Morning Joe - Morning Joe 6/28/24

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

The Morning Joe panel discusses key takeaways from the first 2024 presidential debate.

What I'm going to do is fix the tax system. For example, we have 1,000 trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires in America. And what's happening? They're in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2% in taxes. If they just paid 24% or 25%, either one of those numbers, they'd raise $500 million, billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period. We'd be able to wipe out his debt we'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do child care elder care making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system making sure that we're able to make every single solitary

person eligible for what i've been able to do with the uh with with the, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare. After you rallied your supporters that day, some of them stormed the Capitol to stop the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral votes. As president, you swore an oath to, quote, preserve, protect and defend, unquote, the Constitution. What do you say to voters who believe that you violated that oath through your actions and inaction on January 6th and worry that you'll do it again? Well, I don't think too many believe that.

And let me tell you about January 6th. On January 6th, we had a great border. Nobody coming through. Very few. On January 6th, we had a great border. Nobody coming through. Very few. On January 6th, we were energy independent. On January 6th, we had the lowest taxes ever. You have 80 seconds left. My question was, what do you say to those voters who believe that you violated your constitutional oath through your actions in an action on January 6th, 2021, and worry that you'll do it again? Well, I didn't say that to anybody. I said peacefully and patriotically. And Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago on tape to her daughter, who's a documentary filmmaker, they say what she's

saying. Oh, no, it's my responsibility. I was responsible for this because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard and she turned them down. I had virtually nothing to do. They asked me to go make a speech. Look, he encouraged those folks from up in Capitol Hill. What they've done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What you have done, how you've destroyed the lives of so many people. All right. Two moments that in many ways defined last night's debate. Donald Trump's performance included his usual stream of grievances, along with many false and misleading claims. However, as you saw in that first clip, the debate was particularly rough for President

Biden. Concerns about his age, perhaps his biggest weakness, according to polls, were on full display as he struggled through many of his responses, speaking with a soft, hoarse voice, which his campaign blamed on a cold. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, June 28th. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, NBC News National Affairs Analyst John Heilman. He's also a partner and chief political columnist at Puck. They are both at the debate side in Atlanta. MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle joins us. And Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post and MSNBC political analyst Eugene Robinson. It's good to have you

all on board. I think we should begin with Joe, Willie and me and get your reflections on the debate last night. Well, I think I should start by saying without any apologies that I love Joe Biden and Jill. And I will gladly debate anybody, any time, any place, anywhere over the issue of whether Joe Biden has been the most effective president in passing bipartisan legislation and expanding NATO and responding to the rising threat coming from China by flexing America's strength around China, by having the strongest economy in the world, bar none, the strongest economy actually relative to the rest of the world in 50, 60, 70 years, the strongest dollar in half a century, the strongest military relative to the rest of the world, I would argue, and many others would argue, since 1945, I think his presidency has been an unqualified success.

If, however, you believe, as do I, and as do so many people who watch this program and who fear just how dark of a place a second Donald Trump term will take America, then I think it's critical that we ask the same questions about this man I love, respect, and whose public service in saving this country from Donald Trump over the last three and a half years I honor and always will. I think we have to ask the same questions of him that we have asked of Donald Trump since 2016. And that is, if he were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America, keep him on as CEO. If this were Donald Trump, time and time again, we talked about the Goldwater. Where is the Barry Goldwater to walk over and tell Richard Nixon it was over, to tell Donald Trump it was over. And now the question is, do Democrats need to do the same thing

of Joe Biden? I mean, these are hard questions. But the fact is, friends, failure is just not an option. In 2024, failure is not an option. So who I love, who I respect, who I revere for their work and their duty to service over their lifetime really is not relevant. It's not relevant for any of us. It's not relevant for Democratic leaders. It's not relevant for anyone. The question is, can we know Joe Biden can govern? And again, I'll debate that issue with anyone and I will win. I will destroy anybody that wants to debate Joe Biden's record over the past three and a half years. He can run the White House. He can run the country effectively, despite the barrage of lies that constantly come at him, like Donald Trump's lies last night. But can he run for president in 2024?

