What's happening on Fox News says it all.

At about 1:46 a.m. Wednesday morning, Fox News host Bret Baier officially confirmed what would happen at that point, as pretty much everyone still watching the network already knew at that point. “Fox News’ decision-making department can now officially assume that Donald Trump will become the 47th President of the United States,” Baier said. (The Associated Press and most major networks have not yet called the race.)

“The former president's comeback will be complete with a victory in Wisconsin, a state he narrowly lost four years ago,” said co-host Martha MacCallum, noting that Trump is the second president in U.S. history to who won non-consecutive terms. “Voters expressed deep frustration with the Biden administration and former President Trump – and the Future President Trump – has overperformed in urban areas, particularly among men, proving that the strategy they have doubled and tripled over the last few months was absolutely successful and brought him back to the White House.”

Although it took Fox News until nearly 2 a.m. to make its official call, by midnight most people at the network knew Trump would win, even if they couldn't necessarily say so explicitly. There was a jubilant atmosphere at the various election parties and Trump events that the station's correspondents regularly reported on. Trump's supporters on the ground in states like Georgia, Nevada and Tennessee chanted and cheered, drawing the same conclusions as the rest of us: in two and a half months, Donald Trump would likely be returning to the White House.

In Fox's New York studios, the mood was somewhat calmer. As of midnight, most of the network's hosts and panelists were still trying to be professional while simultaneously just waiting for the opportunity to safely gloat. While everyone on the Fox set seemed to sense the strong likelihood of a Trump victory, the then-unresolved electoral votes of the so-called “blue wall” put them in a position where they spent hours mostly just pointing out Trump's growing margins and leaving them alone allows the audience to see the connections.

Bill Hemmer, the network's designated map expert, called counties in swing states and ran through scenarios that could bring Trump to the presidency sooner rather than later. Baier questioned whether a narrow, unlikely Harris victory would even count as a mandate. “They call it the 'bro strategy' or whatever, it seems to have paid off up there,” Fox decision team member Daron Shaw said just before 1 a.m., referring to Trump's efforts up there Midwest to win the majority of men says, “I mean, it's still, we're still waiting – but you know, things are looking pretty good for him.”

Karl Rove was scribbling on his stupid whiteboard and talking about what viewers could figure out from the numbers they already had. “We're pretty good at saying that 89 percent of the votes were cast, or that 95 percent of the votes were cast, and – that turns out to be correct.” That's very rare – I can't think of a single case in which we said we looked at a number and saw that 90 percent or 85 percent of the vote was for it and that turned out to be completely off the mark,” Rove said around 12:30 p.m

Rove, of course, was criticized on-air by then-Fox host Megyn Kelly on election night 2012 for being completely wrong in his interpretation of the results of that year's election. But on Tuesday night he had a point, and as the fact of Trump's victory finally became clear, the network's moderators and panelists were finally able to do what they had been wanting to do for hours. “Democrats discussed the possibility of taking the lead in battleground states,” Baier said. “David Plouffe of the Democratic campaign, the Harris campaign, suggested this just yesterday. Now it's possible that Donald Trump comes out on top with these states and is building on a major landslide victory in the election.” God help us all.

Update, November 6, 2024, 2:15 a.m.: This post was updated after Fox News called the race.

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