President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA allies appear to be successfully influencing Republican senators to approve his Cabinet picks, ABC News reported Tuesday. Curran, on “The Morning Meeting,” suggested MAGA supporters have been pushing senators into changing their opinions of Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, but Halperin retorted by recounting examples of alleged bullying tactics within the Democratic Party. (RELATED: Scott Jennings Reminds CNN Panel America ‘Just Voted Against The Expected Washington Pick’ While Defending Hegseth)

“So, as a Democrat, I’m looking at a lot of this from the outside of the Republican Party, and it seems like there’s a lot of bullying going on of elected officials to be with MAGA, even if that’s not where their heart is. And when one is bullied, one becomes resentful,” Curran said. “So two things could happen: either they rebel, or they just suck it up and become more resentful and miserable.”

“The strategies of the MAGA people are obviously very smart. Look what’s happened with Pete Hegseth’s turnaround. But also it’s not just those elite-type folks. It’s also the people out there, the Charlie Kirks and all of those folks, who … got the trolls and the bots and all of this stuff, guns trained on people who don’t behave,” she added. “So just play this out: if things go really bad, what do you think would happen to Trump and MAGA?”

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer responded by saying Trump will always retain his “base.” He also suggested Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi has been a bully, although he acknowledged she may have used more “covert” tactics than MAGA supporters.

“And it’s not just Nancy Pelosi, Laura. As you know, you had three years of failed policy on immigration, three years of failure to deal with inflation, you had failed … and you had a failed Afghanistan withdraw, and then you had the logical conclusion: well, maybe our very old, infirm president should get a primary challenge,” Halperin said. “Well, why didn’t he, except from Dean Phillips? Because bullies — bullies who worked for Joe Biden — called people who got out of line and said, ‘Get back in line or you’ll have a price to pay.””

“So I say, with respect, sure, there are bullies in MAGA, but there are plenty of bullies in the Democratic Party, and they arguably cost the Democrats the White House … By bullying people into silence, they allowed Joe Biden to keep the nomination up until it was too late, in the view of the vice president’s people, belatedly, to replace him and win,” he continued. “So I think Sean’s right that they’ll stay loyal to Donald Trump, but I also don’t think one party has a monopoly on bullying.”

Former Democratic North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham officially joined the Republican Party in April 2023, asserting the present Democratic Party is intolerant.

“The party wants to villainize anyone who has free thought, free judgement, has solutions and wants to get to work to better our state,” Cotham stated during a press conference at the time.

“If you don’t do exactly what the Democrats want you to do, they will try to bully you. They will try to cast you aside,” she added.

Democrats have also repeatedly pushed for censorship, including of their opponents. For instance, Democratic lawmakers, led by then-California Rep. Adam Schiff, wrote a letter to billionaire Elon Musk in October to pressured him to censor “election misinformation” on X.

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Bragg has faced intense scrutiny for appearing soft on criminals while pursuing high-profile prosecutions against President-elect Donald Trump and marine veteran Daniel Penny. Clark, on “Dan Abrams Live,” said that the Manhattan district attorney will “probably” lose his reelection bed in a similar fashion to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who was ousted in November, pointing to Bragg’s perceived failure to prosecute property crimes.

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“I think that Alvin Bragg has been in some hot water of his own, independently of whatever people may perceive as his liberal bias. But I think there is something in the air. People are pretty tired of people getting away with stuff, particularly when it comes to property crimes,” Clark said. “I know here in California, we’ve had a lot of problems with shoplifting and people complaining, I think on the East Coast as well.”

“You go into the CVS or whatever, a Walmart, everything’s locked up. You can’t buy deodorant without calling a store manager. Everybody’s tired of it and it really is enough already,” she continued. “So I think that all of the DAs that seem to be associated with that attitude of ‘we’re not going to prosecute that little stuff’ are probably going to be gone very soon.”

Over 27,000 felony crimes in Manhattan were reported in 2024 as of Nov. 10, marking a nearly 17% increase from the identical time frame in 2021, prior to Bragg’s tenure, according to New York Police Department documents, the New York Post reported. Rape, robbery, felony assault and grand larceny have all surged during Bragg’s time in office.

