Dems' Wave Keeps Growing

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0:32Democrats are basking in a historic victory while Republicans sift through the wreckage. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and inside politics.

0:49It has been a dizzying few days here in Washington and all across the country as we grasp just how much Tuesday's election earthquake changed the political landscape and what it means for the country moving forward. Here's what's on our midterm radar. The new Democratic House majority keeps getting bigger. And moments ago, CNN projected 10 more seats, including four more Democratic pickups. Now, CNN has projected Democratic wins in 249 seats. That That includes 39 new seats that they've flipped. And there's still about three dozen races yet to be called. Democrats could plausibly get to 260, a 260 majority.

1:35That would be the biggest for either party since 1990. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters. We want to start with this news. David Chalian, we can put up on the screen some of the specifics, which we can talk about of what we just called, but also obviously the big picture of the fact that this very large House majority keeps getting bigger.

1:57Dana Bash: Yeah. I mean, that is the point. And, you know, a bunch of these races, as you said, are Republican holds from where they were. But the fact that in these 10 races that were just projected, four of them are not just Democratic hold. They're Democratic pickups. They're flipping Republican seats. So that's, you know, Virginia won outside the Richmond area. And there you see there, Rob Whitman, the Republican incumbent, has fallen to Shannon Taylor. And then look at what is happening in the Tar Heel state. We saw it with Roy Cooper, obviously, in his big victory over Wadley. Want to start with North Carolina 6?

2:34Dana Bash: But sure, look at that. North Carolina 6. Cyril Jefferson, Addison McDowell, incumbent Republican, goes down in North Carolina 6. The 13th congressional district in North Carolina is another one that we just projected for the Democrat, which is another pickup in that state and in the 14th congressional district. So there's 13. Yep. There you go. I mean, they're close, obviously, but but the Democrats are ousting Republican incumbents everywhere across North Carolina. And we can also go to North Carolina 14 if we can. And just to kind of emphasize, this is just in this latest batch of calls that we're making, three of them are Democratic pickups in the Tar Heel state.

3:12Never mind what we saw on election night.

3:16Dana Bash: Including the defeat of the chairman of the Republican campaign committee. Exactly. Richard Hudson. We're actually going to have the Democrat who defeated him later in the show. But there's so many reasons for this. They had a very strong Democrat at the top of the ticket and the former governor, Roy Cooper, who flipped the Senate seat. But also, it's just such an example. I think we've been talking understandably a lot about Texas and we will do it more this hour. But North Carolina is another example. I mean, they got slammed by Hurricane Helene. They had a lot of trouble digging out from it.

3:53A lot of people felt like they didn't get enough help from the federal government combined with all of the economic troubles that that state had that matches so many other states. And it just kind of helps to really paint the picture of all of these, in North Carolina's case, purple slash red, but also deep red states that have changed. Manu, as you look at this, being the guy who walks the hallways and talks to these members, many of whom are not coming back, particularly on the GOP side, can you believe how big this is? No, I mean, it's stunning. I mean, it is just absolutely stunning. Nobody, absolutely nobody thought the Republicans would be this deep in the minority.

4:37I mean, remember, so many of these districts have been gerrymandered to the point where there were so few, what we're seeing is true competitive districts heading into November. Remember, we thought that any majority of the Democrats would get would be a pretty narrow one. And, you know, I was talking to a ton of people on both sides of the aisle on the run-up to Tuesday, the leadership. People were really, really deeply involved in all this. Really the high watermark that Democrats thought that they could get was probably 230. There were some people saying maybe we can get to 240 seats, but that would be an absolute tsunami.

5:08The fact that we're talking about 260 is just so stunning because the Democrats won pretty much everywhere across the board. in districts that Trump won by 15, 16, 17, 18 points. There are going to be hardly any Republicans coming back in districts that Trump won by four, five, two or three points. Not many swing districts Republican coming back. A lot of swing districts are Democrats. And that's going to be an interesting dynamic, one that Hakeem Jeffries will have to deal with. And David, you have some stats. I want you to do that in one second. But Kristen, I want to bring you in. And as I do, I want to play what Robert Garcia said about the, and he's now the ranking on the House Oversight Committee, presumably will be the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, what he said about the sort of balance between focusing on affordability and accountability.

