CNN’s Jake Tapper went viral with his stunned reaction upon learning that Kamala Harris failed to outperform Biden’s 2020 results in any state. Early Wednesday morning, as election results confirmed a resounding comeback for President Trump, Tapper sought some silver lining for Harris’s campaign. He turned to CNN’s chief national correspondent, John King, asking him to pull up a map showing where Harris had outperformed Biden by at least 3%. Instead, Tapper was greeted by an entirely gray map—an unmistakable sign that Harris had failed to achieve even a marginal gain.
“Holy smokes!” Tapper exclaimed, visibly shocked. “Literally nothing?” King confirmed, “Literally nothing,” cementing the sobering reality that Harris hadn’t outpaced Biden’s results anywhere in the nation.
This is hilarious. pic.twitter.com/DVwXY6yauq
— (@Texas_jeep__guy) November 6, 2024
This on-air moment quickly went viral, with over five million views in a single clip shared on X (formerly Twitter), capturing Tapper’s disbelief. Tapper tried to clarify, asking if at least some individual counties had swung her way. King zoomed in on counties across the U.S. but found that Harris had only outperformed Biden by 3% or more in a scant 58 counties out of over 4,600 nationwide. For comparison, Trump was reported to have outperformed his 2020 numbers in well over a thousand counties, underscoring his widespread gains.
King highlighted that Harris did show some modest improvement in a handful of West Coast counties and one county in battleground Pennsylvania. Yet, this marginal uptick stood in stark contrast to Trump’s sweeping gains, especially in key states. Trump flipped several critical battlegrounds, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, decisively reversing his losses from 2020 and propelling him to victory.
The map’s lack of support for Harris reflects deeper challenges in her campaign, which struggled to mobilize even the base that Biden had successfully rallied just four years prior. Disillusioned Democratic sources have already pointed to campaign missteps, describing her team as “arrogant” and “out of touch,” with little appeal beyond core Democratic strongholds. While Harris did finally call Trump to concede, the CNN map underscores just how starkly her support fell short, failing to ignite enthusiasm even in traditionally blue states.
As Tapper’s stunned reaction made its rounds online, it quickly became a symbol of the broader reckoning facing the Democratic Party. With Trump back in the White House and a conservative surge across the country, Harris’s lackluster performance is likely to spark fierce debate within her party on how to regain momentum moving forward. For now, however, the election results—and Tapper’s reaction—serve as a reminder of the political ground the Democrats have lost.
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