And thank you for joining us for an abbreviated edition of Meet the Press Now. I'm Ryan Nobles, and we're going to talk more about the developments over the past 24 hours in the 2024 election, joining me now from West Palm Beach, as NBC's Vaughn Hilliard, who's of course covering the now president-elect Donald Trump. Monica Elba has the latest from the Harris campaign, and with me on set here in New York is NBC News, Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitale, and NBC senior political editor Mark Murray. So Monica, let's start with you, because we did just hear from the vice president, when did the campaign realize that this race was not going to turn in their favor?
Well, certainly overnight, Ryan, there was a realization of the fact that her path to 270 had quite quickly vanished and evaporated. They had maintained there were a couple of pathways to 270 that then became basically just the blue wall. And then it was really obvious from the major demographic shifts that we saw all across the country that were breaking for now president-elect Trump that this was not going to be a race she was going to win, but they made the decision that she wouldn't come to Howard University, her alma mater where, of course, she just spoke last night, and instead they decided to punt that to today and to what would become this concession speech, which she just offered. And it was supposed to be a kind of homecoming for her with a significant and meaningful location.
And now it will always be known to her as the site of where she launched her 2019 presidential campaign and now where she gave her concession speech. And it was striking Ryan just in these remarks now to see her say that, of course, she concedes the race, she accepts the results, but she said that she doesn't concede the fight that defined her campaign to continue to talk about pursuing freedom and rights. And where that goes from here is now the next major democratic story, but I was also struck as somebody who was in the room covering Hillary Clinton, the former 2016 Democratic nominees concession speech eight years ago by some of the parallels that we saw here, just in terms of the length of the speech identical, both 12 minutes, some of the lines were the very same, wearing what appeared to be a purple suit, much like then Secretary Clinton did as well to try to project this moment of unity in the country and to try to call for this peaceful transfer of power. But you also did see beyond that a call to action from the vice president, trying to really urge her supporters.
She said it's not really the time to get sad and to despair. It's the time to actually roll up our sleeves in her words, she said, and get to work. So now it really becomes about how that action takes place, whether she is the person to lead that, how that all works. And then we'll look to President Biden, who is also expected to address the nation and the election results tomorrow from here at the White House and offer a similar message, again, trying to really stress this difference in tone and contrast from what we saw in 2020 when there wasn't a peaceful transfer of power.
And when Donald Trump did not invite Joe Biden to come to the White House, we know that President Biden has invited now President-elect Trump to come visit him in the Oval Office. We'll see if that happens in the coming days, and he has also pledged Ryan to attend his inauguration in January. Okay. All right, Monica Alba from the White House.
Thank you for that. Let's now get the view from Trump world of von Hilliard is in West Palm Beach. What's happening inside Trump world right now, von, this has been a whirlwind 24 hours for them, I'm sure. Right.
And it's actually been relatively quiet from Donald Trump himself and his campaign. There are no public events here at this point in time for him or his operation here. We did get a statement here from his campaign after he received a phone call from Vice President Harris. It was one in which he said that he appreciated what she brought to the campaign trail and appreciated the unified call for the country to come together.
The statement from the campaign was to start contrast to what we heard from Donald Trump explicitly on the campaign trail for the last three months when talking about Kamala Harris and President Biden and his democratic perceived enemies. This for Donald Trump is now a moment in which he is tasked with setting up a second Trump administration, a cabinet and finding 3,000 plus political appointees to fill out the government come 2025. And I was talking with Robert F Kennedy Jr. just this afternoon.
He was making his way to Mar-a-Lago to meet with transition officials about the potential role, for example, that he would play potentially is a nominee for HHS secretary or White House health czar. These are the type of conversations that are going to be taking place in the weeks ahead, much like we saw take place at Trump Tower in mid 10, Manhattan in 2016, and it's been minster estate. But that operation has moved south eight years later. Okay.
Vaughn Hill here. Thank you for that. In Florida, let's now bring in Mark and Ali. You know, Mark, you're going to be taking a look at dissecting these numbers, maybe for years to come.
But is your initial assessment? Was this more about Kamala Harris' shortcomings or was it about Donald Trump's ability to continue to expand the space, which we thought had a ceiling for many years? Ryan, I'm an all above person. I think everything that matters in a presidential election, obviously, starts first with Donald Trump's campaign.
