Global News Podcast - Special Update -Trump Harris Debate

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Trump and Harris have clashed on issues including the economy, immigration, and foreign policy in a fiery presidential debate. Both sides accused each other of weakness and spreading false information. We bring you analysis from Washington. Also: We hear from Missouri where presidential election day will also see voters decide whether to legalise abortion. And western nations have imposed new sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is a special updated edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, bringing you the latest on the US presidential debate. I'm Paul Moss, and as we're recording this podcast, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have just finished trading blows in what's been a bitter and at times volatile debate.

She is Biden. You know, she's trying to get away from Biden. I don't know the gentleman, she says. Clearly, I am not Joe Biden. And I am certainly not Donald Trump. We'll have more from the debate and analysis from Washington. Also in this podcast, the rest of the world news. Western nations have imposed new sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine. And 26 people are confirmed dead and dozens more are missing after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Senegal. It's been said that presidential election debates rarely change voters' opinions or shift the polls much one way or the other. And yet, this has already been an election contest like no other in American history.

And with the two sides closer than ever, even a small shift in support could make a big difference, particularly in those key swing states. And while this was not a unique debate, it was certainly more heated than most, the allegations about each candidate more exotic. Here was Donald Trump blaming Kamala Harris for letting in too many immigrants and repeating a debunked allegation that they had unusual culinary tastes. 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.

The Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that. Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you've heard. You talk about extreme. Kamala Harris has previously been criticised for laughing too much, but her mirthful derision there was a stance she often took during the debate when confronted with Donald Trump's allegations. It had been widely reported that Mr Trump's team were telling him to refrain from abuse, to hold back on the aggression.

But it's not entirely clear he was listening. But then Kamala Harris was very much on the front foot. Here she was warning of what a Trump presidency would mean for the war in Ukraine. If Donald Trump were president Putin would be sitting in Kiev right now and understand what that would mean because Putin's agenda is not just about Ukraine. Why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch? I asked our correspondent in Washington,

Tom Bateman, for his assessment. Well, I think you're going to hear both sides talk about why this worked out for them that it was a victory for them that's inevitable there wasn't a major disaster involved in this it wasn't like the June debate you saw confident performances from the two of them but I think given that Kamala Harris had the bigger challenge here as the untested quantity the new entrant to the race I think they're going to be pretty pleased and happy with the result here. Because what you saw throughout this was the sort of temperament of Donald Trump, his frustration and at points anger sort of showing through,

him feeling he had to resort to his political rally mode and really starting to get into some of those more rambling lines that you hear him giving his supporters. While she attempted really to keep a very cool and calm approach to this and really effectively baiting him and then sort of setting a trap and then allowing him to walk into it. And we saw that happen really quite a few times throughout this. The moderators would then try to fact-check some of the more outlandish things that Donald Trump was saying, and that was making him angrier. So I think the dynamics, which he had clearly carefully tried to orchestrate,

worked for her, and I think her side will be pretty pleased with the result tonight. There was, as you said, quite a lot of baiting, there were insults. But contrary to some predictions, they did get into the nitty-gritty of policy. What were the standout issues, do you think? Well, they really did, actually. And there were a few moments where you thought both because of the strength of the question from the ABC hosts

and also just some moments of revelation. For example, they pressed Donald Trump on whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war against Russia. So they asked him that repeatedly and he wouldn't say that. What he talked about is he wanted the war to end. Now, that was very telling. I think that the Harris side will interpret that or want it to be interpreted as him refusing to see that there should be a Ukrainian victory at the end of this and therefore abandoning a US ally. That was a strong line of journalistic questioning. I thought there was also a moment where on gun control, where Kamala Harris had repeatedly said

she wanted to come back on a point that Donald Trump had said that she wanted to take everyone's guns away. And she came back and said that Tim Walls, her running mate, and her were both gun owners. Now, that was an insightful moment that I think a lot of viewers wouldn't necessarily have known about. So there were some important moments. And it did, as you say, get into quite a lot of detail in important policy areas, but both domestic and foreign as well. And what you saw was, Kamala Harris,

