A hot mic early Wednesday morning on Fox News caught someone‘s displeased reaction to a host’s prediction that Elon Musk’s influence on the next Trump administration and the Republican Party would only grow over the next few years. “Oh, lord!” was the response after host Bret Baier gave his post-election view of the GOP and its future trajectory. “It‘s a multi-racial party. It‘s working class. And maybe it‘s the future. It‘s Elon Musk, it‘s Joe Rogan and podcasts. There‘s an opportunity here for both parties to realign and change.” Musk‘s political action committee, America PAC, is expected to work on Republicans’ behalf through at least the 2026 midterms, the billionaire Trump donor said on a recent X livestream.

Comedian Jay Leno, though he’s not a Donald Trump fan, thinks the 2024 election was “a great day for democracy.” The former Tonight Show host, who usually keeps quiet on politics, discussed the election in a Wednesday appearance on The Talk. “The nice thing about this election is, it was fair, it was honest,” he said. “OK, I was not a fan, but that’s OK, it’s the President of the United States—let’s all get together, thank you very much.” Leno added that, in his view, the election “was done professionally—there was no cheating. Everybody says it was honest. I mean, it’s a great day for democracy.” The last time Leno weighed in with his political views, in January, he told Piers Morgan that he was “not a fan” of Trump, referencing his numerous criminal indictments. In both interviews, Leno noted that, as a comedian, he used to be able to make jokes targeting the entire political spectrum, which he feels isn’t an option anymore. “In my day, you kind of made fun of both sides,” he said on Wednesday. “You’d get angry letters from both sides. Now you kind of have to take a side and, yeah, it’s a little bit different.”

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A renowned German newspaper responded to Donald Trump’s electoral victory in a four letter headline: “F--k.” The crassly titled article was published Wednesday in Die Zeit, a Hamburg, Germany newspaper that often features longform reporting, essays, and columns. Writing from the perspective of German citizens, author Nele Pollatschek detailed the emotions of watching live election results for the U.S. presidency. Unable to sleep out of anxiety, she wrote “Half past five is also a perfectly appropriate time for feeling helpless, for feeling sorry for yourself, for panicking and for sheer horror.” She also sarcastically detailed how Trump’s return to the White House could imperil his political adversaries. “Last time, Trump’s advisers stopped him from doing too much nonsense,” she continued. “Except that he replaced them for exactly that reason.” Pollatschek’s article was one of several pieces focused on the 2024 presidential election dominating German media coverage on Wednesday, as the European nation faces its own political tensions. The country’s most widely-read tabloid called Trump’s victory “the last warning signal for our government” as it attempts to address core issues including immigration and the economy.

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Olympian Simone Biles has weighed in on Donald Trump’s victory with a request for outgoing president Joe Biden. “Mr Biden, I need you to stand up, straighten your back and make some things shake before your departure,” Biles wrote on X Wednesday. She signed the post, “xoxo the women in america.” Some Democrats have suggested that Biden should take executive action and fulfill some Democratic campaign promises, like codifying the right to an abortion into law, since the Supreme Court has grant presidents immunity from prosecution. Republicans have taken control of the presidency, the Senate and are poised to gain a majority in the House. Biden awarded Biles the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award, in 2022. At 25 years old, she was the youngest recipient ever. Biles is the most decorated gymnast in history, with 11 Olympic medals. She stunned the world with a triumphant return at this summer’s Olympics after dropping out of the 2020 Games due to mental health issues.

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Former Army lieutenant colonel and Trump Administration whistleblower Yevgeny Vindman, whose twin brother Alexander Vindman overheard a call between then-President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that would form the basis of the former commander-in-chief’s first impeachment trial, won a competitive congressional seat in Virginia, according to the Associated Press. Vindman‘s victory over Republican Derrick Anderson helps Democrats as they try to flip the House. Vindman was a legal adviser on the National Security Council at the time of the high-profile Trump scandal, which he ultimately reported to the National Security Council’s lead counsel, Jon Eisenberg. Anderson’s campaign briefly appeared on the national scene when he shot an bizarre ad with what appeared to be his family—though the people in the image were actually the wife and daughters of a friend. The ad showed them together at the dinner table as if Anderson were the father and husband of the family. Anderson denied that he ever claimed it was his actual family.

