Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/11/24: Trump Kamala First Debate LIVE Reaction

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Krystal, Saagar, Ryan and Emily cover the first 2024 debate between Kamala and Trump.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. We just watched that major presidential debate. Emily, unfortunately, had to step away, but the three of us will hold down the fort. I'll be extra loud, all right? Double of the analysis. I'm sure that's not a problem for me. But in general, certainly something, some major moments.

We've got a couple of clips and other things that we can break down for everybody. We'll be taking some questions throughout the stream from our subscribers. So make sure you sign up, BreakingPoints.com, if you want to be able to take advantage. But before we get to that and even to some of the clips, why don't we just give our general impressions? Crystal, what do you think? She came in wanting to make this a referendum on Trump, and she succeeded. Yes. She basically called every shot in terms of what

the topics, what the focus would be, what he would have to respond to. She maintained an affect of laughing in his face and rolling her eyes. He was pissed off and angry almost from the jump. And so, you know, I think for her, this was about as good a performance as possible. She was, she was well-prepared and took it seriously and took him seriously. And I don't think that he took her seriously and it showed he, you know, he took the bait on every look, whether it was his rallies or his indictments or even the Central Park Five or his net worth that he inherited from his dad. He was chasing after every single ball that she was throwing. Yeah, let me pick up on that because I think this is a really key point.

And it's one where I'm already I can see amongst our right wing audience, the ones that remain and others, is there is a tremendous amount of outrage about the moderators and about ABC. And I think we'll talk about this, about how the fact that these moderators did interject multiple times to quote unquote fact check Trump. Many of the questions were frankly ridiculous in my opinion. Like, Kamala, have you ever met with Putin? It was like, come on, what are we doing? Okay. Let's put that aside. Complaining about moderators is cope when your candidate also did – you had multiple opportunities where you took the bait, where you whiffed on the best answers, where Kamala, what I want to pick up on from what you said, was totally in control. Every single time it was her worst issue, she puts a little bit of bait in there that Trump is going to pick up on, and he runs with it. The border section was infuriating to me, watching and waiting.

This is the part where Trump is leading against Harris as much as Harris is leading Trump on abortion. I haven't even mentioned Trump's disastrous abortion performance. We got that coming soon. We will have that coming as well. But actually, that's a perfect example when I put them side by side. On the abortion one, Trump is all over the place giving the worst answers humanly possible. All the stuff that she's tried to do previously, none of it has worked. He doesn't try and bait

Kamala or move the direction. Kamala brings up a border. The very first border question, she starts talking about his rally size. Now we're litigating rallies during the damn border section. And then during every single other one, which was very good for Trump, any issue area, Kamala lays as much bait in there as possible. And Trump takes it and he takes it and he whiffs it. He validates every concern that she drops of he only cares about himself by litigating his rally size instead of talking about the border. Litigating his inheritance instead of talking about, well, I don't even remember. I think that might've been about her flip-flopping. You're right. That's what it was. It was about fracking and flip-flopping. And I'm sitting here losing my mind being like, dude, what are you doing? And so in general, yes, we're the moderator's bias. Yeah, I think. But, you know, you're just going to come across as a whiny baby, you know, only focusing on that.

When you went into this, you voluntarily accepted, and honestly worse, even within that bad framework. They gave you a chance to shine where you could have if you wanted to. You've been in many, you know, biased debates before, and he screwed it. I mean, he absolutely whiffed it on every major issue that was best for him. I want to get Ryan in, but real quick, what that reminded me of, remember the famous Newt Gingrich moment? Oh, of course. Where John King asked him this question about, he had like asked his wife for an open marriage while she had cancer. I mean, it was a horrible thing he did, right?

But they open up with this question. Right. And Newt Gingrich goes in on the moderators and turns it into a great moment. If you're Donald Trump, you come in knowing the moderators are probably going to be asking her easier questions, might be doing a little fact check. Trump at the top of his game not only handles that, but turns that into an asset. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He's a deeply wounded man. Like for him, for him not to be able to let anything slide, like even with the presidency in his grasp,

yes. The depth of insecurity he must feel in, in whatever soul he has inside of him to not just, your point is exactly right. They're talking about her flip-flops. Right. They're talking about the border. These, it's a 90-minute debate. These are going to be the rounds where you have to score the most amount of points.

Right. Absolutely. They're all tilted in your favor. You're just pummeling her in these rounds. Instead, they're not leaving my rally earlier. They don't even go to her rallies. They actually get busted. fake. He went into the fake thing. They're paying fake AI people to go to her rallies. And yeah, exactly. Then you're like, what are we even talking about now? I don't remember that it was actually- During the border section, they were litigating Donald

Trump's cases. Excuse me? Excuse me? She took the opening of him saying something about criminals to be like, let me tell you about criminals. This guy right here. And of course, he goes all in. And same thing, the January 6th section was also disastrous for him because he gets asked the question. Oh my God, he said he was joking when he said he lost by a whisker. Okay, you said for a long time that you won by a landslide.

In the past several weeks, you said that you lost by a whisker and seemed to admit that you lost. No, I didn't admit that. I was being sarcastic. I won by a landslide. And then goes in, although the court cases

and they were biased and there was so much evidence. I mean, again, spending time and energy relitigating one of the things people hate about you. No, I mean, the other thing about the demeanor of the two of them, I think was important as well, because, you know, a lot of this is optics. And one of the things we said is she needs to maintain this sort of like, you know, rolling her eyes, being above the fray, looking down at her, making him small.

