The day Trump won...again AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Code Switch

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Episode: The day Trump won...again

Author: NPR
Duration: 00:35:02

Episode Shownotes

The Code Switch team spent Election Day talking to folks about how the outcome might impact them. From green card holding Trump supporters in Queens, to first-time voters at Harris' watch party in DC, we bring you this time capsule of the day before we knew.Learn more about sponsor message

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Summary

On Election Day 2024, the NPR's 'Code Switch' team captures the emotions and sentiments of voters across diverse communities, reflecting on the historical significance of the day, especially regarding race and representation. They explore the reactions to Donald Trump's potential re-election, emphasizing fears and concerns from educators about the impact on teaching history. Different voices highlight the contrasting perceptions of Trump and Kamala Harris, revealing the complex perspectives among immigrant voters and their communities. As the results unfold, the emotional aftermath is palpable, showcasing the resilience and ongoing fight for democracy among supporters of Harris at Howard University.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The day Trump won...again) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_32
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00:00:19 Speaker_21
Just a heads up, y'all. This episode contains some salty language, which means it's going to be some cussing.

00:00:26 Speaker_14
Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR. I'm B.A. Parker.

00:00:31 Speaker_21
And I'm Gene Demby.

00:00:35 Speaker_14
So Gene, I want to take you back to November 5th, 2024. Do we have to go back? A.K.A. one week ago. Oh boy. A.K.A. Election Day.

00:00:46 Speaker_21
I remember.

00:00:47 Speaker_14
I had already mailed in my absentee ballot to Maryland, so I decided to spend my morning with a bunch of teachers at a professional development day.

00:00:56 Speaker_21
Oh, that sounds so fun. Yeah.

00:00:59 Speaker_14
No, no, no, no. Hear me out. Hear me out. It was great. It was a room full of teachers learning how to teach about government through the life of Shirley Chisholm.

00:01:07 Speaker_14
Now, for context, Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress and the first black woman to run for president on a major party ticket.

00:01:17 Speaker_21
Right. Her campaign slogan was famously that she was unbought and unbossed.

00:01:22 Speaker_01
My significance is not that I am the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, but that I won public office without selling out to anyone.

00:01:30 Speaker_14
Obviously Shirley Chisholm did not become president. But on election day last week, it felt like the country might just elect its first black woman president.

00:01:41 Speaker_15
I'm facing some, what is it called?

00:01:48 Speaker_14
So there I was in a room full of teachers like Dr. Zinga Frazier.

00:01:54 Speaker_15
The last time I did a discussion of Shirley Chisholm to teachers was in 2016. That election day had in many ways the gearings of being a historic election day.

00:02:12 Speaker_14
She said she hoped it wasn't a bad omen.

00:02:15 Speaker_21
But then this happened.

00:02:17 Speaker_00
We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we've achieved the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Is this crazy?

00:02:30 Speaker_21
Donald Trump, as we all know by now, has been re-elected president. This was his third presidential campaign, so we all know his whole deal at this point. And big chunks of the country looked at him and said, yeah, more of that, please.

00:02:43 Speaker_14
The picture of how people voted will become clearer in the weeks to come. But Trump did better with lots of groups than Republicans usually do.

00:02:51 Speaker_21
Although, we should say that doing better is relative. Like, the only racial demographic that Trump won outright was, again, white folks.

00:02:59 Speaker_14
But he's taking it as evidence that he has this broad coalition.

00:03:03 Speaker_00
They came from all quarters, union, non-union, African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, Arab-American. Muslim-American, we had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realization.

00:03:19 Speaker_21
Everybody, I mean... Okay, whatever. Parker, you, and I, and the rest of the Cold Switch team, we went out on election day to chop it up with folks. And we just asked people how they were feeling that day.

00:03:33 Speaker_28
It's kind of a scary feeling to see how America is going to change for us.

00:03:38 Speaker_23
I wanted to vote for Trump, yeah, but I voted for her.

