'Catastrophe', 'incompetence': MAGA responds to midterm blowout

[0:00] We have new CNN reporting this morning here in the Situation Room. [0:03] After Democrats' truly stunning victory on Tuesday, [0:07] conservative media had its own reckoning on election night. [0:11] Listen. [0:13] It's not a red wave. [0:15] I don't think we're going to get our $5,000 checks. [0:18] If we, as a country, did not go into the war in Iran, [0:22] and that was not on the agenda tonight, [0:26] is this a much different race tonight? [0:28] I think 100%. [0:29] I don't think there's any doubt about it. [0:31] I would argue on Iran, there was, [0:35] unfortunately, it's the best thing for our children and grandchildren, [0:38] but higher gas prices, how people feel, [0:41] I think is the more dominant feeling force right now. [0:46] All right, let's go live now to CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter. [0:50] So, Brian, tell us more how these pundits, [0:52] the conservative and MAGA media are talking about Tuesday night's results. [0:56] Well, in the five stages of grief, it starts with denial, [0:59] and we are seeing some denial and disbelief, [1:02] followed by anger. [1:03] So, it's following the five stages of grief. [1:06] Notably, we're not seeing voter fraud lies or outright election denialism, [1:10] the kind that characterized Trump's 2020 loss. [1:14] You might say this was too big to rig. [1:16] That's what some of those right-wing commentators are claiming. [1:18] So, they are accepting defeat, [1:20] and they are in disbelief and angry about it. [1:23] There's also some disagreement about the best path forward. [1:27] Sean Hannity, for example, last night discouraging the GOP [1:30] from finger-pointing and circular firing squads, [1:33] but there are some signs that finger-pointing is underway. [1:37] And notably, although most outside analysts are blaming Trump for his party's loss, [1:42] MAGA media commentators are tiptoeing around that idea. [1:45] They're being very gentle. [1:46] They're acknowledging that the Iran war and the trade war and the economy all contributed, [1:50] but they're largely faulting the people around Trump for the loss, [1:54] blaming lazy GOP lawmakers who didn't do more when they were in the majority, [1:58] or blaming Trump's aides in the White House. [2:01] This is a default setting for MAGA media, [2:04] saying that Trump's not wrong, the people around him are wrong, [2:07] that Trump can't be wrong, but he can only be wronged. [2:10] So we're seeing some of that narrative yet again in the wake of the midterms' loss. [2:14] But there are some right-wing figures, like Tucker Carlson, [2:17] who are celebrating what he calls the end of the Trump era. [2:20] So there are some signs of that GOP civil war underway on the podcasts, on TV and online. [2:26] So let's listen to what President Trump had to say on election night [2:29] when he called into Fox News. [2:32] And then I read at Fox that I'm not popular. [2:35] You know, I mean, the Fox polls are terrible. [2:37] You ought to get yourself a good pollster because your pollster is the worst. [2:40] But tonight, actually, the results are pretty close to what the Fox polls showed. [2:44] Well, I don't know about that. [2:45] I can just tell you about speaking for myself. [2:48] And the results with Fox, with me, were wrong for 12 years. [2:53] I mean, they've gotten me wrong for 12 years. [2:55] But I don't care. It doesn't matter. [2:59] So what does that tell you about the shifting relationship with the media, [3:02] especially organizations that are typically in his corner? [3:06] Well, on that night, Trump was railing against Fox all evening long. [3:09] But at the end of the day, at the end of the night, [3:10] he called into the network because he needs the network's attention more than the network needs him. [3:15] Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are already thinking about a post-Trump era, [3:18] thinking about the 2020 election, and they're starting to move on. [3:22] So Trump certainly wanted the network's platform on a night like election night. [3:26] There's something I think even more interesting about Trump's claims about the polls. [3:30] We heard a lot ever since 2016, 2017, when Trump first won office, [3:34] about this being a post-truth era, about Trump imposing his own truth, his own reality, [3:39] calling real news fake, calling real polls hoaxes, [3:42] recently pushing reporters out of the White House. [3:45] Well, in some ways, truth has reasserted itself this week, [3:48] kind of like political gravity has reasserted itself. [3:50] You know, up until Tuesday, you could have suggested, [3:53] this is what Nate