And she did that. Her facial expressions were very relaxed. She was the one that was having fun at his expense. That's a real role reversal if you think back to how much fun he had at Hillary Clinton's expense. How much fun he had at Lil Marco's expense. How much fun he had at low' Marco's expense, how much fun he had at low-energy Jeb Bush's expense. He was not having any fun up there tonight. And that's one of his comedic, his ability to play to an audience, play to a crowd. That is his superpower, and that was

wholly absent tonight. Yeah, I totally agree. Go ahead. And that's hard to do, for her to kind of ridicule him without looking petty or like a jerk. Like there's a very fine line to walk there. And she didn't really come off as a jerk at all. She came off as like exactly like you said. She hit that well. Yeah. And for people who didn't follow the Lex Friedman interview or didn't listen to the Lex Friedman interview,

he's one of these guys who is like, I love a lot of things about you, but I don't like January 6th. I don't like that you challenged the election. Why can't you just say that you lost? And clearly either he was ready to pander or his advisors were like, please, just please. He's going to ask you about this. Please just say you lost. And he finally says, I lost by a whisker. Right.

And he was absolutely not being sarcastic. Right. And he was not. He was not being sarcastic. I listened to it. I listened to it multiple times. It was genuinely kind of a historic moment. Yeah. And I was like, well, maybe this is a new strategy.

He's putting this behind him. And then, I mean, this is the thing. And I'll say this too. JD just today did the all-in summit. And they asked him, would you have certified the election? He's like, no, I'll say this too. JD just today did the all in summit and they asked him, would you have certified the election? He's like, no, I would have had an alternate state. I'm like, okay, here we go. Like, it's like, this is what we want to do. This is what we want to do. This is what we want to do two months before the election. Okay. This, this, this is it. This is

what we've decided to go with two months before the election. The number one reason why a lot of suburban people voted against you in 2022, right? Arguably one of the huge hits on him in that race in Ohio. I can't really blame J.D. because I think a big part of the reason he got the vice presidential gig is because he had said that before. Totally, Kristen. And there's like, that's why he's in the slot. So he's like, this is my job to stick with this thing. How about we just don't say it? How about we just talk about the border again? We're like, oh, you know, that's an interesting thing. We should talk about the border. And Trump could have told J.D., look, I know you've said that and I got you on the ticket, but we're done with that.

We're moving on. And another thing is that he inexplicably disavows J.D. Vance, who gave him the greatest layup of all time. And he said, J.D. said, yeah, he would veto a national abortion ban. So they asked him about it like, hey, J.D. says you're going to veto a national abortion ban. And he's like, well, in fairness, we hadn't discussed it. Yeah, let's keep the door open to what, a 6% policy? What are we doing? It's like every single level, the calculation, the Trump, the calibration was gone.

It was the reactive Trump, the angry Trump. It was totally not in control. I can already guarantee you he's just going to complain about the angry Trump. It was totally not in control. I can already guarantee you he's just going to complain about the moderators. I think there's a high likelihood that he does not participate in another debate after what happened. Which would be another win for Kamala. Which would be a massive win for Kamala, who has to memorize a bunch of scripted, baited answers, right? Get some mods on her side. Boom. Yeah. And now you just go rally for two more months, maybe do one more bullshit interview with Dana Bash, and that's it.

So I just can't get over this. I would think some people also probably noticed, if they're voting on this abortion question, that his two points clash. Like he says he really believes on a moral level it should be left to the states, and he also won't say that he'd veto a national abortion ban. Right. That's not leaving it to the states. Yes, that's right. I don't even really understand why he is sticking on this. Like, J.D. Vance is actually very, like, what he's said in the past,

he actually embraces all the fringe views on abortion. If he can get there, why can't you? Right. So J.D. Vance would be like, no, no, we're good. And you can't say, I genuinely don't understand that, especially because he clearly knows he's got a problem on abortion. He clearly, you know, as soon as Roe versus Wade was overturned, he knew it was going to be a problem.

It was all over the place on this Florida amendment, and it was a mess. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each

other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal,

to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since we're talking so much about abortion, we have a little bit of this exchange. So let's go

ahead and play it. This is D3, guys, if we could play a little bit of this exchange on abortion. You're running me. J.D. Vance has said that you would veto if you did come to your death. Well, I didn't discuss it with J.D. in all fairness. J.D., and I don't mind if he has a certain view, but I think he was speaking for me, but I really didn't. Look, we don't have to discuss it because she'd never be able to get it. Just like she couldn't get student loans, they couldn't get student loans. They didn't even come close to getting student loans. They taunted young people and a lot of other people that had loans. They can never get this approved. So it doesn't matter what she says about going to Congress.

Wonderful, let's go to Congress, do it. But the fact is that for years they wanted to get it out of Congress and out of the federal government. And we did something that everybody said couldn't be done. And now you have a vote of the people on abortion. He went on this long tangent too about student loan debt. I mean, I know what he's trying to say, which is like, okay, well, you claim you're going to codify Roe, but you're not going to have the votes to do it. It is an opportunity. You actually got through that. I couldn't figure out. That's what he was saying. You're promising things and you won't be able to deliver them.

Right. And I mean, listen, I would love for Kamala in that moment to be like, that's why I'm going to get rid of the filibuster so that we can codify Roe versus Wade. But she in the section did the polar opposite of what Trump did, like in the border section, which is the stronger issue for him. She extended the conversation about abortion. She kept going in as long as we can. She kept going in on it, going back to it. And then he would feel like, oh, I got to respond in some kind of a way. And so, and she brought up visceral examples.

