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Front Burner Transcript for November 6, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Look what happened. Is this crazy?

[crowd cheers]

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson. For months, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rallied voters with a message.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: America, we are not going back. We are not going back.

[crowd cheers]

JP: Well, we are recording this podcast just before 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning, and CBC does not have a definite call at the moment, but it is looking very likely that America does, in fact, want to go back. Back to Donald Trump. There are still a few swing states that need to be called, but Trump is leading in all of them, and he won the others, including crucial Pennsylvania. He has claimed victory. It also looks like he is on track to win the popular vote. And Republicans have won back control of the Senate. I am here with Keith Boag, longtime CBC Washington correspondent. I really cannot think of a better person to go through all of this with. Hi, Keith. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. [laughs] Or this morning, I should say.

KEITH BOAG: Well, thank you for your kind introduction.

JP: Okay. We just listened to Donald Trump speak in Palm Beach, Florida. And tell me what you heard. Tell me what he said.

KEITH BOAG: Well, you know, he obviously is pleased and relieved to have won. He didn't say the relieved part, but I think that's only rational on his part.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends in this incredible movement. This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before.

[crowd cheering]

DONALD TRUMP: And, frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond.

KEITH BOAG: I think the thing that struck me about all of the things that he said was that this was, was... what were his exact words.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before. Nothing like this. I want to thank the American people.

KEITH BOAG: And I think that's true. When you think about it, I mean, it's only twice in all of U.S., twice now in all of U.S. history that a president who's been defeated has run again and won. But when you consider the last four years of his not being president and what that has entailed -- indictments, a trial and so on -- it is a remarkable comeback by any standard for anyone. And, you know, I would have to agree with him. The greatest political comeback in American political history.

JP: Just before 1 a.m., Kamala Harris's team announced that she would not be speaking where people had gathered at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington.

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER FOR HARRIS TEAM: So you won't hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow to address not only the HU family, not only to address her supporters, but to address the nation. So thank you. We believe in you. May God bless you. May God keep you. And go HU and go Harris!

["Woo!"s from crowd]

SPEAKER FOR HARRIS TEAM: Thank you all.

JP: And why do you think that she chose not to address people this morning in the early hours?

KEITH BOAG: Well, first of all, because I think it's difficult, but perhaps more important at that time, there wasn't a great hope that the outcome would be different from what it looked like it's going to be. But there was some hope. In a sense, she was not conceding defeat, but conceding that, you know, there probably wasn't going to be something for her to say tonight that couldn't wait until tomorrow.

JP: Mm-hmm. And, of course, I'm sure we'll be hearing from her [KEITH: Absolutely.] today.

[music]

JP: Let's talk about how the night played out. How would you describe how the vote came in, generally, throughout the evening, once the polls started to close?

KEITH BOAG: Well, I think it's going to look like Kamala Harris underperformed everywhere, not just in the battleground states that were tough fights, but in the states that she won. She underperformed in very Democratic New York, for instance. She underperformed compared to Joe Biden in 2020. And she underperformed... or at least at the very bottom end of polling projections for how she would do in those states. It just wasn't possible to find any bit of good news for her all night long. And people will be sifting through the wreckage of the Democratic result tonight to see what they could have done differently, how much of it was their fault, and how much of it was due to the circumstances that they faced.

JP: Keith, did the majority of the polling bear out here? Like, let me put this another way. Is this the election that the polls predicted? I think the answer is no. Right?

KEITH BOAG: Well, I think it depends. The margins are going to be tight margins. You know, we saw that Donald Trump won Pennsylvania after we had seen more than 90% of the votes come in.

JP: Right. It was tight.

KEITH BOAG: So, it was tight.

JP: And the polls said it would be tight. Yeah.

KEITH BOAG: Yeah. What we didn't see, though, in the polling was the inroads that Trump had made in minority communities, particularly in the Hispanic community in Pennsylvania. Because that was an important community there. That was an important state for him to win. And it came on the heels of some of the most controversial moments during the campaign, which is what was said at his closing rally at Madison Square Garden by a comedian about Puerto Rico, and how Puerto Rico was an island of garbage floating in the Caribbean. And that was seen at the time and through the days leading up until vote, as possibly a fatal mistake for the campaign, and possibly fatal particularly in Pennsylvania. Not true. Not true at all. So, you know, the polls didn't tell us that.

