REPLAY - US midterms: "Today begins the Great American comeback" (Hakeem Jeffries)

Hakeem Jeffries speaking right now. He would be the Speaker of the House. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Union household raised in the Cornerstone Baptist Church. I learned very early on that a setback was nothing more than a setup for a comeback. Today begins the great American comeback. American people have spoken all across the land, in the North, in the South, in the East. In the West, in the Midwest, from sea to shining sea, the American people have spoken and made clear they've had enough of the extremism, enough of the corruption. They want a Congress that's going to deliver for the American people, and that is exactly what House Democrats will do as soon as we get into office in January. We understand. As House Democrats, that life is way too expensive, this great country of ours. There are far too many people who are struggling to survive and certainly cannot thrive here in the United States of America. And we believe in this great country that when you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life, and a good life. That's a good-paying job, good housing, good health care. A good education for your children, and then when it's all said and done, a good retirement. That's the American dream, and House Democrats will work hard to revive it for every single person in this land. We're going to fight for small-town America. We're going to fight for urban America. We're going to fight for rural America. We're going to fight for suburban America. We're going to fight for the heartland of America. We're going to fight for black and brown communities all across America. We're going to fight to make sure that we make this country affordable for every single American. This is a change election. And we understand as House Democrats that we need to deliver dramatic change. Things are broken. We need a Congress that puts the American people first. The wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected. The American people have responded in a resounding way and made clear that America is not for sale. We will deliver a Congress that puts everyday Americans first, working class Americans, middle class Americans first, and all those who aspire to be part of the middle class. House Democrats are committed to fighting for an affordable America. We will fight hard to lower. The high cost of housing and groceries and gas, we're going to fight hard to make sure that we can ensure that every single American can afford to go see a doctor when they need one. We will fight for your hospitals. We will fight for your nursing homes. We will fight for your community-based health clinics. And we're going to fight to reverse these painful Medicaid cuts. We also understand. That in addition to fighting to make this country affordable, we're going to bring accountability to those who have visited unprecedented corruption on this country. Because if you have people in high office who are so focused on enriching themselves, their family members, their friends, or their donors, then they're not focused on making life better for the American people. But House Democrats will put the American people first. We understand that this election, a dramatic change election, means that the American people are crying out for transformational change. We hear you. We see you. We feel you. And House Democrats are committed to making life better for you. Beginning on day one. This is not a partisan moment. This is a patriotic one. This is not. A blue moment or a red moment, it's a red, white, and blue moment because America has won tonight. And so I thank all of you for your extraordinary efforts, for the confidence that the American people have placed in us. I want to thank every single member of the House Democratic Caucus, including our extraordinary leaders, Catherine Clark, the next majority leader of the United States House of Representatives. And Susan DelBene, our amazing field general who led the charge to take back the House of Representatives. Thank the American people for the confidence that you have placed in us. We're going to work hard to deliver on the dramatic change that you deserve. And we understand that trust has been broken between the Congress and the American people. And we're going to work hard to restore it. You will have a Congress that recognizes We don't work for the president, we don't work for the vice president, we don't work for the Supreme Court, we work for all of you, the American people, and that is what House Democrats will deliver. And so let me just simply say to communities that raised me, back at home, we made it, Brooklyn, we made it. House Democrats have taken back control of the United States Congress. We're going to fight for an affordable America. We're going to end this national nightmare and we're going to continue America's long, necessary and majestic march toward a more perfect union. God bless all of you. God bless our amazing candidates. God bless the United States of America. We're listening there to Hakeem Jeffries, expected to be the first black speaker of the House now that the Democrats have won back control of the House of Representatives. I want to