This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," November 16, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STACEY ABRAMS, GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Democracy failed Georgia. Georgians of ever political party, every race, every region again. This is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy. I don't want to hold public office if I need to scheme my way into the post.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Stacey Abrams down in Georgia essentially saying she can no longer win that race for governor as you look at the vote total. She is still down by 54,000. The campaign there was hoping to getting this under 50 percent for Brian Kemp so they would force a runoff. That is not going to happen. She is not conceding. However, she is also not preventing the officials who have to certify the race from certifying it a winner in Brian Kemp, the Republican.

Kemp said "The election is over and hardworking Georgians are ready to move forward. We can no longer dwell on the divisive politics of the past but must focus on Georgia's bright and promising future. Together we will realize the opportunities and tackle the challenges to come. We will put a state that puts hardworking Georgians, no matter their zip code or political preference first."

What about this? We'll start there, go into Florida. Let's bring in our panel: Jonah Goldberg, senior editor at National Review; Susan Page, Washington bureau chief at USA Today, and national security analyst Morgan Ortagus. Jonah, that's a pretty fiery speech, one that we haven't heard before.

JONAH GOLDBERG, NATIONAL REVIEW: It is. You will forgive my cynicism, but I think it's kind of outrageous. When Donald Trump said he might not honor the results of the election if he lost, everyone rightly said that was an outrageous thing to say. Everyone is beating up on Donald Trump for violating democratic norms and all the rest and for questioning the integrity of elections. This woman has done exactly that in fiery prepared remarks.

I think it is in part -- look, there was bad hyperbole on both sides about a lot of these elections. But this is part of a strategy in Georgia to keep the base riled up, to change voter laws and to make this argument that this state belongs to us, and it is all about preparing for future elections and is remarkably cynical and bad form.

BAIER: There were allegations that the secretary of state, Brian Kemp, who now will be governor-elect, by the Abrams campaign, allegations that he was somehow trying to squash the vote, to try to downplay turnout, to somehow hold people back from voting in certain areas, specifically argued that it was African-American voters. There were allegations of that but no real investigation that came forward with specifics that I know of. And yet, this speech at the end there, Susan?

SUSAN PAGE, USA TODAY: I would say if you lose a race you should concede a race. But I don't find it cynical. I think it is questionable that Mr. Kemp decided to continue to serve as secretary of state and oversee the race in which he was a combatant. And that creates at the least at the minimum a problem with appearances.

And there were federal court cases in which the actions Georgia state had taken with voters were the wrong course to take. So there are some legitimate questions raised about how voters were treated in Georgia. So I can understand why she feels so strongly about this.

Of course, Democrats aren't happy that they've lost that race, because that was a very closely contested race, and a historic one, the first African- American woman nominated by a major party for governor. But Republicans might be concerned that she came so close in a state that it's been decades since Democrats have won the governorship.

BAIER: Sure, but if you look at the focus, the biggest focus of this midterms as far as the stars on the Democratic side, Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum in Florida, and probably Beto O'Rourke in Texas, it looks like they are all going to go down. Speaking of Florida, the Senate race is still 12,000 votes, Rick Scott and Bill Nelson. The governor's race, 33,000 plus votes. And the hand recount for the Senate race -- the machine recount is over, but Andrew Gillum is not conceding either. He conceded once, took it back, and now not conceding again.

MORGAN ORTAGUS, NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: There's so many parallels with what's going on in the elections, post-election I guess at this point, in Florida and Georgia. And as you said, I think what we really saw on election night is while we had big Democrat gains, it was among more of the moderate wing of the party. The Bernie wing of the party, the far left of the party, did not come out a winner on election night. And actually right after the primaries in Florida, which I studied Florida closely having worked there for so long and lived there, I described it as the primary -- general election that was the first test of the Trump and Bernie voter, especially in a state like Florida.

And we have seen also in Georgia, you had two pretty fringe candidates. I donŸ_Tt think either one of them fall into the mainstream. It was something that you heard moderate voters in Georgia complain about quite a bit. So I think when you are looking at both Florida and Georgia, you are seeing the Democrat party choose people in primaries, and very contested primaries, by the way. It's not like the two of them walked away with these primaries. You saw them choose fringe, far left candidates. The Republicans chose pretty far right candidates as well. And in both of those states the voters chose fringe right over the fringe left.

BAIER: Yes, and we'll see what comes out with these recounts. It doesn't look like they are going to move a lot of the votes to change the dynamic in Florida.

I was going to talk about the Mueller investigation, what the president said about it, about the acting attorney general. But just in the past few minutes The Washington Post has moved a piece that says the CIA concludes Saudi crowned prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, the Saudi journalist killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. If true, and we haven't independently confirmed this, one would think there is a lot of pressure on the administration to have some kind of different answer, Jonah?

GOLDBERG: Yes, I think there is. I imagine Donald Trump is having an interesting conversation about Mike Pompeo about all of this. And I think it should prompt a different approach to the way we have been dealing with the Saudis. This was so obviously a planned assassination from the top levels of power in Saudi Arabia. And you can't say we have to protect our interest and define our interests solely as arm sales. We have other interests, including the rule of law and the idea that you are not supposed to murder journalists who are inconvenient.

BAIER: Quickly, Susan?

PAGE: Yes, not a surprised, but certainly puts pressure on the administration to do more than it's done to respond to this.

ORTAGUS: Yes, I totally concur with the two of them. And I think it's almost time to relook at our Middle East policy writ large. We are continuing to see just thousands of people still out of Syria, still can't get into their homes. No resolution there. And as we sort of pivot to China and Russia from a national security perspective, it's time to rethink our entire strategy in the Middle East.

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