Yeah. I mean, he hinted at it, I guess. But look, I imagine once you are elevated to that office that you've wanted for decades and, you know, vanity takes over and pride takes over and you think, well, I can stick around. I'm doing a good job. Well, you know, try getting the car keys from your 82-year-old parent, let alone Air Force One. Right. Yeah.

Like a third, 30 percent, something like that in an exit poll said that they want just not just change, but really they want to blow it up. I kind of call it the Joker vote who just want to see it. Everything disrupted. And I guess that's that's a big part of why Trump's appealing to some people. I mean, the disruptive nature to his opponents is a bug, but to his supporters, it's a feature.

well i mean i think it's interesting that elon musk with his was with him because elon musk is a is obviously a classic disruptor but you know you can disrupt things by throwing bombs or you can disrupt things by providing innovation and new ways of doing things and i don't think the people who want things uh disrupted just want to want even more chaos i think what they want is less i think they want common sense policies

I think they want to get rid of policies that they completely disagree with.

So when Donald Trump won in 2016, I mean, he was new. It was exciting to a lot of people. The rich and famous TV star guy, you know, forget about policy. People that aren't that aren't necessarily even into politics were like, hey, this is neat. And then he lost. And then a lot of what you think would be negatives happened to impeachments, covid, capital riot, criminal charges, a conviction. And then he wins. How much was that? The prosecutions, how much of that?

Helped him politically in the end, not to mention getting shot. I don't know anything that helped him except for the fact that people saw him as the ultimate survivor and fighter. I mean, who gets almost assassinated and instinctively gets up?

to say, fight, fight, fight. I think that's a rare bird who has that kind of instinct on display. So no, I don't think it helped him. What helped him was the fact that people saw that he had the stamina and the will to continue to run for president despite all of the obstacles and even death, potential death being enthroned in his direction. This is very crystal ball-y, but is this...

what we're seeing now going to stick for decades. This kind of specific Republican Party power, I mean, especially with the courts,

being the way they're going to be entrenched? Or does the pendulum somehow, as it does, swing back with some sort of progressive push in 2026, 2028? Maybe not progressive like identity politics, but more based on the economy and labor and safety net stuff. If voters say, hey, wait a minute, the Republicans aren't actually making things better for us. And, you know, let me add, I think another major reason that he won was that people felt, you know, the truth of the matter is we probably should have reelected him. And

And this was much more a rejection, I think, of Joe Biden than it was of Kamala Harris. I think when it comes to going forward, I think the Democratic Party is going to have an open debate.

full-throated primary system. There are a lot of potential candidates with real experiences, you know, who've served in legislatures and governorships and, you know, manage big states. And so I think that there'll be an ideological and policy debate. And I think that the interesting thing is 2028 will facilitate that on both sides.

And we will see whether one of these candidates really goes back to capture the center and whether the center turns out to be reowned by the new Democratic Party, as it was with Bill Clinton after going out into the wilderness. It was too far to the left during that cycle or whether or not it will be owned by the by the next Republican candidate who will take office.

the Trump philosophy in a new direction. I don't know. I think that's going to make... 2028 is likely to be the biggest presidential election of our time. Mark J. Penn is the chairman and CEO of Stagwell Inc., chairman of the Harris Poll, a Fox News contributor, of course. Mark, good to talk to you. Thanks. Thank you.

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It's time for your Fox News commentary. Jason Chaffetz. What's on your mind?

In the biggest political comeback in our lifetime, Donald Trump will once again be seated in the Oval Office as the 47th President of the United States. How did he do it? No one expected him to be able to recreate the magic of his 2016 surprise win after facing an endless onslaught of lawfare, false narratives, demonization of his family, and literally being shot in one of two assassination attempts,

Former President Trump overcame every obstacle. He defied the odds, and the masses responded. Some will be tempted to dismiss his successful comeback as a consequence of a bungling Democratic Party paired with a horrific candidate in the lackluster Vice President Kamala Harris. But that's not the whole story.

In reality, Donald Trump built the most diverse coalition of voters Republicans have seen in our lifetimes. He expanded the tent, ran hard on substantive policies, and built a dream team of former rivals who love America. Trump ran on strength and making America great again. The traditional legacy media never understood the power of that vision. Democrats dismissed it as offensive.

Democrats erroneously believed they could create a crude caricature of a man whose leadership had brought prosperity and peace. But Trump overcame the over-the-top name-calling and far-fetched catastrophizing. Trump led the party by remaking the party.

New leadership at the Republican Party was focused on getting out the vote and doing it early. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, together with Laura Trump and countless others, raised the money and built the infrastructure necessary to enhance the efforts of the state parties. Trump successfully drew in low propensity voters from across the demographic and political spectrum.

Trump elevated talented leaders like Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Nicole Shanahan, and others abandoned by today's woke-ified Democratic Party. He won over current thought leaders from Joe Rogan to Tucker Carlson to Megyn Kelly to Dr. Phil, each with their own massive audiences.

Elon Musk's support paved the way for Republicans to communicate their messages without the suppression and manipulation of previous presidential campaigns. Finally, Donald Trump selected the best possible running mate in Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Not only did the hillbilly elegy author have a compelling and inspirational personal story, he knew how to articulate the best case for a Trump presidency.

He savagely dismantled false narratives with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face. In the end, the Donald Trump victory is a story of perseverance, guts, and an insatiable desire to fight, fight, fight for the American people. That message resonated. Voters heeded the call in record numbers. Going forward, we'll see how the Democrats react to a convincing Trump victory. Will they accept the results of a free and fair election?

Or will they once again resort to the election denial they embraced after Trump's first election? I'm Jason Chaffetz, Fox News contributor and host of the Jason in the House podcast on the Fox News Radio Network.

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