Donald Trump lied over and over and over and over again. And Joe Biden couldn't respond to any of those lies. In fact, as the New York Times said, he spent much of the night with his mouth agape and his eyes darting back and forth. He couldn't fact check anything Donald Trump said. And not only that, he missed one layup after another, after another. He couldn't respond effectively to Donald Trump trying to overthrow American democracy on January 6th. He couldn't respond effectively to Donald Trump's continued stream of lies about his own record, and he couldn't even respond effectively on the issue of abortion, where for some reason he darted wildly to the issue of immigration. And on immigration, as I said yesterday morning, any Democrat that can't turn to their Republican opponent and blast them for killing the strongest, toughest border bill in the history of America drafted by a right wing senator from Oklahoma. May not be up to the job. And so that's the question.

I know people are waiting and say, oh, and David Plouffe, I have such great respect for David Plouffe. He said we need to wait three or four days because Donald Trump really turned off swing voters in a lot of focus groups once they saw him again. And that makes a lot of sense. But the door was opened so many times. This race should not be close. We've been asking, why is this race close? We have no idea why this race is close. We've been asking, why is this race close? We have no idea why this race is close. We saw last night why this race has been close and why I fear Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States unless things change. And I will say, Mika, the one thing that I know that you believe it may have been because he was sick.

And and I'm open to that fact, because I'll just say, as I've said on the show, I spent three hours with this man, maybe back in March, three hours, cogent on top of the issues, on top of every issue around the world. And last night, he simply was not on the biggest debate stage ever. And I think what surprised me and what surprised a lot of people very close to Joe Biden is the fact that this man always rises to the occasion. And last night was was sadly for him and I believe for Democrats in this country. And again, if you believe what's at stake at this election is what we believe is at stake. I'll even use the word tragically, tragically did not rise to the occasion last night. OK, so as you can see, you won't see us spinning here on Morning Joe at all. But let me tell you what I believe. And then we'll go to Willie. Biden had a terrible night. He could not land a thought, not even in the closing statement, which is something that's the easiest part. Write down a few words, go through them,

go through the thoughts. And while I validate the chaos and hysteria Democrats might be feeling, anybody who cares about democracy might be feeling, anybody who cares about women's rights and our safety and our lives might be feeling, totally understand that. And at the same time as the night was over and I was hearing you on the phone and all our phones were exploding, I just had this gut feeling that I'm not ready to give up on Joe Biden. Not even close. Joe Biden has lost more in his life than he has won in every way, especially politically. This man has lost and lost. And and and the only time that he wins is when it matters.

And that is we have proof of that. He has lost in personal ways. He has lost and hit rock bottom in every way possible. And every time he comes back fighting. So for me watching what happened last night, again, it was terrible. It was terrible. There's no way to spin it. I still wonder what he's going to look like in a week. I wonder if he was sick. He came out on the stage and I thought something was wrong. I still believe he's the best choice for this country, even with that performance last night.

Because he was standing next to a man who represents fascism, who doesn't believe in this country and would not even agree to the results of this election if they were free and fair to him. A man who has incited a riot, a man who tried to overturn the election, a man who's liable of sexual abuse, a man who is a fraudster, a man who is a convicted felon. So many times Joe Biden has hit rock bottom. Last night was one of them. And I'm I'm just not going to jump to conclusions here and jump on the hysteria train. I am rocked a little bit by it. Didn't like it. Was really worried. But I really, truly believe in him as a president and as a human being. Well, and I know so many people watching do and agree with you.

And again, I already said what I think of the man personally and think of his job. I will say, Willie, that for me, I've been in politics long enough and I've been around politics long enough to know that often time doesn't heal all wounds. this debate does not lead to serious discussions between Democrats and the president, then what you end up having is sort of this frozen political situation where Democrats then start convincing themselves two, three, five, 10 days out that the guy in power, the guy that the people closest to power will suddenly, you know, they'll they'll start spinning and they'll believe their spin. And so I don't think that it's panic. I'm the first one we talk about Democratic bedwetting. I say that that is not this. This is this is like a war where we see a political battle for democracy. And this is like this is like losing a major battle. Is it panic after a war where a major battle is lost to say this general don't know if this general is up to leading the troops the rest of the way.