00:03:42 Speaker_27
I cried this morning. I've been crying on and off. Like I've been very, I'm terrified.

00:03:47 Speaker_10
I voted for Trump. So I'm like, you know, one way or another, there's a change coming.

00:03:56 Speaker_14
So on this episode, a snapshot of Election Day 2024.

00:04:08 Speaker_32
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00:04:23 Speaker_32
You should have at least bought some napkins or even a party-sized bag of chips. So next time, remember, it pays to Discover, based on the February 2024 Nielsen Report. Learn more at discover.com slash credit card.

00:04:36 Speaker_03
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00:05:41 Speaker_14
I left my apartment at 7 a.m. on election day to go sit in an auditorium with 67 teachers from all over New York City. We spent the morning drinking coffee, eating bagels, and discussing the legacy of Shirley Chisholm.

00:05:55 Speaker_21
So, Parker, of all the places you could have been in New York, why a room full of history teachers?

00:06:00 Speaker_14
I guess it kind of felt reverential. Like a couple of floors above us was this big Shirley Chisholm exhibit where I got to use like an actual voting machine from 1972, you know, where like you pull a giant lever.

00:06:16 Speaker_21
And you get the whole kachunk sound. Oh, so satisfying. It's like the literal analog machinery of democracy.

00:06:22 Speaker_14
Yes, way more satisfying than filling out an absentee ballot and printing it out.

00:06:27 Speaker_25
Exactly.

00:06:29 Speaker_14
And I didn't mind if that feeling only lasted for the seven hours I was in that museum. While we were there, we didn't yet know what was to come.

00:06:40 Speaker_14
What kind of questions do you anticipate being asked by your students tomorrow or for the rest of the week?

00:06:47 Speaker_15
I anticipate students asking, hopefully not asking what happened.

00:06:53 Speaker_14
I continue my conversation with Dr. Zinga Frazier. She's director of the Shirley Chisholm Project. She teaches Africana Studies, she teaches Women and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College, and she curated the Chisholm exhibit.

00:07:06 Speaker_15
I remember going on C-SPAN when the other person who will go nameless won, so in 2016. And I remember people just having such a visceral, like, I can't believe that this happened. How did we elect this person?

00:07:24 Speaker_15
And I said what I hope I don't have to say on Wednesday. Which is, who elected him?

00:07:36 Speaker_14
I started talking to the other teachers about their experiences in the classroom the day after Trump won the first time. You were teaching in 2016. How did that go? This is Shai. He teaches global history.

00:07:49 Speaker_04
Oh, that was horrible.

00:07:50 Speaker_14
How so?

00:07:51 Speaker_04
The day after, I had kids crying. Why were they crying? Because of, and this is before a lot of the rhetoric of ICE, I'm going to deport people. This was before he even started mentioning all that.

00:08:05 Speaker_04
He always leaned toward those types of thoughts and themes. And my students at the time very much heard about it. And I remember one student, she was just like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

00:08:18 Speaker_04
And, you know, throughout the next four years of that presidency, her worries came to light.

00:08:25 Speaker_14
Shai said the students remember that, and so does he. This time around, he says his biggest concern is the prospect of a Trump presidency limiting what he can and can't teach about history, even if he lives in a blue state.

00:08:39 Speaker_04
If you mention anything that doesn't put America in a bright, shining light is deemed unpatriotic, but that's real history. A Trump presidency will most likely change how I approach teaching because of the idea of limiting what can be taught.

00:09:01 Speaker_04
But it doesn't mean that you stop teaching about Selma. It doesn't mean you stop teaching about Shirley Chisholm. It doesn't mean you stop teaching about the things in history and in American history that are unpleasant.

00:09:15 Speaker_04
James Baldwin said it the best, the only way to change history is by facing it.

00:09:20 Speaker_14
There was one teacher I was talking to named Maria and she was trying to hype herself up because she was going to vote later in the day.