get right over to Francois Villeminot at the big board because, Flo, you have word of another Senate seat flipping from Republican to Democrat. That's right. This is a really surprising one. This is the race coming out of Kansas. It's so surprising that we didn't even choose it to focus on. It's right here. You can see Roger Marshall there losing out to Adam Hamilton. This is the first time since 1932 that a Democrat has won the Senate race there in Kansas. So that's a major flip. for Democrats. There was another flip that we were also mentioning earlier. This is this time in Ohio. This is John Husted, the Republican, getting beat by Sherrod Brown. So this was a big race that we were looking out for. And there's also another major flip this time coming in the governor's race. This is also one totally unexpected. This is the race in Texas where Where Greg Abbott has lost out to a Gina. Hinojosa, and this would actually mean that she would become the first Latina governor in the United States. So this is huge news. This race really wasn't a competitive one until a couple of weeks ago. This was supposed to be a sure win for Republicans. But as you can see, Democrats really gaining ground and going on to a turf that historically hasn't been theirs. OK, first, let me know. I want to bring in our team in Washington, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Fraser Jackson. Guys, we have results pouring in from Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas. Give us your thoughts. Yeah, I think this is this is the dream scenario for Democrats. Ultimately, you know, we were saying before, Monty, when you spoke to Democrats in the in the lead up to this. You know, a big showing like this was something which was like their dream scenario. They didn't know if they would get there. But, you know, some of the results that we're seeing coming in, you know, and U.S. media obviously is reporting things at different times. Some media outlets are even calling Iowa already at this moment in time. So, you know, if that is the case, then that would mean that they have effectively, the Democrats will have taken control of the Senate once again. Of course, we are still waiting for that to be officially confirmed by the Associated Press before we declare. Claire, anything that big, that major. But, you know, I think we should talk about the House. Ketanji, how do you feel about the fact that the Democrats now, in the words of Hakeem Jeffries, they have taken the House? They've taken the House, and they've taken the House in a big way. Look, for the past few weeks, we've been talking about the fact that for the House, basically, there was little doubt that the Democrats were actually going to take back control of the House. The question was how big the wave would be. Ripple, wave, tsunami, it seems that we're heading... Blue-nami. Blue-nami, as it's been dubbed, apparently. That's the word of the day that everybody is saying here in America. Exactly, and it looks like we're headed towards a blue-nami. All of these seats are confirmed, so really it is the best-case scenario right now for the Democrats. They're winning everywhere that they should be winning, and they're going deep within red territory. They're making those redistricting efforts by the Republicans backfire. So basically they're winning everywhere they needed to, and even more, and then some. It's really a great night, it seems, for the Democrat, and you could tell on Hakeem Jeffries' face that he was extremely happy, and the fact that he turned up before midnight to speak and to claim this victory in the House does tell a lot. Yeah. Sorry for checking our phone. As you can imagine, Monty, we've got a lot of messages from sources and contacts coming through. I'm messaging a friend and a source as well, who's all, you know, a very key kind of democratic, democratic operator, as it were, who actually is annoyed that the Democrats didn't go further. This person is saying that they believe the Democrats could have won Florida if they had put enough money behind that race and said that ultimately the Democrats weren't weren't optimistic. enough about the chances there for Nixon. So, you know, already some of the people that we're hearing from are thinking that this is a blue army, as we have said before. But some people saying that actually they think that it could have gone further. So you're getting some kind of idea about that. Also hearing from people at the White House as well. We are told that President Trump is still watching the results in the East Room. That's watch reception. It's being called not a watch party. But of course, the mood there will likely... And we are now getting confirmation from the AP that Iowa has indeed flipped as well. That is a major result. Ashley Hinson there, you know, defeated by Turek. By Josh Turek, and that is a huge win also for the Democrats because Iowa was one of those races where it was close, it was within the margin of error, it was pretty red as a state, and so it was one of those races where the Democrats were aiming for it, hoping for it, but weren't sure whether they could actually make it there. It seems that that's another one under their belt. So they're now... They've done it and they