Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, host of Axios Recap, and welcome to another special Axios Election 2020

podcast. What we're watching right now is how Special Axios Election 2020 Podcast.

What we're watching right now is how Donald-founder and CEO Jim Vandahai. So Jim, we still don't know who is going to win the White House, but you make an argument in a newsletter this morning that win or lose Donald

Trump in the last 24 hours has solidified his grip on the GOP. Can you unpack

that a bit, explain what you mean? Yeah, I can't stress enough how much more powerful today he is even in defeat if he were to lose than he was 24 or 48 hours ago.

And the reason is not only did he defy expectations

for himself, that he basically expanded the electorate,

did better with Hispanics, did better with women,

brought all these new people in in rural America, not only do that for himself,

but look at how many House Republicans won that didn't think they would win.

And Donald Trump was the only one saying they had a chance to win back the House. They were certain they were going to lose the Senate and they didn't. And so now he stands here even if he were to lose that was just a titular head of the party. He'll be seen almost as a profit that he just sees something in the

Republican Party that most Republicans don't see and he's not going to surrender that power.

He's going to use that power to basically demand allegiance as he takes this thing all the way to the Supreme Court if he can

If he protests the results of this for potentially days, weeks, in months he's going to expect total loyalty he's going to get total loyalty there's

nobody in the establishment that has his power that has his reach that his his

popularity so now even in a narrow defeat, he's probably going to end up the presidential

candidate with the second most votes in the history of America. He brought in more people than

he brought in in 2016.

There's no way he's just going to say, you know what,

I have all that power, I have this big Twitter feed,

I have an ability to command the national dialogue,

and he's just going to go golfing.

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