Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/11/24

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Trump, Harris offer contrasting visions in first debate

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating. 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. I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.

He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community. Well, I've seen people on television. Let me just say here, this is the people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager. I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager. The dog was eaten by the people that went there. Again, 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. One of the most talked about moments from last night's debate, the former president repeating a false, unhinged claim, which his campaign has promoted that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people's dogs, eating dogs.

And moments after the debate ended, another huge headline, one of the biggest names in music, global superstar Taylor Swift endorses Vice President Kamala Harris. As Churchill would say, Willie, it's not the beginning of the end. It's into the beginning. But I don't know with Taylor, maybe it is the beginning. You know, I got to say, our job is to analyze the debate last night. But I must say that, you know, one of the phrases, the catchphrases that have come up this this election cycle has been saying washing. And you have mainstream people, mainstream media people that are trying their best to mold Donald Trump into a Bob Dole-like character, somebody that they can analyze as if he's any other candidate, as if this is any other election, as if last night was any other debate. It just wasn't.

You had one candidate that was completely unhinged, just completely off his rocker. He looked badly. He looked old. He looked disconnected from reality. He looked enraged. He kept repeating the same things over and over again. Made no sense. There was no preparation on his side. And he resorts to to to Internet rumors already debunked just because he has nothing to say. One of the most ill prepared. Well, the most ill prepared presidential candidates we have ever seen in one of these debates. One of the angriest one. And I've got to say, hunched over. Look at it as I squinting. It just the split screen was extraordinary. So this morning for people

on any network, even those who get paid to lie about Donald Trump every day, there's no saying washing this and there's no normalizing this and there's no no pretending that that was any other candidate. This is any other election or that was any other debate. Yeah, we've been encouraging people for a long time to not grade Donald Trump on a curve, to not say, well, that's what he does. That's now this guy wants to be president of the United States again. So watch that debate last night and ask yourself if that's a person who should be back in the White House, who should be near the nuclear codes. We're going to show all of these moments. But just to summarize quickly, in addition to his claim, which was made up on the Internet. And by the way, the person who

took the photograph of the guy carrying the goose down the street spoke out yesterday and said that wasn't in Springfield, Ohio. I have no idea if that guy was an immigrant, if he's Haitian or anything else. So more debunking of that incredible moment yesterday when Donald Trump, former president of the United States, is screaming about people eating dogs. It didn't happen. He praised when asked about foreign policy, praised only Viktor Orban, the authoritarian leader of Hungary.

He would not say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war when asked many times, effectively siding with Vladimir Putin there, defended his actions leading up to and on the day of January 6th and defended the mob that desecrated the Capitol and beat up cops that day. Went back to the well, even Joe, of defending what he did around the Central Park five said, well, actually, at the time, I mean, why? Why go back to that? He was asked about it. But why even attempt to rationalize or defend calling for the death penalty for five young men who ultimately were exonerated? And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

So there's no more grading Donald Trump on a curve. He wants to be president. United States again. Watch those 90 minutes last night and ask yourself which of those two people is more fit to be president. And for anybody who is frustrated watching Donald Trump lie again and again, unchecked, I will say that last night was validation. Finally, watching him get called out, not necessarily by the moderators, though they did make an attempt to try, although he talked over them and they didn't turn him off. But Kamala Harris was superb. She was elegant. She was classy, but she also was joyful. And then she also went right in there and baited him

over and over and over again. And he fell for it every time. And I think the moment that really was the unraveling was when she invited all Americans to attend a Trump rally and to see the lies in person and to see how tired and boring the rallies are to hear about Hannibal Lecter and other things. And he just lost it from there on. In fact, we can play that. Let's play it real quick. Take a look. 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. And I'll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will. 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 what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War Three 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. And from there on out, Joe, it just went downhill for him. He could not handle hearing that his rallies are boring and that people get up and leave.

You know, Willie, it's interesting that when you're listening to music and you're trying to really figure out what's going on in a performance, it really is always best. Quincy Jones would always tell people, if you want to know what's going on, turn your back to who's performing or just close your eyes. That's how you hear the music here. I would say just the opposite. If you want to get exactly where a debate's going, turn the sound off. Use your eyes. And visually, the split screens are so stark. When you do that, you see Kamala Harris smiling, mocking, putting her hand underneath her chin, going, are you really saying that? And at one moment in that bizarre exchange about dog eating, she actually looked like she was feeling sorry for the man.

Yes. Because he was so detached from reality. Yeah. I mean, he wouldn't look at her. I mean, if you go through those 90 minutes, you probably count two or three times when he even glanced over. Yeah. He's scowling. He's uncomfortable. And I think, John, one of the big tells and we've heard from a lot of

Republicans who concede privately that this went just terribly for Donald Trump. And actually, I heard some praise for Kamala Harris's performance, even from Republicans. Democrats obviously excited about it was about 30 minutes into the debate. We started to see online and now on the front page of a major newspaper that it was the moderator's fault. Blame the moderators. They're ganging up because a handful of times they fact check Donald Trump on egregious lies. You also know that it didn't go well because Donald Trump showed up in the spin room.

