Tom Hurst

Erin Burnett: “we do have the breaking news, the tsunami getting even bigger, more midterm results coming in tonight and democrats have flipped eight more republican seats just today. and we've got more projections possibly coming in at any moment this hour as we are watching that decision desk. eight additional seats that i mentioned now gives democrats 253, 253 and more to count. okay, that's a 97 seat majority compared to republicans just at this moment. and as i said, more races in play. in fact, 27 races still not yet called as of tonight and democrats are leading in five of those districts that are currently held by republicans and republicans are no longer leading in any district currently held by democrats. so democrats are now on track for what may be the biggest gains for the democratic party since 1974. a party left for dead a couple of years ago. 1974 of course was right after the watergate scandal which walked washington after richard nixon was forced to resign in one of the darkest periods of america's history up until that time. and democrats remarkably are now on track to hit or even exceed, are you ready for this? 260 seats in the house, 260 as possible. so now let's go to the senate. also there, the tsunami. democrats now have already earned 54 seats. even three days ago, nobody thought we would be saying any such thing, right? every single possible map was to try to get to 51 or 52, 54 already, two seats up in the air. it could go to 56, we'll see how those go, but those are alaska and mississippi. and that brings me to where i began, which is mississippi where we just got more results. democrat scott collum leads the incumbent republican, cindy hyde-smith right now by more than 1800 votes. that gap just getting a little bit bigger. still razor thin, but it's bigger, right? 24 hours ago, we were in the low 40s. so now let's go to alaska. mary paltola, the democrat there leading dana sullivan, the incumbent by more than 600 votes. alaska still counting, and that's what we continue to see. 48 hours after the first polls closed in what turned out to be a monumental election. and this election was a crushing rebuke of president trump. we've heard the word extinction from many republicans talking about their own party, and democrats are picking up more and more seats. meantime, republicans want heads to roll.” A person: “i'm a business guy. and if in business, all of a sudden you lose that much of your work to your competitor, you're gonna fire people. in fact, i think there should be some heads rolling from the white house as well right now.” Erin Burnett: “heads rolling from the white house. and one of the heads that more and more republicans want to see roll is the defense secretary, pete hegseth, or as he calls himself, the secretary of war. today, hegseth responded to this, releasing a six minute screed rant online. he railed against diversity. he touted what he says are his accomplishments, and he gave a warning to his critics.” Pete Hegseth: “a disgruntled, defeated congressman, along with all his democrat allies, has also dropped sham articles of impeachment against yours truly. just like they tried against president trump twice. you see, their policies don't work, so their obsession with political theater, disguised as power, drives them to try to destroy their opponents. it's all about the politics of personal destruction. didn't work against president trump, and it won't work with me. you can rest assured of that.” Erin Burnett: “much more on that to come, but i want to go over to the magic wall. harry anton's out front with me there. and harry, obviously we just played hegseth there, but the count, the count that he is responding to, a situation which he did not see coming.” Harry: “i don't think many of us saw it to this scale.” Erin Burnett: “to this scale, no. and here we are. so we're trending now to watergate levels, possibly for democrats. i mean, a possibility of 260. this is stunning. so what are you saying?” Harry: “it is absolutely nutter butter. let's just start with what we've called so far, right? 253 for the democrats, only 156 for the republicans, already a net gain pickup of 40 seats for the democrats. now you spoke about the fact that we called some races today. let's talk about those races that we called today. and look at this, look at this. you can come in on here and call races in north carolina, virginia, ohio, colorado, arizona. i want to go into north carolina here for a split second because this was a state that republicans redistrict to pick up seats from the democrats. uh-uh, uh-uh, did not work. i mean, my goodness gracious, look at this. look at this. i didn't even know who these democrats were for goodness sake. look at this. here's a district they redistricted. the democrat wins there. let's go here. how about right down here? addison mcdowell, an incumbent, loses in this district. we can go here. how about this one? tim moore. i, again, i never even heard of these democrats before this election. and before all of a sudden election night, we were looking at them. now more than that, let's sort of zone out on the map here. and let's just sort of get an understanding of what we are really dealing with in this election, okay? so we're going to go in terms of the flip so far. and this to me really just does tell the story. there are a few republican districts that flip, but the democratic districts that flip, just the geographic diversity of it. we're talking from the northeast, new york, pennsylvania, down to the southeast, right? virginia, north carolina. you go to the midwest. it's michigan. it's iowa. it's texas. it's colorado. it's nevada. it's california. it's montana for goodness sake. and you of course mentioned, erin, that so far obviously we have only called 253 seats. it can go even bigger than that. it can go even bigger than that because i want you to look at the ahead column here. look at this. democrats currently leading in 261 districts. i think they're going to probably end up right around the 260 mark, which of course would be a tremendous net gain well into the forties at this point, which would mark the biggest gain since watergate, as you were pointing out. and more than that, what i want to note is i'm going to bring out the pen here. right now in the national popular vote for the u.s. house, democrats lead by, get this, 12 points. 