5:59We need to both move forward and pass new laws and lower the costs. There also has to be accountability for the crimes that are being committed because there is a link. And so what I've told folks is that we if we want to actually bring costs down, then we actually have to take on corruption as well. How's that playing at the White House? The White House is preparing for every scenario right now. I mean, I think that there are some that would like them to be preparing more in terms of investigations. And I'm talking about like junior staffers who haven't been briefed on any of this, but they many of them were in the White House in the 2020 administration and got swept up into January 6 investigations.

6:37A lot of people I'm talking to are talking about potentially leaving their posts. They don't want to get swept up in any of this. We know that the council's office has added 15 attorneys to deal with this, but they're not having kind of public briefings with the staff as to what this could look like. I will say, you know, Republicans are hopeful that Democrats do go all in only on investigations. Obviously, the White House doesn't want to be a part of that, but they will be the center. But Republicans in general are hopeful because they believe that that diminishes Republicans across the board, that that's not what the American people want.

7:09It does seem, what'd you say? That there'll be backlash? Yes, exactly. And it does seem that Democrats, especially those who have been part of this Trump era, are keenly aware of that and trying to find the balance there. Yeah, no question about it. I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how different of a dynamic this is now than it was in 2019. Remember Rashida Tlaib in 2019, said we're going to impeach, you know, and she used a curse word that I will not use at the moment referring to Donald Trump, But will that be the, will the pitchforks be coming out? How will, you know, Hakeem Jeffries told me yesterday, no one has mentioned impeachment to him privately in a conversation yet.

7:44Will that change?

7:44Dana Bash: And remember how reluctantly Nancy Pelosi was kind of dragged into that impeachment the first time around? Yeah. But Hakeem Jeffries is going to have a bigger majority to navigate that with. Yeah. And I want to actually talk about that. But I do want to get some of the research that you've been doing in, because I think our viewers are going to love it. Take it away. Sure. Thanks. So this is what Manu's point was making. And something I started really obsessing about is, okay, you know the way every political operative assesses, like at the beginning of an election cycle, either side, what are our opportunities?

8:12Dana Bash: Where did the president win? So, you know, did Trump win between zero and 10 points? What do those districts look like? Well, I want to show you what those districts look like right now. These are districts that Donald Trump won. If I can get this to work. Hang on. I'm not going to be able to show you this, Dana. That's okay. There you go. No, no, no. Hang on. You're going to have to do this another time. Okay, so you do that. The buildup. You do that. Well, just explain what it was. Sure. There are about 33 districts that Donald Trump won between zero and 10 points just two years ago. Okay? So that's the target that you would go to if you're a Democrat.

8:55Dana Bash: Where are we going to go fishing for seats? Democrats have won nearly every single one of them. Wow. So if you were a Republican in a zero... How many are we talking about? 33 districts. Wow. So if you were a Republican in a district that Donald Trump won zero to 10 points, there was like no safe harbor for you. Then we looked, where are the districts that Donald Trump won between 10 and 20 points? Guess what? There are a lot more of those districts. He won a lot of districts in that range between 10 and 10 points. But you're talking about Democrats still winning a huge chunk of those. What we have found is the high watermark right now, the Trumpiest district where a Democrat won is in Texas, the ninth congressional district.

9:36Dana Bash: Donald Trump won it by 19.9 percentage points and a Democrat won it. So not even if you were a Republican in a Trump district, 10 to 20 was his margin. Were you actually fully safe from this wave? This went deep into Trump country. So interesting. It is. And on that, when you think about governing and what you were mentioning about Hakeem Jeffries, David, let's just kind of show you how the breadth of the Democratic caucus. Let's first put on the newly elected Democrats in Trump districts so far. And this doesn't include the ones that we just put up. So look at all of those names. These are newly elected Democrats in districts that Donald Trump won.