Bragg secured a conviction of Trump in May on 34 counts for falsifying business records to reimburse his former attorney Michael Cohen for a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels. However, a jury acquitted Penny on Monday on charges of criminally negligent homicide in the death of homeless man Jordan Neely.

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The media has faced allegations of bias against Trump and he also got indicted four times during his 2024 presidential campaign. Smerconish, on “Press Club,” argued that these factors ended up helping Trump rather than hurting his appeal with voters.

“I don’t want it all distilled into this one sound bite or conclusion, but at the top of my list, I’ll say it that way … It’s like a parenting lesson. The more that you tell people what they can’t do, what’s intolerable, you must not do this, you should not do this, the more they’re going to rebel,” Smerconish told Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin. “Maybe they would have ultimately come to their own conclusion and rejected Donald Trump. I don’t know.”

“But I think that the constant browbeating and the combination of the media influence and the four indictments, one conviction, and showing that god-awful joke from Madison Square Garden a week in advance of the election on a loop — and I felt it, and I said it,” he added. “I can’t sit here, Aiden, telling you, well, this is the way I called the election, but I definitely felt the potential for a boomerang effect, and I think that came true. I really do.”

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe performed at Trump’s Oct. 27 Madison Square Garden rally, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and receiving significant media backlash. However, Trump ended up winning a majority of Hispanic male votes nationwide in his race against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Republican voters in Georgia told MSNBC during a May segment that Trump’s legal issues have made them more passionate about supporting him.

“It’s actually caused me to support him more,” a voter named Antonio Jones said. “I just don’t believe that it’s a coincidence we have a trial happening in Atlanta, we have one happening in New York, so the question people are beginning to ask themselves like I did, is like, why now?”

Trump leads Harris in the popular vote by 2% with over 76 million votes as of Friday morning, according to The Associated Press.

After Trump’s election victory, his two federal cases will be dropped and his state cases probably will too, though there’s a possibility that ambitious local prosecutors could extend the battle, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. For instance, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis signaled during a Wednesday interview with Atlanta News First that she intends to proceed with her case against Trump, which accuses him of attempting to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

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Trump announced Gaetz’ selection in a Truth Social post, describing him as a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law” who would end “Weaponized Government.” Murphy, on “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” called the decision “stunning” and warned of “cataclysmic” consequences for “American democracy.”

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“I was walking off the Senate floor just moments ago when the news was announced. You could literally hear the jaws dropping to the floor of Republican senators who are now going to be in a position to stand up to Donald Trump in a way that they have been unwilling to. I mean, listen, Matt Gaetz is dangerously unqualified, but that’s not the worst of it,” Murphy said. “Gaetz has been Trump‘s chief defender when it comes to Trump’s assault on democracy, his attempt to overthrow the government on January 6. And he has openly called for the abolition of law enforcement agencies if they don’t get in line with conservative political priorities. This is going to be a red alert moment for American democracy.”

“Matt Gaetz is being nominated for one reason and one reason only. Because he will implement Donald Trump‘s transition of the Department of Justice from an agency that stands up for all of us to an agency that is simply an arm of the White House designed to persecute and prosecute Trump’s political enemies,” Murphy said. “This is a stunning announcement in some ways, but not surprising in others because Trump told us during the campaign that he was going to use the White House to go after people who politically opposed him, and it seems this pick for the head of the Department of Justice is very much in line with the promises he made during the campaign.”

Trump also announced Wednesday that he would appoint former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to be director of National Intelligence. He also said he would appoint Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. He announced on Tuesday that he would appoint Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.

“Matt Gaetz is being nominated because he will be and is today a political agent of Donald Trump. The ramifications of this pick, this particular pick, are stunning and potentially cataclysmic for American democracy,” Murphy added. “I hope that some Senate Republicans will see that.”

Trump is facing multiple federal prosecutions from special counsel Jack Smith, but the Department of Justice is considering how to wind down its cases against him as he prepares to take office in January, multiple reports indicate. DOJ policy bars the criminal prosecution of sitting presidents.

