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John Yang, Judy Woodruff>
Stefanie Brown James, Matt Schlapp, J.D. Vance, Ellen Fitzpatrick, Amy
Walter>
What does a Trump presidency mean for the nation? How is the rest of the
world reacting to Trump`s win?>
ALI NOORANI: Right, right, at the forum, looking at this election as one about culture and values and what it means to be an American.
And when you look at over the last few months, a lot of people, yes, they - - a lot of Trump voters want to see a solution in terms of immigration. They want to see greater regulation, a greater, a stronger border. But some of their solutions actually are different from what the candidate put forward.
So I think Donald Trump has an incredible challenge to translate his campaign promises into a consensus-building policy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Betsy McCaughey, do the rest of Americans have something to fear when it comes to this gap between what Donald Trump had said on the campaign trail vs. what he might do as president?
BETSY MCCAUGHEY: I don`t...
HARI SREENIVASAN: I mean, you see the social conversations today, that there`s a huge group of people, whether it`s women, whether it`s minorities, whether it`s immigrants, who are concerned that they don`t know where they stand with the new president.
BETSY MCCAUGHEY: Yes. Well, actually, I found most of his message quite unifying, because the emphasis was on prosperity.
I did want to touch upon something that one of our contributors said a moment ago about women and failing to break the glass ceiling. And here`s how I see this. Hillary Clinton was urging voters to make history, but a lot of voters, particularly women, had trouble with her history.
And she was portraying herself as a feminist, as a glass ceiling breaker, but, in fact, in the eyes of many women, especially women closer to Hillary Clinton`s own age, she had gotten where she was primarily on her husband`s coattails.
She was less a Susan B. Anthony and more an Evita. And so they found this unconvincing. And millennial women who are out there every day competing with men don`t see the issue.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Ellen Fitzpatrick?
ELLEN FITZPATRICK: I think this kind of rhetoric and exaggeration that has really informed this entire campaign does very little to elevate the political process.
And it`s very unfortunate. It was amazing last night to see Donald Trump, who had been describing Hillary Clinton as crooked and corrupt, in a matter of a moment, was describing her as a fine and dedicated public servant, once he had won the election.
So, there was a kind of barbarism all the way around, I think, in this political campaign, in which the issues really were boiled down to very small sound bites. The impact of mass media on presidential elections, a process in television which really began in 1960, is reaching its logical conclusion here. And I think it`s -- the public is not well-served by it, frankly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: J.D. Vance, in your book "Hillbilly Elegy," you deal, of course, with white working-class Americans, many of whom you write about feeling forgotten, disrespected.
What do you think they are now looking for Donald Trump to do, and do you think he can deliver for them? Well, just answer the first part yet. What do you think they`re looking for from him?
J.D. VANCE: Well, the first thing that I think they`re looking for, they have already gotten, which is a sense of vindication that they predicted, they knew that the media was corrupt, that they were lying about the outcome of the election, and Donald Trump really proved them right in some ways.
So, I think that there should be some soul-searching from the press, who predicted that Trump would lose very, very handily. But, of course, that didn`t happen. And I think that corrodes some of the trust that a lot of folks back home have in the mainstream press.
(CROSSTALK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, if I could just interrupt for a second, that was based on polls that pretty universally were showing Hillary Clinton ahead, because we don`t do our own polling. But go ahead, please.
J.D. VANCE: Yes. No, of course.
I`m not trying to be hyper-critical of the press, but I think that even the polls suggested a fair amount of volatility. And there was a certain degree of certainty, even though I don`t think that certainty was necessarily supported by the polls that suggested Hillary Clinton was slightly ahead, but not very comfortably ahead, as a lot of folks talked about.
But I think what people want to see from the Trump presidency is, fundamentally, they want to see a more repaired and better path to the middle class. What a lot of folks feel -- and some of the other commenters have mentioned this -- is that there isn`t a very clear way for somebody who`s working-class, who is middle-income to really get ahead in 21st century America.
That implicates our education system. It also implicates our local and regional economies. And I think that folks will expect Trump to fix a lot of those things. But, of course, it`s a really tall order, and it`s not going to happen overnight.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Matt Schlapp, sometimes, the saying is that campaigning is the easy part, governing is the hard part.