JP: What do we know from exit polling about why that group didn't veer away from Trump, and actually, you know, went closer towards him, right? Compared to how they voted in 2020. Am I right about that? We're talking about Latinos.

KEITH BOAG: Yeah. I heard some, you know, Trump surrogates, commentators through the evening talking about how this was a much broader coalition than they had seen supporting Trump in either of his last two presidential elections. And they're pretty chuffed about that. And, you know, they have a right to be, I suppose. You know, I think that people got caught up in the, in the Harris campaign and the excitement of the Harris campaign, and forgot what the headwinds were against her, which would have been difficult for any candidate. That not only was she representing the incumbent government at a difficult time, but it was a difficult time, particularly on economic issues that matter to people. There are very few economic issues that matter to people more than prices, even more than unemployment. Most people, even when unemployment is really bad, aren't affected directly by it. Everybody is affected directly by higher prices. And that proved a really tough thing to run against. But basically, with probably the exception of abortion, the entire issue set favoured Trump and was against Kamala Harris.

JP: Right. And so I guess picking up on that, a single issue that a lot of people thought was going to bring people out in big numbers was the abortion issue, right. There was a feeling that this could be a repeat of the 2022 midterms where the pro-choice movement came out in force. But like, did that even happen tonight?

KEITH BOAG: You know, it may have happened, but what may also have happened is that Trump succeeded in doing what we knew that he was doing with his campaign, which was trying to dig deeper into the MAGA base and find people who are natural MAGA people, except for the fact that they hadn't voted previously, and to get them out to the polls. I mean, I think this... as always happens after an election, it's going to take a while before people get a really good grip on what actually happened on voting night. But we do know that that was the aim of the Trump campaign -- to dig deeper rather than broader.

JP: Right.

KEITH BOAG: And, you know, they won. So I think we have to consider that the strategy that they chose was responsible for that.

[music]

JP: What does the vote tell you about how the Democratic strategy of courting Republican voters, like the hidden Liz Cheney or Nikki Haley voters, how that might have gone?

KEITH BOAG: Well, not well enough. I mean, you know, that was an incredibly broad coalition of people who joined together in support of Kamala Harris because they feared what would happen under a Trump presidency. So that you had everyone from Liz Cheney and her father Dick Cheney all the way over to Bernie Sanders on the left, all saying the same message: that we're putting our differences aside because we see the threat of Donald Trump to democracy and the Republic is too great to ignore at this moment.

SOUNDCLIP

BERNIE SANDERS: And I know there are people who disagree with Kamala Harris on this and that issue, especially Gaza, and count me as one of those who do disagree with her on that issue. But I think overall, the choice could not be clearer in terms of this campaign.

KEITH BOAG: And it was an utter repudiation of that point of view by, it appears, a majority of voters. It was a repudiation of America political-- American political elites. And entertainment elites, by the way. You know, I mean, all the fuss made about Taylor Swift didn't seem to make a difference in the end, did it.

JP: Talk to me a bit more about why you think that's a repudiation of this top issue, which was democracy, right? Like, how are we to understand these results, given that it was put forward as a referendum on democracy?

KEITH BOAG: Because people didn't believe it. Or because they thought the threat to democracy came from the Democrats. And I know that sounds weird to people who, you know, saw the evidence of their own eyes on January 6th, January 6th, 2021, in Washington, where, you know, the MAGA base incited by Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the results of the last election. But I think we have to, whether we agree with it or not, we have to acknowledge that polling shows a significant majority of Republicans believe that the election was stolen from them. And so when the question is posed to them about whether they think democracy, defending democracy in this election was important, I think it's wrong to read that as something that only Democrats would say yes to. I think both sides would say yes to that for completely different reasons. And I would go so far as to say only one side is right about that. But the fact remains that it's something that divides on partisan lines as to whether-- who you think is the bigger threat to democracy in America.

[music]

JP: I think it's probably worth us also talking about the down-ballot races tonight, right? What do we see? How significant could it be?

KEITH BOAG: Well, I think, you know, the Republicans have won back the Senate. It's unclear to me whether they've won back the House, but tonight, Donald Trump said he thought that they had. That's a trifecta. I mean...