But I mean, again, these are just things that that Democrats are going to have to answer over the next couple of days. I'm curious your thoughts. Yeah, we'll talk a lot about the substance over the next few hours of the show about last night. Donald Trump did what he does. He lied. He lied about having the greatest economy in the history of the world. He didn't. Of course, he lied about his role on January 6th. He lied about immigration the greatest economy in the history of the world. He didn't, of course. He lied about his role on January 6th. He lied about immigration, what happened during his administration. He lied and he lied and he lied. That's all true. The problem is the American people were watching to see if Joe Biden in this moment, we talked

yesterday about how people have sort of tuned this out and they will tune in at two, three, four big moments. Last night was one of those to see if he was up to the job. And the resounding answer last night anyway was no. And it happened within the first 10, 12, 15 minutes. And there's been a lot of talk in the last 12 hours about how elected officials, Democrats, insiders, campaign strategists, people who also have to run on the ballot this fall, worried that they're going to lose if Joe Biden's on the ballot, and also donors that they're concerned. I think the bigger problem is that's all a conversation we'll have in a minute and what that means. The bigger problem is that regular people, people who don't watch

cable news every day, people who are not on Twitter, people who don't watch cable news every day, people who are not on Twitter, people who don't absorb politics the way we do. They watched last night and said, my God, I don't think he's up to this. They did tune in last night, many of them Democrats hoping for the best. And instead, their worst fears were confirmed. And I like you guys. I heard Kamala Harris's name a lot last night. I heard Gavin Newsom's name a lot last night. I heard Governor Josh Shapiro's name last night. He'll be a guest on our show in just a little bit here. I heard Wes Moore's name last night. People who desperately want what you just laid out, Joe, which is to prevent Donald Trump from being in the White House again last night, becoming convinced.

And maybe their minds can be changed. But it didn't feel like it last night that Joe Biden now cannot beat Donald Trump. That is the message not just from party insiders, but from regular people who will decide the election. And the thing is, Mika, this is not because I don't think any Democrat would want anything to be about power or about personality or about a personality cult. None of this is personal. I remember telling Newt Gingrich when he was shocked that we were voting to remove him as Speaker. He said, this is nothing personal. If we believe in what we believe, I would do this to my mother. I would do this to my mother if I believed she was standing in the way of our goals. And in this case, we were talking about a balanced budget and smaller and more effective government back then. Now we're talking about, Mike Barnicle,

democracy. And again, I'm not saying that everything happens today and maybe we wait a week. I'm just saying personal feelings, personal feelings, personal admiration, love, respect, honor, all the things I talked about in my feelings about Joe Biden, Jill Biden and their family that Mika and her family have felt about Joe Biden for 50 years that I felt for as long as I've known him that you felt about Joe Biden that cannot play a role in any of this. This is a battle for the future of American democracy. And now is a good time in June. Thank God in June and not October in June. This is the last chance for Democrats to decide whether this man we've known and loved for a very long time is up to the task of running for president of the United States. Your thoughts, Mike? Yeah, you know, it would be hard to be more

insightful than what we've heard from you, Mika, and Willie in the last 10 or 15 minutes about what happened last night. Watching it last night, I was reminded of a friendship I had for a long time with the late Kenny O'Donnell, who was then technically chief of staff to John F. Kennedy. And Kenny used to say that the primary job of the chief of staff or anyone that close to the presidency was to tell the president the bad news. Well, we now know what the bad news was from last night. Joe Biden had an awful night, a terrible night. And going forward, it's going to be up to, I mean, my phone, like Mika's phone, like everyone's phone, was filled last night with messages from the donor class, people indicating they were crying watching the thing, people upset because of what they

perceived to be Joe's really, really bad night visually. And it's such a visual thing, the TV and the mouth agape quote from the New York Times, all accurate, all true. And people indicating to me on the phone messages and phone calls that they felt badly for him. Unfortunately, nobody votes for president of the United States because they feel badly for someone. Elections, as you just indicated, Joe, are about the future. And the panic is now in full bloom, I assume, among the Democratic people who put together these tickets, who vote for delegates, who will go to the convention. Full blown panic. There's no doubt about that. The interesting aspect, and it's the only perhaps hopeful aspect

of all this, is what are the polls going to show on Sunday or Monday, an in-depth poll, about finally, you know, you saw Donald Trump for fully an hour and a half lying about every single issue that impacts people's lives, lying about abortion, lying about taxes, lying about the economy, just full blown lies. And unfortunately, last night, President Biden let every fastball hanging out over the plate go right by for a strike for Donald Trump. So that was an indication that he was just not up to it. Yeah. Last night. OK, OK, OK.

