Katie Couric must be feeling pretty sheepish right about now. On election night, she took to TikTok to caution her followers against what she called a “red mirage”—a supposedly fleeting lead for Trump that would ultimately dissolve once urban votes rolled in.
Well, the “mirage” turned out to be more of a tsunami, and by the early hours of Wednesday, Trump had clinched more than 270 electoral votes, reclaiming the White House in a decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Couric’s warning about rural counties reporting first, creating an illusion of a Trump lead, didn’t age well. Her message came off as a preemptive excuse for Democrats and left-leaning viewers, something along the lines of, “Don’t worry if you see Trump winning—it’s not real!” But as the night went on and the battleground states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin turned red, the so-called “red mirage” proved to be anything but an illusion. Trump wasn’t just leading—he was winning.
Remember Katie Couric? This woman was once considered “cute.” Now she is mainly known for being “idiotic”pic.twitter.com/N4VBQxinpP
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) November 6, 2024
Even Couric, to her credit, saw this coming in part. Back in May, she admitted that Trump “seems to have the edge right now” despite his legal battles and relentless media scrutiny. She saw that Trump’s momentum was baffling to Democrats and the mainstream media alike, but instead of reflecting on why he might be gaining ground, it seemed she hoped these trends would fade.
By October, she was pointing out Kamala Harris’s inauthenticity, saying that Harris “takes a really long time to get to her point” and leans on talking points too much. For a candidate trying to replace Joe Biden on a national stage, sounding rehearsed and hesitant isn’t exactly a winning formula.
Couric’s reluctance to buy into the Harris hype was one of the few times she and some media voices dipped a toe into reality. Even Charlamagne tha God, when he suggested Harris was authentic, got a rare pushback from Couric. But that was as far as they were willing to go.
For the most part, the narrative remained the same: Trump’s support is exaggerated, and his lead is only temporary—a “mirage.” Yet, the red wave kept rolling, and by the time the dust settled, Couric’s warning about Trump’s fleeting lead turned into an ironic reminder of just how out of touch the media has been about his support.
.@center4politics‘ @larrysabato says, “This isn’t going to be a landslide for either candidate,” and that “winning at the margins is what really matters” in this race.
Join me on Instagram Live for the latest. pic.twitter.com/Sl65bS0IeM
— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) November 6, 2024
The lesson here? The so-called experts underestimated the movement Trump represents—again. The “greatest political movement of all time,” as Trump described it in his victory speech, isn’t a flash in the pan. It’s a genuine shift in the political landscape, one that’s been fueled by Americans fed up with being told by media elites that their views are just a mirage, a passing phase, or worse yet, something to be “corrected.” Trump’s return to the White House marks the continuation of a populist wave that’s here to stay, whether Katie Couric and company want to believe it or not.