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Lichtman accurately forecast nine of the 10 last elections before wrongly predicting Harris would be victorious, according to USA Today. The historian, on his YouTube channel, argued that voters were not “rational” or “pragmatic” due to what he characterized as a massive uptick in “disinformation” and Trump’s promotion of “xenophobia,” “misogyny” and “racism.”

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“I think two things this year, and maybe going forward, broke this premise of a rational, pragmatic electorate, and these are trends that are not new but have exploded this year beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. First is disinformation,” Lichtman said. “Always had disinformation, but we’ve never had anything remotely on this scale, where billionaires — I don’t know how much Elon Musk is worth, I’m sure more than a hundred billion dollars — who control critical sources of information for the electorate. I mean, Elon Musk owns X, and I’ve seen reports that his disinformation that he’s put out, has been viewed by two billion viewers, vastly more influential than New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CBS.”

The historian also alleged that Musk is not the only billionaire disseminating “disinformation.” He asserted that “the incredible explosion of disinformation” has led to Americans believing falsehoods about the state of the American economy, “mak[ing] it very difficult for a rational, pragmatic electorate to operate.”

“Then add to that that we’ve seen Trump and his allies exploit, far more than ever before — even 2016 and 2020 — trends that run deep into American history and still resonate at this time: xenophobia, fear of foreign influences … We have never seen, in recent history, xenophobia to this level, and it digs deep into a trend in American history. It’s not something brand new, and it’s not just white people, you know?” Lichtman said. “People of all races and ethnicities can be subject to xenophobia.”

“And finally, there’s racism, one of the deepest, most pervasive trends in American history,” he added. “And we have seen, just as Trump and his allies have brought misogyny and xenophobia to a new level, he’s also brought blatant racism to a new level … So we see then the explosion of disinformation and these three dark trends from American history, and that calls into question the whole premise behind the keys of rationality and pragmatism.”

Lichtman earlier in his video also said the Democratic Party publicly attacking President Joe Biden when he was still running for reelection could have contributed to his wrong prediction.

Radio host Charlamagne Tha God and CNN’s Van Jones both recently argued against exclusively blaming the election results on “racism” and “sexism.”

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The Harris campaign had explored the possibility of appearing on Rogan’s podcast in an attempt to increase her support among male voters, Reuters reported on Oct. 15. Rogan, on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” said he accepted the “restrictions,” but made it clear that there would be no editing of the interview.

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“There was a few restrictions of things they didn’t want to talk about, but I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ I go, ‘Get her in here, like whatever you want to talk about.’ And they want to know if I edit,” Rogan said. “I’m like, ‘There’s not going to be any editing, there’s no editing. We’re not going to edit.’”

“Yeah, that’s the same thing they asked us. ‘Is there an edit?’” fellow podcast host Theo Von responded.

Rogan posted on X on Oct. 29 that the Harris campaign had wanted him to “travel to her” to record an interview, but that he deeply believed it would be better for the vice president to appear in his Austin, Texas studio. He also said on an Oct. 30 episode of his podcast that he extended an “open invitation” to the Harris campaign while she was in Texas for an Oct. 25 rally, but that she did not take him up on it.

“She had an opportunity to come … You could look at this and you could say, ‘Oh, you’re being a diva,’ but she had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas. And I literally gave them an open invitation,” he asserted at the time. “I said, ‘Anytime.’ I said, ‘If she’s done at 10:00, we’ll come back here at 10:00.’ I go, ‘I’ll do it at 9:00 in the morning, I’ll do it at 10:00 p.m., I’ll do it at midnight if she’s up, she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull and fuckin’ party on.’”

President-elect Donald Trump appeared on Rogan’s podcast on Oct. 25, recording a three-hour episode that has amassed over 47 million views on YouTube as of Friday.

“I just wanted to talk … I feel like you give someone a couple of hours and you start talking about anything, I’m [going to] see the pattern of the way you think,” Rogan said Friday. “I’m gonna see the way you process ideas. I’m gonna see whether or not you’re calculated or whether you’re just free. Or are you comfortable with you or are you projecting things?”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Trump’s election victory was fueled partly by increased support from Hispanic and black men. Cuomo, on “The Chris Cuomo Project,” suggested voters cast their ballots for Trump over Harris based on “a gross violation of norms” that they find “unacceptable.”

