Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who may play a key role overseeing public health issues in a second Trump administration, said Wednesday that he won’t take away people’s vaccines, NBC News reports.
He also said he will meet with senior Trump aides on Wednesday to discuss his role going forward.
Vice President Kamala Harris was preparing to concede the presidential race to Donald Trump in what her campaign said would be a speech at 4 p.m. ET, the New York Times reports.
Harris was scheduled to call Trump soon to formally concede.
“Donald Trump’s victory means he is likely to name a U.S. attorney general who will halt the two federal prosecutions he is facing,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“That means Fulton County’s election interference case could be the only criminal case left standing. And it will likely will be put on hold until at least 2029.”
“Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who won reelection to a second term Tuesday, has not directly addressed the question of what she will do with the case against Trump should he return to the White House. But many legal experts believe even if the Democrat moves forward she will ultimately be stymied by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
David Graham: “Ironically, it may have been Donald Trump’s discipline that won him a return trip to the White House.”
“The former and future president is infamous for his erratic approach to politics, which was on flagrant display in the past couple of weeks of the campaign. But Trump consistently offered a clear message that spoke to Americans’ frustration about the economy and the state of the country, and promised to fix it.”
“Throughout the campaign, Trump told voters that President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and undocumented immigrants were responsible for inflation, and that he would fix the problem. His proposals were often incoherent and nonsensical. For example, Trump promised to both whip inflation and also institute enormous tariffs, a combination nearly all economists agree is impossible. The mass deportation that Trump has promised would also likely drive up prices, rather than soothing the economy. But in a country where roughly three-quarters of Americans feel that things are on the wrong track, a pledge to fix things was potent.”
“Wall Street investors are cheering former President Trump’s return to the White House,” NPR reports.
“The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 1,300 points soon after the open, or more than 3%, just hours after Trump won the presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Lisa Lerer: “Donald Trump told Americans exactly what he planned to do.”
“He would use military force against his political opponents. He would fire thousands of career public servants. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups. He would crush the independence of the Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad. He would turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters. He would be a ‘dictator’ — if only on Day 1.”
“And, when asked to give him the power to do all of that, the voters said yes.”
“This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip. Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”
William Kristol: “The American people have made a disastrous choice. And they have done so decisively, and with their eyes wide open.”
“Donald Trump is returning to the White House as the world is embroiled in two widening regional wars, America’s rivals are coalescing into a new global authoritarian axis and some of the U.S.’s closest allies fret over his re-election’s consequences,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Russia has now enlisted North Korea into its nearly three-year war in Ukraine, where it is making slow but steady advances. Israel’s year-old war with Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza has expanded into an invasion of Lebanon and the first-ever direct exchanges of missile strikes between Israel and Iran. China is giving crucial economic and political support to the cooperation among Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran—while strengthening its own military for a possible war over Taiwan.”
“Donald Trump didn’t just beat Kamala Harris. He beat the system that tried to put him in jail,” Politico reports.
“He was already the first former president ever to be charged with and convicted of felonies. Now he has become the first convicted felon ever to win a presidential election. And his victory virtually guarantees that he will never face serious legal accountability for an avalanche of alleged wrongdoing…”
“It almost certainly allows Trump to postpone any sentence on his New York conviction for covering up a hush money scheme in 2016.”
“Even the civil cases against him will now face new obstacles. Presidents can, in some circumstances, be subject to civil penalties from private lawsuits, but Trump will surely try to use the cloak of the presidency to avoid paying the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes in judgments for sexual abuse, defamation and corporate fraud.”
Axios: What happens to Trump’s criminal cases after election win?
David Frum: “These past few months, my plan for 2025 was to retire from political journalism. Seems I’ll have to make new plans.”
Oliver Darcy: “The post-2024 autopsy will not be kind to the American news media. At least in 2016, Trump and his tactics were new to the scene. This time around, not so much. Lessons that were learned over the Trump years were disregarded as he sought to regain power. And that warrants some hard questions.”
“If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.”
— A television executive, quoted by New York Magazine.
Tom Nichols: “For a decade, Trump has been trying to destroy America’s constitutional order. His election in 2016 was something like a prank gone very wrong, and he likely never expected to win. But once in office, he and his administration became a rocket sled of corruption, chaos, and sedition. Trump’s lawlessness finally caught up with him after he was forced from office by the electorate. He knew that his only hope was to return to the presidency and destroy the last instruments of accountability.”
“Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.”
“Do not misunderstand me. I am not counseling complacency: Trump’s reelection is a national emergency. If we have learned anything from the past several years, it’s that feel-good, performative politics can’t win elections, but if there was ever a time to exercise the American right of free assembly, it is now—not least because Trump is determined to end such rights and silence his opponents. Americans must stay engaged and make their voices heard at every turn.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “What appears to have happened was a national swing to the Republicans from where they were was four or even eight years ago.”
“Why? Sorry, we have no idea, and if you want to know the real reason I advise patience. Elections are complicated things, and we haven’t even counted all the votes yet. It’s going to take time to figure it out.”
“There are two different processes that go on. The wonks (political scientists who study these things, and also all sorts of other analysts) will try to figure out what actually happened. Meanwhile, every politically active group will quickly claim credit or, on the Democratic side, deflect blame. That matters going forward, because politicians and other political actors will respond to whatever they think happened in the election.”
Julia Azari: “The 2016 election was likely one of the most over-interpreted in U.S. history – and this one will give it a run for its money. The votes are still being counted, the final tally unknown. We don’t know the details. We do know that Trump has already claimed a mandate, a characteristic overreach that is hardly without precedent. We also know that news media seem eager to write about a comeback, and while that may be accurate, it tells us very little that we don’t already know.”
“Others have been quick to observe that ‘Trump is who we are’ – and that, too, is a truth that needs to be wrestled with. But ‘who we are’ is not and never has been a single thing.”
Brian Beutler: “The United States and the world will soon be in the hands of mercurial, vindictive, greedy men with scores to settle and few checks on their power.”
“Perhaps there’s some solace in that word ‘mercurial.’ Who knows what Donald Trump, the 78 year old former president and current president-elect, will choose to do with his time and authority? Maybe some semblance of stability can be salvaged through the fact that he mostly just wants to be the center of attention.”
“But I don’t take much solace at all. First, the people who’ve attached themselves to Trump know this about him, and they are ambitious. They have already reasoned that they’ll be empowered to fill all the gaps in his attention, and their ranks include corrupt oligarchs, conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, religious extremists, and fascists. Think Trump might ultimately not care that much about abortion? Well, the people serving under him do, and he won’t be checking their work.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Tuesday’s election showed a realignment of the Republican Party and the American electorate that centers less on race and more on occupation, the Washington Post reports.
Said Rubio: “Donald Trump won it by fundamentally remaking the Republican Party but I hope also revealing to people that for voters in the United States of America, their primary identity is not their ethnicity, it’s not their race. It’s what they do for a living, it’s who they are in their daily lives.”
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Americans now have a responsibility “to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years,” the Washington Post reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.