10:20So by definition, they're more moderate. They have to be more moderate in order to win, generally speaking. Not all of them, but generally speaking. Now compare that to the Democratic Socialists or the sort of far left aligned caucus. It's pretty big, but nothing compared to the large group of Democrats in Trump districts. And so what that says is that Hakeem Jeffries is certainly going to have a lot of pressure from the left, but he's going to have a lot more pressure, I think, from the middle, which is not something that we've seen in recent times. Exactly. And this is a good problem for Jeffries to have because he can sort of push those folks away on the left and worry about the people that he needs to actually keep happy in order to be become maintain his speakership and have them be reelected to keep his majority.

11:18We had expected this to be a situation like Mike Johnson faced as the speaker, having the Freedom Caucus types, those folks on the far right that just completely stalled his agenda. Perhaps the socialist wing would do the same thing for Hakeem Jeffries. He can push those folks to the side because those blue districts presumably will stay blue in the next midterm. He's got to keep those folks in the middle very happy. It also means the House Republican Conference is getting a lot more conservative. It's already a very conservative conference, extremely conservative. And I know maybe I'm, you know, sort of, I'm going to use the word that we've been using, hopium.

11:54And my hopium right now is about getting things done in Washington. Is there any world in which, given the fact that you have all these potential dealmakers, that there is some room for compromise? I mean, you have to remember something. Donald Trump has no real political convictions. I mean, he aligned with the Republican Party, but that is not because he has some deep-seated value system that aligns with Republicans. He is a businessman who fell into this job, really. I mean, he didn't even think he was going to win. And he had spoke to a certain demographic of the entire country, not just Republicans, that, you know, ended up propelling him to the White House.

12:31He wants to get stuff done, too. He does not want to be a lame duck. The last thing he wants in the entire world is for this day or yesterday to be the end of his presidency. And so if they go in there and want to make deals with him, which the White House is hopeful that they will, because they think that there are a lot of people before 2028 who are going to want to get out there. They're going to want legislation out there. Dems are going to want stuff passed so they can point to it for 2028 that they would work together. I mean, what happened last time is they came out of the gate, Democrats, and launched these investigations, as you said.

13:00It was, you know, we're going to impeach them. Right, exactly. And so there isn't a real world here in which they could work together. Yeah. All right. Everybody stand by. We have been talking about what this means for the president. We're going to be discussing more of that and getting much more of Kristen's reporting. How will the president handle this new reality? We also are just getting in. We saw the new votes from the House. We're getting some new votes from the state of Mississippi where there is that razor thin outstanding Senate race. We're going to bring you what's going on there after a quick break.

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14:35And we've got a key race alert. We just got new votes in the razor thin Mississippi Senate race. And what we have is the Democrat Scott Colombe increasing his lead over the Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. He now has a lead just over 1 ,700 votes. That is an increase by about 600 from before. Colombe spoke to reporters earlier today. I knew we were competitive. I wasn't surprised. I kept saying months ago, So people across the country are going to be surprised, but I'm not going to be surprised. Yeah, I'm confident, very confident. I mean, you just got to look at the numbers. Anybody out there that does an analysis knows where this is going, right?

15:13The affidavit is always moving in the Democratic favor in Mississippi. You know, you look at the ballots that are left, you know, it's going in our favor. Absolutely.

15:25David, he's not wrong. That is true. The votes are moving in the favor, in his favor. And you and I were talking yesterday, Manu, about the vibes on the GOP side, not all that bullish on keeping this. Yeah, I've talked to a bunch of Republicans who think that this is going in the wrong direction. It was just so stunning. I mean, a couple of weeks before the election, we were hearing that Republicans were thinking about investing into Mississippi. And then we were told, no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. And then the bottom just absolutely fell out of this race. Trump had to go. The Democrats put some money in, but they didn't put nearly as much as a lot of the supporters wanted them to put in.