00:09:28 Speaker_21
Praying for the best, preparing for the worst?

00:09:29 Speaker_17
Basically. If his name comes up, I just try to frame it in terms of hope, and also we can kind of make a way through. Even if our candidate doesn't win, there are ways of dealing with that disappointment and sort of working through the new normal.

00:09:48 Speaker_17
Even as I'm saying that to myself.

00:09:50 Speaker_14
She is cringing the whole way she is saying this. I want this to be noted.

00:09:56 Speaker_17
Her face is purely scrunched up trying to be hopeful. I'm trying to be hopeful, but I hope I have a better face when I'm talking to my students.

00:10:03 Speaker_17
No, I do, because I'm going to step into a different place when I'm teaching, so I'll be more aware of my facial expressions and make sure not to cringe at the possibility of a Trump presidency.

00:10:14 Speaker_14
In our conversation, she was so focused on what she considered to be the trauma of election night 2016, that she had completely forgotten about 2020.

00:10:23 Speaker_17
2020, there was dancing in the streets, literally. I remember, because I was proctoring an SAT test, and while I was there proctoring, I could hear cheering in the streets and horns blowing. It was jubilant. It was amazing.

00:10:40 Speaker_17
And I hope that we have a moment like that. Thank you for bringing that up. I feel better now. I'm smiling. No more cringing.

00:10:52 Speaker_21
So Parker, it sounds like all the teachers you spoke to were hoping that Harris would win. Am I reading that right?

00:10:59 Speaker_14
Yeah, I mean, obviously I didn't speak to every one of the teachers, but I found it interesting that among these people who all spend their lives steeped in American history, no one that I encountered wanted Donald Trump to win.

00:11:15 Speaker_21
Okay, we're gonna move from New York, go down I-95 to D.C., where it's no longer morning, but now early afternoon. And here in D.C., our producer Jess Kung was walking around trying to take the temperature, see what everybody was feeling.

00:11:29 Speaker_21
Jess, what's good?

00:11:30 Speaker_22
Hey, y'all. Yeah, in D.C., the big story was security. Yeah, just barricades going up everywhere, yeah.

00:11:37 Speaker_22
Yeah, fencing was coming up around the White House and the Capitol building and Howard University, where Harris was going to be headquartered for the night. Businesses, like, preemptively boarded up their windows.

00:11:47 Speaker_22
A CVS half a mile west of Howard was getting the treatment.

00:11:51 Speaker_10
I'm in preparation for the election and possibly what could happen after.

00:11:58 Speaker_22
Yeah, so we've been to a few different ones. That's Robert Hill. He's a carpenter. And he told me he'd been boarding up CVSs since like 8 a.m. And he seemed talkative, so I asked him how he was feeling about the election.

00:12:12 Speaker_10
I like the election. Yeah, I voted. Yeah, I think it's a crazy time. But yeah, I definitely, yeah, I definitely voted. I voted for Trump. So I'm like, you know, one way or another, there's a change coming.

00:12:25 Speaker_10
Because I don't like what's happened these last few years. I feel like with Trump, It's more economy, you know what I mean, like keeping money in people's pockets.

00:12:36 Speaker_10
And I think with Kamala, it's more like a feeling where it's just like, oh, yeah, you feel good.

00:12:40 Speaker_09
You got the money in your pocket, but at least you kind of like feel good.

00:12:44 Speaker_22
From there, I headed downtown and I circled the White House a few times. It was all boarded and gated up, too, and nothing was really going on.

00:12:52 Speaker_21
Yeah, it's not really a residential area, it's a ghost town after work hours.

00:12:55 Speaker_22
And it's a school night. Yeah. I forgot, I guess. And, you know, the main motivation to be in that area is to be able to show the White House behind you.

00:13:06 Speaker_22
So, like, protests gather there, but also, like, TV news stand-ups and independent political streamers and just generally people who want attention.

