The 2024 U.S. presidential election took the nation by storm earlier this month, with Republican candidate Donald Trump coming out on top against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the race.
“Inside the NBA” stars Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley recently touched on the outcome. While both seemed to express disappointment at Trump winning, they agreed (around the 9:40 mark) that they find it troublesome that some Harris voters are now saying they don’t want anything to do with Trump voters.
“One thing that bothers me is that a lot of folks who voted for Kamala Harris are now saying, ‘If you voted for Donald Trump, I want nothin’ to do with you,’ and that’s the part that we have to get over, is that fact that because you voted one way and I voted another way, that we can never see anything eye to eye or we never want anything to do with each other because we’re getting nowhere that way,” Johnson said.
Barkley rolled with with Johnson’s assessment, calling the phenomenon “crazy” before agreeing with Johnson’s take “100 percent.”
This year’s presidential election was expected to be very close, but ultimately, Trump was able to coast to a relatively comfortable victory. He won key swing states and grabbed 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226. The number needed to win is 270.
The popular vote is still being tallied, but as of this writing, about 76 million votes have been counted for Trump while about 73 million votes have been counted for Harris. That gap could close as some blue states finish counting their ballots, but it won’t change the outcome of the election.
For some Harris voters, Trump’s track record from a legal, political and moral standpoint makes it difficult to level with his supporters. However, if the Democratic party wants to gain support in future elections, work will have to be done to pull voters from all over, and difficult conversations will have to be had with folks from the other side.
Trump is now set to serve a second term as president after he was also in office from January 2017 until January 2021. His first term sparked major controversy, and he failed in his attempt to secure a second term in the 2020 election, but he will now return to the White House after his victory over Harris.
Trump won’t be able to run again in the 2028 election, which will open the door for someone new to represent the Republican party.
