After four long tense days we've reached a historic moment in this election.
... that former vice president Joe Biden will win Pennsylvania and Nevada putting him over
the 270 electoral votes he needs to become the 46th president of the United States.
It took days to decide but Donald Trump's presidency is over.
I sought this office to restore the soul America to rebuild the backbone of this nation.
After spending months traveling America, I returned to Florida, the critical swings state that Trump would win
again opening the floodgates to the president's baseless attacks on the legitimacy of the vote.
Palm Beach county is home to Trump's famous private members club Mar-a-Lago,
an area divided by extreme wealth to the east and poorer neighbourhoods to the west.
You're letting us come and ride with you? Is that all right?
We need to take the bird at the White House because we're sick of tweet ...
I ran into a group of activists called Palm Beach Indivisibles, a grassroots community
group that has been working for months to get the vote out in the city's most diverse neighbourhoods.
You think Joe Biden's gonna be a good president?
I think he is because you know why?
Because they're giving it the same energy as they did when Obama got in when they had everybody
getting them buses for people that can't make it to the polls, they're doing that now they
got whole tour buses in, whole greyhound buses taking people to vote ... so yeah I think he got a
great chance of winning this. — Yeah?
Yeah I think he's gonna be there, I think he's gonna do it.
That evening I headed south to Miami for a midnight rally with Donald Trump.
It was an event designed to garner the support of the city's large population of Cuban Americans.
Although Joe Biden won the majority of Latino voters nationwide, Trump did better than
expected in Miami and falsities portraying Biden as a socialist were cutting through.
How are you feeling about this election?
I'm feeling very good now. — Do you think he's gonna win?
I'm very optimistic, cautiously optimistic.
I'm feeling confident that Trump is gonna pull it. — How confident?
Very, very confident.
I'm a Cuban-American woman and so this is something that I've been
preparing for my whole life because my mother said it could happen anywhere, even here.
I assume you're talking about socialism there?
Oh yes. We're talking about Marxist that's behind it.
Socialism is just step one.
... president of the United States, Donald J Trump!
Trump: Hello Florida, hello Florida.
... we will continue to cut your taxes,
cut regulations, support our great police, support our great military ...
It's less than 48 hours now until election day. This is the fifth rally that Donald Trump has
held within 24 hours ... to be totally honest, he seems a bit exhausted but this could be
one of the last political rallies Donald Trump holds as president.
Or depending on who you talk to, the beginning of the end for American democracy.
So we're with some Trump campaign volunteers, a guy called Joe who is a local
kind of republican establishment bigwig and it's 4:36 in the morning.
They're out at a bunch of polling stations in Palm Beach county
putting yard signs out in front just before everybody gets to the polls.
We are in a bit of a car chase.
Were you not able to put signs up here until election day?
Well, people steal signs and knock them over and stuff like that so
that's why we put them up at the last minute.
I gotta be honest, this is one of the most ... you're one of the most committed supporters i've met on a
long journey. Are you seeing that level of commitment amongst your friends as well?
The enthusiasm in Palm Beach county is just off the charts for any presidential
election we've probably ever had.
Do you think at this stage a sign outside a polling station
is going to change anybody's mind?
Well, there's only a couple of % of people that are probably subject to have their mind changed as
they're going into a polling booth but on a hot day when somebody goes in and walks out of a store
with an ice cream cone, all of a sudden everybody wants an ice cream cone.
So I think it just demonstrates the enthusiasm
that we have for our president.
Trump/Pence ice cream cone?
Yeah, there you go, Trump/Pence ice cream cone.
You can ask Joe Biden what flavour ice cream he likes, he likes soft questions like that.
Great. — Alright, we got to go.
It's a man in a hurry
and on a mission.
As the sun rose, I headed back to west Palm Beach where organisers were the indivisibles
were preparing for a long day at the polls. The county voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden
but the margin remained almost identical to four years ago with turnout soaring on both sides.
Sorry, can you just tell me a bit about what the purpose of this is?
Yeah, we call it a comfort tent.
A comfort tent provides,
you know, things that make it more comfortable for the voters that are going to be standing in
line possibly for hours so we provide them with literature, we provide them coffee and donuts in
the morning, water throughout the day.
Where are the donuts?
I'm purely asking for journalistic reasons, I was not going to work for a donut, don't worry.
How long you been out here for?
I got here at five o'clock this morning.
Five o'clock? Why so early?
It's very important right now, it's very important. Very.
Just in terms of the elections that you voted in the past, how important is it? How does it compare?
Democracy is at stake ... bottom line.
Radio: 'If Donald Trump loses one of those big early reporting states ...'
As the polls close, I headed to a hotel near Palm Beach airport for Joe Budd's election night party.
Right now, the data is showing us that the Republicans have a 220 thousand turnout ...
On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you
that Donald Trump is going to win a second time in office?
9.5. — 9.5.
I'm a 9.
110%.
That is very, very, very confident.
This comes down from inside information from the chairman of the republican party of Florida ...
Ladies and gentlemen florida has gone to Trump.
In the same hotel, local democrats were also holding a more low-key event.
I caught up with Christelle and a few of her colleagues.
Florida's doing Florida's thing again which is unpredictable which, you know, it's Florida.
I believe things can shift in a magnificent way that we don't know but I'm trying to be optimistic.