can't even afford to sort of not hold one race if it were in this way. Talking about the reaction from the White House and the fact that Donald Trump is still watching the returns, he has, of course, taken to Truth Social. Here are his words, pretty short. He says, I was not on the ballot, and if I was, I would have won in a landslide. Thank you for your attention to this matter, which is his usual sign-up. But the fact that he says, if I had been on the ballot, it would have been a landslide after claiming or messaging. For weeks now, Pretend like I am on the ballot. It seems that people listen to him, but not necessarily in the way he wanted. Definitely not. And we're also, he's since then spoken to our colleagues at the New York Times as well. They asked him whether he's going to accept these results. And he said he will accept these results. I'm going to get that quote for you just now. He told my colleague, Tyler Page, will, you know, look forward to working with them, them being the Democrats. He says, we'll probably work something out. He says, I will absolutely hear you. He's absolutely willing to accept the results of the midterms. I think, Kedvan, that really, to me, says a lot. We know Donald Trump has spent... You could argue years trying to sow the seeds of doubt into the integrity of U.S. elections. Again, even in the last few weeks and months, the last especially month on the campaign trail, he was sowing these seeds. We saw, you know, some of the teething problems in New York, in Florida today. Those kind of things were seized upon by, you know, far right influencers like Laura Loomer and the like online to try to say that the Democrats were trying to steal these elections. Donald Trump, though, you know, was somebody who. in the past has used the expression too big to rig and that statement to the New York Times to me really says that He's seen the writing on the wall and realized that he's not going to be able to argue with the size of this win. This is a significant swing away from the Republicans, even in districts that the Republicans won in places like Florida. The margins that they won by are so much smaller than they were in previous elections. Absolutely. And the Democrats actually picked on that line from Donald Trump and used it for their own campaigns, telling their voters, you need to come out and vote. We need to make this win so big that they're not going to contest it. Everyone was preparing for that because the Republicans and Donald Trump had been laying sort of the groundwork to potentially challenge some of those results if things had been very close. The fact that Donald Trump already before the Senate control is even fully called already talking to the New York Times and saying, look, I'm not going to contest these results is huge and sort of is a symbol of how big the night is for the Democrats. And that's really what the Democrats were hoping for, to make it so big and to win so so many races that even if there's a challenge in one small race, it's not really going to matter And it seems that Donald Trump, as we were talking about earlier, is seeing the writing on the wall and also already shifting the blame and pointing fingers to everyone but himself, even though he inserted himself in this campaign very, very strongly. And just one thing, Monty, before we throw it back to you, I think what was interesting I've been talking to some Democratic ...legal types in the last few days as to what they were doing, how they were preparing. They were really organizing a slew of lawsuits, effectively, to be able to counter-sue against the administration if indeed the DOJ, the Department of Justice, tried to contest these results. They'd effectively kind of, you know, mad-libs their way through the legal dictionary by creating lawsuits that you would just need to plug in the name of the states to try to block them. It appears that if this is the case, and Donald Trump is indeed going to accept this, then And all of that will be something that we can avoid as well, potentially, in the coming weeks. And it's sort of similar to what happened in 2024, just two years ago. I had a source, a lawyer who worked on the 2024 on the Democratic side, preparing themselves for challenges. And he was telling me just earlier this week, he said in 2024, in the end, the victory for the Republicans was so big that it turned out to be a nothing burger and there were not that many challenges. It seems that this time around, the victory might be so big for the Democrats that all those legal challenges are not really going to amount to that big of a deal. Okay, Fraser and Ketavan, thanks so much. Just want to pass this along that the AP has confirmed Senate control for the Democrats. So it is now confirmed that the Democrats have taken control of the House and the Senate. I want to go now to Waseem Kornay in Los Angeles. Waseem, you have a guest with you, I understand. Hi, Monty. Yeah, we've got Congressman Brad Sherman, who represents the 32nd District here in California. Congressman Sherman, I want to get your reaction, given these incredible results now that the Associated Press has called the House and the Senate. What are your thoughts? Democracy is back in the United States. We