And he kept saying, you know, oh, everybody wanted this to be done. And she said, no, those women who were bleeding out in parking lots, they did not want this. The majority of the country doesn't want it. That's why in red state after red state, they chose freedom, she said, is how she framed it. And the other thing that I kept thinking about in this section, Brian, is the way that Biden handled the abortion answers in the last debate. Do you guys remember this? Yes, of course. He finished by talking about immigrants raping people. Yes, yes, he did. And now Trump is the one who's like, you know, bringing up his own worst issues. But yeah, and Biden gets asked the abortion Trump is the one who's like, you know, bringing up his own worst issues.

But yeah, and Biden gets asked the abortion question last time and everyone's like, all right, well, this is the layup for him. And he starts talking incomprehensibly about an undocumented immigrant raping someone. What? What is happening here? I got some fun breaking news here. Kamala's campaign will now ask for another debate, according to The Washington Post. Oh, OK. Yeah, I would too, you know. I certainly would too after whatever we all held as witness. I think we should talk then about what we've been alluding to is that, you know, there's this concept of like

frame control where Kamala was just totally in control of the frame constantly. So we're talking about the border. Oh, no, no, no, no. We're going to make a little thing about rallies that you're going to take. And then, oh, well, let's also talk about you said migrant crime reminds me of crime because you're a criminal. And he's like, wait, no, no, I'm not a criminal. You know, and it's like, what are we doing? No, you're supposed to be. And actually, that's one of Trump's most powerful things is that he was always in setting control of the narrative. He was somebody who could pivot the discussion where he wanted it to go. So we have the perfect example here. Guys, let's go ahead and prepare D4. This is exactly where Trump is talking about, Trump has asked a question about the border. Kamala has initially asked about the border. In her border answer, she gives a rally comment. We were all sitting here at the desk and I was like, here we go. He's going to take the bait. And then immediately, that's what he does. He focuses on himself, not on the issue. So D4, let's take a listen. And I'll tell you something. He's going to talk about immigration a lot tonight,

even when it's not the subject that is being raised. And I'm going to actually do something really unusual. And I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies, because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you,

the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your desires. First, let me respond to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there and then showing them in a different light. So she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That's because people want to take their country back.

Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject, what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don't want to talk. It's not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it.

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far as the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again. It's a very simple phrase, make America great again. She's destroying this country.

And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success, we'll end up being Venezuela on steroids. That's a perfect example. In that, you know, what we just watched, he takes a question about the border, spends probably 70% of it talking about the rallies. In it, he also has to bring up a pet hoax, at least as far as we know right now, about Haitian migrants eating pets. And he's not talking about, I mean, that's the other thing. Why do we have to do with the pets? Lake and Riley, we all know Lake and Riley's name.

You could say that. You could bring up any legitimate case of migrant crime and you're not going to get interjected with the moderator saying, hey, actually, you know, we talked to the city manager or whatever of Springfield and that they say that's not true. It's like he took the worst decision possible in every single moment there. But most importantly, Harris got under his skin and got him to whiff the answer on the border whenever, I mean, did he even say border czar? I'm trying to think. I believe the moderator. I think one time he said it.

The moderator instead is the one saying, Kamala, you were put in charge of the border. Trump, it's like complete incoherence. If you're watching that and you're a normal person who's genuinely concerned about immigration or the border or whatever, what did you get out of that? And that's the question you have to ask here.

Quick fact check. The immigrants are not eating cats. They're actually children who identify as cats. Oh, okay. Transgender children in, yeah, criminals, whatever. No, trans species. Okay. See, that's the other thing.

It's not actually a fact check. That came out in a couple of places. Because, like, we knew what the fuck he was talking about with the whole pet Haitian migrant thing because our brains are rotted and we're online way too much. There are millions upon millions of Americans at home who are like, what are you even talking about? In fact, someone very close to me who is like not that political and definitely not super online

was like, if you're gonna make up some shit, at least make it believable. You know, this is just preposterous and weird. Sorry.

Didn't it come from a Springfield town meeting? It's not a litigate. Isn't it some like super far right wing, ultra right wing lunatic? I have, I can tell you the genesis. The genesis of it is that there was a Facebook post in the Springfield community or whatever, in a group. On the group, it said, I hear from my neighbor's daughter's friend. It was like my neighbor's daughter's friend says that the Haitians are eating cats or

eating pets that's one two is a viral video a video goes viral of a black woman who was arrested for eating a cat okay but it turns out that that video did not take place in Springfield Ohio and she's and she is an American citizen she is not citizen. She is not Haitian. So it's actually the native-born people who are eating the cats. Turns out, yeah. She's probably a drug, also, she's probably

just a drug addict. But, okay, let's put it that. Yeah, and then that's your genesis. There was also a fake photo of a guy holding a goose. which happened in Columbus, Ohio. And there was no indication

that the man was an immigrant. So that's what we are. He's a member of the Kennedy family, I believe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, by the way, I think we should normalize eating geese. But anyway, that's a whole separate conversation.

I think fish and game regs are way too— That's not what comes down as pro-goose eating. I think we should. I mean, there's all these— Extremely, like, greasy. We're such a rich country. We've got these tasty ducks sitting in these ponds for a while. They're not that tasty.