Silver wrote in his blog earlier this week, [3:55] you could have suggested that all the approval rating polls showing Trump's unpopularity might have been off, [4:00] that maybe Trump voters were not picking up the phone when pollsters called, [4:03] that maybe it was a huge polling miss. [4:05] Well, now we know, through the voter polls, through the election results in these red states, [4:10] that Trump really is deeply unpopular. [4:12] It's harder to deny that reality. [4:14] So it seems to me all of this is a reaffirmation of some core truths. [4:18] As much as Trump has tried to deny those, as much as he lied about the polls, [4:22] well, this week, it's very clear what's happened, [4:26] and the truth has been reaffirmed in some ways. [4:28] It totally seems like a vote of no confidence as far as Trump is concerned. [4:32] Brian Stelter, thank you very, very much. [4:35] And as we continue to follow out the aftermath of last night, [4:37] Republicans are searching for answers. [4:40] Democrats are celebrating their seismic wins. [4:42] The MAGA world is also reacting. [4:45] Some of them are saying that last night was a, quote, [4:47] political catastrophe of historic proportions. [4:50] And they're demanding that the Senate's Republican leadership resign [4:53] for what they say is lazy, incompetent, and completely brain-dead leadership. [4:59] Others in the MAGA world are predicting the next two years will be, quote, pure hell. [5:04] CNN senior course on it, Joni O'Sullivan, [5:06] has been sifting through the MAGA reaction all day and joins me now. [5:10] And, Joni, obviously this was, I guess, inevitable, [5:13] because a lot of people in MAGA were not happy with the, you know, [5:17] trajectory that the Trump administration was taking in this second year. [5:20] What else are you hearing from them tonight? [5:24] Hey, Caitlin. [5:24] Yeah, I mean, just to pull back a little bit, [5:27] and I think this really speaks to how extraordinary and unusual [5:31] American democracy has been operating for the past half a decade. [5:35] There was a lot of people who were fearful and, frankly, [5:38] expecting that we would be in a very different situation tonight in this country than we are, [5:43] one whereby the president of the United States would indicate [5:46] that he's not going to accept the results of the election [5:49] and that the sort of whole MAGA universe behind him would get behind him [5:53] and we'd have that sort of crisis that we saw in 2020 and 2021, [5:59] attempted coup, insurrection. [6:02] So that's not happening. [6:04] We're seeing a sort of more, I guess, [6:05] what you would describe as a normal reaction from a political party [6:11] where there is the blame game is happening, [6:15] very much sort of playing off this, [6:17] the idea that the Democratic Socialists are coming and taking over Washington, D.C. [6:22] And Steve Bannon, who is the sort of central player in the MAGA world still, [6:28] he indicated today that while the president right now [6:31] might be talking about potentially working with Democrats, [6:34] he's not holding out much hope for that. [6:36] Here's what he had to say. [6:38] It's going to be Fort Apache, right? [6:42] It's going to be Fort Apache. [6:43] They're coming. [6:44] And the reason is, just like Nancy Pelosi ran on impeachment, [6:48] I told people, oh, no, she's not going to do it. [6:49] She'll never do it. [6:50] They don't want to risk it. [6:51] That's what the people that knocked the doors, [6:53] the people that were there hammering all the time, [6:55] they are the ones that they want that. [6:58] That's that kill Trump and kill Trumpism. [7:01] So the White House is going to turn to Fort Apache on the investigation. [7:07] So they're ready for a very big fight over the next two years, [7:10] but they have started focusing and turning their attention to 2028 [7:15] and trying to win back some of these seats [7:16] and, of course, trying to hang on to the presidency. [7:19] And by Fort Apache, he is referencing the 1948 Western? [7:26] Yeah. [7:27] It's in that the White House should not be cooperating. [7:31] The president should basically be on lockdown. [7:34] And as he could probably get from Baton there, [7:38] does not see any hope of any cooperation between the presidents and the Congress, [7:45] despite what Trump might be indicating right now. [7:48] Yeah. [7:48] If you're invoking John Wayne, that could foreshadow where this goes. [7:52] Joni O'Sullivan, great to have you here tonight. [7:54] Thank you for joining us with that. [7:56] I wanted to discuss all this with the most legendary chroniclers of history, [8:00] documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. [8:01] Ken, it's