I think there was a preparedness to realise that the economy is a weak point for her because of the very significant inflation that's happened under Biden-Harris administration. And she'd obviously made a conscious decision not to shy away from that. She really turned it, tried to turn it to a campaigning point, repeatedly saying she wanted to create this opportunity economy, $50,000 startups for new businesses, and talked about this opportunity economy, which became really a tagline that she used in her sort of closing statement as well. So it did get into the detail. You told this programme, just as the debate was getting underway,

that election debates don't normally shift opinion much, but that this time might be different. Obviously, it's too early. The polls haven't come out yet. But what's your guess? Well, I mean, I sort of stand by the first point that you're not going to see sort of fundamental shifts in the opinion polls. But that's really the point about this race, that it is so close. I think we were saying earlier, weren't we, there's probably around point about this race that it is so close i think we were saying earlier weren't we there's probably around 150 000 voters um that will be the most critical decision makers in this because they haven't really made their minds up yet or a bit more perhaps lying across six or seven swing states but i do think as a you know i come back to the point i think her side

knowing that they had to insert themselves into the minds of voters as her being a serious quantity that these people could vote for, I think that will work to their favour. But I don't think we're going to see a sudden sort of shift of the needle in the way the polls are at the moment. In her closing statement, Kamala Harris said she wanted to turn over a new page for America. I intend to create an opportunity economy, investing in small businesses, in new families, in what we can do around protecting seniors, what we can do that is about giving hardworking folks a break and bringing down the cost of living. I believe in what we can do together that is about sustaining America's standing in

the world. In response, Donald Trump accused her and the Democrats of having betrayed the American people. So she just started by saying she's going to do this, she's going to do that, she's going to do all these wonderful things. Why hasn't she done it? She's been there for three and a half years. They've had three and a half years to fix half years. They've had three and a half years to fix the border. They've had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn't she done it? Shortly after the debate, our BBC North America correspondent Anthony Zerker gave us this analysis of the candidate's performance. I think it was really interesting to see how Kamala Harris' strategy from the get-go

was to try to goad Donald Trump into topics and areas he didn't want to be on, talking about his crowd size, hitting him on foreign leaders, laughing at him. Time and time again, she got him on the defensive, on areas where Kamala Harris may have been weak, like immigration and the economy. And then when there were issues where Kamala Harris was the strongest on abortion, she was able to go on the attack. So if a debate is won and lost on the train on which the debate is held, on taking advantage of your strengths and deflecting your weaknesses,

it was a very good night for Kamala Harris. I think it would be hard for Donald Trump's side to feel good about what happened tonight because Harris did come in with weaknesses, came in with areas where the polls show that voters have real questions about her on the economy, on the administration's handling of Afghanistan, on immigration. And Donald Trump was never able to push those attacks really home. He seemed to get caught up in defending himself, defending his crowd size, as I mentioned, defending his record on civil rights, those sorts of things. It sucked him into responses that chewed in time he could have been using to really land rhetorical blows on Kamala Harris. That's all from the US presidential debate. Now to the rest of the world news

with Nick Miles. Well, as we heard there, one of the most important issues nationally in the US election, and one that's actually on the ballot in many states in November, is the question of access to abortion. In 2022, when the US Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe versus Wade ruling that protected a woman's right to an abortion, Missouri became the first state to implement a near-blanket ban on the procedure. The only exception being cases where the mother's life is in danger. Women have to travel to abortion clinics outside the state, as James Menendez reports. It was heart-wrenching. My world crumbled that day.

