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AsElection Day 2020approaches, flashbacks to the last presidential election are inevitable.
That was the jovial experience of that last plane ride when we landed in Westchester.
The Clinton campaign was so optimistic, they were doing the Mannequin Challenge.
Don’t stand still.
She was always more serious and reserved.
So the mood on the press plane was,This is the end.
Its all over after this.
We were all outside of the voting location.
I said at some point that it didnt feel like covering a winning campaign in the final weeks.
I had gotten laughed at by Clintons staffers for saying that.
Wed drive out to Clinton events and there would be Trump signs along the road.
The reason is that those indicators can be artificial.
But that way of doing it, honestly, was undermined in 2016.
Its New York City and he gets confronted with an overwhelming number of boos from the crowd.
When he walked inside, some kids were selling cookies as part of a fundraiser for the school.
Tur:Anthony, my producer, and I go to the Hilton at around five oclock.
I noticed there was a cash bar.
So unlike other victory parties, Donald Trump was charging for the booze.
It wasnt like one of the presidents big, giant 5,000-person rallies.
This is a small room in the Hilton.
It can only accommodate a few hundred supporters, and these arent the supporters you see at rallies.
These are his wealthy and well-connected friends around town.
Stephen Baldwin was in the crowd, Alec Baldwins brother.
Alec Baldwins famed for his impression of Donald Trump.
His brother was in there celebrating, wearing a MAGA hat.
Ali Vitali,NBC News embed on the Trump campaign in 2016: Oh, there was a cake.
It was brought out really early.
It was a bust of Trump in a suit.
It was one of the oddities that often popped up when you spent time around Trump and his events.
It was such a production.
Of course, the glass ceiling wasnt lost on anybody there.
Steve Kornacki:We routinely get exit polls at 5 oclock.
And also that the throwing under the bus process had already begun.
Tur:Already at five o clock, you saw the knives coming out.
He was telling me, No, its absolutely not true.
Where did you get that information?
I told him, Well, Ali Vitali has the source information.
He says, No, its not true.
Where did you hear that?
And I said, Its not just Ali Vitali, Sean.
Kellyanne Conway just said it on television with Chuck.
I think Sean said something like, She did?
And then he hung up immediately.
They look like decent Democratic numbers.
And yeah, I could see this being a Clinton night based on these numbers.
And then you started looking at the turnout and its like: This is a flood.
What we expected was what ended up happening.
They wanted to be in the green room with the celebrities they had brought to the Javits Center.
Brian Williams:Much of the data we were getting didnt make a whole lot of sense.
At our internet, we are simply not allowed to have contact with the decision desk during Election Night.
They are literally roped off in a separate newsroom.
We hear from them when they make a call.
We are their client in a one-way relationship.
Ive seen calls reversed, Ive seen predictions go wrong.
A lot of predictions were wrong in 2016.
Vitali:Someone said Virginia was too close to call.
Vitali:Around ten, a Republican staffer walks by me and hes visibly drunk.
He says, I have to sober up because I think he might win.
I felt a little bit like obviously theyre my colleagues.
They were very gracious to have me on the set.
Thats when we really knew that they didnt even know what to make of what was happening.
He could be the next president of the United States.
The whole room at the Hilton just explodes in this cheer.
The crowd is still super-excited, but it wasnt until 11 oclock at night where things became abundantly clear.
Thats when they called Florida for Trump.
Williams:Thats when we all collectively realized wed be covering a Trump inauguration in January.
Alba:There was a moment where all of the Clinton supporters just started to collectively sit down.
They were zapped of energy and excitement and they were nervous.
Some of them had moved on to tears.
Hunt:Was it Lady Gaga who was crying backstage?
Michael Cohen was running around the room like he was Paul Revere saying, Which polls?
Alba:The Clinton campaign had turned the TV networks off and just put on the playlist.
Vitali:Katy was sitting in a chair and I think I was sitting at her feet.
Tur:It wasnt about political party or partisanship.
It was about this assault on truth and objectivity that I had been experiencing for all this time.
I got death threats.
It felt like you cant breathe.
I think it was very clear that this was not like any other election.
It was a feeling like,Oh my god.
All of our lives are going to change.
That same error could happen again.
Brewster:Were always talking to voters, digging into what the energy is behind peoples votes.
How much are we not realizing, or what did we miss?
Williams:We are about to see if polling has become more accurate over the course of four years.
And we are about to see how democracy works during an uncontrolled pandemic.
What could go wrong?
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