great to always speak to you in kind of pivotal moments in our history. [8:07] We've spoken in recent years about the strength and, for that matter, [8:11] the vulnerabilities of American democracy. [8:13] I'm wondering what your reaction is to the election results. [8:17] Well, you know, I think there have been lots of pundits [8:20] have been listening all day about what it means and whatever. [8:24] I think the founders spoke. [8:26] We're in our 250th year. [8:27] I think the people wanted to get back to what the values were that created the country. [8:36] There are lots of symptoms, the corruption, the high prices, the costly war, the tariffs, [8:42] all of that stuff, the broken sort of political process. [8:45] But the disease was the rising authoritarianism, which the founders were trying to reverse engineer for. [8:51] And I think what we found is that people across party lines were picking, you know, [8:57] not retribution, but restoration, not hubris, but humility, and not self-dealing, but service. [9:05] You could hear that in Annie Andrews' comments to Caitlin a second ago, and not vulgarity, but virtue. [9:12] These are all the values of the founders. [9:15] And you could hear in Tallarico, you could hear in Ossoff, you could hear in so many speeches last night, [9:20] they were echoing one of the points I tried to make in the New York Times yesterday morning [9:26] was that there's only us. [9:29] And you and I have talked about it and know them. [9:31] And I think that this was sort of the re-sort of awakening of a sense of us [9:36] that didn't have to do with party, as Senator-elect Andrews was saying, [9:41] but had to do with service to the community. [9:44] It was a really spectacular thing. [9:47] You wrote in this op-ed, you talked about the fourth great crisis, [9:51] you think, that the current administration had plunged America into. [9:56] And I just want to read something you said. [9:57] You said that we face our country's fourth great crisis because of misinformation [10:03] which the current administration encourages, age-old fears, conspiracies have created [10:07] a sense of us versus them that is fundamentally at odds with a healthy democratic society. [10:12] Elections are in doubt. [10:14] The highest court seems compromised. [10:16] History has been distorted. [10:17] Books have been banned. [10:17] And dictators have been coddled, while our closest allies have been ridiculed and dismissed. [10:22] People are rightly concerned whether institutions are at a breaking point. [10:25] Do you still feel that crisis exists? [10:30] Not in the same degree I felt today. [10:34] This morning, I didn't feel that as much as I felt it yesterday morning. [10:38] And I think it had to do with how resounding, how historic this vote was. [10:44] I mean, when you have Kansas electing a senator, a democratic senator, [10:48] and they hadn't done that since 1932, [10:50] you begin to realize that there's always been, Anderson, about 32% of the population [10:56] that doesn't believe in the Declaration of Independence. [10:59] They didn't believe it back in the Revolution. [11:01] They obviously didn't believe it as they participated and served as agents [11:05] or were part of the slave oligarchy. [11:07] They didn't believe it after the Civil War and the attempt at Reconstruction, [11:11] Gilded Age, Progressive Age, all of these things. [11:14] So they're always going to be there. [11:16] The only problem is that for the last 10 years, [11:18] they've sort of directed the national narrative. [11:21] And now we've seemed to, with this election, [11:23] at least given these people an opportunity to dedicate themselves [11:27] with all sincerity to repair and restoration. [11:30] And it's going to be hard, but it's pretty direct. [11:33] You can pass a far-ranging ethics bill. [11:36] You can, you know, get back USAID, Corporation for Public Broadcasting. [11:41] I'd be happy about that. [11:43] Fun scientific research, which we know has just gone down the tubes. [11:47] Protect our parks and the Department of Interior, [11:50] not coddle dictators. [11:52] Support and defend Ukraine. [11:54] This is not heavy lifting. [11:56] And I think with both houses in the Democrats' hand [12:01] and a lot of Republicans very sympathetic [12:04] to breaking the spell of the last 10 years, [12:08] I think we might have, we might be able to get things done. [12:12] And even Trump has indicated that he's willing to make deals. [12:16] So if he is, then he should begin to make deals [12:19] that can help that restoration process. [12:22] Ken Burns, it's always good to talk to you. [12:24] Appreciate it, Ken. [12:24] Thank you.