As J.D. Vance just said, there`s a lot of expectations that people have. All those people that put Trump into office, they want to see results. And now, technically speaking, no excuses. Congress, both the House and the Senate, are Republican, as well as the White House. What is the Trump deliverable in the first day, first 100 days, first year?
MATT SCHLAPP: Yes, you know what? It`s going to be time for us to put up or shut up.
You know, it`s hard to reverse all of the problems we have seen in the economy that we have seen with these working-class voters, these blue- collar voters that turned out in just droves for Donald Trump.
But there are actually some easy things we could do. Our tax -- our corporate tax structure is a disaster. And many of us who are small business people actually pay at higher rates than corporations do. We have some of the highest corporate taxes in the globe.
And what we`re seeing is that corporations are leaving America for the sole reason of taxes. Second of all, we could do something about our regulatory structure.
Look, you could look at climate change. The impact of chasing after regulating carbon dioxide has really shed our economy of manufacturing jobs and additional energy jobs. We all know about the war on coal. We can all have our opinions on things like climate change, but we can`t disagree on the fact that it has shed so many jobs in these communities and in these states, states that Donald Trump did very well in.
So, Republicans, of which I`m a proud member of that party, being in control of Congress, although we don`t have 60 votes in the Senate -- and it`s always important to say that, which is, there is still going to be bipartisanship and all these things -- we really ought to do something on our taxes, and we ought to do something on our regulatory structure. And ought to be more competitive internationally.
And then the investments that are sitting on the sidelines would start to flow into our economy. I really think middle-class America will be well- served by that, and, of course, a fix of Obamacare.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me turn to Stefanie Brown James, because you started out, Stefanie, by talking about raw feelings in the African-American community, the communities of people of color in this country.
If this principal focus of a new President Donald Trump is on economic issues like what we just heard Matt Schlapp and Betsy McCaughey describe, does that in some way reassure, assuage some of the concerns that you expressed?
STEFANIE BROWN JAMES: I mean, definitely, you know, there is no doubt about that, you know, communities of color are very much concerned about the economy, being able to make sure that they have enough food to give their families. So, poverty is also a big issue.
But the challenge comes down to respect. And if there is a president who you feel doesn`t fundamentally see you as an equal to other Americans, doesn`t respect you, doesn`t respect your life, then it doesn`t matter what policy position they put forward or what plans they put forward, because the humanity -- you feel your humanity is not being seen by your own president or your own government.
But, to be quite frank, you know, I`m excited to see what the Republican Congress is going to do, what this new Republican president is going to do, because I do think that it is time to show up and to prove that the policies that they say they want to put forth that`s going to, you know, help the middle class, that it`s going to actually make a difference.
I think people conveniently like to forget that, you know, President Obama inherited a doomsday economy, so I want to see what this Republican-led government is going to do to get us into a better shape.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Ali Noorani, I just wanted to pick up on something that she just said. How do you get these communities to feel respected?
ALI NOORANI: Well, I think we`re in for an interesting ride.
I should start with, I do not believe that every person that voted for Donald Trump is a xenophobe or a racist. On the other hand, some of the things that Donald Trump said over the course of the campaign gave voice and gave permission to people to do some very, very terrible things.
Just today, I saw news of a swastika being painted on walls in Philadelphia. So we`re going to unfortunately see these kinds of things as we move forward through this administration.
President-elect Trump, when he becomes President Trump, is going to have an incredible opportunity to heal this country and to be able to, in essence, take that permission away.
MATT SCHLAPP: Oh, just very quickly on this respect question, I think that`s so right.
But, remember, I think actually this really boomeranged on Hillary Clinton. We focused so much on Donald Trump`s rhetoric. But when she called Donald Trump supporters a basket of deplorables, you can see it in the exits. It just destroyed her with these voters.
And when called Christians -- not her, but her staff in these leaked e- mails -- called Catholics and Christians backwards, you can just see Donald Trump did -- he actually won Catholic voters. So, you know, this idea of rhetoric out of control is something that really hurt Hillary Clinton in this race.
JUDY WOODRUFF: J.D. Vance, how do you see this playing out?
J.D. VANCE: Well, I think that, first of all, Donald Trump and the Republican Party has to recognize that, though they obviously won this election, if you look at their low numbers among black voters, among Latino voters, this is not a long-term coalition that they can build on.