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“You are forcing new social norms on people in this country. ‘No, I’m not, we’re just doing what’s fair. Trans people have rights too.’ Yes, but if it’s communicated as if you must be forced to accept and be indoctrinated with ideas that you do not share — is that fair? ‘That’s not what we were doing.’ That’s how they felt you were treating them about it,” Cuomo said. “That’s the women in sports thing. It’s not that it happens a lot, like immigrant crime. It’s not that it happens a lot. It’s that the fact that it happens at all, to them, is a gross violation of norms and unacceptable. And you find it okay, and they believe that is wokeism run amok.”

“What is woke? They don’t even know what it is. Here’s what they believe it is, and it just won the presidential election,” he continued. “The economy won the presidential election, and concerns that all go under the umbrella of wokeism — which, to people who voted for Trump, is a set of ideas that messes with traditional values, but more importantly, new ideas that are being forced on them to make their own, even if they don’t agree.”

Cuomo asserted lenient immigration policies are an example of “wokeism” that voters rejected.

“We don’t have an open border, but it does meet that suggestion. And politics is about hyperbole. Politics is about persuasion. Politics is about using perception as a hedge against reality, and perception generally wins,” he said. “So when you undo what was working and allow people to flood through, you feed into the idea that you want it that way. And then you get the Great Replacement Theory and all this other bullshit. But it is an extension of what they see as wokeism.”

“Yes, it’s also national security. It’s also immigration on its own. But it is this exaggerated liberalism, this exaggerated laxity, this exaggerated relaxing of law and order for some other value system,” he added. “Trans is that. Censorship is that.”

Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews on Wednesday also criticized Democrats for their “open border” policy, arguing it made numerous voters “very angry” and contributed significantly to Harris’ defeat.

Moreover, Democratic strategist James Carville on Wednesday noted “the woke era” was a factor that hurt Democrats in this election.

“We got beyond it, but … the image stuck in people’s minds that the Democrats wanted to defund the police, that they wanted to empty prisons,” he said. “You know, the immigration stuff, obviously again a big mistake, but more importantly, it created to the perception of disorder.”

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Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris by 16 points among men, while Harris holds a 16-point advantage among women across all the battleground states, according to a Sunday New York Times/Siena College poll. The voters, featured on journalist Mark Halperin’s “The Morning Meeting,” expressed surprise at backing Trump, saying they no longer trust the media’s portrayal of him.

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“I can’t believe I’m voting for Trump,” a law school student named Lauren said, telling Halperin she has only voted for Democrats in past elections. “It started with COVID things … For me, this election is like a referendum on the elites way more than it is anything about Trump or Harris. specifically. And I recognize, like I live in D.C., I’m about to be a lawyer. It doesn’t matter.”

“After years of being yelled at about misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories, and after, like, for this past, year actually doing my research on what Trump did, not just what he said, but what he did in his first term and realizing the media’s lies and then seeing the media’s lies this past year, I mean the amount of work that you have to do as someone who’s not surrounded by a conservative bubble to actually figure out like the nuanced truth of what’s going on is insane,” she added.

Lauren also said she is backing Trump because of Israel, criticizing Harris and President Joe Biden for their handling of antisemitism. She also said she was “really inspired” by the team Trump has assembled during his 2024 campaign.

Halperin asked Lauren later if she is “pro-choice” and she said she was, but added she favors “keeping abortion to the states,” which Trump supports.

“I feel like a lot of his positions are pretty moderate and I think that moderate positions are best for the country right now,” she added.

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“I think I’m supporting Trump, which is crazy for me. I very much resonate with what Lauren said earlier,” a California voter named Megan said, adding that the people she knows who are around her age of mid-twenties to early thirties appear to be supporting Trump.

“I think that COVID had a huge impact on how I view the media … it really led me to question a lot of what the media was saying, which sort of, you know, led me to look into a lot of other things. And I sort of had always bought into the media narrative around Trump, which I now disagree with,” she added. “I don’t agree with Trump on a lot of things and I’m very pro-choice, but there are certain issues that I really think that he is right on about.”