The meditation app Calm sought to defray some nerves on election night with a clever ad aimed at anxious voters. Amid the breakneck pace of election coverage on CNN and ABC Tuesday, Calm ran a silent ad to offer viewers a moment of peace. “We bought this ad space to give you 30 seconds of silence,” the ad reads. “Yep, just silence. You’re welcome.” After the ad aired, the app shot up more than 100 spots on the App Store, TMZ reported. A Calm representative told TMZ they knew “offering moments of tranquility was essential during election season.” The app offers guided meditations and a “Sleep Stories” series, which are aimed at helping adult listeners sleep. Calm also sponsored CNN coverage during election night in 2020, which also paid off for the company: then, it rose 20 spots in the App Store, according to TechCrunch.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz joined the crowd in tearing up at Vice President Kamala Harris' concession speech—an end to one of the shortest presidential runs in history. In her speech, Harris shouted out Emhoff and Walz, who have joined her on the campaign trail throughout the run, mostly in battleground states. “To my beloved Doug and our family, I love you so very much,” Harris said. “To Gov. Walz and the Walz family, I know your service to our nation will continue.” The camera flipped to Walz and Emhoff in the crowd, where they seemingly were emotional. Republican nominee Donald Trump won the election by millions of votes, despite Democrat efforts to win over battleground states.

Throughout the speech, the camera flipped through the crowd, showing supporters crying as Harris conceded in the race.

The Daily Beast Podcast episodes are released every Thursday. Like and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. And click here for email updates as each new episode drops.

E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued President-elect Donald Trump and won over $88 million in damages, issued a stark warning on Wednesday after his reelection to the highest office in the land was confirmed. “I tried to tell you,” the 80-year-old writer wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Carroll sued the president-elect in 2019, then again in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, accusing Trump of sexually assaulting her decades prior in a dressing room at Manhattan department Bergdorf Goodman. Judge Lewis Kaplan found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but not rape, and awarded Carroll $5 million—but the president-elect continued to insist he never met the former columnist. Carroll amended her original defamation suit, and Kaplan added another $83.3 million to the sum Trump already owed her after another trial in January. Attorneys for the president elect have been busy appealing the judgment, arguing to a federal appeals court that some of the witnesses should not have been allowed to testify and that the notorious Access Hollywood tape should not have been admitted into evidence.

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Cardi B posted some fiery remarks on her X account as the election results rolled in Tuesday night. “This is why some of y’all states be getting hurricanes. That’s what I’mma say,” said in a now deleted video. Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in a decisive victory, with Southern swing states Georgia and North Carolina surging red earlier in the night. She also posted a photo of herself on Instagram stories with the caption “I hate yall bad.” Cardi B campaigned with Harris in Milwaukee on Friday. She told Rolling Stone in June that she wouldn’t vote for Trump or Joe Biden. But the Democratic Party’s switch from Biden to Harris changed her mind, a sentiment she echoed in a statement after Harris’ loss. “No one has ever made me change my mind and you did!” the rapper wrote Wednesday. “I never thought I would see the day that a woman of color would be running for President of the United States, but you have shown me, showed my daughters and women across the country that anything is possible.”

One of President-Elect Donald Trump’s closest advisors says he won’t be joining the Republican candidate in the White House next year. Corey Lewandowski told the Daily Beast in an email that he “will not be a government employee” in Trump’s second administration. Lewandowski served as Trump’s campaign managed in 2016 but was fired in what Donald Trump Jr. called an “amicable” split. He remained close with Trump, meeting with him at the White House multiple times as a private citizen, and went on to become a TV political commentator in addition to his job as political strategist. He reemerged on the Trump campaign this year in August as a volunteer advisor, after the president-elect reportedly reached out and told him he missed the “fun” and “freewheeling” ways of his 2016 campaign. The Atlantic reported Lewandowski went “rogue”—much to the chagrin of other senior Trump aides—in encouraging Trump to return to his “killer” nature from 2016, which coincided with a raw and seemingly less disciplined Trump in the final weeks of the campaign. Unleashing the old Trump didn’t seem to dent his prospects, however, as the Republican pulled off the best electoral performance of his political career.