Hold on a second that I agree with everything you said, except for the last part of it. Everybody calm down and I'll tell you why. I mean, it's fine to not spin what happened last night and we're not going to. But by the way, in a Mika, everybody's calm here. No, you're the only one raising your voice. Everybody is calm here. But again, it's the let's just immediately pull this. Let's end this.

Let's find someone else. That's not what Mike said. That attitude toward this is what I am saying slow down on, because, again, there's no spinning it. But let's be balanced. Let's for once show some balance in a media world that is so shrill with imbalance that we've become inured to the difference between these two candidates. So let's put it this way. Gene Robinson, I'll go to you. Well, wait, wait, I just have to stop you. First of all, we always show balance. We are. Yeah. Secondly, nobody's panicking. I said these were questions that Democrats and Joe Biden needed to

ask themselves. And Mike said he missed one pitch down the middle after another and wasn't up to it last night. Right. OK. He said he wasn't up to it last night. He said last night. So I will say that it's not panic. I mean, it's not being panicked to understand what's at stake at this election and understand the window is closing very quickly. And if Joe Biden is not up to doing this and if last night did not reveal that to you and other Democrats, then it needs to be revealed pretty soon. Mike, finish your thought. Alex is asking me to go back to you to finish your thought and then back to Mika. Last night, if it's on the ballot, you have the chance to vote for a good man or a bad man. There is no contest here,

not even with last night's performance. Joe Biden is the good man. Joe Biden is the decent man. Donald Trump is the opposite. That's your choice going forward. Right, right. We all agree. Gene Robinson, Biden will hear the bad news. And knowing Joe Biden, he has tremendous perspective. He will take it hard and he will also know how to manage through it. What I'm talking about when it comes to balance, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are here in In this media landscape that we are living in, not on this show, but in the media landscape that we have to join, and many of them are pro-Trump networks or whatever, Donald Trump has had a thousand days where he has said something,

done something, said many things, including last night, where he appears to be completely unfit for office, completely oblivious of what the office entails, of what service means and is out for himself. Joe Biden had a horrible night. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. No, Joe Biden had a horrible night. Absolutely. At a very, very bad time. As Joe said, it is it is fortunate for the Democratic Party that this happened in June and not in September or October, because if it had happened in September, October, I believe it would have guaranteed the election of Donald Trump to another term as president. I think that would be disastrous for the country. You know, we have seen incumbent presidents blow the first debate before. But there was a big difference between those earlier examples and last night. In 2012, in Denver, Barack Obama blew the debate against Mitt Romney. And yes,

there was concern, and yes, there was bedwetting. But going into that debate, nobody thought Barack Obama was lackadaisical and uninformed. They just thought, yeah, he had a bad night. Going into last night's debate, a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, thought Joe Biden was too old and feeble to have another four-year term as president. And he came out last night, and he didn't dispel that impression, as I expected him to, but he reinforced it. And that is a real problem. That is a real problem. So my question is, yes, absolutely, Mika, there should be no rush to anything. Let's see how this develops over the next few days. But let's start thinking, or I believe

Democrats should start thinking seriously and concretely about scenarios, about whether Joe Biden can indeed run for president. As Joe said, we know he can be president. He has been an excellent president. I have never seen Biden like he was last night. Joe, you talked about your three hours with him. I haven't spent that much time with him recently, but the times I have spent with him, that wasn't the Joe Biden that I saw last night. But by the way, do you know who else said that?

You know that it was Kevin McCarthy, despite his what he said to The Wall Street Journal when he contradicted himself. Kevin McCarthy's staff said, Gene, that repeatedly he came back and told his staff that Joe Biden was an effective negotiator and drove the meetings. And so and so it's not just me. It's like Republicans that were in negotiations. There's a reason why you pass more bipartisan legislation than any president in a generation. But go ahead, Gene. Well, no, I mean, but the question is, how do you unring that bell that was rung last night? And that is my question. How do you sort of take that back? I don't know. Maybe, again, time and events and Donald Trump can certainly reshape this race in all kinds of ways that might be favorable to Joe Biden. But that was a really, really bad and significantly bad night, I think, because it reinforced what what was what is Biden's biggest weakness. And that's a that is a problem for, you know, in running for president. It's not a problem in being president, but it's a problem

in running for president in this very, very tight race where everything is at stake. And so do some concrete thinking here. Jonathan Lemire and John Holloman are down in Atlanta, the site of last night's debate. Jonathan Lemire, I'll start with you. Let's remember that the Biden campaign was the one who introduced the idea of this debate, of this early debate with this format under these terms so that they could sort of reset for the American people and establish that Joe Biden was up for the job. That was the point of this debate and the consensus is that he failed at that last night. I'll say again what we said at the top of the show. Donald Trump lied for 90 minutes. We'll go through all of it. Chapter and verse about