00:13:24 Speaker_22
Yeah, for a while, the park behind the White House was dominated by this evangelist with a really impressive speaker system. The guitar you're hearing was provided by some folks with Harris signs.

00:13:35 Speaker_22
It's very classic, like, ooh, maybe this country is divided, actually. But it really ended up not seeming like a night for whatever the CVS is for bracing for.

00:13:56 Speaker_21
That evening, around 5.30, I walked over to Howard University's campus, which is where Kamala Harris had planned her big election night watch party.

00:14:04 Speaker_07
I really love, you know, the atmosphere of D.C. I mean, it's going to be crazy, you know, like, hopefully it's a win.

00:14:10 Speaker_21
I met this 21-year-old merch dude who had drove up from South Carolina to sell Kamala Harris t-shirts at 20 bucks a pop.

00:14:15 Speaker_23
20 bucks isn't a bad deal. I wanted to vote for Trump, yeah, but I voted for her. He's been president for four years already before, right? So what happened when he was president? Nothing crazy.

00:14:31 Speaker_21
As I was walking to the security checkpoints, you know, to get on the yard, I ran into a very amped Howard University senior.

00:14:37 Speaker_17
I'm still trying to wrap it in.

00:14:38 Speaker_18
I'm first generation American. I'm originally from Jamaica. So knowing that our possible first female black president is also from Jamaica makes me feel good. The whole accent comes out and everything. I'm just excited.

00:15:02 Speaker_21
I got through the security and the DJ was hyping everybody up on the quad.

00:15:08 Speaker_07
So my grandfather actually would gather everybody and take everybody to the boat. And he did the same thing today. Even though I'm not there, my mom called with the excitement.

00:15:18 Speaker_21
So... One second, one second, let's go ahead. So we got interrupted by the music, but he kept telling me about his grandfather and his family.

00:15:33 Speaker_21
All right, so you said that your grandpop, your grandfather, gathers up your whole family and y'all go vote as a family every election day.

00:15:44 Speaker_07
I see that my grandfather was instilling in us the necessities of voting because the first 50 years of his life, he wasn't even eligible to vote because he's a black man in America. So for him, voting is like,

00:16:00 Speaker_21
So yeah, the vibe at Howard was pretty upbeat, like lots of people with their frat and sorority paraphernalia on, you know what I mean? Lots of people sporting clothing with the names of different HBCUs.

00:16:10 Speaker_07
And like the energy today is like an energy of peace, if I have to sum it up. Like not even knowing what the outcome is yet, like people are happy, like genuinely.

00:16:26 Speaker_21
After the break, the election night vibes shifted a lot. That's coming up. Stay with us.

00:16:42 Speaker_03
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00:18:09 Speaker_32
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00:18:24 Speaker_14
So as election day turned into election night, our producer Xavier Lopez went out to talk to people in Queens.

00:18:32 Speaker_24
Yeah, that's right. I headed over to Jackson Heights. It's an immigrant-heavy neighborhood near where I live in Queens. I saw a sign for an election night watch party being held outdoors at this place called Diversity Plaza?

00:18:49 Speaker_21
I wonder what it was called before the wokes took over. What were people saying already at Queens Square?

00:18:58 Speaker_24
There were a bunch of people gathered around drinking tea and watching a TV that was blasting Bangladeshi news very, very loudly, by the way.

00:19:07 Speaker_24
We spoke to a few people, most of them from Bangladesh, and most of them Trump supporters, including Amin Khan.

00:19:14 Speaker_12
I didn't vote because I'm a green card holder yet. But yes, definitely if I got the chance, I'll definitely vote Donald Trump.

00:19:24 Speaker_24
Amin has been in the States for the last 12 years. And even though he's an immigrant himself, he says that immigration policy is one of the main reasons he supports Trump.

00:19:32 Speaker_12
Because I like the way he was thinking about the border. You know, those who are not the real immigrant is coming over here. He wants to take out them. But for me, I'm also immigrant, but I came in a legal way.