And so I really do think it comes down to respect. It comes down to being gracious. It comes down to really showing compassion for the problems of the black and Latino communities. And I really hope that Donald Trump takes the ball that`s in his court and tries to go after those voters, tries to show some compassion, and really offers them something substantive to get excited about Republican and conservative policy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Just a final word from Ellen Fitzpatrick on bringing the country together. Is it possible?
ELLEN FITZPATRICK: Of course it`s possible, Judy.
This was a very close election. And, in fact, I believe Hillary Clinton, at least the latest count, shows that she won the popular vote. There was a lopsided vote in the Electoral College, as there often is.
So, we remain a very divided electorate. And it will be, of course, an imperative of the new president to try to address those divisions and to bring the country together in order to govern.
This is not a -- this is not "The Apprentice." And, in four years, you`re fired if you`re not able to address the concerns of the American citizens. So, it`s a tall order for someone without experience in politics or military service, and it`s a new model. We will get to see how it plays out.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, the conversations are just beginning. This is only the first day after we have learned the results of the election. But we are so glad that you were all able to join us.
Ellen Fitzpatrick, Matt Schlapp, we thank you. J.D. Vance, Stefanie Brown James, Betsy McCaughey, and Ali Noorani, we thank you.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Now the view from overseas.
The election was watched closely, both with anticipation and fear.
And, as chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports, today, the rest of the world awoke to an America profoundly changed.
MARGARET WARNER: The stunning news ricocheted around the world from Tehran to Tokyo, Istanbul to Berlin, met with apprehension by some and applause by others.
In Moscow, the Russian Parliament erupted in cheers at the announcement, and President Vladimir Putin was among the first to congratulate Trump, who had lauded Putin as a strong leader.
Nathan Hodge is a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Moscow. He says there is glee over the divisive U.S. election.
NATHAN HODGE, The Wall Street Journal: It`s a way that, basically, that Russia, which has seen lots of scolding from the United States and the West about the way that it conducts elections and the authoritarian tendencies of its leadership, they can now point to the United States and say, look, you guys, you`re not so great yourselves.
MARGARET WARNER: Russia also left its imprint on the election, with allegations that it engineered the hacking of Democratic Party e-mails to embarrass Hillary Clinton.
All of this has NATO allies nervous. Its member states, especially in Eastern Europe, rely on the U.S. as a counterweight to Moscow and a guarantor of their security. Alliance leaders made clear today they are looking for Trump to maintain a tough line with Putin after Russia`s annexation of Crimea, and to abandon his campaign talk of putting conditions on the U.S. commitment to NATO.
The president of Latvia says he`s willing to give the incoming president some time.
RAIMONDS VEJONIS, President of Latvia (through translator): Of course, during the campaign, Trump came out with many blunt statements on many issues, but we should remember that it was a pre-election time. Let`s see what the administration of the president will look like.
MARGARET WARNER: But, in France, President Francois Hollande said the result -- quote -- "opens a period of uncertainty."
Reaction in nationalist quarters of Europe was exultant.
"NewsHour" special correspondent Malcolm Brabant spoke to us from Copenhagen.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Right-wing leaders across Europe are basically seeing the Trump victory as a validation of their policies. You have got people like Marine Le Pen, who is the leader of the French National Front, she`s going into a presidential election in six months` time.
The latest polls give her about 30 percent of the vote, and she will see what happened in America as being encouragement for French voters, saying, if it can happen in the United States, why can`t it happen here?
MARGARET WARNER: That nationalism already triumphed in Britain. British Prime Minister Theresa May says her nation`s special relationship with the U.S. remains.
But she came to office last summer after British citizens voted for Brexit to abandon the European Union. Trump embraced the move, calling himself Mr. Brexit at one point.
Also in question is America`s participation in the Paris climate accord. Trump has called climate change a hoax, and while it would take four years to formally pull out of the agreement, there are no sanctions in place for ignoring it.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she watched the U.S. election results -- quote -- "with trepidation," but that she will work with Trump. Trump has called Merkel insane for taking in a large number of refugees.
The center of that refugee crisis remains in Syria, now in its sixth year of civil war. People in Aleppo, locus of the fighting now, say their low hopes for U.S. protection remain the same.
WISSAM ZARQA, Syrian Teacher: We are trying to look at the bright side. Trump has no promises at all for the Syrian people. Before, we had empty promises. So, now it would make us maybe more realistic.