16:07Behind Scott Colombe, the supporters who thought that Colombe really had a shot, they put a little bit of money in, but nobody thought this. It just shows you how lackluster of a candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith was to lose and combine with all the economic factors and the strength of Scott Colombe's candidacy. And one fun fact, if you want to call it that, that I think goes underreported, that Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked Scott Cologne from being on the federal bench. He was going to be, yeah, he was going to be a judge. And so had she not blocked him, maybe she would still be in the Senate.

16:41Dana Bash: And when Donald Trump went to Mississippi, do you remember what he said? She might still be in the Senate, but it wouldn't be this close likely. She's going to be, she's fine. She's fine. I'm just here to like double check and make sure, but she's going to be totally fine. Well, the White House was really mad at her. They said that she didn't do any fundraising, that she didn't lift a finger on that. And they were, I mean, again, all of this goes back to Donald Trump and his policies. So let's talk about that a little bit more. You know, it's not the first time a president has gotten their you-know-what handed to them, their John Husted handed to them.

17:12And the way that presidents handle that, the way that they react varies, but only to a certain degree until we got to Donald Trump. Let's watch what happened when Bush had a major loss, Obama, and then now. Race by race, it was close. The cumulative effect, however, was not too close. It was a thumping. Now, I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like I did last night. You know, I'm sure there are easier ways to learn these lessons. It's a structure the likes of which has never been done. The ceilings are over 50 feet high. Okay, well, first of all, we were never going to see a joking around about losing Donald Trump.

17:58So there's that. Two, I mean, I was just saying this during the break. Watching him was like, are you dissociating? Are you still present on what's happening? I mean, this was the first, at one point he turned to the press, he was like, these guys wanted this to be a closed press event. Can you believe that when it's so great? And I was like, no, I definitely can believe that your team did not want you out there doing this beam stuff when, like, you guys just got completely slaughtered. But they were beautiful steel beams and beautiful veins going through the marble. I learned a lot, actually.

18:25It's what he cares about, and that's what he wants to focus on. And that's exactly why he really did look at the schedule and think, wouldn't everybody want to see this? I mean, this is how he wants to spend his time in Washington. And now, because he only has two years left, he feels like he can focus even more on some of these vanity projects. Well, let's look at just some examples of how the remaining Republicans are recommending that they absorb these results. In the next two years, we need to do two things. One, fight the madness. This entire two years, everything that we did on the floor was to protect the mods, the moderates, yet ignoring conservatives and what our plans were and what we thought we needed to accomplish.

19:10I was asked by the BBC, so should the Republican Party go back, you know, reject Meg and go back to the old Republican Party? No. The old Republican Party sucked. Tell us how you really feel, Senator Johnson. I mean, this is going to be the classic debate of a party out of power, although they still have the presidency, so not quite out of power, but a minority party. Do you battle? Do you go back down to what your base wants? Do you fight the other side? Or do you moderate, try to cut deals? And Trump is really going to be in the middle of this and driving how he approaches the other side. Does he try to whip up Republicans to try to block everything that Democrats are doing?

19:47Does he cut deals with Democrats? Because in the Senate, they still will have power. Even if they do get 56 seats, they will need to get four seats to break a Republican filibuster on most legislations. And a lot of these swing vote Republicans are gone. Tom Tillis is gone. Susan Collins is gone. Lisa Murkowski is still there. So it's a more conservative Republican conference on the Senate side, certainly in the House. So he does still have power, Trump does. Does he listen to the Ron Johnson's in the world and want to battle Democrats tooth and nail, or does he say what he said right after the election?

20:17Let's work with Democrats.

20:18Dana Bash: Whatever Ron Johnson thinks about the old Republican Party, which he made his opinion clear, I think the reality is that doesn't exist anymore. So there's not a returning to that. It doesn't exist, but also Trump was doing things that were aligned more with the old Republican Party than MAGA. That is why people were so angry with him within the debates and he couldn't drive it out. He went to war with Iran. He promised that he was America first. That's what people wanted. They wanted to feel like they weren't first and they weren't going to be pouring money into these other countries the way that they had in the past.