00:19:47 Speaker_21
You see, you can kind of hear him saying, I'm doing this immigration thing the right way.

00:19:52 Speaker_24
Yeah, but not all the people that we spoke to felt that way about immigration. This is immigrant country. This is Mitu Ahmed. He's 56. We ran into him standing outside the fabric shop he owns.

00:20:06 Speaker_24
Mitu said that during the pandemic, his business suffered because no one was coming out to buy anything. These were bad days for his shop. But now, because of recent migration, he says people from all over the world frequent his shop.

00:20:22 Speaker_06
Immigration is good for your business? They like it, they buy it, because this is like, you can say all is middle class. Elon Musk not coming here for Biden. What did you just say?

00:20:48 Speaker_24
He said Elon Musk is not coming here? He's not gonna come here. He's not gonna come here. MeToo didn't want to make known who he voted for, and that was partially because of how split his community is over some of these issues.

00:21:05 Speaker_14
So what did you make of what MeToo was saying?

00:21:08 Speaker_24
I think it highlights some of the rifts caused by this election. This division in the Bangladeshi community here, to me, feels like a microcosm of some of the divisions in the country.

00:21:21 Speaker_24
Yeah, like I know that New York, and especially Queens, is not a great representation of the country racially, but ideologically, these are some of the same divisions you see all over the country, even within families.

00:21:36 Speaker_27
Like, I have family members, I have extended family members who are posting status about, let's go Trump, vote for Trump, not Kamala. And I'm just, I'm like, I'm disgusted of the blood I carry in my veins because I'm related to these people.

00:21:49 Speaker_24
That's Preeta Rosario. We ran into her canvassing outside a school, a polling place. She talked to us a bit about this immigrant, anti-immigrant mentality in her own family.

00:22:00 Speaker_27
Like, so I'm very, like, sad because these people grew up here. These people are immigrants themselves. And to be voting for someone who will take one look at you and say that you're, you know, go clean my bathroom.

00:22:13 Speaker_27
Like, you have to be next level dumb or next level evil. You know, so I'm just very sad.

00:22:17 Speaker_21
So it sounds like Preetha voted for Kamala Harris.

00:22:21 Speaker_24
Yeah, she did. But that wasn't really an easy choice for her.

00:22:26 Speaker_27
So I actually got a lot of backlash for voting for Harris because she's known as the... You know, she's backing up Israel too. So I got a lot of backlash.

00:22:38 Speaker_24
The situation in Gaza was one of the main reasons that Prita wasn't going to vote for Harris. She thought that she might vote for Joe Stein, or maybe even just not vote. But then she changed her mind in the last few days.

00:22:49 Speaker_27
seeing the amount of Trump supporters on my feed, amount of Trump signs around the city, I'm like, yo, I don't even, I want Kamala to win as much popular votes as possible because I'm very terrified. I cried this morning.

00:23:04 Speaker_27
I'm just like praying right now. I've been praying, I have no idea.

00:23:07 Speaker_24
You've been praying a lot, and it sounds like you've been worrying a lot. What are your big worries? It sounds like you've mentioned a couple of them, but what is your big worry about a Trump?

00:23:15 Speaker_27
One of the biggest one is abortion. As we live in a country where so many women in Florida, Texas cannot get what they need, and women are actually dying. And the LGBTQ community. The trans community is under a lot of attack. And minorities.

00:23:32 Speaker_27
So he wants to lock up people, round them up, send them back, you know. There are so many undocumented people. They pay taxes. America gets billions of dollars from them in taxes. So I don't want these people to get out of the country, you know?

00:23:48 Speaker_27
So these are some of the things I'm very nervous about.

00:23:56 Speaker_24
My final stop of the night was Terraza 7, a Latin jazz club that's been a neighborhood staple in Jackson Heights for more than 20 years. I spoke to Freddy Castiblanco. He owns the club.