MARGARET WARNER: Elsewhere in the Middle East, there`s unease over Trump`s campaign calls to ban many Muslims from entering the U.S. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was one the first world leaders to telephone congratulations overnight, but others in Egypt struck a different tone.
MAN: He hate Muslims, whether he admits it or not. He`s afraid of Arabs.
MARGARET WARNER: On the other hand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Trump today, calling him a great friend of Israel.
His education minister put it more plainly, saying Trump`s victory means -- quote -- "the era of the Palestinian state is over."
The Israeli government sharply opposed the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, and Trump has suggested he will try to renegotiate the lifting of sanctions it provided.
Borzou Daragahi, Middle East correspondent for BuzzFeed in Istanbul, said that will be difficult.
BORZOU DARAGAHI, BuzzFeed: The U.S. could, in theory, ramp up unilateral sanctions, but it never really ramped them down, except for the ones that were kind of imposed by the executive. The ones that are by Congress are still in place and remain in place.
MARGARET WARNER: The president-elect also wants to revisit major trade deals, such as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has yet to be ratified.
China`s President Xi Jinping telephoned Trump himself today, voicing hope for -- quote -- "non-conflict and non-confrontation." U.S. tensions with Beijing have ratcheted up over China`s aggressive moves in the contested waters of the South China Sea.
Gillian Tett, the U.S. managing editor for The Financial Times in New York, spoke of the Chinese reaction.
GILLIAN TETT, The Financial Times: There is certainly a lot of questioning and a lot of concern. There has also been a series of comments from China about the fact that this makes American democracy look rather peculiar at best.
MARGARET WARNER: Closer to home, Trump`s victory was met with alarm in Mexico City, given his talk of building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it.
The Mexican peso crashed overnight, hitting levels not seen for more than 20 years.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I`m Margaret Warner.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In the wake of last night`s huge upset, there are many questions about what the pollsters, the pundits and many journalists may have missed.
To tackle this, we are joined by Margaret Sullivan. She is the media columnist for The Washington Post. Steve Deace, he is a popular conservative radio talk show host in Iowa. And Jim Rutenberg is a media columnist for The New York Times.
And we welcome all of you to the "NewsHour."
Margaret Sullivan, you`re sitting here next to me. I`m going to start with you.
We heard J.D. Vance say in that previous discussion in the program we saw the news media, he said, lying about what was going to happen in this election based on the polls. And I pointed out that we depend on the polls, but we don`t do the polls ourselves.
But how good a job or poor a job did the media do this time?
MARGARET SULLIVAN, The Washington Post: Well, I don`t think that the mainstream media was lying about what was going to happen.
I think we missed the overarching story to a large extent. And that is a failure on our part. But it wasn`t the result of, you know, a plan or a lie or anything as -- quite as venal as that.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Steve Deace, I want to ask, how much of this is a disconnect between the people who write the stories and the people who are out living them in the middle of the country?
STEVE DEACE, Radio Talk Show Host: I think it`s a massive disconnect.
And I`m someone who used to work at a major city newspaper which is considered mainstream or liberal media. I have done a lot of work with USA Today and MSNBC, which are considered the same, because I like to engage people that have different ideas than me and maybe even persuade them.
But how many people in the newsroom here right now at PBS, how many that work here, how many are pro-life? How many of them go to church or to mass once a week? How many of them voted for Trump?
And I think there is a lot of talk of the lack of diversity. There is a huge lack of ideological and cultural diversity in our newsrooms. And I think that`s creating a massive disconnect nationwide.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim Rutenberg, connect those two things. We just heard Margaret Sullivan speak about how the press missed the story, and we hear Steve Deace saying how disconnected we are from the rest of the country. How do you see all of this?
JIM RUTENBERG, The New York Times: Well, I kind of, in a way, agree with all of the above, in that it`s indisputable that America`s newsrooms, especially its mainstream newsrooms, are not diverse with ideological opinion.
But a lot of journalists are not -- don`t consider themselves ideological, though much of the country doesn`t believe that these days. So -- but I do believe that we need people with different backgrounds.
But mainstream newsrooms aren`t going to go looking for people with ideological viewpoints. It`s not what we do. Our editorial page issue should. But you do want people who at least grew up or kind of are immersed in the kind of thinking.