January 6th, about immigration, about the economy he had, about how he handled COVID. We could go on for four hours this morning on all that. That's all true. But that is not what people will remember coming out of last night. So what are you hearing? You were there last night talking to officials, talking to people down in the room after the debate. What are you hearing about last night and about what may happen from here? Well, let's start here. The stakes of this election couldn't be higher. And the loudest voice saying that has been the Biden campaign, saying democracy itself is on the ballot.

And they looked at this race. They saw a frozen race, a very static race. And to your point, Willie, they're the ones who wanted this early debate. They felt like they needed to grab Americans' attention, tell them this is your choice. It's Biden and it's Trump. You might not be happy about it, but here's where we are. Listen to Donald Trump. Let's remind you of why another four years of him would be so disastrous to this country. And they knew the bar that they had to clear was about Joe Biden's age and competency for the job. He cleared it at the State of the Union. He did not clear it last night. And every aide that I've spoken to, Democrats are deeply worried about what they saw from the

president. Yes, Trump lied. We will get into that. But the fundamentals here last night was that President Biden did not answer the bell. So I was here last night in Atlanta, Democrats scrambling. We had Vice President Harris, not scheduled to do any interviews last night, suddenly scrambled to do them on the cable networks, including MSNBC. We had aides about 45 minutes into the debate, suddenly blasting reporters' text messages telling us for the first time that President Biden had a cold, and that was explaining why he wasn't doing well. They pointed to his rally in North Carolina later today, saying that'll be a moment where he does do better. We had, at the moments after the debate, here in the spin room on the campus of Georgia Tech University, Republicans, the Trump surrogates, were out

instantly wanting to talk to anybody they could about how well their guy did last night. We had to wait 15, 20 minutes for anybody from the Biden campaign to show up. And when they did, they were subdued. Gavin Newsom, the California governor, was flat out asked if he would perhaps be the Democratic nominee instead of Joe Biden. He, of course, said no. He said he stood with President Biden. But John Hammond, that moment sort of captures where we are right now. This was not just the 2012 debate. President Obama, yes, he was bad that night, but he went into that debate ahead. Joe Biden was not ahead last night. He wasn't down by much. It was a close race, margin of error race, but he had to answer some questions and he didn't. He didn't show up last night. So now where do we

go from here? So it's a two part question. How does the Biden campaign try to right the ship to say, look, he's our guy or how do Democrats go make the push to him to say, no, you're not. We need to go another direction. Well, I'll just start by saying that just without without having opinionizing about this, as a matter of fact, having covered presidential debates since 1992, having seen a fair number of bad nights for candidates on first debates, bad nights for incumbents, some bad nights for challengers. In terms of measuring the degree of alarm of a presidential candidate's party about their performance, I have never seen anything like this by an order of magnitude. This. That is just this is a reporting matter.

Sitting congressmen, sitting senators, sitting governors, millionaires, billionaires across the spectrum, people who've been supportive and loyal to Joe Biden from day one and and continue in some respects to be supportive and loyal to Joe Biden, freaking out last night. I can't, as a reportorial matter, I can't overstate the degree of freak out about what they were seeing. I don't know what is going to happen now, but I will tell you that by the time you got to the first commercial break, at the highest levels of the Democratic Party, senators, governors, congresspeople, biggest bundlers, biggest donors. There were conversations about what do we do now? This is we need to figure out how that works. And there's a story the other day in the in the totally non-credible in many respects Daily Mail, I think, a couple weeks ago on Monday,

that said that the Clintons, the Obamas, Schumer and Pelosi were going to watch this debate. And if it did not go well for Joe Biden, they were going to go and try to have the talk with him about stepping back. Many people laughed at that. It was not an incredible report. You look at the Daily Mail, the British tabloid, whatever. I had about six good sources after that who said that's not totally false. And the interesting part of that was the Schumer and Pelosi piece, because no one thinks Joe Biden would listen to the Obamas, the Clintons on the subject. But because he cares so much about Democrats in the House and Senate, there was some discussion about whether Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer privately were at least taking soundings on this question. I don't know what will happen now going forward, but I will say these are the kinds of conversations that people are having now in the