20:48And then he went to war with Iran. I mean, these are things that he was doing that were not aligned with the MAGA base. This is why you're Kristen Holmes. Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. That's a quote from Republican Senator Ted Cruz. The Texas-sized political shockwaves and what it all means for 2028.

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21:59Not only did Democrats win the high-profile Senate and governor's races, they won every other statewide race on the ballot and flipped the statehouse.

22:10Dana Bash: The voters have delivered a mandate for change, and it is change they will get. We won this race because people who are desperate for change now are going to get change. Joining me now is the Texas Democratic Party chair, Kendall Scudder. Congratulations. They're definitely in order. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. A lot of people worked really hard for a long time, so I'm very grateful. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And look, there's no doubt about it. It was a stunning rejection of the Texas GOP on Tuesday. It was only two years ago that the Republicans overwhelmingly rejected your party.

22:55So my question is, do you think this is a sign of real political realignment in Texas, or could the pendulum just swing back two years from now? I think it certainly could be. I think it counts on two different factors. Number one, whether or not the Democrats actually deliver what was promised, sweeping anti-corruption reform, investments in community public schools, reducing property taxes. Those are things that I think the party needs to focus on. If they do, I think we can hold on to it. The second piece of it is if our infrastructure holds and we continue to build on it. When I became chairman a year and a half ago, we only had one third of the state with precinct chairs.

23:3520 % of our counties didn't even have county chairs. We've been building infrastructure. We ran our first coordinated campaign since 1982, where everybody was on a team together. If we can keep building on that infrastructure, I think we can start to build a machine here that that would be unbeatable. But it's going to take a lot of sweat equity. The first coordinated campaign since 1982. And what that means is that Democrats working up and down the ticket. That's amazing. That's right. Yeah. And for the first time we were sharing on the data back in, we knew we were going to get outspent. OK, Elon Musk spent three hundred and fifty million dollars.

24:13We knew it was going to happen. And so we have to be as efficient as we can with all the dollars that came through. And so we put together a plan. Everyone, James, all the way down to your local constable. We're working together to try to make sure we weren't duplicating efforts. We ran some really innovative programs for low propensity turnout where we put low propensity voters into civics classes and help create vote plans. That was really great. I think there's a lot of really cool innovative things that we did that will probably be replicated around the country. But for now, my priority is making sure that I raise money to keep it all cranking and even in an off year, but also to just try to make sure we're building on that.

24:49OK, so on that note, two years from now is a presidential year. Texas has a massive haul, 40 electoral votes. They have been reliably read for decades. Are they now up for grabs? And if so, how do you as Democratic chair in Texas make sure the National Democratic Party makes investments so that you can compete? yeah i mean i think texas is absolutely in play not just in the general election but now remember a democrat has to get through texas in a democratic primary too we're the largest delegate selection uh on super tuesday so people are now going to have this outsized priority i think of coming to texas and you're going to have to be comfortable with our populism you're going to have to meet people face to face travel a really tough state that's very diverse and i I think it's going to really strengthen who our Democratic nominee is.

25:42And then when you get to the general, you know, you're also going to have to answer to Texans for that. It's possible. You can win here. But Texans, you know, we're real proud people. We work really hard. We expect people to take the time to come and meet us and talk to us. And it's a big state. It's hard to do it. As the state chair, I've done events in more than 130 counties. We've got 254 of them. Like it's going to be a challenge. But someone with a real organization together could do very well in Texas. And we're here to use our party infrastructure to make sure we're competitive. Before I let you go, I want to ask about a key demographic in your state, and that is the Latino vote, because Latinos rushed back to the Democrats after supporting President Trump largely in 2024, more than we have seen in Texas in some time.