12 points at this point. i think that number is going to go higher, probably closer to let's say 14 points. and that would mark the biggest popular vote win for democrats since the bicentennial 50 years ago. this is what...” Erin Burnett: “1976.” Harry: “1976.” Erin Burnett: “i mean, it is incredible because i'm just thinking back to the eve of the election when the most optimistic forecasters were saying somewhere between 230 and 240. and if democrats get a miracle, 240. and you're now saying that somewhere around 260 is within reach.” Harry: “this is absolutely within reach. this was a wave because it was wide across the map. and it was deep in terms of the trend in which we see republican, people who voted for republicans just two years ago, flipping across the map, voting for democrats.” Erin Burnett: “absolutely stunning. and as you said, the count's still coming in. so we're watching this because we do anticipate more numbers coming in through this hour. so we'll see if any of these become firm calls in the next few moments. let's go to kristin holmes at the white house. kristin, if there was any talk that trump might've had of saying, oh, well, it didn't go my way here. so i'm gonna say it was rigged. i mean, it is the depth of this wave which made any such thing impossible. what more are you learning about the white house thinking on this stunning and major loss?” Kristin Holmes: “well, erin, they're still coming up with their strategy to move forward. you have to remember this. there were a lot of different scenarios they planned for. they planned for a scenario in which they lost the house and kept the senate. they even planned for a scenario in which they both lost the senate and the house. but what they didn't plan for was losing it by this much. these are insane margins. and so all of the things that they had been actually planning for, they need to be adjusted. and i was told the day after the election, they had a senior staff meeting where they talked about what the white house paths forward are. they talked about executive orders, how to work with democrats. if democrats do wanna work with them, what would they actually believe that they could compromise on? what are things that they could present to democrats? and i also heard that there was talk about how they will react if democrats come in and they are planning immediate expansive investigations. and that's going to be a more aggressive approach, obviously, from this white house and one we've seen before. now, in terms of how the white house is thinking about moving forward and looking back, i'm still told that there is so much animosity behind the scenes, finger pointing a lot of it at pete hegseth at the secretary of defense. and the big question is whether or not trump ends up cutting him loose. he has said publicly, repeatedly, that he is not going to fire him, that he thinks he's doing a fantastic job, but it hasn't stopped him from calling and talking to a number of people and saying, how do you think he's doing? and he has been fielding calls, he said this earlier, by a lot of republicans who say they don't think that hegseth should remain in the job. now, if in fact republicans do vote in the house to impeach hegseth next week, which is what we're hearing could happen, then we're going to look at this again because that could be a chance that president trump uses to cut him loose.” Erin Burnett: “yeah, yeah, absolutely. and when you talk about hegseth, that's something, whatever the vote might be, that has a lot of bipartisan support. kristen, thank you very much. i appreciate you and everyone's here with me. john, just sitting over there with harry, thinking about on the eve, the 235, 240 seat in the house forecast that everybody said, oh man, those people are crazy. and now you're looking at 260, 261 is very conceivable. getting close to that is quite probable and likely. i mean, this is really stunning.” John: “it is a landslide. it is a definitive rebuke of donald trump like we've never seen. i mean, you've got to go back to watergate as we've seen, but it's also a dozen state legislatures. it's deep into the south and the midwest. and so the whole republican coalition has been blown up because trump pursued policies that were not only made people's economic situation worse, but were intentionally unpopular. he pursued an extremist agenda. and so this is a populist blowback.” Erin Burnett: “i mean, ashton also, they didn't even, i'm just thinking the former speaker of the texas house, republican was with me. he lives along the louisiana border. he's like, look at louisiana.” John: “oh, i mean, this could have been worse.” Erin Burnett: “i mean, i looked at louisiana. they only are winning by like a point-ish.” John: “louisiana, tennessee, florida. you look at south carolina, even the governor's race in south carolina, 90,000 votes. it was the difference with minimal investment.”