00:24:11 Speaker_24
He's someone who has seen how this community has changed in the last two decades. I wanted to ask him what the more Hispanic side of Jackson Heights was thinking about the election.

00:24:21 Speaker_24
And even though a lot of people often think of New York City as this liberal bastion, he said that the Hispanic immigrant community here has been very loudly pro-Trump during this election cycle.

00:24:34 Speaker_26
He said that even Latinos who can't vote have been supporting Trump.

00:24:48 Speaker_24
Just like with Amin, who you heard from earlier, in the Bangladeshi side of Jackson Heights. Freddie said that a lot of the immigrants that have been here for a long time feel overlooked. Like they had to wait their turn.

00:25:21 Speaker_24
And the newer wave of immigrants have gotten more help and benefits in ways that they didn't receive when they first got to the States. I said goodbye to Freddie and then I headed home before it was fully clear how this all was going to play out.

00:25:40 Speaker_21
As X was wrapping up in Queens, I was still hanging out at Kamala Harris' watch party in Washington, D.C. As you can hear, the vibe is really jubilant. People are really excited. Yeah, I'm gonna just stop rambling, but it's about five after eight.

00:25:59 Speaker_21
And so we got a long night ahead of us. As polls started closing, they cut to CNN on the big screens in the middle of the yard.

00:26:08 Speaker_02
There was a couple there with their young daughter, who was probably in her early teens, and they were kind of shaking their heads as CNN was giving the latest returns.

00:26:26 Speaker_11
Best case scenario, like in terms of winning, oh, we want Kamala all the way, you know. I mean, democracy is our biggest thing. That's a major issue for us, because nothing else matters if you don't have democracy. Yeah.

00:26:38 Speaker_06
I want Trump putting nobody else in the Supreme Court.

00:26:44 Speaker_21
We don't want that. Clarence Thomas is 76, right? And so... We don't want a Clarence Thomas replacement. We want a Thurgood Marshall replacement. How did voting for Obama in 2008 feel different than today? Does it feel similar?

00:27:01 Speaker_11
I mean, there was a lot of focus on Obama, you know, and the fact that he was the first African American.

00:27:09 Speaker_11
And this time, because of the experience that we had back in, you know, during the Trump era, now it feels more like the focus is not on her race, the focus is not on her gender, it is just on saving this country.

00:27:24 Speaker_21
As the night wore on, things started to feel a little more dour, a little more anxious. The election returns were rolling in, and they were not looking good for their fellow Howard Bison.

00:27:41 Speaker_21
And Parker, to give you a sense of how tense it was, so the DJ queued up Juvenile's back that ass up and nobody budged, really?

00:27:49 Speaker_14
Gene, that's physically impossible.

00:27:51 Speaker_21
Listen. Later in the night, when it was clear which way the winds were blowing, I ran into the woman who was the mother of a current Howard student who was outside, and she was still hopeful.

00:28:04 Speaker_16
I am mixed. Cautiously optimistic. But I am a faithful praying woman, so I'm hoping that Kamala will pull it through. So yeah, we'll see. It's not over till it's over, right?

00:28:19 Speaker_16
Just like the Washington Commanders game where at the last minute, he threw a Hail Mary. So I'm hoping for a Hail Mary right now.

00:28:37 Speaker_14
So Jean, I want to take you back to New York for a minute. Around 9 p.m., I took the subway from East Harlem to Trump Tower on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

00:28:47 Speaker_14
And it's an area crammed with luxury stores, like Chanel, and Bergdorf Goodman, and Tiffany. It's like this strip of unattainable wealth.

00:28:57 Speaker_21
Yep, yep. Some of the richest people in the world live there. But what was the vibe over there? Was there lots of cheering?

00:29:01 Speaker_14
It was pretty quiet for most of the night, except for, I guess the same with, in preparation with DC, like there was a helicopter that was swarming the place.