26:29What are you going to do to hold on to Latino voters over the next two years and beyond? Yeah, I mean, what Hispanic voters did in the last election is they gave the Republicans a chance and they completely blew it. So we need to seize on the opportunity to meet what their expectations were. They put their hopes in us. We need to deliver for that. If we do that, I think we can do well. What the Democratic Party has done in the past that I think was a failure was when they go to Hispanic communities, they talk to them about immigration. They go to black communities. They talk to about criminal justice reform.

27:03We're a majority minority state. Hispanics are the plurality of our state. So when you go to those communities, talk to them about their public schools. Talk to them about reducing their property taxes. Talk to them about increased access to health care. Talk to them about cost of living. And when we treat everybody like they're worthy of this discussion to sit at a table at government, make decisions to govern here, I think that they have a lot of respect for that. So we're going to keep talking to people around this state, listening to what's important to them and delivering on it, which I think is the really important factor here.

27:32Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder, thank you so much for joining me and congratulations again. Thank you very much. And up next, the succession fight is on. Republicans are already tracking a path to keep President Trump's voters and convince everyone else that they represent something different.

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28:57Vice President J.D. Vance has been considered Trump's heir apparent, but here was the president's assessment yesterday. You can have people running. You can have a lot of people. Maybe a lot of people are running. Maybe nobody's going to run. Maybe he won't run. I don't know who's going to run. I think somebody's probably going to run. While Vance decides, he and many other high-profile Republicans are already diagnosing what went wrong and prescribing a fix. Here's some. Vance, quote, the reason we lost is the war. Senator John Cornyn, do what you promised. Senator Ted Cruz, a very real economic disconnect.

29:34Nikki Haley, stop the distractions. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, heed the will of the voters and learn. Mitt Romney, bad policy, bad character. Kristen? Here's what I'll say. We know that there is a slew of voters across the country because we saw the turnout numbers in 2024. And this happened in 2022, even though he lost. That said they were going to hold their nose and vote for Donald Trump because they liked some of the policies. They liked some of what he was saying. Well, they don't like what he's saying. And they remembered the economy being good in the first term. But they don't like what he's saying anymore.

30:09And so the bad character or any of that kind of, you know, Donald Trump, he is who he is. I mean, I think it's very clear that they don't like the policies he put in place and they don't think he delivered on what it is that he did. The distractions have always been there. Yes, he is doing it this time in the form of this kind of beautification of D.C. and it seems more obvious to us. But if we look back on his first term, it was exhausting. He was always over here, over there. Like the distractions were there. This is all about how people feel themselves. And they were able to put all those things aside.

30:43I honestly think a lot of people would be able to put the corruption aside if they felt that they were themselves getting some back, something back from this administration. But they feel like they've been stripped. Yeah. Let me read what Newt Gingrich, who is an ally of President Trump, of course, way back in 1994, was the leader of the Republican revolution that brought in a big sweep. Here's what he said. If the administration had won a big victory, Vice President J.D. Vance would have had an enormous argument to be the inevitable nominee. Now, with this go slow strategy blowing up in Iran and his defense of Vivek Ramaswamy's horrible, inhumane ad, this is Newt Gingrich here, featuring his opponent's mother attacking her own daughter, a good bit of the luster has come off the bloom.

31:31The number of people who want to draft Secretary of State Marco Rubio is staggering. It was quite a statement from Newt Gingrich. And I think a lot of people would agree with that assessment that J.D. Vance has lost a lot. He was seen perhaps as the prohibitive favorite heading into 2028, but not so much anymore. And not just the way he handled himself late in the campaign trail. He really owns what happened in Iran in a lot of ways. He came out, what was it, three, four months ago, saying they're going to remake the Middle East. He was the architect of this MOU that they had put together. And he tried to sell it to the American public.

32:11That obviously didn't materialize. Now he's saying that the Iran war is the reason why we lost. He very much owns the Iran war and all the baggage that comes with it. There is clearly an opening here. How much will he embrace Donald Trump heading into 2028? Will he continue to try to figure out ways to distance himself? And can he actually distance himself from Trump?