That's Erica, who lives on the other side of the state in the confusingly named Kansas City. A year and a half ago, she was given the news that no mother-to-be wants to hear. I had a very wanted pregnancy when my doctor came in and told me my son, who we named Easton, had a fetal anomaly. And she went on to share what it meant if he survived. And so for us, thinking about our living child, Easton, and his quality of life, our marriage, we did make the choiceless choice to seek an abortion. And compounding that horrible situation was the fact that Missouri has an almost total ban on abortions. Were there big questions about how you were going to get the treatment, the abortion you needed? So when I got to maternal fetal medicine and they ran the additional tests,

she told me where I could go. And it was a 10-hour car ride to Denver, Colorado, or an airplane to Washington, D.C. There are those on the other side of the argument who believe the sanctity of the fetus's life is the most important thing. What do you say to them? Our decision was made out of immense motherly love and fatherly love. I did not want my child to suffer. Yeah, that means that I will forever miss him and

grieve him and wish that things were different. But as a parent, aren't you supposed to protect your child? Aren't you supposed to love them, even if it means that you don't get what you want? Missouri became the first abortion-free state. Missourians have fought hard. Opponents of Amendment 3, as the vote on restoring the right to an abortion in Missouri is known, are still battling in the courts and in the court of public opinion to get it struck off the ballot in November. That campaign has been led by Republican State Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman. I believe that every life is sacred and that we should do everything we can to protect the unborn.

And all the polling suggests that a majority of Americans believe that there should be some access to abortion. And we've seen Donald Trump, for example, apparently flip-flopping on where he stands on this issue because he seems to be aware that actually this may cost him the election. Do you think that's true? No, I think if you look at the history of what Donald Trump has done in this issue, it's been a little bit messy. Going back to the 2016 campaign, I think that like most Americans, it's not his top issue.

He's not paying attention to it at the same level. And so he'll say things and then he'll learn more and he'll say, you know what, actually, I was wrong on that. That was Mary Elizabeth Coleman ending that report by James Menendez. And within the past few hours, Missouri's top court has ruled that a proposed abortion rights amendment to the state constitution will appear on the ballot in November, allowing voters to decide whether to restore legal abortion in Missouri. The United States and its allies are imposing new sanctions on Iran and Russia over what they call Tehran's escalatory decision to supply ballistic missiles to Moscow. On a visit

to London on Tuesday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Russia had received shipments of ballistic missiles from Iran and was likely to use them in Ukraine within weeks. For some time, the United States has warned of an additional threat, the provision by Iran of ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine. We've warned Iran publicly, we've warned Iran privately, that taking this step would constitute a dramatic escalation. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner told us more about the weapons.

This is a weapon system called the Fateh 360. Fateh means victory. It's an Arabic word, but it means the same thing in Farsi. They are short to medium range ballistic missiles. A ballistic missile basically goes up in a parabola and comes down very fast. They've got a maximum range of 75 miles, which is what, roughly about 120 kilometers. But they can carry a payload of up to 150 kilos of high explosive. So it's thought that they're going to be deployed on the battlefield in the next few weeks. And they will be quite a game changer for

Russia because it will allow Russia to use these against Ukrainian frontline positions, helping to push back their forces in the Donbass, where they're already slowly retreating, and freeing up Russia's own arsenal of longer range ballistic missiles, which they will then use to make life absolutely miserable for people in Kiev, Odessa, Lviv, Rivne, further afield cities like that. And there was further detail coming out today from the Russians about a new bilateral treaty between Russia and Iran. And that suggests that this might not just be a one off these missiles. It goes to the future as well. So that's doubly concerning. They, as in the US and Britain, are very concerned about this and also disappointed, I think, because Iran has a new

precedent. And Iran has made it clear that it wants to reach out and rejoin the rest of the world and take its place, its rightful seat at international forums and so on. They're saying it's going on about it in exactly the wrong way. It's going in the opposite direction by supplying these weapons and in return getting technology from Russia, missile technology and nuclear technology, forging this alliance of the pariahs, as somebody once called it. Well, it's a troubling cooperation, I guess. Don't forget that the two countries have got a common body of water between them, the Caspian Sea. And that's where they're able to ship these missiles across.

