Donald Trump got word from his security detail in Cedar Rapids on Monday that there could be someone in the audience with tomatoes — so Trump reportedly decided to go ahead and take precautions.

"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them," Trump urged his supporters. Were anyone to feel concern about being prosecuted for assault in such a scenario, Trump reassured that, "I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees."

Watch below. Jeva Lange

On TV, at the Republican National Convention, and at rallies, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. has been one of Donald Trump's most forceful advocates during the presidential campaign. Now that Trump has won the presidency, thousands of people are protesting in the streets in cities across the U.S. — and in Los Angeles, they burned a piñata of Trump's head. Clarke had a message for them Thursday morning:

In the graphic, under the words, "These temper tantrums from these radical anarchists must be quelled," Clarke is touting his fealty to the U.S. Constitution, which clearly gives citizens the right to protest their government. Same goes for his follow-up line, "There is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people" — especially since Hillary Clinton got some 250,000 more votes than Trump (and counting). Peter Weber

It's always fraught business meeting your new boss, but for America's intelligence community, disclosing America's national security secrets to President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly especially nerve-wracking. Trump has been dismissive and disdainful of the conclusions reached by the spy agencies, especially regarding Russia and Syria, and suggested that as president, he would order the CIA to resume torturing suspects. "I cannot remember another president-elect who has been so dismissive of intelligence received during a campaign or so suspicious of the quality and honesty of the intelligence he was about to receive," former CIA Director Michael Hayden told The Washington Post.

As early as Thursday, intelligence officials will give Trump his first full intelligence briefing, likely the same daily intel briefing President Obama gets, and there's a "palpable sense of dread" in the intelligence community, reports The Post's Greg Miller. According to European intelligence officials cited by Newsweek, the Kremlin has a dossier on Trump, including potentially compromising video of Trump in a Moscow hotel room. Trump's only prominent adviser from the intelligence community is retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and then seen dining with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I'm half dreading, half holding my breath going to work today," an unidentified senior U.S. national security official tells The Washington Post. "It's fear of the unknown," he added. "We don't know what he's really like under all the talk.... How will that play out over the next four years or even the next few months? I don't know if there is going to be a tidal wave of departures of people who were going to stay around to help Hillary's team but are now going to be, 'I'm out of here.'" Also in The Post, Richard H. Kohn, an emeritus profess of peace, war, and defense at UNC, pleads with prominent Republican national security leaders to serve in the Trump administration, even though they "dislike and distrust" Trump. You can read Kohn's op-ed at The Washington Post. Peter Weber

With the 2016 election now behind us, Jimmy Kimmel decided to take a few wild guesses as to what lies ahead for such campaign luminaries as Chris Christie, Kellyanne Conway, and Melania Trump. Donald Trump surrogate Scott Baio, for example, will star in his first production since 1988, Sharknado 5: Sharks in Charge, Mike Pence is demanding a recount, and Billy Bush is embarking on a new career as a mannequin at Nordstrom Rack. Watch the video below to find out who will wind up marketing his face as Reverse Viagra. Catherine Garcia

Seth Meyers knows it stings for the millions of people who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, almost certainly giving her the popular vote, that she is not the first female president of the United States. On Wednesday's Late Show, he offered an optimistic message for whatever woman ultimately earns the title.

"We don't know who you are, but I imagine this moment today will be a defining one for you, one that will make you work harder and strive farther," he said. "Whoever you are, I hope I live to see your inauguration, and I hope my mom does, too." There's also an important, often overlooked plus side of being the first woman president. "First is so much better than second," Meyers said. "That is the difference between George Washington and John Adams — you either end up on money or Paul Giamatti plays you in a movie."

Meyers admitted that his feelings of sadness, anger, and fear are likely the same emotions that Trump supporters felt, and it would be "wrong for me to feel my emotions are somehow more authentic." Now is the time for empathy, Meyers told Trump voters, and he hopes the next president "sincerely addresses your concerns and if you felt forgotten, he won't forget you now." By the same token, Trump and his supporters must also be "compassionate" toward the people who did not vote for him, Meyers said, and for those absolutely terrified by Trump's election, he shared some comforting words: He's been wrong about everything Trump has done over the last 18 months — he never thought he would actually run, he never thought he would win the primary, and he certainly never thought he would win the whole shebang. "Based on this pattern of me being wrong on every one of my Donald Trump predictions, he's going to be a great f—ing president," Meyers said. "Let's just hope this trajectory holds." Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia

On Wednesday's Conan, host Conan O'Brien took a bigger-picture look at Tuesday's election, noting that Donald Trump's victory made half the country happy and the other half "somewhere between despondent and furious." But as a history buff, "I was struck by one thought today: We have been here before," Conan said. "We have had angry, bitter elections for 200 years," and he listed some. "The point is, this is our thing, okay? And the optimist in me chooses today to be happy that we have fair and free elections at all — I think that it's an amazing thing, I really do."

After traveling to places like Cuba and Armenia over the past few years, he's learned that people in many countries "would give anything to have our system," Conan said. "In America, we get to pick who's going to ruin our country." Watching President Obama and Hillary Clinton promise a peaceful transfer of power "gave me chills," he added. "Now today, Americans have the right to feel happy, angry, pessimistic, optimistic, but everybody should feel grateful that we get to vote, and if we don't get our way, we have the chance to try again. It is a beautiful thing." He quoted Winston Churchill's line about democracy being the best worst form of government, then ended with a more dubious Churchill quote, "When healing a divided nation, always resort to cheap visual comedy," and an example of that maxim.

Earlier in his monologue, Conan half-joked that with Trump's election, "my job just got easier for the next 4 years," quipped that "the first thing I did this morning was call my old high school bully and congratulate him," and offered some unwelcome solace for Clinton: "For the millions who are disappointed for Hillary, remember, America has a special place for people who lose. And ironically, it's the cast of Celebrity Apprentice." Peter Weber

A lot of older white people in the upper Midwest helped make Donald Trump the next U.S. president on Tuesday, and another older white upper Midwesterner, Garrison Keillor, did not sugarcoat the blow to the Americans who voted for his opponent. "We liberal elitists are wrecks," he wrote in The Washington Post on Wednesday. And now that "a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president," millions of Americans exhausted by the long campaign "will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure."

"The Trumpers," on the other hand, "had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting 'Lock her up,'" but now that their guy has won, he's "their problem now."

The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth. Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next....

We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses. [Keillor, The Washington Post]

You can read the rest of his folksy essay at The Washington Post. Peter Weber

As demonstrations against Donald Trump's election raged on across the United States Wednesday night, thousands of protesters marched through downtown Los Angeles, chanting "Not my president!" and carrying signs with messages like "Love trumps hate." At one point, a group of protesters near City Hall set fire to a large piñata designed to look like Trump's head. Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia