Donald Trump has appointed Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, as his White House chief of staff in his first big appointment as president-elect. Meanwhile, three states, including America’s most populous, are making moves to protect liberal policies from the next administration.
Friday 8 November 2024 10:04, UK
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Discarded posters and American national flags remain at the site where Kamala Harris conceded defeat to Donald Trump.
The vice president made a speech at Howard University on Wednesday, where she told supporters “we must accept the result” but vowed to continue the “fight”.
Many of Harris’s supporters were despondent on Tuesday night as her hopes of victory diminished, with some shedding tears at her concession speech the next day.
A historian who failed to predict the correct outcome of the 2024 election despite getting the right result in nine of the past 10 races has explained why he got it wrong.
Professor Allan Lichtman predicted that Kamala Harris would narrowly beat Donald Trump.
His predictions are based on his “13 keys to the White House” system, which has successfully determined the outcome of every election since 1984 aside from 2000, when he called it for Al Gore.
But speaking to CNN, Prof Lichtman said a multitude of factors played into the incorrect prediction, including the spread of disinformation and the way the Democratic Party’s campaign played out.
“I think the fundamental problem was the keys, not my interpretation, no one’s convinced me that was wrong,” he said.
“There are unique features, I’ve always said some unique features could break the patterns of history and I think that’s happened here.”
One feature was some Democrats “openly and viciously trashing” Joe Biden after his poor debate performance against Trump.
“I have never seen that before and I’ve studied politics since the founding,” he said.
Biden’s plummeting approval rating in the debate’s aftermath “extended beyond” him to “weaken any Democratic candidate”, he said.
There was also an “explosion” in trends that have existed before, “but not to this extent”, Prof Lichtman said.
“Disinformation – you know, Elon Musk… has been the director of misinformation, two billion views of his spreading of disinformation, not just about the economy but about immigrants, about minorities. We’ve never seen disinformation at this scale,” he said.
He also said there was an “agitation” of three trends “deeply embedded in American history” – misogyny, racism and xenophobia – that had never been seen before.
Olivia Rodrigo appears to have removed one of her best-selling singles from a TikTok video posted by Team Trump.
The video captioned “WE DID IT AMERICA”, celebrating Donald Trump’s election win, originally used her song “deja vu”, according to screenshots posted on social media.
The TikTok now displays a “this sound isn’t available” message.
Rodrigo previously endorsed Kamala Harris for president.
In a town that sits between two nations, Arnoldo Montiel knows exactly where he stands on immigration.
The 80-year-old has lived in Nogales, on the border between Mexico and the US, virtually all of his life.
He says the issue is one of the main reasons he voted for Donald Trump.
“These are people who are illegal. They don’t belong in the United States,” he says. “If they need to come in, we welcome them. But they have to be legal.”
Driving towards the border wall that straddles the Arizona town, he says he believes the issue is why Kamala Harris lost the election.
“Why do you think she lost big?” he asks, before answering his own question: “The border and foreign affairs.”
In many ways, Arnoldo’s life has been defined by the border issue, not just because of where he lives, but because of who he loves.
His wife Lupita lived on the Mexican side of the border wall, meaning she had to apply for citizenship.
Like her husband, she supports Trump’s approach to immigration, which the president-elect says will involve mass deportations.
She calls President Biden’s approach “horrible”.
“He just let everybody come in, there’s been crimes, there’s been murder,” she adds, echoing some of Trump’s claims on the issue on the day he told NBC News he would push ahead with mass deportation plans no matter the price.
For some, like young mother Corinna, the subject is more than a debate, it’s their reality.
She voted for Kamala Harris, with her family a central concern, because she wants her two-year-old daughter to grow up in the US.
Her Mexican husband is currently in the process of applying for American citizenship and she fears that tighter rules around border controls will separate her family.
“I want my family to be together and I want a better future for my daughter,” she said, adding: “I just hope everything works out eventually.”
Google searches for “move to Canada” surged as it became clear that Donald Trump was headed for a second term in the White House.
Data shows a 1,270% increase in the search term in the 24 hours after US east coast polls closed on Tuesday.
Similar searches about moving to New Zealand spiked by nearly 2,000% and 820% for those thinking about a move to Australia.
Searches for all three countries hit record highs on Wednesday night on the east coast, a Google official said.
“Every half hour there is a new email enquiry,” said Evan Green, managing partner at Canada’s oldest immigration law firm, Green and Spiegel.
He said many Americans feel they are “going to lose freedoms” under Trump.
Similar interest in moving abroad was seen after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The Democratic Party needs to go “back to basics” to unpack the election and work out why it lost so many votes to its opposition, a political commentator has said.
Joe Radosevich, vice president of campaigns at the Centre for American Progress Action Fund, told Sky News that Donald Trump had such a successful night as he managed to increase support with “a lot of different demographics”.
“That will take a little bit of time to unpack and think about how we really move forward,” he said.
Mr Radosevich said not only in the US but across the world, institutions need to “get in the trenches with people who are frustrated”.
“Our economy in the US has actually done quite well post-COVID, and under President Biden our GDP may be growing, but the quality of life for way too many people has shrunk,” he said.
“And so I think for Democrats, we’re going to be going back to the basics there about how do we make sure that we are growing the middle class, and we are putting forward a programme that is reaching out to everybody, listening to everybody and putting those economic concerns first.”
Donald Trump has begun picking his top team after pulling off a stunning comeback to return to the White House.
If his first term as president is anything to go by, some of those jobs could go to members of his large and in most cases politically inexperienced family.
The president-elect has five children from three marriages – with his three sons all reported to have contributed to his 2024 campaign in some way.
In June 2023, Trump said he wouldn’t want his children to serve in a second administration because “it’s too painful for the family”.
However, his critics might say that it wouldn’t be the first time he has said one thing before going on to do another.
Here we take a look at the incoming president’s family and how they might feature in the Trump White House 2.0…
After Donald Trump went uncharacteristically silent online following his election result, he returned to his Truth Social platform last night to celebrate his victory.
The president-elect did not make any comments, but instead posted newspaper front pages of his victory and an image of himself branded with the words: “Get ready for the golden age.”
Donald Trump yesterday named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff in his first major appointment as president-elect.
She will be the first female in history to take up the role – one of the most important non-elected posts in Washington.
Here’s a little more of what we know about one of Trump’s most trusted political confidantes…
Wiles, 67, a Florida native, is one of the most respected Republican operatives, though she has largely stayed away from the limelight despite being in the political circle for decades.
Wiles is the daughter of the late NFL player Pat Summerall.
She first worked in the Washington office of Republican New York representative Jack Kemp in the 1970s, before stints on Ronald Reagan’s campaign and in his White House as a scheduler.
After that, Wiles moved to Florida where she undertook various roles including adviser to two Jacksonville mayors and helping lead Rick Scott to victory as governor of Florida in 2010. He is now a US senator.
Wiles was also brought in to help save the 2018 campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who won after initially having floundered. The pair later fell out.
When it comes to her relationship with Trump, Wiles ran Trump’s 2016 effort in Florida, when his win in the state helped him clinch the White House.
Trump said she was also an “integral part” of his 2020 campaign, and she served as co-manager of his third bid for the White House this year. He described her as an “ice maiden” in his victory speech on Wednesday.
Trump often referenced Wiles on the campaign trail, publicly praising her leadership of what he said he was often told was his “best-run campaign.”
“She’s incredible. Incredible,” he said at a Milwaukee rally earlier this month.
Response to her hiring as chief of staff has been overwhelmingly positive from Republicans.
Some boards erected around buildings in Washington DC in anticipation of possible unrest following the election result are starting to be removed.
Security was beefed up across the city ahead of voting day, with protective fencing and anti-riot barriers also seen near the White House.
In a speech yesterday, Joe Biden promised a peaceful transition of power and urged Americans to “bring down the temperature” following Donald Trump’s win.
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