They made a decision. There's our colleague, Derek Noted, from the very beginning that they were going to go after lower-pincey voters, try to get men, Latinos, younger men, and it actually paid off for them. They were able to kind of have reinvent the electorate we saw it last night. But obviously, to Harris' point, one of the things that really struck me in her concession speech was my journey as a candidate for 107 days.
I mean, we talked about the unprecedented nature of this campaign. That's one of the switch that we ended up seeing in her having just a little bit more than three months being the Democratic nominee on the top of the ticket. But then let's also forget the role that President Joe Biden had in this. When I look at the numbers and you go through the exit poll, a 40% job approval rating for him, 73% of voters who say that they were dissatisfied or angry with the country's direction and a lot of what ended up happening last night was a condemnation of the current president's administration.
You know, Elliot Osterby, Monica, talking about the similarities to what we saw play out in 2016. It did feel like the age of it at points. But yet again, here we are in a position where a woman comes so close to the White House, but falls short yet again. But what do you make of that?
And in opposition to Donald Trump, right? This is now twice that we have seen him fail a Democratic nominee who happened to be female. Certainly, I think there was a lot that I think about when I try to parse through why this title of my book remains true today, why we haven't put a woman in the White House yet as this country. We'll have time to parse that through the gender and the sexism.
All of that stuff is unquantifiable. I think the other piece of this, though, that is quantifiable is the role that abortion played. And I think the casual connection that a lot of strategists and even maybe the Kamala Harris campaign itself were making between abortion and reproductive access as a female issue, which we know it touches all genders, but making that assumption that it was going to reshape the way that women came out to vote. And at the end of the day, even despite reporting that I and others had done around white women potentially shifting and bucking their typical trend of voting Republican, they did exactly what they always did because the economy and even concerns about democracy, maybe not the conventional way that Biden used to talk about it, but those seemingly jumped abortion.
To that point, I mean, how surprised were you to see these referendums across the country go the way of reproductive rights advocates, but then in some states still vote for Donald Trump? It's right. It's one where I wonder if people are going to question this strategy, right? Because it showed what we often talk about, which is that voters can hold multiple things and multiple decisions in their head at one time.
We went in talking about ticket splitters for Senate races. Clearly, we saw some of that bear out, but what we didn't go in is wondering, would people register their complaints with abortion politics in this country and then separately still vote for Trump despite the fact that he's the one who put this landscape in place in the first place? So where do the Democrats go from here, Mark? How do they begin to rebuild their party?
So that's a big thing. And, you know, how can Jeffries, if he's the speaker, would play a big role, although when you do look at the map right now, you might want to be Republicans rather than Democrats with those remaining uncalled House races, then they end up having to have, they'll be a new DNC chair. And then, you know, Ryan, I think the biggest part is that the 2028 presidential race is kind of off-the-run. I mean, nobody's doing anything right now, but it's going to happen, certainly on the Democratic side, and that would probably be a robust field.
And remember, we really didn't have that at all when Joe Biden at the time was running for reelection. The other thing is that Donald Trump's going to be a lame duck president too, and you're going to be having JD Vance as vice president, but will there be another Republican who wants to challenge? So I think there's going to be a lot of interesting cards to play over the next several months. We have less than an alley, but your take on the balance of power.
Do Democrats think they've got a shot to hold out of the House and at least have some ration of power? They think they've got a shot. They think it might run through New York. We haven't called those races.
At least not the last time I checked the board that's sitting behind me. They're going to hold out that optimism until they don't, but I think that mark is right to point out that just when you look at the seats that are there, the way that the vote counting is happening at this final moment, it's a tough map still for Democrats. And you and I know the chaos of the last two years, the fact that competency wasn't factored into the House majority is stunning. Yeah, definitely when you see how voters behave when it comes to this, they don't often attribute the failure of Congress or their individual member and that may be what we see play out here.
As these votes come in, we continue to count them all. Guys, thank you for being here. We appreciate it. We all need sleep.
We're packed tomorrow though with more Meet the Press now, but there's going to be plenty more news on NBC News now, including with Hallie Jackson right now.