Fox Political Analyst Stephen Caliendo on what's next following the 2026 election

Joining this morning to talk about this election is Fox political analyst Stephen Maynard-Caliendo. Stephen, so good to have you. Good morning. Good to be with you. So let's talk about this key deadline. This key deadline passed in this Mississippi Senate race. What is the deadline and what happens next? So the deadline was when anything they received, they would have to now stop counting. Oh, like the provisional. Right, exactly. Yeah, and they call them affidavits in Mississippi. But essentially, they show up at the poll and they're not on the list, but they think they should be able to vote. They can vote, but they put them in a separate pile. They spent the week going through those to try to figure out who was who and then actually make calls to people who cast ballots, etc. By Friday, we should know the results. By Friday? They have to certify by Friday. What is it looking like at this point? It looks like Holcomb is going to win. He's far enough ahead. Honestly, in another era or another context, we probably would have had a concession from the incumbent at this point. But because it was such a surprise to so many people and The one good thing is that it's not down to 50 votes in the Senate, right? If it was hinging on the outcome here, I think there would be a lot more lawyers in Mississippi. But at this point, it's clear the Democrats have control, and they just wanna make sure every vote gets counted. I also wanna ask you, we've been doing this news story all day about the House Republicans electing Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio as their next minority leader. Talk about what stands out about him. Why was he the guy this time? Because, I'm Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson, bow out. Right, yeah, and Mike Johnson probably was the right person for their time when they had the majority. But in a minority leader, you want somebody who's really fiery, and Jim Jordan fits that bill very nicely. I will say that if you combine, if you do one plus one equals two, and you combine the selection of Jim Jordan with the selection of Stephen Miller for the White House Chief of Staff, it really is signaling what this White House intends to do over the next two years, and that's fight. Okay, and that was my next question, is what does the White House intend? Yeah, for sure. Because the Stephen Miller pick is really getting a lot of headlines as well. It should. Look, the president, right after the election, we were surprised that he didn't blame it on anybody else. He didn't say it was stolen, etc. So that Wednesday morning, last Wednesday morning, it was like, well, this was a good day for democracy. And then he turned around and picked Stephen Miller, who was the architect of the policy that so many people were upset about in terms of immigration crackdowns. He started Truth Socialing conspiracy theories about could they really have won this big, it really have happened. Yeah. So we've seen a change in the president over the last couple of days. And I think that if you think about the Pete Hegseth issue too, where there was an attempted impeachment of Pete Hegseth, that also signaled that the White House is ready to fight. I wanna ask a little bit, I know we touched on Jim Jordan, I wanna touch on the Democratic side as well. I know that Chuck Schumer was saying that he wanted to be majority leader. Bernie Sanders recently came out saying he won't support Chuck Schumer as majority leader. So what is that fight shaping up to look like? Because I was saying during the break, I'm chronically online and I'm even seeing people saying We don't want Hakeem Jeffries either. That's right. That's right. People don't want establishment Democrats. That's right. And interesting, the Republicans decided to go with one establishment and then choose somebody different. The Democrats look like they're going to try to be sticking with Hakeem Jeffries for sure. The Chuck Schumer thing's interesting because, look, on the one hand you say, we won this because it's a new generation. And many of the candidates who won and unseated Republicans did so partly on the promise that they weren't gonna stick with the status quo with respect to leadership. On the other hand, it was a huge victory. And so you kind of give credit to the coaches, right? The people that helped orchestrate that victory. So I think that's why a lot of folks are conflicted is that they're not sure. You don't want to really send the wrong signal to the voters that we don't want to turn the corner and make change, generational change. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to punish somebody who will get you to the point where you are. That's a good point. I mean, do you think it's going to be Jeffries eventually? I think it's going to be Jeffries for sure. Do you think he's listening to the people who are saying, hey, we kind of want this change of leadership a little bit and maybe listen to them? I think one of the things that Jeffries is going to have to do is make sure that he's clear that he's going to continue with oversight because he's sort of at the... In the days after the election, tended to back off a little, talk about what he wanted to do for the American people, which is all good. But a lot of these folks who won, one, wanting to hold accountable people who they perceived as committing wrongs against the country. And so he's got to make sure he's signaling that if he is the speaker, he's going to allow that kind of oversight to continue. I think that's how he pacifies. Right. Yeah. Walking into gum at the same time. We've heard that phrase a lot this week. Can the Democrats walk into gum at the same time? You know, speaking of Hegseth here, quickly, Do you think that they're going to bring this up again? This impeachment thing in the House did not pass yesterday. It didn't pass yesterday. It was a procedural matter. They referred it to the committee, which means it's going to die there in the lame duck session. They could bring it up again this time. Eleven Democrats didn't show up to vote. Interesting. And that would have made the difference if they all would have voted to move forward or to say no to the referral, which is procedural move forward with the impeachment. Even if it doesn't happen, though, you can bet that Democrats are going to bring this back up in January. Yeah. And he's not going to be the only one. Interesting. There's other cabinet members who certainly will be on the hook. That raises the question, shouldn't they just go forward and impeach the president? Because that's exactly what they're getting at. Remember, the Supreme Court said a couple of years ago that the president can't be held criminally responsible after office. For actions he takes while he's in office. Okay. I mean, that was the argument that Mitch McConnell made in the first Trump term. Don't impeach him, just hold him accountable. The Supreme Court has now said you can't do that. These are official acts. The only appropriate remedy for a president who's not acting appropriately is impeachment. So we'll have plenty to talk about when January rolls around. I think we'll have a few things to talk about. To say the very least. Thank you so much for being here for us this morning. Plenty on the way. It's 8.30 right now. We'll be right back with more Chicago's morning news after this.