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Biden made the comment during a Tuesday Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Sunday Madison Square Garden rally. Luntz, on “CNN News Central,” argued Biden’s remark holds greater weight than Hinchcliffe’s because he is the president, adding that it was “inappropriate” even if people interpret it differently.

“It’s gonna be huge because this is not some comedian saying something stupid and offensive at a rally where he should have been just basically disinvited. This is the president of the United States endorsing his vice president saying something, and I know that there’s different interpretations about what he said,” Luntz said. “It’s still inappropriate. He still shouldn’t be doing it and I’ve watched Trump already seize this.”

“The basket of deplorables was significant, was meaningful in 2016. In 2024, I can promise you that this is gonna drive Trump turnout,” he added. “He’s doing it already … I’m sure there’s going to be ads on as soon as tonight about this. This may be a turning point for those final 3%, and that’s all it is, who still need to be persuaded.”

Trump currently leads Vice President Kamala Harris slightly in five of the top seven battleground states, with Harris only holding narrow advantages in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to RealClearPolling averages.

“And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something … I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said Tuesday. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”

Biden tried to clarify his comments in an X post Tuesday night following criticism, claiming he was referencing Hinchcliffe’s “hateful rhetoric” rather than all Trump supporters.

The White House first published a transcript that recorded Biden saying “supporters’,” with a plural possessive apostrophe. It subsequently changed the transcript to read “supporter’s,” suggesting that Biden was only referring to Hinchcliffe.

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(DCNF)—Journalist Mark Halperin said Friday that mounting “data” suggests former President Donald Trump is gaining momentum against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris currently trails Trump slightly in all seven top swing states, according to the RealClear Polling averages. Halperin, on his 2WAY platform, noted a lack of confidence among Democrats as Harris’ likelihood of defeating Trump in November appears unlikely.

“Unfortunately for blue America, there’s an asymmetry in what’s going on now. We could spend all day, the three of us, trying to get a Democrat on the phone who was super confident, like, ‘We’re going to win.’ We wouldn’t succeed in terms of political professionals, members of Congress, strategists,” Halperin said.” It would take us one call, random dial any Republican in our rolodex, to find someone who said, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty confident we’re going to win.’ Or more.”

“Okay, that’s an asymmetry. It’s just a reality. Some attribute it to cultural differences between the party and there’s something to that,” he continued. “There’s qualitative and quantitative data everywhere you look that things have moved in Trump’s direction and that it will be difficult for her to win, but not impossible. And that is causing a lot of tension in blue America.”

Halperin then pointed to The New York Times/Siena College’s last national poll of the 2024 election cycle, which the outlet published on Friday and found Trump and Harris tied at 48%. The previous NYT/Siena poll published on Oct. 8 found Harris leading Trump 49% to 46% nationally.

“The conventional wisdom has been, even though it may be false, that if Donald Trump is tied or within a couple points in the national poll, he’s going to win. Now The New York Times says it’s possible that Kamala Harris could win the electoral college and lose the popular vote,” Halperin said. “And we’ve talked about Trump over-performing from last time in the big blue states that could make him a bigger popular vote winner, but still lose the electoral college. Possible.”

The poll also found Trump drawing 42% of Hispanic voters and 11% of black voters. Halperin read from an X post from CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein reacting to the poll, which states it “shows Harris basically matching [President Joe] Biden winning 2020” percentages among whites, but “slipping” among minorities, particularly Latinos.

The analyst asserted this data “explains why less diverse Rustbelt states remain the most plausible path for her, as they were for Biden.”

The journalist also read from an X post from pollster and former Bill Clinton adviser Mark Penn, which states, “[The Wall Street Journal] and Forbes polls all show 3 to 4 point movements in the direction of Trump in the last few weeks. This is real movement and momentum going into the close. It is still close but this is a substantial move.”

Halperin also asserted Tuesday that Trump will be elected president on Nov. 5 if the current early voting trajectory “continues.”

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