Feels like we're almost in a bit of an alternative reality because Fox News just announced that the
democrats have retained control of the house of representatives and no one seems to have noticed.
By this point Joe's party was completely packed no one was wearing masks and there was no social
distancing so I decided to spend the rest of the night outside. As I watched it was becoming
increasingly clear to people inside that the election was much closer than they'd realised.
Are you kind of ready for the long haul? — I am yeah, locked and loaded and ready.
Locked and loaded? — Yes.
What do you mean by that? — You know, from what I've seen
from the democrat party over the last three years but particularly the last year, rioting
looting, harassing, I don't feel safe in my own home and that's really disgusting.
And if Biden gets in, we are totally ducked, we are ducked to the max because he's going to shut everything down,
he's listening to the stupid scientists and they don't understand everything.
Bolshevik Marxist Leninist communist Maoist revolution, OK? Thank you.
Joe, a lot of the people that we were speaking to came out this event were very angry, very, very,
very angry and we're talking about being locked and loaded, we're talking about, you know, fury at
Joe Biden ... are you angry?
No, no not at all. No, not at all ...
But if Biden wins it, how are you going to feel?
Well, I think most important thing to me is the Supreme court justices ... I think
we solidified the courts for a generation and so, I think we're in good shape there.
So I've been up for 24 hours, it's almost 2 o'clock in the morning now
and most people here are calling it a night. We still do not know who's won this election.
What is very clear though is that this country is still deeply divided.
The weight for a result went on for days and as Donald Trump continued to undermine the process,
tensions were rising in parts of south Florida. It's two days since election night now and
the election is basically coming down to four battleground states
and even though Florida has long been decided, we've heard a group of pro-Trump protesters
are out in Miami calling for the counts to be stopped around the country.
Trump: 'There's tremendous litigation going on and this is a case where they're trying to steal an election,
that's why they did the mail-in ballots where there's tremendous
corruption and fraud going on.'
After trump's speech finished, Enrique Torrio, chairman of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys,
addressed the crowd.
You're with the Proud Boys, right? — I'm the chairman.
What do you say to people who say that you're spreading dangerous and baseless misinformation?
I don't care about those people, those people to me, I consider them retards.
People that think that I'm a danger or there is a danger ...
... they said that the information that you're spreading or disinformation that you're spreading is dangerous
and it's designed to stoke up anger and hatred.
Well, I could tell them to go [ __ ] themselves.
Small protests continued throughout the country but a result was gradually becoming clear
and finally two days later ...
News presenter: 'CNN projects Joseph R Biden Jr is elected the 46th president of the United States.'
This has been a gruelling election and in my travels around the country,
I've seen two different versions of America pitted against each other: one, rife with divisive politics
and in the end an effort to subvert democracy; the other, an attempt to unify the country by returning
to a semblance of normality.
Do you know who you're voting for? — Of course. Not for Trump.
During this pandemic election, it hasn't always been easy to grasp the enthusiasm for Joe Biden
and much of the energy out there was fueled by a disdain for Donald Trump.
He's lied, he's cheated ...
I just can't vote for him.
The president's catastrophic policy failures have harmed
communities around America and those communities turned up in big numbers to vote him out of office.
George bush is a great president compared to that thing that's in the White House.
But there was genuine belief that Joe Biden represents a type of decency that's been absent in high office.
However this victory is not just about Joe Biden, it is a story about a coalition of voters
made up of young people, communities of colour and women - a coalition that increasingly
reflects the diversity of this country.
We are now engaging people of colour, we're now seeing people
on the ballot that are people of colour.
People think that that is a political statement, saying that black lives matter
instead of just a statement of our humanity.
While Donald Trump lost convincingly, he still gained millions more votes than last time.
He has created a political movement with a base of deeply loyal supporters.
'This mask is useless.'
This mask is useless, yes.
And he's moved fringe far-right conspiracy theories into the mainstream.
Do you believe that an online furniture retailer is peddling a global pedophilia conspiracy?
From lies about his handling of the pandemic.
I think this entire pandemic has been a set up.
To racist dog whistles.
And are you guys gonna be on these streets? — Yes!
All against a backdrop of the decline of trusted and objective information.
The president of the United States demeans this business, dismisses it.
Donald Trump may have lost but Trumpism will remain a powerful force in American politics for years to come.
'Ungrateful pieces of crap! Get our of our country!'
And Joe Biden comes to power at a time of entrenched division,
economic crisis and a global pandemic when trust in institutions and democracy itself
has been undermined.
It's been a long election week.
To be honest, this journey has been a difficult one,
seeing a lot of division in this country and a lot of polarisation.
But right now, in this car parade, I think of at least 100 cars that they've brought out,
a sense of unity and the sense of togetherness is quite amazing.
You told me on election night you said that some of the work that you were doing was for your
family and for your kids. — Absolutely because our children are the future.
You feel like it paid off?
It absolutely did. It's very important and it shows that we can do it, anyone can do it.
Absolutely.
Just because I look like this man, I'm political too, man, we all are, man.
We did it! We did it!
There's no limit what we can do if we put our minds together and everybody put their
minds together and put their act together and focus.
No limit to what we can do if we all come together
like Biden said that we come together as a unit, united there's nothing we can't do.