00:29:10 Speaker_14
But honestly, there was more police and supporters until I saw a group chanting down the street. I'm about to walk up to a crowd with a bunch of American flags and Israeli flags. Who is honking in solidarity?

00:29:33 Speaker_14
And I realized that it was the workers inside of a sanitation truck who were honking. But the night got lively when a cyber truck stopped in the middle of the street. Oh, they're standing on top of one of those cyber cars with Trump on it. There we go.

00:29:54 Speaker_14
The police are now in the truck, cyber truck, and they've driven it off. And there was this guy named John who was waiting on the Pennsylvania results.

00:30:09 Speaker_13
I've been out here since this afternoon. I don't know what time, two, three, three. So there were a whole bunch of people here.

00:30:21 Speaker_14
He was wearing a Gays for Trump t-shirt and a Joe and the Ho Gotta Go trucker hat.

00:30:28 Speaker_21
Got it.

00:30:28 Speaker_14
Gays for Trump. Gays for Trump. He invited me to go sit in the restaurant on the ground floor of Trump Tower to watch the results.

00:30:37 Speaker_13
Can't believe it's so dead here, but they're all inside in the restaurant.

00:30:43 Speaker_14
— I don't think I've ever been this far up on the east side before, so I didn't know there was a restaurant. — And I hinted that I might be nervous about that, given that I am a black woman and I'm pressed. — But you did go in, right? No.

00:31:06 Speaker_14
More people were forming outside.

00:31:08 Speaker_21
Okay.

00:31:09 Speaker_14
But when I talked to him later in the night, he had found his people. So far, so good. I know. It's going just as planned. The bitch is going down.

00:31:19 Speaker_13
Yeah. The bitch is going down.

00:31:22 Speaker_14
Yeah. That you'll be fine that he said didn't feel so comforting by then. I left Trump Tower and got home very late at night, then refused to look at my phone until the next morning.

00:31:41 Speaker_21
Yeah, I was out on Howard's campus until a little before 1 a.m., when the head of Kamala Harris's campaign came out and told everybody who was still around on Howard's Yard that she was not going to come out to address the crowd.

00:31:53 Speaker_21
And so, yeah, it wasn't quite funereal when I was leaving, but people were quietly leaving.

00:32:02 Speaker_14
Just after 5.30 Eastern time, enough votes had been counted for the AP to call the presidential race for Donald J. Trump. By the time I woke up, it was front page news all over the world.

00:32:16 Speaker_21
On November 6, the day after Trump won, our senior producer, Christina Kala, went back to Howard's campus. That's where Vice President Kamala Harris was set to give her concession speech.

00:32:33 Speaker_31
I got there a little bit before 4 p.m., and people were as steadily streaming in as you could through a giant security line. We walked up a hill. There were lots of people on the yard. The bleachers were mostly full, but it wasn't totally packed.

00:32:49 Speaker_31
A lot of people were holding American flags, probably wearing Howard gear. There were giant screens, and everyone was trying to get a look. People were really just processing their emotions.

00:33:00 Speaker_20
I went to bed kind of early last night. I was like, let me protect my peace, because no matter what, we have to keep on fighting and keep on going the next day. Like, let me go to bed on a high note. I stayed up last night.

00:33:12 Speaker_19
I was too anxious to go to sleep, I'm gonna be honest. I think it was like 2 something in the morning, and I was like, oh, Trump has 267. I was like, maybe, and then I was like, no. It was hard to go to sleep last night, though.

00:33:24 Speaker_19
I kept waking up, and then in the morning, for sure, I knew it was done. I will accept it. I won't do anything crazy.

00:33:33 Speaker_16
I don't know what to feel right now. I'm just trying to hear what she got to say today, honestly.

00:33:39 Speaker_31
Everyone came to hear the VP's concession speech.

