Trump wins! How it happened and what's next

The episode opens with jokes about who voted for Trump, then housekeeping. The hosts promote a Saturday, December 7 holiday party in San Francisco with Steve Aoki, a Botez sisters chess tournament and tickets of roughly $500. Jason says the event could cost $1 million and will probably lose money, since the aim is to see what they can sell.

Sacks describes election night. He went to Mar-a-Lago around 7:30 Eastern for Tucker's livestream, saw a dinner in the ballroom and a staff room full of TVs, and was photographed with Trump and Elon. He says Trump was "cool as a cucumber" and relaxed, though not acting as if he had it locked up, while the rest of the group was nervous. Most supporters were at the Palm Beach convention center, and Sacks says everyone knew it was in the bag once Pennsylvania was called.

The host puts the final tally at 312 electoral votes for Trump and 226 for Kamala Harris, against Trump's 304 in 2016 and Biden's 306 in 2020, with every swing state won fairly resoundingly.

I think the simple explanation is, like, they just lost the script.

Chamath argues that voters tired of being labeled misogynist, racist or fascist, and of a party courting them through identity. In his account Trump spoke to prosperity, safe neighborhoods and a predictable school curriculum. As evidence he says the Democratic margin in California fell to about half of its 2020 level of 29 points, and in New York to 12 points. He reads the result as a rejection of wokeism, cancel culture and judgmentalism, and a return to normalcy.

Asked about alternative media, Jason says podcasts were a major part of Trump's strategy and Democrats did not grasp that media goes where the audience is. His ranking: first the candidate, Harris, who was installed late without a proper primary; second inflation, illustrated by a McDonald's cheeseburger going from $2 to $4; third voters' dislike of being called racist or sexist, and cancel culture.

He plays a Trump ad featuring Charlamagne tha God about taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and says it sums up Harris's problem. He adds, as his own claim, that she was in charge of the border and that she and Biden held the economy when inflation spiked, calling the result a bad candidate with a bad record against a flawless Trump campaign.

Jason also shows a chart of Trump gains across nearly every demographic group. The transcript on the exceptions is unclear, but older voters and white college-educated women are described as moving modestly left. The largest shifts were among Hispanic and Asian voters, which he reads as Asians valuing meritocracy and Hispanics holding traditional family values.