JP: Yeah. Just, what does that mean? If it is, yeah.

KEITH BOAG: Well, it means he will be the most powerful president in the history of the country. Because he will have both houses of the legislature, he'll be the president, and as we've seen in a certain way, there are people who will argue that he's also captured the Supreme Court. He's clearly appointed to the Supreme Court some of its most important jurists. But also the court has ruled in a way that allows him a kind of not very limited immunity from the law, which, I mean... I mean, that stunned people when that ruling came down this summer. And what it means is that there is another guardrail there that has disappeared in terms of checking Donald Trump, and restraining what appear to have been through his... his life, I suppose, but certainly through the last administration, his impulses. So we're looking at a presidency that will not be any more restrained by the legislature, unless there's a Democratic legislature. And I think it's important that people not see that as a partisan comment, but understand that the Republican House moved to be absolutely no check on the presidency at all in the first Trump administration. And if there is a Republican House after this election, that will be the case for the next Trump administration as well. So we have seen a lot of guardrails fall by the wayside, even as Trump's power increases.

[music]

JP: Throw this forward for me a little bit more, what, you know, we might have to look forward to here. What a Trump administration could look like in the coming months. The economy, cabinet.

KEITH BOAG: Well, you know, we see some of the people that he has around him who are going to have influence on him, such as Elon Musk. Who apparently is going to slash the government budget by about a third, which is just an incomprehensible thing to do without damaging a lot of people. We expect, from what both men have said, that Bobby Kennedy Jr. is going to be a part of the government and perhaps might be in charge of all of the health agencies [JP: Yeah.] of the next Trump administration.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Kennedy, who has repeatedly spread debunked conspiracy theories about vaccines, dropped his own independent bid for the White House to back Trump.

BOBBY KENNEDY JR: We're going to get toxic additives and pesticide residues out of our food. We're going to support the tens of millions of Americans who choose alternative and complementary medicine. We're going to become once again the healthiest nation on earth. That's what we mean by MAHA -- Make America Healthy Again.

KEITH BOAG: There are other things to consider that we know about in terms of Trump's inclinations that affect the world. It can't be an encouraging sign tonight for the people of Ukraine. Their future is going to be in the hands of Donald Trump, and he has indicated that he doesn't really care that much about their fight against Russia, that he thinks... that he's quite sympathetic, as we know, to Russia and to Putin, and that his promise that he can solve the war in 24 hours can only mean that he would sell them out somehow, because they, they would have solved it themselves if it were that easy. So they have that to fear. I think from the economic point of view, we know that Trump's promise to apply a broad base of tariffs on all imported goods, particularly those from China, is probably not an idle threat. You know, that he will surround himself with people who can make that happen. And indeed, there are those people who believe that that is, over the long term, a sensible economic course for a Trump administration. I would add, it doesn't get much attention, but one of the people who is likely to be a part of the administration again is Bob Lighthizer, who negotiated-- renegotiated what was then called NAFTA, and who would play some kind of economic role in a new Trump administration, and who has adopted a kind of faith in currency manipulation, and believes that one of the things that the United States should at least consider doing is devaluing the dollar. I mean, just consider the impact on Canadian exports to the United States of that.

JP: Yeah. With tariffs, yeah. I also wanted to ask you about Trump's own cases, court cases against him. What might we expect will happen there?

KEITH BOAG: Well, he has the power, or he will have the power, to get rid of the two federal cases. So one of those is the federal case brought by the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, about the insurrection on January 6th. And that was supposed to have been tried this year, but it was delayed by the immunity case that went to the Supreme Court. The other case is the documents case, that is also an obstruction of justice case -- the classified documents that Donald Trump took with him when he left the White House and stored in his bathroom and places at Mar-a-Lago. That case was thrown out by the judge because she said that Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, which wasn't something that was likely to withstand an appeal because it was kind of a, like a nonsense kind of argument. But now if Donald Trump is going to be the president again, he'll just have his Justice Department drop that appeal. That one will be gone as well. There is another case in Georgia that has to do with the insurrection on January 6th, which is a prosecution by the state of Georgia, which would stay alive. But I'm not clear on how that particular case might be affected by the Supreme Court's ruling on immunity. So, I mean, if I had to bet on it, I, just from what I would see, I have seen so far, I would say Trump's likely to get away with all of it. The one thing he's unlikely to get away with is his sentencing on the conviction at trial in New York this summer, that had to do with his attempts to interfere in the 2016 election by paying hush money and striking a deal to catch and kill a story that would have been embarrassing to him during the election. And I think it's going to be a lot more interesting. Well, I thought it was going to be pretty interesting anyway, but I think it will be even more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

JP: Right. Because, I mean, can they even sentence someone who's going to be the president?

