White women ‘core folks’ who elected Trump, says Democrat representative

We’re joined by Democratic Representative of Pennsylvania Andre Carroll, and Republican strategist Dennis Powell.

Matt Frei: Dennis, you must be delighted. I wonder if you’re surprised.

Dennis Powell: No, I was not surprised. I called a landslide to several of my associates early on. I saw the trend, especially in the last week, as different endorsements came in. And what I concluded was Trump’s was the campaign of addition and multiplication. And at the end of the day, Harris’ campaign was a campaign of subtraction and division, and her campaign sort of flatlined. It was the same at the end as it was in the beginning, and Trump kept bringing in new constituencies and new support.

Matt Frei: Andre, what about you? You must be surprised and shocked.

Andre Carroll: I don’t think surprise and shock is it. I think that I’ll say that I’m disappointed. Looking at the results, it’s very reflective of 2016. But I don’t think that I’m shocked. America has done this before and America has unfortunately done this again.

Matt Frei: When we spoke ten days ago, I asked you whether you thought that Trump was a fascist. He’s been described as a fascist by the people who work for him in the Oval Office, by his closest associates. If it’s that serious, if he is that person, is there an argument for the Democrats to say, ‘we don’t accept this result because it’s too dangerous for America?’

Andre Carroll: That’s not how it works. We don’t get a chance to just wake up and just say the election, because it didn’t go our way, that the election is not real. We’re not Donald Trump. We don’t do things like that. And we’ll show that. One thing I can promise you is that because Donald Trump won the election yesterday, that the transfer of power will be peaceful. That’s what I can promise you.

Matt Frei: And of course, he didn’t just not win the key swing states, he’s probably won the popular vote with quite a sizable margin. So what President Biden said about the first Trump presidency being an ‘aberrant moment in American history’ is just wrong. It was Biden who was the aberrant moment.

Andre Carroll: I wouldn’t say that, because let’s just let the record reflect that Donald Trump lost the popular vote twice. He lost it in 2016 and then he lost it again in 2020. This is actually his first time actually winning the popular vote. So I wouldn’t say that it was a moment. But that is, in fact, true that he did win the popular vote last night for the first time in his political career.

Matt Frei: Dennis, Trump had a very divisive campaign. It was toxic. He went after his enemies and his opponents rhetorically and vowed to go after them in the spirit of revenge and retribution once he got back into the White House. What would you say to him today in his moment of victory?

Dennis Powell: I don’t accept your premise. Divisive, I think when you look at the campaign, which was a media Democrat campaign against him…

Matt Frei: It’s not a premise. These are quotes from Trump. I can read them out if you like, there are plenty of them.

Dennis Powell: I understand, and you should also quote them calling him Hitler and a fascist and these types of things were an equal measure throughout the campaign. No, I don’t expect retribution. What I expect is progress. This guy is driven by success. He knows he has four years, and in four years he’s going to try to do as much as he can to make America great again. And I think that’s his motivation. I think you’ll see amazing things coming out of this administration because he’s bringing in an amazing team, a team that we’ve never seen before in politics in my lifetime.

Matt Frei: And what do you expect Trump to do in the first few days when he gets into the White House?

Dennis Powell: If you asked him, he’d say ‘drill, baby, drill’. He’s sent a message, the activity at the border will change immediately. I think you’ll see a surge over the next few months because they know Trump will do something to not allow the flow of immigration to come over as it is. He’ll put in place some new laws to make immigration more reasonable, more orderly. And those are the first two things. And then I think he’s going to start addressing foreign policy relationships with our allies, the military, which has been decimated under the Biden administration because of bad recruitment. And I think you’ll see a lot of things very quickly out of Trump, very quickly. He’s a multi-tasker extraordinaire.

Matt Frei: Andre, there was always a narrative that Trump was bad for minorities. He started his whole political career in 2015 with that line about stopping Mexicans from coming across the border, that many of them were ‘rapists and murderers’ and so on, ‘some of them were good people’, and he’s repeated that all along. But actually, minorities voted for him, including African-American men, in numbers that many people thought were just impossible. How do you explain that?

Andre Carroll: I didn’t say that Donald Trump was bad for minorities. I think that Donald Trump is just bad for America. And I also said the last time that we spoke that Kamala Harris did not have a Black men issue. 73 percent of Black men voted for Kamala Harris and 88 percent of Black women voted for Kamala Harris. It’s not us, we’re not the majority in this country. We’re not responsible for Donald Trump being re-elected to the White House. We need to look at the core group of folks who have re-elected him, that is white women. They elected him in 2016 and they re-elected him in 2024. Also, two, Latino men. Latino men came out in bigger numbers than Black men did for Donald Trump. So it’s not just one thing, I keep saying…

Matt Frei: So it’s about the men?

Andre Carroll: White men, yeah. We’re going to talk about men, it’s more white men. White men are the bigger demographic in this country, and more white men voted for Donald Trump than they did for Kamala Harris last night.