Julie Mason: I thought I wouldn’t be at work ‘past midnight’

As Election Day dawned, Julie Mason thought her biggest problem would be keeping radio listeners engaged during what everyone assumed would be an easy victory for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. 

“Always with live radio you hope for some exciting development and of course, coming in on Election Day, I had all the arrogance of my profession,” Mason said. “I thought my biggest challenge would be finding something really interesting to say about Hillary Clinton [winning].”

{mosads}“We thought we’d get some results early, wrap it up with a bow, I wouldn’t be here past midnight,” the host of “The Press Pool” on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel told The Hill. 

At best, she thought, the drama would center on whether Trump would concede immediately. 

But once the results began to roll in, Mason quickly realized that the election might not be so predictable after all.

“There was something out there. I hate to be a revisionist historian … but there was so much discontent and the exit polls were measuring that,” she said. 

While caught off guard by the shock of Trump’s victory, Mason said that the outcome energized her as a journalist.

“It was a delightful surprise because so much of politics is so predictable. We predict outcomes, there’s polling that shows us how things are going to turn out. And it can still throw you a little curve — that’s pretty awesome,”  she said.