The one thing I want to argue here, though, is that this isn`t about geography. It`s not about the middle of the country. And I wrote this today, that it`s a state of mind. And so there are people on Long Island who are hard-core Trump voters who I don`t think are understood by most mainstream news reporters who live amongst them. Right? So, it`s a psychology, as much as it is about geography.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Margaret Sullivan, what about the idea that there is an affirmation bias in the press, that perhaps we went along with the polls because it was more palatable or whatever -- the prediction was more palatable, and that we didn`t dig into the numbers on how the polls got to the way they were, especially considering there was such uniformity?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: This was the year of magical thinking on the part of a lot of journalists.
We thought that it would be -- it was unthinkable that someone who was insulting people, saying racist and xenophobic and sexist and misogynist things could become the president. And so we didn`t really -- many of us didn`t really deal with the idea that this could the case.
And the polls were close enough and the election forecasts were often saying that Hillary Clinton would, you know, win, and you know, she was probable by 85 percent or something like that. So, there were a lot of factors working for us.
I think that we did get out into the different parts of the country and do some reporting. Did we do enough? Did we listen hard enough? I wonder about that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Steve Deace, you brought up a moment ago journalists, the whole disconnect point.
You know, we have strived, I think, in newsrooms for years to become, as we like to put it, more like America, to be more diverse. But I hear you saying we have missed a whole chunk of the country in our effort to be diverse.
STEVE DEACE: I don`t think there is any question about this.
I read something an L.A. Times film critic said a year ago, when "American Sniper" was the number one movie. And he said, listen, the only people surprised this is the number one movie are the people that live in the two coasts and haven`t visited the 47 states in between.
You know, what Margaret said about some of the things Trump said, I mean, that`s why I was #NeverTrump. I was disturbed by those things.
But you know what also disturbed me? To hear Hillary Clinton say that I am her -- quote -- "enemy," the comments that were made in the previous segment from the WikiLeaks e-mails calling Christians backwards, the fact that those of us who think that we shouldn`t have men in bathrooms next to our young daughters are called bigots, when we used to just call them parents.
Those things create a backlash as well. So, I don`t fault the media for thinking that Trump couldn`t get elected because of his incendiary comments. The fault, though, comes in the fact that an equal light was not shed on Hillary`s incendiary comments and the backlash that created against her, which we saw in the vote total last night.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim Rutenberg, what about that?
JIM RUTENBERG: Yes.
I think -- and I think that what we learned from the lack of reaction, I think this is where we see the disconnect, how we ask ourselves, and including some never-Trump Republicans -- did the incendiary comment from Mr. Trump not create a backlash, and how did he get elected in spite of it all?
And I think that goes to, again, not understanding the level of anger in other parts of the country and, to my point, certain people everywhere. And they care much more about the ills that Mr. Trump was promising to cure than they cared about whatever personal traits we were writing about in our coverage.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Margaret Sullivan, what about this potential of almost an observer effect, having Jim`s paper, The New York Times, or The Washington Post, having these predictions on a daily basis seeing that Hillary Clinton is going to win by 92 percent probability or 85?
Does that end up having kind of a confirmation effect over time, saying, well, maybe I don`t need to go out there and vote or this is really the narrative anyway? Am I countering that? Am I challenging that narrative with a different type of story?
MARGARET SULLIVAN: I think, when you walk into the voting booth, it`s a very emotional issue.
And I believe that, for many people, the idea of the Clintons back in the White House was something that, when they actually walked into the voting booth, they just didn`t want to countenance, and that you can talk about experience or inexperience or incendiary comments or stronger together, make America great again, but a lot of times, it`s a purely emotional issue.
And it speaks to how you feel about your life and the direction of the country. And I think that`s really what we saw happening.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Steve Deace, it`s such a big subject to look at how the media and a president interact.
But if there were mistakes made in the campaign, how can the media, shall we say, be closer to the mark in how we approach covering the Trump presidency?
STEVE DEACE: I think one of the big things, people misunderstood FOX`s original appeal when it was launched 20 years ago.
Its original appeal is that it looked at institutions of America, the military, churches, the family. It didn`t look or view them with instantaneous suspicion, because most Americans do not. And, frankly, a lot of people that live in more progressive enclaves do.