If recent political history is any indication, examinations into Republican electoral defeats up and down the ballot may not be far off, according to a political columnist.

In fact, they could be one presidential election cycle away.

Take for example the elections in 2008, 2016 and 2020, when voters gave the prevailing party governing trifectas, MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen wrote.

Of course, the GOP was handed the coveted political situation this year, but four years ago it was Democrats who were handed back control of Congress and the White House after Republicans wrestled it away in 2016, the same way Democrats turned the tables in 2008, Cohen noted.

“Quite simply, it might not be long before the election postmortems are being written about the GOP,” Cohen told readers in an opinion piece published Monday for MSNBC.

While Cohen is not doubting the scope of the “bad outcome” the 2024 elections produced for the Democratic Party, he says the data shows some bright spots for the party, including that “Democrats outperformed the presidential ticket in several key Senate races.”

“The Democrats’ defeat has led to a host of postmortems and renting on what went wrong and what the party needs to do differently going forward,” he wrote. “But a deep dive inside the numbers suggests that while the election results were bad for Democrats, they aren’t quite as awful as they seem.”

He continued to establish his argument by reminding readers that Democrats were facing “an uphill battle” this year in the face of anti-incumbent sentiment worldwide and that President-elect Donald Trump’s victory was not the landslide win that MAGA world wanted to portray.

“His margin of victory, 1.6 points, was the fifth-smallest in the last 100 years,” Cohen noted.

The columnist concluded by writing that even as Democrats “lost four Senate seats and control of the chamber, considering the 6-point shift in national voting and Trump’s victory, they did better than expected.”

“Going forward, the ubiquity of the occasional Trump voter should concern Republicans,” according to Cohen, a senior fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. “Can they hold the White House — and their advantages in the House and Senate — if Trump is not on the ticket (and constitutionally, he cannot run for president again)?”

A top New York Times reporter who has covered President-elect Donald Trump extensively for years said Monday night that Eric Trump gave a “warning shot" to GOP legal strategist Boris Epshteyn.

The assessment from Maggie Haberman on "The Source" came after the incoming president’s son reacted to Fox News earlier Monday when asked about reports that Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide, profited by selling access to Trump’s inner circle.

“I’ve known Boris for years, and I’ve never known him to be anything but a good human being,” the younger Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “That said, I will tell you, my father has been incredibly clear – you do not — you do not do that under any circumstance. I certainly hope the reporting is false, and I can also tell you if it's true, you know, the person will probably no longer be around.”

Haberman and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins both had the same reaction.

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“Well, that's actually not very, that's not subtle,” Haberman said after watching the Fox News clip.

“Right? That was my reaction,” Collins said.

Haberman went on to express a starker view of Eric Trump’s remarks.

“It was gentle about Boris Epshteyn, but it’s a warning – I interpret that as a warning shot,” she said.

“Yeah, that's a red line,” added Ellie Honig. He noted that Trump’s former “fixer” and attorney Michael Cohen had a falling out with his ex-boss over money issues.

“Donald Trump didn't want him profiting, and Michael Cohen ended up stealing from Donald Trump, that came out in the trial,” Honig said.

Watch the clip at this link.

“The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart opened his show Monday by taking Democrats through the wringer in a stinging takedown of their election night defeat last week, joking with his audience, "It turns out the election was stolen by more people voting for Donald Trump.”

“It’s quite the capper,” Stewart said to laughter. He opened his show Monday by demanding a close-up camera view before taking on a serious tone and declaring: “Welcome to the resistance," he said, pausing as the audience applauded. "I’m actually being facetious.”

He continued his opening segment by dissecting the Democrats’ election night loss with a smattering of humor and defeat, and then offered his own assessment of what the Democratic Party – and the political analysts – got wrong.

“I’m glad to say Democrats did protect democracy, just for the other side,” he said. “But it’s a delight to hear about why it happened from so many people who were so wrong about what was going to happen,” Stewart said.

ALSO READ: Trump didn't win — disinformation did

“Everybody’s talking about this ‘wokeness’ theory,” he continued. But, he noted that the Democrats “didn’t talk about pronouns, they didn’t say ‘Latinx,’ it was the opposite. They didn’t do the woke thing…they acted like Republicans for the last four months. They wore camo hats and went to Cheney family reunions.”

He said instead, Democrats were mostly running “against an identity that was defined for them based on a couple of months of post-George Floyd defund the police ‘Me Too’ Instagram posts from four years ago."

He continued his post-election assessment by telling viewers that the general mood in the country that the Democrats discovered on election night was that “government wasn’t working for them.”

“And then Democrats in particular were taking their hard-earned money and giving it to people who didn’t deserve it as much as them. So the Democrats got shellacked," he said.