have weathered the storm. Trump will still be in the White House, and he'll still be doing some terrible things. But the worst of it is over. And, uh... Let's hope that Trump and his people get the message. This is the biggest drubbing I've ever seen a president get. We've heard a lot of political pundits calling him now, for the final two years of his term, a lame-duck president. What is the strategy now for the Democratic Party, now that they've got control of Congress? Well, I've been in Congress for 30 years. We often use the term lame-duck, even with a successful president who's in his last two years. What, first of all, no legislation can pass that Democrats don't support. Second, because we now have the Senate, no judges can be appointed that Democrats don't support. We will be investigating and displaying to this country the corruption and the malfeasance of this administration, and yet, look, we have a very powerful presidency in this country and in France you have a pretty powerful president as well. And so we're not going to be able to prevent. Some additional casualties from Trump, but we're going to reduce it. One thing that's galling to me is that the Republicans have already pre-funded our immigration police, ICE, for the next two years. So it would be very hard for us to reduce their funding. For the people in Texas, in Kansas, who have led to these unbelievable flips, who might have never voted Democrat in their life and who've done so today, what is your message to them? And can they trust you to honor that choice? We hear you. Prices are way too high. The tariffs are crazy. The war is illegal. And thank you for your vote. Congressman Brad Sherman, thank you so much for your time. All right, Monty, I'm going to throw it back to you. That was Congressman Brad Sherman representing the 32nd District of California reacting to what has been an unbelievable night for Democrats. More wild than their wildest dreams, but throwing it back to you. Okay, West Team Coronet reporting for us in Los Angeles. Doug, so the number we have now is 51. Yeah. That can be problematic because you have John Fetterman, you have, you know, and now- We're not there yet, and we don't know what's going to happen with Alaska yet. No, exactly. All eyes are now on Alaska because- Yeah, which could be a while. Which could take some time. Yeah. Look. Uh, 51 right now, I, Democrats probably aren't ruining the 51 at all because, you know, a few months ago, as we were saying, that would have seemed improbable. I mean, going into the night, it was even seen as a real uphill slog to be able to flip four seats, especially even just looking at that, that core block of Ohio, Iowa, um, uh, uh, Texas and, uh, and what's the, the. The fourth one, fill it in for me. We've been on the air a long time. North Carolina? No, no, no. But anyway, the fact that Iowa was sort of a fifth flip, in a sense, that brought them over to 51, and it hadn't been seen as probable. It had been actually seen in the 11th hour polls just on the eve of this vote as perhaps one of the harder states. In. If the Democrats were going to pull that off and flip it, it would have been seen as, you know. Not a Hail Mary pass, at least something, you know, that would have seemed unlikely a few weeks ago. So, you know, the words we keep hearing, yeah, this is the pipe dream for Democrats, not in their wildest dreams. But it's clear that the Democrats, what can be objectively said. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum tonight, is the Democrats in district after district and in a lot of the Senate races for which we have results so far have outperformed, but not just outperformed, they have done so handily in a lot of areas where you would have thought a short while ago they wouldn't have been able to perform that well. It is clearly, objectively going to make, whether he wants to recognize it or not, it will make Donald Trump's last two years as president harder. Um, just by the numbers, the math in Congress, no longer having the trifecta, having a one factor, the White House, yes, still as allies on the Supreme Court, but let's not forget that as far as the judiciary is concerned with control of the Senate, the Democrats will also have control over the final say in judicial nominations. That is obviously going to have some sort of impact over the next two years or so. So regardless of... To what degree? We heard Fraser in Washington say before that Donald Trump has told the New York Times that he accepts the results. That's obviously good news, given a lot of the speculation and fears that there would be a lot to do and a lot of obstacles and roadblocks being put up. So he'll accept the results, and we'll see, he says, wants to work with the Democrats. We'll see what that means. But there's also, based on past precedent, probably a part of Trump that believes he will still be able to If not ram through his agenda, still be able to push it through with quite a bit of determination. Thank you. That has been his modus operandi. He doesn't go in reverse, and he certainly doesn't like to stagnate. He goes full throttle, and he'll keep on pushing. How much pushback, despite the pushback he's going to get, will be interesting to see, I