I'll put it all aside. Anyway, he's so internet brained. Not only then, right? That he brings up this whole thing that most people won't even know what you're talking about, let alone what Kamala Harris has to do with it, let alone that it even

involves immigrants. They just have no idea what you're talking about. And there were other instances of that as well, where it's like, oh, when he, in the rally answer, in that same answer, he's talking about these conspiracies. Oh, she's busing in people, et cetera, et cetera, which again, normal people haven't heard of. They don't care about. It's just, I hadn't even heard that particular conspiracy. He refers to the January 6th rioters as J6, right? Which is also very like online lingo. It's subcultural lingo. And, you know, I do think that they're like a victim of their own success on Twitter. Like it's too much of a right-wing echo chamber and they're drinking too much of

their own Kool-Aid. They're high on their own supply. And they think that this stuff is like legit lands has national purchase. And any, most people who are at all up for grabs in this election are just like, I don't literally don't even know what the fuck you're talking about right now. And he has spent so, and I was sort of joking earlier when I said that getting kicked off of Twitter hurt, hurt his ability to be in touch with what's going on, but not really because because instead he was on Truth Social. Right. And that puts you in a subcultural genre where you start using words and talking to people who are just nowhere near the median. You're using words that they understand. Right. But anybody who's not in Truth Social doesn't. Got some big news. I had to confirm it before I read it. Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris. Oh, there you go. She just posted.

She says, like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven't already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed. Recently, I was made aware of AI falsely endorsing Trump. It was posted to a site. It conjured up my fears around AI. Blah, blah, blah. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 election

I'm voting for Kamala because she fights for the rights and causes I believe I think she's steady handed gifted leader she also posted a picture with her cat

so cat lady cat lady I mean look we all knew it was coming but oh my god with love and hope

Taylor Swift childless cat lady at the end you sure this is real yeah I swear to god but oh my god with love and hope Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady at the end oh you sure this is real yeah I swear to god I

that's why I had to be a hundred percent I just went to her Instagram page I refreshed it I read it right off of it myself well this comes right

on the heels of our cat conversation so it's a you know wow they're flip-flopping on how they feel about cats

they can't even keep their position straight on cats that is a big one that the taylor thing actually is a big one i mean people have exaggerated it before i don't know she's the most pop she's like she ascends you know pop culture the most famous person probably in the world to register i mean yeah but getting people to register to vote i don't know uh look you could be right crystal i just i'm not discounting it especially in a row row row your vote thing this whole cat cat stuff. I mean, you've got tens of millions of people who are following her. She'll be on tour. I only know this because I'm trying to get tickets. Right before the election in the

critical battleground states like Miami and Indianapolis. I'm just saying if she does pepper some of that in there. But I do think, you know, that is, it's significant in a certain way, not just the Taylor thing. The media conversation after this relative to how it was after Biden is night and day. You can imagine the backflips that they're doing on CNN and MSNBC. You can imagine the absolute coping Jesse Water tears over how bad the moderators were. You just don't want to be in that position. You want to be celebrating good stuff your candidate did, and they didn't have nearly enough moments for that.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah. No, that's it. I just want to know where Taylor Swift was at the DNC when I was promised a special guest, so we got Leon Panetta. All right.

That's what I want to know. Nor did we get Beyonce. So it's like, come on. What are we doing? Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships.

It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. We'll be right back. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant,

and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There was an interesting moment where, Ryan, beforehand, you asked us to take the over the under on Kamala doing her, like, I'm speaking. I'm speaking, yes. And we got a big surprise on that one, which was actually Trump. Did it multiple times.

Did he? Yes. Multiple times? One time he said, quiet, please. And another time he said, quiet, please. Trump channeling his inner girl boss. I'm talking. Perhaps this is a way for him to try to win the woman vote over by channeling his inner girl boss. Yes.

We have D6 is a little bit of that Trump, I'm speaking, reprising Kamala's. Very sassy Trump. Very sassy Trump reprising Kamala's famous line vis-a-vis Mike Pence. Let's take a listen to that. She gave up at least 12 and probably 14 or 15 different policies. Like, she was big on defund the police. In Minnesota, she went out. Wait a minute.

I'm talking now. If you don't mind, please. Does that sound familiar? She went out. She went out in Minnesota. You know, her face was very active too. That was clearly very intentional, her faces. There were times where she would actively go like,

It was a little Gretchen Whitver to me, for me. It was like she studied. There were times where she almost like had a look of like pity on her face. She was laughing at him. It was night and day, obviously, with Joe Biden. But it was also very different affect from what Trump had in this debate where he was just straight on, not looking at her at all, straight on, angry mug to the camera. And, you know, I think she, it was a, it was, I think, a smart play on, in her regard.

And like I said before, like they thought through how they wanted this debate to go. They thought through the spots they were going to pick. I guarantee they even practiced, okay, when he brings up criminal immigrants, you're going to say you're the criminal, and then he's going to go in on that. When you get asked about flip-flop, apparently there was a plan to bring up his dad's net worth or whatever it was that threw him off track there. He has become predictable enough that they knew what his points were going to be and how she could throw him off. They even telegraphed it in her opening remarks where she said, you know, you're going to, here's what you're going to see today.

Yeah. We have some of that. You're going to see a guy that talks about himself. We can roll that one. Why don't we, guys, can we play D1, please? That's right. That's a good point. Because this is important.

This was the set piece. She telegraphed what she was going to do. Then she did it, and he took the bait every time. Zero discipline. It was ridiculous. Let's take a listen to her, please, from the beginning of what she said she was going to do. Zero discipline. It was ridiculous. Let's take a listen to her, please, from the beginning of what she said she was going to do. D1. But I'm going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same

old tired playbook a bunch of lies, grievances, and name-calling. What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again. I believe very strongly that the American people want a president who understands the importance of bringing us together, knowing we have so much more in common than what separates us.