“But, I just want to assure people that this isn’t forever,” Stewart told his audience, before discussing the 1984 election results when Democrats won just a single state.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen in four years, at all.”

Watch the clip below or at this link.

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as Donald Trump’s next secretary of state would no doubt be “a hawkish choice” as the president-elect continues to build out his incoming administration, according to Axios co-founder Mike Allen, who adds the pick also sends a reassuring signal.

“This is to be reassuring to people around the world, to Republicans, to Democrats in Washington, of the choices that president-elect Trump had,” Allen told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins during an interview Monday near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Marco Rubio is a very traditional Republican.”

Allen, who described Rubio as “a great American story,” noted that the Florida senator is the son of two Cuban immigrants, and would be the nation’s first Latino secretary of state. Rubio, who Trump famously mocked as “little Marco” during the 2016 campaign, is also somebody who can carry Trump’s message, a trait the former president “really values.”

ALSO READ: What Trump's win really means for America

“The world is so different than when President Trump was in office before, now president-elect Trump is coming into wars,” he said. “This is a hawkish choice. He’s been hawkish over the years on China, on Iran, on Cuba, but, as the reporting suggested earlier, he's moved toward Trump, including on the issue of a negotiated settlement for Ukraine, one of the biggest things on his plate, no question.”

Allen added that he views the administration picks that Trump has announced so far as “confirmable.”

“All very, like, responsible, reassuring to Republicans who were sort of hoping for the best Trump. These picks so far are very much in the Republican main lane,” he said.

Watch the clip at this link.

A longtime GOP insider’s on-air plea for “a couple years of peace” for President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party stirred up a CNN panel Wednesday evening and left an anti-Trump Republican infuriated.

The moment unfolded during the network’s continued post-election analysis when Republican strategist and CNN commentator Scott Jennings made an impassioned appeal to Trump’s political opponents.

“The American people want this president and his administration and his party to make progress on the things they promised to do,” Jennings told the panel, which included anti-Trump Republican strategist Ana Navarro. “This is exactly what happened last time. They were plotting to impeach him before he ever took office back in 2016 – let us not have a replay of this. Can we just have a couple of years of peace for the Republicans and President Trump to do what they promised to do because the American people clearly are asking for it.”

Navarro immediately pounced on the brazen statement given the MAGA leader mounted a violent insurrection attempt and encouraged supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol after refusing to concede the 2020 election.

“Scott I have to tell you that's really rich though from a party and from Trump who for four years never even acknowledged that Joe Biden had won the election,” Navarro said.

CNN’s Erin Burnett added: “He still hasn't, except for when he said to Joe Rogan by accident.”

That’s when former Obama White House senior policy adviser Ashley Allison went after Jennings, telling the former Mitch McConnel strategist that the Senate minority leader not only blocked former President Barack Obama “from doing anything to allow him to get another term or make any progress,” but he also refused to allow the 44th president to move through his Supreme Court nominee through the Senate.

“It is so duplicitous I feel like. I respect you Scott, and you are my friend, but please do not sit here and say that Republicans when Democrats are elected just roll over…”

Jennings concluded the exchange by offering a piece of advice to Democrats.

“My advice is if you go down this road and try to stop this government, which just won a mandate, you will pay the price in election after election. The American people are asking for progress. Do not tie this man up. Give this person a chance to lead,” he said.

Watch the clip below or at this link.

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Republicans are urging the Supreme Court to block a Pennsylvania ruling that allowed voters whose mail ballots were rejected due to a technicality to cast provisional ballots on Election Day.

The request filed Monday by the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania GOP for the high court to step in came after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 opinion that the critical battleground state must allow voters “who make mistakes when returning their ballots – errors that would require the votes to be thrown out” – to cast provisional ballots on Nov. 5, Politico reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union said at the time that the Oct. 23 ruling was “a win for voting rights.”

"Provisional ballots provide a failsafe to ensure that eligible voters are not disenfranchised for unforeseen circumstances at the ballot box," the organization posted on X after the ruling.

The Republicans say in their stay application Monday that the “sharply divided” ruling “departed from the plain terms of the Election Code to dramatically change the rules governing mail voting,” and did so in the middle of the ongoing election, according to the filing.

They are asking the Supreme Court to block the state court’s ruling “for this election or, in the alternative, order any such provisional ballots be set aside so litigation over their validity can proceed after the election, if necessary,” according to Politico.

“The majority’s interpretation of the Election Code is not remotely plausible and cannot stand,” the Republicans said in the filing. “The court below ignored unambiguous statutory language.”