think, over the next two years also, how much he will wield his veto, because he has veto power, remember that. And to overturn a veto, you still need two-thirds of a Senate. Democrats are nowhere near two-thirds, being able to muster a two-thirds majority in the Senate right now. So it's going to be an interesting slog, but I think it is, you can objectively say tonight, whether you're a Democratic or a Republican political strategist, that this has been a degree of a repudiation to Donald Trump, and by extension, to the MAGA movement, which he embodied. You were saying before that the Republican and the MAGA movement... You know, the MAGAs are perhaps the real Republicans, the Republicans going back to their roots. But a lot of the Republicans that we've spoken to in recent weeks and months really make a distinction between how they see themselves and how they identify as Republicans and MAGA Republicans. And a lot of people who did vote for Trump and have considered them MAGA Republicans, if you're to believe the polls, and tonight the polls seem to be pretty, pretty steady, pretty solid. If you're to believe the polls. Then a lot of those Republicans who once identified as MAGA for varying reasons, there's not one monolithic block of reason to explain it, no longer identify as MAGA Republicans for whatever reasons, whether it's because they feel betrayed or because they feel like the issues they most were concerned about were addressed or whether they simply feel like a lot of the messages that they thought most embodied the Republican movement and their core values were not delivered upon by Donald Trump's brand. One of the things that I find interesting is that not a single Democrat ever campaigned with the name Joe Biden on his lips. Joe Biden's four years have been completely obliterated. And this is where the prices were even higher than now. And this is where I accuse the media of being always pro-Democrat because. The current prices are still lower than they were under Joe Biden, especially gasoline, especially gas, or petrol, as you call it in Britain. The last person we heard speaking was a congressman or a representative in California. He said, it's so too bad we can't get rid of ICE. What do they want? They want more foreigners coming across the border. This is one of the reasons the Democrats are winning. All the people who came across the border, legal or illegal, they are the ones who are voting for Democrats. Just as the leftists prophesied and just as in countries like Spain, the prime minister has said, we want. Half a million new people here. A lot of the, I just want to interject there, a lot of the Hispanic voters who went in large numbers for Donald Trump in 2024 cited. Exactly what you were just saying, the large numbers of illegal immigrants coming over the border as a reason that attracted them and that drew them to Trump, Trump and his promises to get tough on illegal immigration. And he did deliver on that promise. There have been the number of border crossings have been reduced to almost nothing. But what's interesting is that same demographic of Hispanics say that it almost went to the other extreme now and that The reaction in the form of ICE, in the form of the deportations, in the form of people that we've reported on in recent weeks who say they don't go to work anymore, they don't go to the supermarket anymore, they don't go to bring their kids to school anymore because they are scared, whether you say rightfully or not, of being rounded up arbitrarily by some hooded ICE agent and disappeared. So those same Hispanics have been scared off by an immigration policy that they see as too draconian for what they initially supported. There again, I go back to the media that does not report on crimes committed by illegals. For example, there was a black woman, her name was Thompson, Jaleisha Thompson. She was murdered by five white men, five young white men. Why would you think that would be a typical thing to report on in America and here in Europe about, oh, American racism? Well, it was not reported on because they were illegal aliens. They were not good old southern boys. So this is, again, the media that turns, that reports. And in a terrible way on what is going on. Donald Trump was watching Fox News tonight. And one of the things he did over we were watching this over the course of an hour and a half, he posted three Truth Social posts railing at Fox News. And I think you'll agree Fox News was a media that at least once was very much affiliated with Donald Trump. Maybe he's distancing himself from it now. But he accused them basically of, you know, fake polling and didn't like the reporting they were giving tonight. We're going to have to, I'm being told to wrap, we're going to have to wrap. I apologize for cutting you off, but we have some more election coverage coming up. Just to sum everything up here, House and Senate now controlled by the Democrats. I want to thank you, Eric Svane, Republicans overseas, Doug Herbert, Florence Villamino, all of our correspondents, of course, our team in Washington. Thanks very much for being with us for the last three hours here on France 24, and stay tuned. Our coverage of the midterm elections continues right after this.