Clearly, the U.S. has been able to detect this, probably through satellites, but it could be human or signals intelligence as well. And the U.S. and the U.K UK have shown that disappointment, as you expressed it, in saying that there will be further sanctions on Tehran. But we've seen the sanctions don't necessarily prevent Tehran from developing these new weapons and sending them abroad. They don't. So the sanctions package has already been announced. There's a number of individuals who've been sanctioned. But I think most relevant, perhaps to UK and Europe, is that the E3, that's Britain, France and Germany, have announced some trade sanctions, which include transport. And that means that Iran Air, Iran's national carrier, is going to be

restricted from landing in Britain, but not for another year. So in that sense, it's pretty toothless. Frank Gardner. As we record this podcast, 26 people are now known to have died after a wooden boat carrying migrants capsized off Senegal's coast on Sunday. The authorities say more than 100 people were on board. Our Africa regional editor, Richard Kago, reports. coast on Sunday. The authorities say more than 100 people were on board. Our Africa regional editor Richard Kago reports. Distraught relatives and friends have gathered along the beach, anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones. So far, four people have been rescued and such efforts are still underway. The boat departed from Boer, about 80 kilometres south of Dakar,

bound for Spain's Canary Islands. In recent years, the number of migrants leaving West Africa through Senegal has surged. Mostly young men fling conflict, poverty and unemployment at attempting the dangerous Atlantic route to the Spanish islands, with nearly 30,000 arrivals recorded this year. Richard Kago. Still to come. Why should I have to cut my hair? People can have their hair all the way down to their hips as long as they want, but because

my hair grows out, I need to cut it. The campaign to end Afro hair discrimination. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step.

But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime,

all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. In Ukraine, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said his team are doing all they can to deliver justice for crimes committed by Russia. Karim Khan was speaking on a visit to Kiev at a children's hospital that was badly damaged by a Russian missile back in July. The ICC has already

issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and senior members of the Russian military, a move which Moscow has condemned. Our Europe correspondent Nick Beek sent this report from the hospital. A mum desperately calls out for her daughter. A missile has just hit their hospital. Oksana says she has no idea if her 16-year-old daughter Solomia is alive or dead. Later, they do find each other. Today, on a video call, Solomia told us her overwhelming emotion that morning had been fear.

It was very scary, but I tried not to listen to the explosions and stay calm. When the missile hit, I didn't immediately understand what had happened. I thought that maybe I was overthinking and worrying too much. But after some time, I understood everything. It's two months now since the massage strike at this hospital, and in front of us is what remains of the intensive care unit. Part of it has been completely levelled. All the windows are blasted out.

There's a huge amount of debris. And the sight of cancer patients, intensive care patients, bloodied, covered in dust and debris, being rushed to safety, shocked a lot of people, even in this war of so much death and devastation. And for a lot of Ukrainians, it represented Russia sinking to a new level in striking Ukraine's biggest children's hospital. The International Criminal Court has been investigating. And today its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, came to see the damage for himself and told us his team were pursuing all avenues to help deliver justice.

We're here for a purpose. It's not a sightseeing visit. It's to move forward, to make sure we pierce the veil of impunity and make sure the law is felt, and that's why we're here. Ukraine says Russia hit the hospital. Moscow claimed it was a Ukrainian air defence missile. But the United Nations concluded it was highly likely it was a Russian missile. So what does Solomia's mum Oksana think the ICC's investigation will bring? I think that this will not lead to anything, to any positive result.

There are international organisations in the world that could prevent all this happening in Ukraine. But no one has done anything so far. We put this to the ICC's prosecutor, Karim Khan, while he was at the hospital. We're doing our best. It's not going to bring the dead back to life and it's not going to mean that it's any easier for the treatment that she's having. But we're doing our part and if everybody plays their part, hopefully it can mitigate some of the harrowing stories that we're hearing around the world and also here in Ukraine. Both Ukrainian and international prosecutors hope in time, evidence gathered here will help point to a pattern of Russian attacks. Attacks far from the front line, with vulnerable civilians in the line of fire.

Nick Beek. The international human rights charity Global Witness says it's documented 196 killings during 2023 of people who were trying to stop the destruction of natural environments around the world. The report's lead author Laura Theronis told my colleague Paul Henry who the people who lost their lives were. A Colombian small-scale farmer trying to get on with their daily lives and having the sort of small plots of land encroached by corporate interest activists in the Philippines trying to fend off destructions of the land to make way for a large-scale airport. Indigenous peoples in the Amazon trying to protect their forests.