Democratic Party as we speak. What to do, because the level of panic is, for me, in my time covering politics, I've never seen a level of panic about this on this scale. So, Joe, to be clear, the Biden campaign defended their candidate' performance last night. They say he did draw that contrast he needed to with President, with former President Trump, saying what a danger Trump would be to our democracy. But to illustrate John's point, Congressman Debbie Dingell, who knows Michigan as well as anyone, who's a dear friend of President Biden's, she was my guest on Way Too Early a short time ago. I put it to her whether President Biden should remain the top ticket. She didn't want to answer. She didn't say. And that

shows you where the party is right now. All right. We're going to have much more ahead on last night's debate, including what Biden and Trump had to say about their ages and what Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California had to say after Biden's debate performance. And we will, of course, be tracking again all the lies that Donald Trump told over those 90 minutes that unfortunately were never answered. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. It's ridiculous. We have a debate. we're trying to justify his presidency his presidency he's without question the worst president the worst presidency in the history of our country we shouldn't be having a debate about it there's nothing to debate worst president history 159 presidential scholars voted him the worst president in the history of the united states of america

he was standing with his four-star general and he he told me, he said, I don't want to go in there because they're a bunch of losers and suckers. My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You're the sucker. You're the loser. He made up the suckers and losers, so he should apologize to me right now. The idea that I have to apologize to you for anything along the line. We've done more for veterans than any president has in American history. There are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally. That's better than when he left office. And I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers. President Trump? I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence.

I don't think he knows what he said either. The only person in this stage is a convicted felon is the man I'm looking at right now. When he talks about a convicted felon, his son is a convicted felon at a very high level. His son is convicted. How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, of having sex with a porn star on the night while your wife was pregnant? I mean, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat. Give me a minute, sir.

I didn't have sex with a porn star. I'm happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it? I've seen you swing. I know you swing. Let's not act like children. President Trump, we're going to turn. Let's not act like children. To a specific, will you accept the results of the election, regardless of who wins, yes or no, please?

If it's a fair and legal and good election, absolutely. I doubt whether you'll accept it because you're such a whiner. The idea if you lose again, you accepted anything. You can't stand the loss. Something snapped in you when you lost the last time. Let me just say after watching tonight's debate. Both of these men should be using performance enhancing drugs. I'm sorry. Both. As much of it as they can get as many times a day as their bodies will allow.

If performance enhancing drugs will improve their lucidity, their ability to solve problems, and in one of the candidates' cases, improve their truthfulness, morality, and malignant narcissism, then suppository away. Guess what, everybody? They should be taking

whatever magical drugs can kick their brains into gear because this ain't olympic swimming you know what i'm saying oh he solved the middle east but he was doping so it doesn't count there's gonna be an asterisk next to his presidency and by the way if those drugs don't exist if there aren't actually performance enhancing drugs for these candidates, I could sure use some recreational ones right now because this cannot be real life. It just can't. We're America. God. Willie, John Stewart at John Stewart's Best.

I will say I've never really cared what, you know, people think, what does the rest of the world think of us? And I thought, well, that we're the freest and we've freed more people we've fed more people than anybody on the planet. I will say last night when these two elderly gentlemen were having a back and forth about their golf handicap, I was so embarrassed that that's the view the world had of our debate for presidency. And of course, you know, there's so many lies that we just played there. I mean, I mean, he lied. You know, Donald Trump lied about January the 6th. He lied about stolen election.