The number of provisional ballots at stake in the case is unclear, but Politico reported that Democrats would likely benefit if the state court ruling were to remain in place because Democrats in Pennsylvania, the publication noted, “tend to vote by mail at much higher rates than Republicans.”

Donald Trump and his MAGA movement fit “the definition of fascism,” according to retired U.S. Army Majority General Randy Manner who warned that if the former president were to return to office — especially in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling — “everything changes.”

“If he was to be the commander in chief again, everything changes," Manner said during an interview Monday night with CNN anchor Laura Coates. “The Supreme Court has given him immunity and the threshold for turning the National Guard into his personal police force is quite low."

Manner noted that as long as Trump remains out of office, “he cannot do anything to harm Americans directly," but then added a stark warning.

“Most Americans don’t know how easy it would be for an unhinged president to use the military against our own citizens," he said.

ALSO READ: Trump keeps telling us he believes he’ll lose

“President Trump is not like any sane leader,” Manner said.

He went on to recite a dictionary definition of fascism after Coates read a statement from retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley to journalist Bob Woodward, in which he called Trump “a total fascist.”

“Let’s back up a second, if you go to Webster online, you will find that it’s usually nationalistic, it’s far-right — ok, let’s see, so that’s definitely the Trump campaign,” Manner said as he as he went on to read other aspects of fascism that he says lines up with Trump.

“Check, check…that is actually the definition of fascism,” Manner said. “If he as the chairman of the joint chiefs is calling the president a fascist, I am so proud of him for breaking that barrier to say — to speak to the truth — that he is.

He added at the conclusion of the interview that “the very far-right, the hard-core — they don’t understand what fascism is. The reality is they are in fact fascist themselves by the definition.”

Watch the clip below or at this link.

Calling the moment “an emergency” and making clear that he views Donald Trump as unfit to return to the presidency, prominent conservative and staunch Trump critic Charlie Sykes said he will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris – and encouraged other conservatives to follow suit.

“This is the theme echoed by essentially all of the conservatives who have broken ranks: We may disagree on policy, but this is an emergency,” Sykes wrote in a column Monday for MSNBC. “And in every genuine crisis, people of goodwill put aside their differences. When the emergency passes, we can go back to arguing about other things; but right now, the moment demands that we make common cause, and put country over party. Even, and especially, if that means voting for Kamala Harris.”

Sykes said that he refused to be a conservative who "reject[s] Trump but cannot bring themselves to vote for the one candidate who could stop him.” He lists as part of that group anti-Trump Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), former Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former President George W. Bush and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

“Many of these officials and pundits recognize the dangers that Trump poses, but want to preserve their ‘relevance’ in the party; others clearly hope for Trump’s defeat, but want to keep their hands clean by staying above the fray and casting a write-in vote,” according to Sykes.

He said he joined the “newly minted pro-Harris conservatives” in making public that he intended to vote for the Democratic nominee. He added the names of other “lifelong conservatives who have defied partisan loyalty” to endorse Harris. He named former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY); former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and former Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS).

Sykes added in his piece that the significance of the GOP defections should not be underestimated and referenced a line in an article he wrote for The Atlantic where he said: “Before Trump, the ideological divide between Harris and conservative Republicans might have been too large to bridge. But this is not a normal campaign.”

“But the newly minted pro-Harris conservatives recognize that this election isn’t about those things at all,” he wrote in his column Monday. “They recognize that a second Trump term will transcend typical ideological/political differences.”

Suggesting that Vice President Kamala Harris “isn’t competent to run a bingo game at the community center,” Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller laid into a top Harris spokesperson Monday night for suggesting that Donald Trump backed out of a "60 Minutes" sit-down interview because the former president is “avoiding the media.”

The social media feud between Miller and Harris-Walz senior national spokesperson Ian Sams ensued shortly after the airing of the traditional “60 Minutes” candidate interview, which Trump was notably absent from despite originally agreeing to.

“Scott Pelley opens ‘60 Minutes’ outlining in great detail how Donald Trump agreed to sit for an interview, including quoting Steven Cheung phone calls and text messages, before canceling,” Sams wrote on X. “Yikes. Why is Trump avoiding the media? Why won't he answer questions from real outlets?”

“Hey liar, Trump has done dozens of hours long press conferences with adversarial media,” Miller wrote in a reply to Sams. “Kamala has never done one adversarial interview in any setting anywhere and never done one single solitary press conference. Kamala isn’t competent to run a bingo game at the community center.”

Sams left his position as a Biden administration spokesman for oversight and investigations in August to join the Harris-Walz campaign as a top spokesperson, the Washington Post reported. He previously served as national press secretary on Harris' 2020 presidential campaign, according to the publication.

Miller is a longtime Trump adviser and architect of the Trumpadministration's “zero tolerance” family separation policy.