32:30Dana Bash: I would just say, ask Al Gore and Kamala Harris how easy it is to separate from a president you serve as vice president and not have it make your mission to become president harder. So I know you're talking about the prohibitive favor for the nomination. But given how Donald Trump is more unpopular than Bill Clinton was in 2000 or than Joe Biden was in 2024, actually. And I just think that this is an enormous problem for J.D. Vance. He is attached and inseparable from a woefully unpopular president who just suffered historic losses. I wonder how much these other 2028 candidates will be able to criticize Donald Trump in the run-up to the election, because we know that's been so hard for Republicans to criticize Trump.

33:10Will they do that now? I'm glad you brought that up, because we started to see some of the toes go into the water on that. First, I just want to show our colleague Steve Contorno has been talking to Republican primary voters already for 2028. Here's what he heard. It's all about the economy, the economy, the economy. Marion, Iowa, retiree Rich Seidman said he's bullish, though, on Vance. If the caucuses were today, that's who Seidman would vote for. Seidman thought for a moment, then said, I wouldn't mind seeing DeSantis either. That, of course, is Ron DeSantis, the outgoing governor of Florida, who was on CNN last night.

33:46Here's what he said. You know, I haven't planned anything. I have a job to do. The midterms was an important marker because you need to see what the political environment's going to do. I got some more things I got to do, and I'll be a free man come January 5th. Not that I'm counting down to that. And then we'll look to see the landscape. Just take you a little bit behind the curtain here. we were watching that on set last night and went, what was that?

34:12Dana Bash: Who was that? Yeah, it was fascinating. It was just an interesting, two things, that he wanted to show up on CNN and do that interview, right? I mean, that was not how Ron DeSantis positioned himself much during his last presidential run in the primary. And secondly, that he was sort of using the midterms as a jumping off point to paint himself apart from what just happened into the Republican Party. And before that interview, that morning I got a call from someone who does, MAGA, a lying Trump person who does stuff in Florida, and I said, well, who do you think it's gonna be? You think it can't be Vance after all this, right?

34:47What do you think, you know, in terms of popularity? And he said, you know, I never thought I'd say this, but what about Ron DeSantis? He's like, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. And I'm not really sure he came up with that on his own. Yeah, let's quickly not forget about Ted Cruz for a second, because he's not forgetting about his ambitions for the White House. Watch this. Listen, it's no secret that I want to be president. I ran for president. Are you going to run again? Are you going to run again? Time will tell. The very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, it's not about you.

35:22It's about them. It's about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures. But it is always darkest before the dawn. And morning is coming. I mean, it would be a shocker if he does not run for president. He's clearly running for president. And, you know, I saw him on the campaign trail in South Carolina when he was trying to boost Darlene Graham. He very much has his stump speech ready to go about trying to return to conservative principles. He's got a lot of one-liners and quips. He tries to rile up the crowd. He tries to fire up the crowd using a lot of inflection in his voice, at times screaming at times and trying to get people riled up.

36:03He's running in 2016. He's learned what happened when things went wrong there. He's almost certainly going to do it again. And he did win the Iowa caucuses. He did. Don't go anywhere. We've got a lot more coming up. Stay with us.

36:22We just moved into our new house and I didn't realize just how close we were to the neighbors. That's when my friend told me about Blinds.com. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Customers who shop at Blinds.com experience excellent customer service from consultation to installation. Side effects include increased privacy and better sleep. Talk to your partner today and see if Blinds.com is right for you. Shop Black Friday all month long at Blinds.com. Don't miss huge deals dropping every week. The blue tidal wave hit North Carolina and took a lot of Republicans in its path.

37:01CNN has called nine of the 14 North Carolina House races. All nine that we've called so far are for Democrats. Five of them are flips. We're going to put up the map. No North Carolina red yet. I mean, that is remarkable to see. What we have seen so far includes ousting North Carolina Republican Richard Hudson, the chair of the NRS, excuse me, NRCC, who was tasked to help elect Republicans in the House. This is the second time in the last two midterm election cycles where a party's campaign chair lost re-election. The Democrat who did that is Congressman-elect Richard Ojeda, and he is there now joining me.