He was shocked. It took so long to get there. Shocked that you had one guy up there who was a felon who tried to overthrow the American government. And it took 40, 45 minutes for that issue to even come up. I'm not sure how that happened, but it took 45 minutes. But you have here even the suckers and losers, quote, Donald Trump lying about not saying that, saying that Joe Biden made up. No, General John Kelly, his longest serving chief of staff, lost his son, who lost his son, I believe, in Afghanistan, told The Atlantic that he was with Donald Trump. And Kelly confirmed that Trump privately disparaged U.S.

service members and veterans and called fallen soldiers suckers and losers during his presidency. Willie, that's General Kelly, who, like Joe Biden, lost his son and General Kelly lost his son at war. Yeah. I mean, unless you're deep, deep marinated in the MAGA universe, just ask yourself, who do you believe in that story? Donald Trump or General John Kelly, who's given his life in service in the country to to Jon Stewart's point about the performance enhancing drugs, Joe, I had a lot of people say last night, well, I guess now we know that Joe Biden was not on Mountain Dew as one. Alleged he was going to be jacked up on Mountain Dew. And that was the most tame of things that were introduced as possibilities. Clearly not on anything last night. But to your point, I'll take it to Mike Barnicle. What Joe and Mika have been saying is

it's not just the style. The style was bad. We've all talked about that. But on the substance that Joe Biden was not able to answer the lies in his rebuttals, the format of the debate, which I will say without the crowd and everything in there, we actually could just get to some issues and a lot of them in 90 minutes. It was left to the president of the United States to answer those criticisms. And he oddly got off course. Abortion, we've been told, is the cornerstone of this 2024 campaign. It is so important to so many people of all different parties in this country. And somehow the president fell flat on that issue when asked about it. He drifted off into a conversation about immigration. So it was on the president of the United States

to answer the lies last night. And boy, were there a lot of them from former President Trump. And he wasn't up to the job of doing that. Willie, again, as this morning proceeds, I get sadder and sadder and sadder. I was sad last night watching Joe Biden. Joe Biden has been a terrific president of the United States in terms of taking care of the world, in terms of trying to take care of ordinary people in this country. He's been terrific at it. And his goal is to make the world a better place for the middle class in this country and a safer place for countries like Ukraine. Without Joe Biden, Ukraine probably doesn't exist this morning as Ukraine.

It's probably a captive of the Soviet Union, of Russia, of Putin. And good luck to everybody along the Ukraine border once Putin gets a taste of the victory he would have had. But, you know, Joe Biden last night stood next to a man who actually said, quote, unquote, I never had sex with a porn star. The guy's a candidate for president of the United States. This is the United States of America. This is the best we have? Donald Trump, this is the best alternative we have.

A guy who says, I never had sex with a porn star. I never thought I would live to see the day when politics, national politics, things that are critical to the future of our country, critical to the future of your children, my children, my grandchildren, everyone's families in the country. The guy poses a distinct threat to our way of grandchildren, everyone's families in the country. The guy poses a distinct threat to our way of life, to the way of democracy that we all live in. And yet here he is. You know, the thing is, though. Jonathan Lemire. At one point, speaking about Ukraine, Donald Trump said after the invasion of Ukraine that he talked to Vladimir Putin.

And let me get the exact quote. When Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we're going to go in and maybe take my this was his dream. I talked to him about it. This is Trump saying he talked to Vladimir Putin about it. His dream. It's shocking that anybody would say that. And I must say, for Democrats, for people who love this country, for people who believe would not have stopped and said, wait, wait, hold on. Wait, did you just say that you talked to Vladimir Putin after the invasion? And I guarantee you they're going to spend this now after the invasion of Ukraine. And Vladimir Putin confessed to you that it was his dream to invade Ukraine. There's so many of those things, Jonathan, that Donald Trump left hanging out there. It wasn't a fastball. It was a ball on the tee that I let me just say that Josh Shapiro would have hit for a home run.

My God, Gavin Newsom would have hit it for a home run. Any Democrat would have knocked that out and hit it for a home run. He said, I talked to Vladimir Putin after the invasion, and he told me it was his dream to invade Ukraine. And yet that's another pitch that went right past right down the middle of the play. Went past everybody. Yeah. One of the one of the few, I thought, good moments from President Biden, you mentioned NATO, is that he tried to ask Donald Trump if he would stay in NATO if he won again. And Trump was about to answer and then bizarrely cut off by the moderators who who seemed too intent to keep the discussion moving and not actually the time moving, as opposed to actually let the two men have a discussion. But you're right. That was a moment where President Biden didn't say anything about Vladimir Putin. Early on in the debate, he missed opportunity, opportunity.