And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans. So there you go. Like you said, Ryan, she set up. You know what that reminded me of in the moment and did rewatching it there? Remember when Chris Christie destroyed Marco Rubio? Because he said, watch. He said he has his memorized talking points and then Marco Rubio goes on to recite his memorized talking points and use them over again. And then Christie's able to see he's doing the thing I told you he was going to do. And Kamala did that exact same thing with Trump. Like, here's what you're going to hear tonight. And then when he would do something like this, see, I told you this is what he was going

to do. Yeah, you're exactly right. So I was just telling you guys while that clip was playing, a reporter who's in the room, the spin room, asked Lindsey Graham, how did you think the debate went? He said the debate team should be fired and that Trump was unprepared. Quote, disaster. As you said, Crystal, it's never Trump's fault. It's never Trump's fault. This is like when, remember they were saying that about Biden? Jim Clyburn originally, his original cope, he's like, oh, he wasn't well prepared. He was reciting facts. They did a lot of throwing the staff under the bus, remember? It was, oh, they worked him too hard and they were having him memorize too many facts or whatever instead of just letting Joe be Joe. Yeah, there was a lot of that. Yeah, and we're going to watch

that now. I mean, Trump is a capricious man. He's deeply sensitive. So what's going to happen? He is going to lash out at his staff. We're going to see multiple truths and others. I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see, you know, who was it? Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. Already there's major tension in the campaign between him and Corey Lewandowski. Corey's going to use this against them. Corey's going to use this against them.

See, they screwed you, Mr. They are the ones who screwed you. That's so true. And Laura Loomer was on the plane with Trump, right, today, on the way. Guarantee you she'll be like, oh, you got to get rid of these people. So look, when Trump- She's the one that told him about the Haitian cat situation, I'm sure. When Trump is in a bad spot, what happens is he always retreats to the most sycophantic, like the people who are the most willing. We saw this in Stop the Steals. Used to be the evangelicals.

When I was, yeah, when I was covering him in the White House, I saw this all the time. When things got bad, it wasn't Jared and Ivanka. It was the Bannons, the Jenna Ellis's, all these other people. So I predict something like that. Mike Lindell. Mike Lindell, bingo. Exactly. The overstock CEO. And that's only going to make things worse, right? It's going to make things even worse as we get into the overall stretch. I think this is a really good point because this takes us beyond the theater of the debate. And I think the theater itself doesn't really change the debate, doesn't really change the race that much. Like it could have if Kamala completely face-planted or if like Trump fell off the stage.

But, you know, I don't see this moving the polls a whole lot in one way or another. But the way that it will substantively affect the race is exactly what you're talking about. The way that Trump reacts to it because he can't handle it. He was humiliated by a person he has contempt for. And right, he's going to take it out now on people like La Civida. Yeah, people who are like professionals. And it will bring out the worst side of him. Yes. And he will retreat to the, yeah, exactly, to the worst people around him.

And those worst people around him will use this to their advantage. Right. And so there's only, what, how many days left? There's not enough time for him to be upending the race. And some states are, you know, starting to vote like now. Next week, yeah. North Carolina's out. It's a disaster.

And North Carolina, as we were talking about in our pre-show, has the high chance of actually being the number two, according to Nate Silver, tipping point state. So there's a lot of problems that happened for Trump tonight.

I genuinely, I mean, look, everyone always said that Hillary won, you know, the general consensus was Hillary won all three debates. She still lost the election. Okay, so I'm like, we'll see.

You know, I think she'd probably still win. I think her consensus was also kind of wrong. Was it? No, no, no. I don't disagree with you. I'm saying the media, the media conversation around it was that Trump had lost quote unquote, all three debates. Yeah. So look, could he still win? Yeah. Sure. What will this have effect on the polls? I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think she'll get a bump? Yeah. You think like maybe one, maybe two? I do think she will get a bump. I think it will be certainly not as consequential as the

Biden debate, obviously. But we do have very unique circumstances here. People feel like they don't really know who Kamala Harris is. And this was her first really big test on a giant stage. And I think the ratings for this are going to be astronomical. I mean, just from the normal people who aren't really political in my life that were texting me about it today. I have a feeling the nation was tuning into this. And certainly they will be tuning into the clips that get run and pulled from it, for sure. And she passed the test. She did more than pass the test.

And he, the worst side of him, was on display. So I do think that the polls will shift some. Do I think that it's going to be massive? No. Does it go back to, you know, more like what it was going into the convention when she had a pretty clear lead, but, you know, still very much on the nice side? I think that's probably where we're headed. Yeah. And then the question is, does that sustain? Is she able to sustain that? Because to Ryan's point, you don't have to sustain it for that long. Like, we're down to the wire already. And Kamala says now she wants to do another debate. Do you guys think Trump is going to want to do this again? I do not think he, well. It depends. So he has agreed to NBC and Fox. She has only agreed, I believe, to NBC.

