Hugo Lowell: Hey, everyone.

Leah Feiger: David Gilbert, senior reporter who focuses on disinformation and extremism.

David Gilbert: Hello. Good to be here.

Leah Feiger: And senior writer Vittoria Elliott, who focuses on the internal machinations of the US government.

Vittoria Elliott: Good to be here, Leah.

Leah Feiger: We'll get into how these candidates supported by Elon Musk and AI super PACs ended up faring and why these elections were rebuked by Americans of not just the current government, but also of Big Tech. So the Democrats needed a net gain of four seats in the Senate and three in the House. They blew by both. What were your biggest shocks of the evening, everyone?

David Gilbert: Well, because I am based in Ireland, I woke up on Wednesday morning and the landscape had just completely changed. Even people who were in deep red states like Arizona, like Mark Lamb, who was a certainty to win, his race still hasn't been drawn. It's just exceptional.

Vittoria Elliott: I was floored by how tight Mississippi is and the win in South Carolina. I would not have put my money on that. Incredible.

Hugo Lowell: Yeah, I agree with Tori. South Carolina, Darline Graham was handpicked by Trump and endorsed by him to win that race. And it was not this close in previous cycles.

Leah Feiger: To inherit her brother's seat.

Hugo Lowell: Insane. And she ended up losing it. And then also in Mississippi, the fact that Cindy Hyde-Smith, who's been in the Senate a long time, was once considered to be a very, very safe incumbent losing in deep red Mississippi. I mean, it's not been called yet, but that was also a massive shock. And I think what really stood out to me was having been at Trump's election night party in 2024 for that presidential run and how everyone there was talking about how Trump had put together this historic coalition, was making big gains in all sorts of places where they didn't expect to and took all of the battleground states. What happened on Tuesday night, on election night was a reversal of all of those gains and then some. I mean, if you think about Trump winning double digits in battleground states and then seeing what happened on Tuesday, those states swung 10 points back in the other direction for Democrats. And it just, I think, goes to show how in 18 months and 20 months, Trump has managed to undo everything and all of the goodwill that Republicans have built up in the '24 election cycle through all of his vanity projects, all of the cuts with DOGE, all of his acts in the federal government, and really the fact that he led the country into an unpopular war that led to higher prices, which are even more unpopular.