You mentioned how he pivoted from abortion nonsensically to immigration. There was also a moment early on where he, Biden, introduced the concept of Afghanistan. And the Afghanistan withdrawal is one of, even the president's allies will note, one of the sort of darker moments of his term. Very successful first term, otherwise, they will say. And it was Biden himself who brought up Afghanistan, allowing Trump to hammer him on that. John Hammond, I mean, this is there are moments there to Joe's point last night where it's hard to imagine any other Democrat not rebutting what Trump had to say, all the lies. And there were so many. Biden wasn't able to. He wasn't able to do

it. And those some close to him will say that's just a bad night. But I think for a lot of Democrats who are panicking today and also a lot of American voters, they look at that and say, actually, maybe this is who he is. Should he continue in this job going forward? Well, I think, you know, one of the things I think, Joe, when we were talking just maybe yesterday on on the air about, you know, what the Biden messages has come come come down to, like, what what is it that what is the frame? And this question of Trump cares only about himself. Biden's fighting for you. Trump only fights for himself and the various kind of penumbra that might come out of that. I looked at this last night, 90 minutes on the debate stage last night.

That message that they had been honing, that you heard surrogates saying it, a boiled down version of it on television, on various networks over the course of the run up to this debate last night. I defy you to go through and find those words coming out of Joe Biden's mouth last night. The message that they apparently had settled on as being the frame for the debate, a frame for the race going forward, something that the candidate didn't deliver in the course of 90 minutes. And I think that kind of performance failure, a basic performance failure, where you've decided this is the frame for the race and that the candidate does not say anything approximating it even once over the course of the 90 minutes is the kind of thing that that is why so many Democrats are nervous and concerned about this.

And, you know, you pointed the that Mika, I think, suggested she may not be alone in having missed that Vladimir Putin reference that went by. A lot of people might not have been as quick, Joe, as you were to catch it. But there were some really basic hanging curves out there over the plate that Joe Biden, on a normal day, on a day six months ago, that we've seen Joe Biden in recent vintage knock out of the park. Last night, he didn't. And the thing is that we are supposed to have a second presidential debate. I do not think that debate is very likely to happen at this point. The lie. I mean, you never know with Donald Trump. He may just be enough of a narcissist and a gambler to think that he could do this again. But the great likelihood is this may be the only debate that we see, Joe.

And I think, you know, the reality is game changing moments between now and the election. There's a lot of time between now and the election. There's a lot of time between now and November 5th. The things on the calendar where there are going to be tens and tens of millions of viewers tuning in. There aren't that many and certainly not where they're going to get to go face to face again. So, you know, how do you turn the page on this? Well, that's the question. And I will say it is it is true that it's only June. I remember a very important article that you wrote, John Heilman, in 2012 about the Obama Romney race. And it was a look back. And you said in that piece, you showed how Barack Obama's team had already locked in the perception of Mitt

Romney as this evil, money-grubbing venture capitalist who destroyed people's lives and killed a man by taking his insurance away. And as unfair as those attacks were, as you said in your New York Magazine piece, that reality was locked in with voters by May. By now. By now. We're now in June. And so that is a problem. Hey, John, thank you so much for being with us. We greatly appreciate it. And I'll just say this because as we close this hour and we're at start a new hour, I would just say that that John is right. The president never got to that line, that this is, you know, I'm doing this for the country. Donald Trump is doing it for himself. I will say there is a even a more stinging realization inside the White House.

Now there needs to be. And again, I'm as I'm saying, I'm saying the president needs to reflect on this. Jill Biden needs to reflect on this. People close to him need to reflect on this and they need to come up with a decision. But turn that around and ask that of yourself. At this point, are you the best person to save American democracy? You've done it for your pride? Are you doing it for your ego? Or are you doing it for the country? And for a man, I never asked that question of Donald Trump because he is a narcissist. But Joe Biden has given his life, his family. He sacrificed everything for 50 years of public service. Well, the question we'll be talking about in the next few hours and and wondering is what does Joe Biden need to do now if he wants to turn this around?

And I will say for those who are talking about him being replaced immediately, let's move on. Let's find someone else. You know who hates that? You know who hates that kind of talk the most? Old people, people who are older, people who are in later years of their life. They don't like being counted out. Just just a point, because I think those people vote as well.