KEITH BOAG: You know, he's not the president then. My expectation of the sentencing is that the judge, who has been, you know, very meticulous in explaining why he does what he does, is not going to sentence Donald Trump to jail, but he would probably say any other defendant in this circumstance would be sent to jail, if for no other reason than your behaviour in court. I mean, so I think it's going to be a remarkable event in New York when it happens, and I see no reason right now not to believe that it won't happen.

[music]

JP: Keith, I take your point that Kamala Harris and the Democrats were pushing against headwinds, the economy, you know, frustration with incumbents, which is a global trend. But I do imagine that tomorrow, or today, I guess, a lot of fingers will start to be pointed and people will be asking questions about what went wrong here. Because, I mean, you and I, as of recording, it looks like he's going to sweep all seven swing states and win the popular vote. So do you think that the Democrats blew it here?

KEITH BOAG: You know, I think there are -- sure, there's going to be a lot of finger pointing and it's going to start with Joe Biden. I mean, fingers pointed at him. I mean, it will be argued that it was because he waited so long to recognize what others could already see and step aside and let somebody else fight this battle, that they wound up not having the opportunity to either put Kamala Harris to a test by having a real primary race which she could win, or maybe she would be tested and found not to be the best choice and somebody else could have won. There was time to do that. A lot of people began talking about whether he should do that after the 2022 midterms. There was time to do it. There was, you know, like, an imaginary slate of candidates who would be interested in doing it. And he, I mean, he could not really have played it out any longer. And by doing that, he foreclosed on all of those options. Next was, you know... I mean, I think that most people would agree that, you know, being passed the ball so late in the game without any time for preparation to take on this enormous task against severe headwinds was a really tough ask for Kamala Harris. And it will be hard to fault her for anything she did during the campaign or didn't do, except for one thing. And we will hear about whether her choice of the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, wasn't in the end a mistake, when she could have chosen Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. And clearly, we've seen what a big difference that might have made if he had been able to deliver Pennsylvania.

JP: Yeah. Or...

KEITH BOAG: Or not.

JP: Maybe, maybe not enough of a difference.

KEITH BOAG: Maybe not enough. True enough.

JP: Yeah.

KEITH BOAG: Yeah. But I think, you know, I think that's almost dead certain to be one of the elements of the second-guessing game that begins probably in a couple of hours.

JP: Yeah. Before we put this podcast to bed, Keith, are there any parting thoughts that you might like to leave us with? And I say that with the caveat that there don't have-- there doesn't have to be any.

KEITH BOAG: [laughs] Look, I think America is going through something really significant right now that goes beyond just electing Donald Trump, but goes deeper into what the MAGA movement is about. And I think you see it in other countries as well. What is really happening is that countries' populations are turning the page on the last four decades of an economic orthodoxy that said that it was unquestionable that the free movement of goods, people, technology, information and capital across borders was just a good thing. It became an orthodoxy that went unquestioned. Now it's being questioned. It's responsi-- The questioning is responsible for the... you know, call it what you want, whether it's increased protectionism or, you know, some kind of light tariff regime or a heavier one. That's what that stuff is about. The sense that we need to get back control over our economy because the most significant development of the last 40 years has been the export of high-paying manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. And we've got to figure out what to do about the consequences of that.

JP: Mm-hmm. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad you did that, then, Keith.

KEITH BOAG: [chuckles] You didn't expect me to make a speech, though, did you.

JP: No, it was great. I did. It was great. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it, as always. Such a pleasure.

KEITH BOAG: Thanks for having me again, as always.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right, that is all for this morning. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

America embraces a second Trump presidency - Transcript

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