Latin America seems to be a centre of these kind of killings, tragically, and Colombia especially. Why there? Civil society and social movements and indigenous peoples and local communities are really powerful in Latin America. So they're really able to make their voices heard and they're being attacked for doing so. But also that doesn't mean in any way that being a defender in regions like Asia or Africa is any safer. And how carefully researched is your data? Can you establish direct links in all these cases between the murder of an individual and specific, say, corporate interests? In 2023, for instance, out of 196 cases, we were able to identify mining as the sector linked to the largest amount of cases, and that was 25 all in all. But murders are the most brutal form of attacks.

But we, you know, our report also features a number of cases from around the world of defenders who are luckily very much alive, but, you know, are subject to orders of non-lethal attacks, you know, including criminalisation, which is on the rise globally, but also threats and harassment and sexual violence. I mean, the list goes on and on. Who do you hope your report will really strike a chord with governments around the world whose responsibility it is exercise due diligence and therefore identify, you know, way before they come to any land to establish their extractive projects, just establish what risks there are, you know, and talk to the community there, you know, talk to them about what the risks might be and make right decisions about their operations that go beyond just profit and take into account possible human rights violations.

Laura Ferenes. Mel B from the band The Spice Girls has joined other black women in British entertainment by calling on MPs to end discrimination against anyone with Afro hair. A letter signed by 100 people says that hair discrimination is a pernicious form of oppression, which dates back to the slave trade. To stop this, they want the UK's Equality Act updated to make Afro hair a protected characteristic, along with age, race, religion and sexual orientation. The call has been made ahead of World Afro Day on Sunday. Actress and broadcaster Sarah-Jane Crawford is part of the campaign. She told my colleague Sarah Montagu about the discrimination. So it's really important to think about it in three main areas.

So we've got school, where typically, you know, a style that is synonymous with Afro hair from braids to fades, locks, cane rows, styles that are typically penalised in school. There are bans around having those hairstyles. You know, right from the get go, individuals are made to feel on a psychological level, as if the hair is inferior, it's not good enough. And I think it's because the Eurocentric aesthetic is considered to be more neat, tidy and professional. The other area, of course, then naturally goes into employment, where again,

Afro hair is deemed unprofessional which means that you know you experience anxiety before you even go into the workplace because we actually have research that shows that you know you are less likely to get a promotion from even being hired in the first place and then the third area is health what's really really sad is that women of color are more likely to be impacted by harmful toxins because of hair straightening products. And because of this desire to go after the kind of like professional Eurocentric aesthetic, you know, Afro hair is synonymous with African heritage. So if you protect the characteristic of Afro hair, then a teacher or someone in the workplace, it's then illegal for them to want you to have straight hair. It's then illegal for them to tell you that

you can't wear braids because obviously this is an afrocentric style or cane rose or a you know a fade if you're having your hair short or locks now I have to say you have the most amazing hair thanks have you ever experienced any of I think that definitely for me there was like an unspoken rule going into the world of broadcasting that I needed to have straight hair. I think it's definitely changed. I was chemically straightening my hair from as young as teenage against my mother's wishes. But my mother being Caucasian has a different hair type to mine. So she spent years trying to find different hair products for me that were going to work. And you know, she was navigating a journey of not being exactly sure what to do. And this is the case, you know, with

a lot of mixed heritage families as well. The industry in terms of hair care has definitely moved on, but has the conversations around what is deemed professional. I mean, it would be naive for us to say, is that even going on? Do you see what I mean? Well, the mad thing is, of course, if you have straight hair, you're trying to get some body and oomph in it the whole time. But you know what I mean? So if a woman walks into a workplace with a suit on and she has locks or a really large afro, that is not generally deemed to be professional as an aesthetic. And so therefore, indirectly, well, I think very directly, that is in itself racism. And that's why we need to update the legislation, update the Equalities Act and include afro hair as a characteristic. Sarah-Jane Crawford.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life.

I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care to hear more stories of recovery visit camh.ca if you're hearing this you're probably already

listening to bbc's award-winning news podcasts but did you know that you can listen to them without ads get current affairs podcasts like global news americast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership.

Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.