37:46And if his name sounds familiar, you may recognize him from his 2020 presidential run. But now you are headed to the Capitol to be in the House of Representatives. Again, thank you for being here. This is a Trump plus 16 district, meaning the president just two years ago won your district by 16 percentage points. The fact that you beat the Republican in charge of electing House Republicans this year, how much did that factor into the way you waged your campaign against Richard Hudson? We knew from the start that if we were ever going to be able to defeat the chair of the NRCC, we were going to have to put the work in.

38:26And for 22 months, we literally never took a day off. We knocked on doors. We went to every single type of city council, county commission meeting, board of education meeting, and we made sure that people saw us. And, you know, showing up matters. And I believe that, you know, that plus the affordability issue has been basically devastating to the Republican Party. You know, people are struggling. Farmers are worrying about losing their farms because of the crop price of diesel. People can't afford to put groceries on their table right now. And that is a major issue with people. And we addressed that issue and we spoke about what we wanted to do to try to help put money into the pockets of the working class.

39:09And I think that the people, you know, really enjoyed hearing a conversation that spoke about actually showing up and fighting for them for a change. Well, Democrats now will have a massive House majority and it could get even bigger by the time all of the votes are counted. your district has a DNA that is still pretty Republican. What will your approach be when you get to Congress so that you're not a one-term wonder? So I absolutely, once the election is over, now everybody is my constituent. You know, it's not Republican, it's not Democrat, it's not unaffiliated. Right now, my job is to work for everybody.

39:49And on the night when we won the race, I gave a speech and I said, I don't care if you voted for me or not. You know, it is now time for me to focus on every single person. I have a lot of farmers throughout this district, and I'm trying my best to get on the Agriculture Commission, the committee, because you know what? I know the majority of these farmers are Republicans, but they need somebody fighting for them in Washington, D.C., and I'm going to do that. You know, in two years, they're not going to say, hey, that's Democrat Richard Ojeda. We don't do Democrats. They're going to say that's the guy that has actually been actually fighting for us for the past two years, and that's the reputation that I want to have.

40:25I want you to respond to something your soon-to-be Democratic colleague, Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, told my colleague, Audie Cornish, this morning.

40:35Dana Bash: Without a doubt, we are focused on accountability. The president's agenda is wildly unpopular. There is rampant chaos and corruption from this criminal enterprise in the White House. They have self-enriched on the taxpayer dime, and we will be investigating. There will be depositions and hearings. There will be subpoenas, maybe. is that what you want to be a big part of the democratic agenda to do the investigating and subpoenas going after the sort of accountability agenda uh i didn't really get to actually hear what what you you said or if there was a video or something okay so uh could you i didn't i'll just tell i'll sure i'll tell you briefly i apologize for that This is Lauren Underwood, your fellow Democrat, who said, without a doubt, we're focused on accountability, the rampant chaos and corruption from a criminal enterprise in the White House.

41:29She said there will be depositions and hearings and subpoenas. Yes, I absolutely think that this administration definitely needs to be investigated. as far as Donald Trump goes. I'm kind of on the side that says, you know, instead of impeaching, which will allow MAGA to martyr him, I say we investigate him thoroughly. You know, we can impeach the people that are part of the administration that have done so many horrific things. Do you include Hexette in that? Like snatching people off the ground. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we are committed to a war with no exit strategy. People have been killed in the Caribbean.

42:08There needs to be accountability for this. And I think that we are going to absolutely do that as soon as we get there. But when it comes to Donald Trump, I believe we need to investigate thoroughly and show the American people the evidence. You know, imagine a concept where every night from six to eight you can tune in and you can learn about the classified documents. You can learn about January 6th. You can learn about the people that have been protected with the Epstein files. Because you know what? They ran on that and they didn't follow through. And that is a big reason why I believe in many cases people turned away from them.

42:38Congressman-elect, thank you so much for being here. Congratulations again. And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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