Michael Smerconish Explains Method to Trump's Madness in Winning Election

TMZ

Michael Smerconish is breaking down the strategy behind Donald Trump's convincing win on Election Day ... and he says Trump pushed all the right buttons.

Transcript

00:00How did people miss the boat in such a profound way here?

00:07Because no one in media talked about this scenario.

00:12When I was asked what I thought the outcome would be, I was saying for the last several

00:16days, my head says Trump and my gut, not my heart, but my gut tells me that it's Kamala

00:23Harris.

00:24And when I would say that my head tells me it's Donald Trump, I simply meant that the

00:28pollsters had blown it in 2016 and 2020 relative to his standing.

00:34The biggest shock to me is that I'm one of those who would often say that he had a very

00:39high floor, but a very low ceiling, meaning that we thought that he was capped somewhere

00:44in the 45 or 46% range.

00:47That was okay in 2016 because you had Gary Johnson and Bill Weld and a very robust third

00:52party effort.

00:53There really wasn't one this cycle.

00:55The biggest shock to me is that he broke 50% in the national polls.

01:00Do you attribute that to the fact that he turned more voters or just that Kamala Harris

01:08didn't mobilize, didn't motivate enough people to come out and vote?

01:13Charles, he was so dark in the last couple of weeks of the campaign.

01:17I never understood it.

01:18I'm in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

01:21This is the epicenter.

01:23I'm in Bucks County as I speak to you, and everybody wanted to know how will Bucks County

01:27go.

01:28Bucks County went for Trump, Pennsylvania went for Trump, and the nation went for Trump.

01:33He was so dark in the last couple of weeks.

01:35I would say, why does he say that?

01:38Why does he make the comment about media shooting through the glass?

01:41Why does he make the comment about Liz Cheney and the nine barrels that are trained on her?

01:46He's not earning any support among my neighbors, but my neighbors were never the intended audience

01:52for those comments.

01:53I think there was a method to his madness.

01:56He was seeking to get the 80 million who were eligible to vote in the 2020 cycle but didn't

02:01off the couch and out to vote.

02:04We're not going to know until the dust settles from some of these numbers, but my suspicion

02:07is you've got a lot of very low interest voters who came out and voted for Trump or wouldn't

02:13have come out at all.

02:14In some ways, the media and the Democrats repeated a mistake from 2016 when Hillary

02:23Clinton talked about the deplorables, that there are a lot of people who were saying

02:28that the Trump supporters, Trumpers, were racist and misogynist, and they were using

02:34all sorts of words that I think may have animated these voters to go to the polls.

02:40I totally buy into that.

02:41I had radio callers today.

02:43I've just finished my three-hour radio program, spoke to folks all across the nation.

02:48I posited, Harvey, that very idea.

02:51Are there some among you who feel like begrudgingly you voted for the guy, you don't like the

02:56guy, but you didn't want to be told by the media for whom you should be casting your

03:00ballot?

03:01Several answered that and said, yeah, I'm in that category.

03:04I felt like I was browbeaten.

03:06I was told so often that those who had any kind of a liking for him were, to use President

03:11Biden's word, garbage, and they kind of drew me to support him.

03:15Now, whether that person would eventually have supported Trump anyway, I don't know,

03:20but I think that there's something to it.

03:22I mean, the media really was, and the media is whatever you want it to be today, conservative

03:26outlets, liberal outlets, but the so-called dominant media were so far in on this case

03:33that they may have ended up helping Donald Trump when really they were seeking to hurt

03:38him.

03:39What I don't get is that the media that were really advocates for Kamala Harris, they were

03:46using their wishful thinking and masquerading it as political analysis, and it was never

03:52really analysis.

03:54It was just what they wanted, and they never got to the root of why Donald Trump draws

04:00in voters.

04:01Right, and I think at the root, immigration was driving that bus, and it's a fallacy to

04:07think that when Trump talks tough about the border, he's alienating Hispanics who are

04:13here.

04:14To the contrary, I think the data suggests that Hispanics who are here are often of a

04:19mindset that they played by the rules, and they're at the top of the list of the people

04:23who resent open borders and individuals who are coming in and not doing what they had

04:28to do to earn their status.

04:30So I think they end up being, as a group, among the most concerned about border security,

04:37and that was to his benefit as well.

04:38You put together education, the cultural issues, gender, huge gender divide, and now factor

04:45in the demographic changes that are taking place in the country, we're in a tumultuous

04:50period and the future is not yet certain.

04:53That's what I think.

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