Hello and welcome back to the Spike podcast for this US election special.

We've just had the most extraordinary election, a landslide victory for Donald Trump,

something that was not only unexpected, against the odds, but also against a great weight of

opposition from the establishment.

For this, I'm delighted to be joined as ever by Spike's editor,

Tom Slater. And with us down the line, live from California, Spike columnist Joel Cochkin. Hi, Joel.

Hi.

Tom, this was a really, really thumping victory. It wasn't like in 2016, you know, Trump won

the popular vote. He didn't just eke out an electoral college win. No one is in any doubt that

this is Trump's country now. I mean, it is, it's historic, it's seismic, all of the

cliches and the superlatives don't really quite do it justice. Because of the

fact that, as you say, we have been here before. There was the populist revolt of 2016. But at the

same time, there was always that attempt to try to, on the one hand, just kind of dismiss it. This was

a fluke that was produced by an undemocratic electoral college. He didn't win the popular vote.

That cannot be said of this result, given how emphatic it was. He hasn't just triumphed in the

electoral college. He's also won the popular vote. He's also taken the Senate. He seems

odds on to take over the House of Representatives. At the time of recording, he's still projected

to win in all seven of the

key battleground states. And so that excuse, that bit of cope, doesn't work anymore.

I think also the nature in which he won, the coalition that he brought together, also repudiates

one of the arguments that was used to try to de-legitimize the Trump revolt in

2016, which was to suggest that this was basically a death rattle of old, crusty white men who were

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