00:33:42 Speaker_05
I want to stand by Vice President Harris. We stood by her when she was looking for our support. As she gives up this concession speech, which I know must be difficult for her, I think it's my responsibility to stand by her in this moment as well.

00:33:56 Speaker_31
That's Christopher Prince. He's 69 years old. Were you here last night?

00:34:00 Speaker_05
Yes, I was.

00:34:01 Speaker_31
And what was that like for you?

00:34:03 Speaker_05
So I came, it was somber, but I wanted to still be on this campus. My parents went to Howard University. So sorry, it's just, it's very personal for me. So I felt in the honor I had to be here.

00:34:18 Speaker_31
At the end of the day, people came to Howard, despite road closures and capital letter feelings, because they wanted to hear what she had to say to this particular crowd of people who believed in her, to the nation that woke up to President Donald Trump again.

00:34:37 Speaker_05
Pardon me. would like for her to say, I'm going to contest every single vote in the Republican state. I want them to count these ballots twice. That's what part of me wants to say.

00:34:48 Speaker_05
The other part of me just wants her to be herself, say whatever's in her heart.

00:34:54 Speaker_08
There's an adage, an historian once called, a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is

00:35:07 Speaker_22
Only when it is dark enough can you see stars.

00:35:15 Speaker_08
I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time. But for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing. America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars

00:35:40 Speaker_14
I think for me right now, the sky still feels smoggy.

00:35:50 Speaker_21
We've offered up this snapshot of a day, and now we have to face what's next. For more than half the people who voted in this election, this is what they wanted. And we all have to live with that.

00:36:08 Speaker_14
And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram at NPR Codeswitch. If email is more your thing, ours is Codeswitch at NPR.org. And subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app or every Get Your Podcasts.

00:36:22 Speaker_14
You can also subscribe to the Codeswitch newsletter by going to NPR.org slash Codeswitch newsletter.

00:36:28 Speaker_21
And just a reminder that signing up for Code Switch Plus is a great way to support our show and support public media, and you get to listen to every episode sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash codeswitch.

00:36:41 Speaker_14
This episode was produced by Xavier Lopez, Christina Kala, and Jess Kung. It was edited by Courtney Stein and Leah Dinella. Our engineers were Josephine Neonay and Gilly Moon.

00:36:52 Speaker_21
And we'd be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the Cold Switch Massive. That's Dahlia Mortada, Jasmine Romero, and Verilynn Williams.

00:36:59 Speaker_14
Special thanks to Jasmine Garst, Christopher Gorman, and the Museum of the City of New York, and Material Things Ceramic Studio.

00:37:06 Speaker_21
As for me, I'm Gene Demby.

00:37:08 Speaker_14
I'm B.A. Parker.

00:37:09 Speaker_21
B.E.Z.O.

00:37:11 Speaker_14
Hydrate.

00:37:21 Speaker_31
Hello! Yeah! I think I had the best job of the day. I went to my ceramic studio in Maryland.

00:37:29 Speaker_21
Oh yeah, plush gig, okay.

00:37:33 Speaker_31
The studio opened special for the day so people could get their hands dirty and keep their minds off the news. Are you pulling handles for mugs? I am.

00:37:43 Speaker_29
I only just made my first traditional handle mug a week ago. So I'm scared of handles. Handles are scary.

00:37:50 Speaker_31
It's kind of cheesy, but there's a lot of little life lessons in clay. Stay with me here. There's a lot of trial and error. Things don't always turn out how you expect them to.

00:38:01 Speaker_30
The thing is, you kind of have to tell yourself when you're trying something new that it's not going to work out. And if it does, it's just a happy surprise.

00:38:06 Speaker_31
I like that you're tackling it today of all days.

00:38:10 Speaker_30
It was just where I was in the process. Lucky day.

00:38:19 Speaker_03
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00:38:37 Speaker_32
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00:38:47 Speaker_32
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00:38:52 Speaker_03
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00:39:05 Speaker_03
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