So is he going to agree to an NBC News debate? Like, I have a high— Maybe she would agree to Fox. I mean, I'm not sure she would agree to Fox. I don't think she would. Just because, look, when you came out of a good debate, and then you just say, oh, I'm not going to, you know, acquiesce to a sycophantic people, even though the moderators on this one were biased in favor of you, there'd be

enough media cover that she could probably get away with it. I think it is a very legitimate question of if Trump participates in another debate. I'm not ready to say he won't, but just because his vanity generally gets the better of him and he always thinks he can take someone. And he's agreed. I mean, look, he agreed to debate Biden. But at this point, now he's got a debate which got Biden out of the race, which was objectively a disaster for Trump and the Trump campaign. And now he has another debate where he's going to 100 percent what's going to happen. He's going to blame the moderators and he's going to blame his staff. Does he have the wherewithal to accept another debate under those circumstances? I'm not 100 percent sure. He might have taken away both debates

in this race so far were bad for me. So why would I do another one? But I actually think that helps Kamala as well. I think you're probably right. You probably got a little bit of a bump. I mean, I certainly don't think the election was won or lost or anything like that tonight, but I think it is very consequential in that he blew a moment where both she rose to the place where she needed to be. She probably reassured a lot of voters about like the who are you question. And then worse, every time she didn't want to reassure them about anything that she fake believes, she just laid up this very classic attack on Trump of he only cares about himself. And then he would validate those by taking the bait on all of these

ridiculous areas. So on the issues front, he really failed to actually shine in the ways that I think he needed to. And that's objectively a disaster for his campaign. Yeah, he hasn't gotten over Biden leaving the race yet. Yeah, that was another piece. He kept talking about Biden.

He's probably going to fume about that for days on truth and maybe jump over to Twitter with that. And part of that is, part of not accepting Kamala Harris as his opponent comes from, I think, him just not respecting her whatsoever, holding her in complete contempt. And when you hold your adversary in contempt, it only comes back to bite you. That's right. Should we take some questions?

That's absolutely right. Yeah, go ahead and pull up some questions. One last thought I had before we get to the questions is I think we also learned a lot about Kamala's theory, political theory of the case and her approach in this debate. This was not a debate about here's my policy, here's how I'm going to deliver. It was an attempt to turn it into a referendum on Donald Trump. She had one policy, $50,000 for startups. Yeah, right. Not a bad policy. I actually was at the bathroom. You guys told me about this, but Trump gets asked about health care.

And what did he say? Like, I have some concepts and formation. I have concepts of a plan. I have some concepts of a plan, quote, but I'm not president. Right. Okay. But it was, you know, there was very little policy. And that was clearly by design. And they also started running this ad today, I think, where it was a reprisal of Obama's crowd size joke.

And so you know that that rally line was planned to coincide with the Obama rally-sized joke. And, you know, so they're leaning into that as well. That was like their equivalent, I think, of that little girl was me moment that they had planned out in advance. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally

intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to

tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue

for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. So we have a question here. Just a reminder to everybody who is watching on YouTube or Rumble or anywhere else who's not watching on Locals. We're taking questions from our premium subscribers. If you do want to ask a question, become a premium subscriber. BreakingPoints.com So this first one is a great one. From Jude1234.

Was this worse for Trump than the Biden debate in 2020? Great question. The Biden debate in 2020? The question. The Biden debate in 2020? The very first one. The bad one. I have to think about it. I'm not sure. If I had to say, I think this one was probably worse.

Just because first time against Kamala. Biden is such a known quantity. So many more questions about Kamala and her abilities. You rising to her. I think the stakes were higher in this debate and that's why it matters more. And the opportunity was so much greater. Like, there was so much damage he could have done because she's not known. There's only so much you can do to a 2020 Biden. And those views of her are hardening very quickly. So every opportunity

you miss to define her, throw her off balance, make her appear like, you know, the word clouds that we got that were incompetent, make her appear like that caricature-ish incompetent person that, you know, has that image that has been spun up over these number of years. Every time you miss those opportunities, the clock is ticking down to election day point by point. So, you know, also that Biden debate, I believe it was probably a little earlier, too. So there was also probably more time to recover from it. But they were also just both individuals whose images were largely hardened. So it was the stakes were a bit lower.

It's actually later. September 29th. Crazy to think about, I know. Wow. September 29th, 2020. All right, what else have we got here? They say, oh, question. What were your thoughts on the foreign policy sections of the debate?

Yeah, I think we can all guess. I mean, this lady, I'll let you guys handle Israel. On Ukraine, ridiculous. She basically implied that the only acceptable condition of victory in Ukraine is total Ukrainian victory. It's like, okay, we're going to be there until the goddamn end of the century then, if that's the plan. On Afghanistan, she was both defending the first time that a Democrat has defended Biden's withdrawal of Afghanistan. Cool. I think the—

Let's give her a con. A proxy was out there on the Sunday show defending it at the time. So she's like, well, it's good that we got out and now we're not paying for it. And I was like, oh, this is good. You know, this is good. And at the end, she's like, and he invited a terrorist to Camp David. I'm like, well, you know, we were fighting a war against him. So that's probably how you should end a war. You want to negotiate at Camp David. There's a lot of bad people living at Camp David. That's how you get some shit to be over. It's just incoherent. So anyways, those were my general thoughts.

I'll let you guys handle Israel. Go ahead. On Ukraine, I noticed a little, not to whine on behalf of Republicans, but there was a moment where David Muir is saying, do you want Ukraine to win this war multiple times? Yes, that's right. And Trump says, I want the war to end. Yeah.

Unusually anti-war for a presidential candidate. Yeah. Like against the war. By far, in my opinion, like his best answer. Because he gave the same one to CNN and the media freaked out about it then too. And he's obviously on the side of the American people who want to also end the war. But then when he circled over to Kamala Harris for that question, he said, I want to ask you about support for Ukraine. Which is different than saying,

to ask you about support for Ukraine, that's different than saying, do you want Ukraine to win the war? It's a much softer way of letting her into it, but then she still went in extremely hawkish. The equivalent question would be, are you going to just continue this war forever? What are your conditions?

At what point do you end? Is it important to negotiate? Right. I mean, listen, on the foreign policy. So first of all, I thought overall the foreign policy section was Trump's strongest section. I thought if the whole debate was that section, they were roughly at a draw.

In terms of the substance, I mean, Kamala's Israel answer was exactly what Kamala's Israel answer has been. The question was framing was actually kind of sympathetic to Palestinians. It was like, hey, there's been a lot of suffering, you know, this many have died and nothing has changed. What would you do different? Nothing. Lay up to, you know, put some distance between yourself and this president and this horrifically, like, you know, atrocious policy that is wildly unpopular. But we all knew she wasn't going to do that. We talked about it beforehand. She went through her whole, like, memorized, same thing she said at the convention, same thing she says every time she gets these

answers. So that sucked. Obviously, Trump sucks on Israel. You know, he's always and his line is always the same. Oh, this never would have happened. Never would have happened. OK, well, it did. So what now? Right. In terms of Ukraine, you know, on the substance, obviously, the worst crime that we committed on Ukraine was scuttling. And now we have even more confirmation of the way we scuttled this early peace deal that could have could have avoided so much tragedy and loss, etc. And there's no indication that she has any desire to break from the Biden policy on Ukraine. I also would be remiss if I didn't say it's one of the areas where his policy is actually the most popular in terms of, you know, when people ask, how's he doing on this and that issue? This is one of the areas where he pulls the best. So to separate my own feelings on the issue from,

you know, what I think, how it will be received, all her bluster about the Taliban in Afghanistan and what she said about Ukraine and standing with our allies. And that's why we have to turn a page on Donald Trump and also baiting him there too. Remember about foreign leaders having contempt for him. She did that in that section as well, which he again took the bait and spent an inordinate amount of time talking about Viktor Orban for God knows what reason. But I think that the way she presented those things, even though I disagree with her in certain very key and important ways, I think it probably did land with the general audience. The funny thing is, on the Orban point, it's like, you know, we would be lucky

if 15% of this country knew who Emmanuel Macron was. Like, the president. It's like, dude, name check, Victor Orban. But this is, again, the online... I know who Victor Orban is. This is the online brain, because this is a leader that there's a fixation with in online right-wing subcultures.

Oh, that's crazy. You know, you drop a true social about Viktor Orban and everybody knows what you're talking about. I'm like, yeah, grandma in Wisconsin definitely knows who Viktor Orban is, bro. Like, yeah. Can people even name the prime minister of the UK? Probably not. Like, no way. That's like our closest ally, let alone the damn president of hungary oh

and maybe somebody in the comments can help us out here because i have had no success finding out what the heck kamala harris was talking about with this thing where accusing trump of giving chips to china like remember early on she said trump sold us out by giving our chips to China to make their military better or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what it was about. There's got to be some CFIUS. I'm sure there's some something. If I had to guess, it's something about.

He even looked confused like, I don't know what you're talking about. It's also certainly not true because the Trump administration banned Huawei. They had CFIUS that it put. And they arrested like the vice president of Huawei, right? Well, no. Well, that was, I think that was Canada. I'm pretty sure you're talking about.

Yeah. Possibly with US influence. Anyway, we don't need to get bogged down. But she took the tack in that whole, in that whole portion of trying to out hawk

Trump on China. Right. She even was like, you sent a tweet about President Xi congratulating him. Oh, and she did the lab leak. Oh, yeah. That was your favorite part. Kamala's a lab leaker. She was like, you sent a tweet about President Xi congratulating him. Oh, and she did the lab leak. Oh, yeah.

That was your favorite part. Kamala's a lab leaker. She was like, Xi congratulated President Xi when he was covering up the origins of COVID. I'm like, what? So Kamala, you know? You won. You know Kamala? Okay.

Oh, wait. Okay, Ryan, let's at least take that, bro. We won. It took us four years we got the the vice president of a democratic administration to admit at least that there were quote-unquote questions around the funniest way for her to finish her closing remarks we've been like oh and by the way trump funded the wuhan yeah yeah yes and then he covered it up yeah f, Fauci and Trump. Trump-Fauci funded the Wuhan lab. Just skip Fauci.

Trump funded. Trump funded the Wuhan lab. Obama had a moratorium. Yeah, that's right. And he lifted it. Trump reversed the Obama moratorium on gaming. He would have melted right there. Oh, my God.

Game over. Game set. And every Democrat would be like, yes, that's exactly what happened. They would. Yes, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. They'd be in the spin room immediately afterwards. Natural origin.

Like, Bacari sellers or whoever. I never believed in a natural origin. I don't want to talk about that. One last question, I think. From Tara Albaran. What was the single most determinative moment in the debate, and what do you anticipate the cope will be? The one that we played where he responded on rallies. That was it.

That was when it was solidified for me. I think that was roughly, what, 25, 30 minutes or so. And it was the first time of the border section. And I said, that's it. He's lost. He lost it. He has no discipline. He let himself get riled up and angry.

And from then on, I think it would just continue to be downhill. And he did it over and over and over again. If people were watching from the Skycam, they could have seen Sagar flopping around like a fish in a boat. It was so interesting. I was mad. You believe in things and you see them go to shit on national television, you're like, okay, all right, great. I'm torn between that moment or that series of moments where she just, you know, throws out the bait and he just chases after it like, you know, whatever. Or the abortion exchange because I do think. That's true., you know, whatever. But, or the abortion exchange, because I do think.

That's true, that was big too. And this is, you know, it was kind of Kamala-esque, frankly, because she normally is the one who gets a predictable question and screws it all up. There was nothing more predictable in this debate than that you were going to get asked about abortion. Like, you knew this question was coming. You know, specifically, you're going to get asked about a national abortion ban knew this question was coming. You know specifically you're going to get asked about a national abortion ban, which J.D. Vance had said you would veto. You knew this was coming and you can't handle,

you still don't know what to say on this issue. I think it's just that one is so consequential to so many voters. It's clearly been such a motivating factor and it's just such a clear winner for Democrats that, you know, I do think that that also was a very determinative moment. What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, the knock on Harris was that she doesn't prepare. Instead, Trump didn't prepare. And he just, he flopped. I think that that's right. Like, her being able to just lead him by the nose around just made him look ridiculous. Yeah.

And made him miss all the opportunities he has to score points where his policies are more popular. Yeah. Interesting. So apparently Trump himself actually just came into the spin room. Of course he did. So that's generally a bad sign. That's a sign he knows it went bad. So apparently Trump himself actually just came into the spin room. So that's generally a bad sign. That's a sign he knows it went bad. You know, I also knew he realized towards the end it went bad because there was a moment when they were getting to the final questions where he starts trying to rattle off everything that he'd clearly prepared. Like fracking and Medicare fraud, but ending private insurance.

It was like, oh, you realize the clock is ticking down. Right. All your good stuff. And you're trying, you're like, oh shit, I didn't say this. I saw that too

with his last statement. He was trying to just spray and pray all about their house. That's exactly right. It's been a long time. That's the other problem. I realized very early on

is statistically the vast majority of people only watch for like 30 minutes. Almost nobody watches this entire thing. You're very rare if you do. You watch the first 30, like get a sense of it, and you go to bed, especially if you're on the East Coast.

And that was when Trump really whiffed it. They had whiffed it on abortion, and then he whiffed it on immigration back to back. The two most consequential issues of this entire election. So that was my takeaway. And knowing him too, the fact that he's in that spin room, he is there because he probably immediately turned on the television afterwards, saw the coverage, and he goes, I need to go out there and I need to reclaim. He's trying to change the narrative. So far, I haven't seen him spin it back.

I mean, those days are kind of over. You know, I think the spin room used to be a lot more consequential than it is at this point. But to your point about his closing statement, the message there is very effective. It's like, okay, you got all these great ideas. Where were they for three and a half years? How does it take you to the very end of the debate before that ever comes out of your mouth? Totally. Because that should have been what he could have hit her on that over and over and over again.

And that's how you get a message to actually sink in. You can't just say it once at the end of the debate. That needed to, that could have been a refrain, you know, no matter what she was talking about on Ukraine, on healthcare, on energy, whatever it was, he could have been saying that. And it doesn't come out till the very end when he realizes like, oh shit, I got to do something to try to turn this around and put lipstick on this pig yeah that's right all right any closing thoughts ryan what do you think uh i think trump going out to the spin room is great evidence of the point that you were making earlier that this could that he he's gonna unravel for a week or two but so much more could still happen. Like, maybe there's a breakthrough in Ukraine or something.

Like, a collapse over there. Like, the election is still wide open. Yes. That's the point. Yeah, that's absolutely. So, what do you think is going to happen with the polls with regard to this debate, if anything? I think she probably does get a little tiny bump from people leaving Trump. Yeah.

Like, a couple people are like, yeah. You know, one thing, I think she's going to raise an absolute fuck ton of money. She's going to raise so much money. Like $100 million like in a week or something crazy. And she just has to make people not hate her. Yeah. And she did fine. Right.

If that's the goal in that debate. And be an acceptable alternative. Be an acceptable non-Trump. And people be able to envision you in the role and like rise the occasional person. Still no idea what she stands for. Still no idea what she stands for. Crystal, any last thoughts? Yeah.

No, I mean, I think we've covered it all. Not a good night for Trump. Not determinative, right? I think she did herself a lot of favors. And the question has been, can she like vibe and meme her way into November? And every day that goes by, we're closer to her being able to pull that off because she's going to get a phenomenal news cycle out of this. Right. She's going to get a phenomenal news cycle. The clips are going to be circulating. He's going to be fuming and doing himself no favors. There's

going to be all kinds of like leaks out of his campaign, this one throwing this one under the bus and all that stuff. And so I think the strategy of running out the clock and vibing and memeing until November is kind of working out pretty well right now. Certainly could work. Also, now Taylor Swift has weighed in. So yeah, my general one is just what a missed opportunity. And it just shows you that the Trump, the chaotic Trump, the one that everybody said shouldn't appear, he just can't help himself sometimes. And if you're such an easy mark for Kamala, who's not, let's be honest, we're not looking at the most talented politician in modern American history. I think a lot of people wanted you to be from those undecided voters we saw in the New York Times.

You give Kamala an equal shot at that, and that very much, you know, that ethos through the election going up, it could be what costs you at the end of the day. When we're this tight, everything matters, and the stakes were crazy high. There was no—his greatest asset is, asset is his charm and his levity. And when he makes people laugh when they don't even want to laugh. And there was none. None of that side of him tonight. So, yeah. Be interesting to see what he's saying in the spin room.

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