Donald Trump himself yesterday, last night after the debate to try to sort of reimagine what happened in that room last night, the Harris campaign calling immediately for a second debate. We'll see if there is a second debate. They feel confident about it. The Trump campaign resorting to blaming the moderators for what their candidates did in that room. Yeah. If you're showing up in the spin room, you've lost. If you're blaming the moderators, you've lost. And Trump, we should note, was noncommittal about whether he would debate Harris again. The Harris team very much say, hey, let's get a second date on the books for October. The split screen, as noted, was so effective for Harris. The way she smiled and sort of almost mocked him at times, just looking in disbelief. I can't believe I'm sharing the stage with someone who's saying things like that. And she threw him off right at the beginning. She walked over for that handshake. He clearly didn't expect it. That set a tone for the night that the first 15, 20 minutes, relatively even when they talked about the economy. But as once we went to the crowd size,

once they started talking about abortion, which is an issue that Trump twisted himself in knots to try to explain his shifting stances, but at the same time made clear that he was proud of the Supreme Court justices that he nominated that overturn Roe v. Wade before falsely claiming that all Americans wanted this settled. The issue settled by the states and the vice president scored some points there. And there were so many moments here where she just got the best of him. And he looked old. He looked out of touch. And he looked like he was speaking, Joe, to just a small Republican ecosystem, not winning over any new votes at all.

It's what's so bizarre. And we should note, it took a while to get there last night. But he was asked, not just about January 6th, where he defended his actions, but he was asked about the 2020 election. And he repeatedly would not say that he lost. And by the way, for for for people, again, that have to lie constantly trying to normalize Donald Trump, that's there's so much they can't run away from, you know, his own campaign staff begging him to stop lying about a stolen election. He couldn't do it.

He could not say that he wanted Ukraine to be able to push back the Russian invaders, would not say it. He would not say repeatedly whether he was going to push a national ban for abortion on on American women, would not say it was asked afterwards as he was leaving debate. He would not answer that question on whether he supported a national ban or not. You go down the list. He time and time again would not say he did anything wrong on January 6th. Again, there was nothing normalized about him. His performance was absolutely terrible.

And there were many people who actually dared to say the truth. It was the worst debate performance in history. And you had a lot of Trump supporters on Twitter in the media saying it was one of the worst debate performances they ever lost. They ever saw and they could blame ABC all they wanted to blaming those two. You can't you can't get past that. No, seriously. I mean, is he that he's going to take on dictators all over the world and can't handle the truth about eating cats in Springfield, Ohio? Are you serious? Right out of the box on Fox News, Brit Hume said she won hands down. There's no other way to look at it. Others tried to make up stuff, but there was nowhere to go. They have nothing.

Also with us, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kaye, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson. CEO of the Messina Group, Jim Messina is here. He served as White House deputy chief of staff to President Obama and he ran his 2012 reelection campaign. And in Philadelphia, NBC News national affairs analyst and a partner and chief political columnist at Puck, John Heilman. So let's let's go around the table. Why don't we start? Anybody who's won a Pulitzer Prize? Yeah, that would be why. Gene Robinson in Washington, your thoughts.

So Kamala Harris from the beginning, the opening minute was the alpha female on that stage, first of all. I mean, she took charge of the debate, such as it was. And she got her points across, while at the same time, she knew exactly what buttons to push to bring the insanity out of Donald Trump. The crowd size, the, you know, John McCain. Being a disgrace. Military leaders calling him a disgrace. A disgrace. Using that word disgrace. Looking right at him. And looking right at him. He wouldn't look back. It was just the most comprehensive beatdown I have ever seen on a debate stage. And I'm including the Trump Biden debate.

Biden beat himself. I mean, Donald Trump didn't do it. But it was just I mean, if there were a mercy rule, it would have been called after the after the first hour. It would have been called very, very early. Let's let's play a clip right now on abortion. Well, the reason I'm doing that vote is because the plan is, as you know, the vote is they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have and you can look at the governor of West

Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor is doing an excellent job. But the governor before he said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we'll execute the baby. And that's why I did that, because that predominates, because they're radical. The Democrats are radical in that. And her vice presidential pick, which I think is a horrible pick, by the way, for our country, because he is really out of it. But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth. It's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born is OK.

And that's not OK with me. Hence the vote. There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born. Let's understand how we got here. Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did exactly as he intended.

And now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans, which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state, which understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree. The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body. I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn't want that? Her husband didn't want that? A 12 or 13 year old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don't want that? And I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. But understand, if Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban. Understand, in his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion, a monitor that would be monitoring your

pregnancies, your miscarriages. I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular, the freedom to make decisions about one's own body should not be made by the government. It's a lie. I'm not signing a ban. And there's no reason to sign a ban because we've gotten what everybody wanted. Democrats, Republicans and everybody else and every legal scholar wanted it to be brought back into the states. And the states are voting and it may take a little time. But for 52 years, this issue has torn our country apart and they've wanted it back in the states and I did something that nobody thought was possible the states are now voting what she says is an absolute lie and as far as the abortion ban no I'm not in favor of abortion bit but it doesn't matter because this issue has now been taken

over by the states would you veto a national abortion ban if it well I won't have to because again and two things number one she said she'll go back to has now been taken over by the states. Would you veto a national abortion ban if it came to your desk? Well, I won't have to because, again, two things. Number one, she said she'll go back to Congress. She'll never get the vote. It's impossible for her to get the vote, especially now with the 50-50, essentially 50-50 in both Senate and the House.

She's not going to get the vote. She can't get the vote. She won't even come close to it. He just wouldn't answer that on the veto. And through that answer that on the veto. And through that answer, he keeps lying. And Kamala Harris just very plainly put out there, Katie Kay, the bitter truth that what Trump has done to women's health in America is monstrous. And she very eloquently, but very clearly put out there what is happening in doctor's offices and emergency rooms across the country thanks to him. Yeah, I thought in a night of strong answers, that was her strongest. And I

when I was listening to it at a time, I marked that one down. She started with a policy. She took it to the personal. She turned it back to Donald Trump. I would have loved for her to have had the opportunity to push him again on his response to those women who are bleeding out in emergency rooms or who are the victims of incest or the young kids who have had to be moved across border lines. And he managed to duck that. But it was a very powerful moment. Some of my colleagues were with swing voters, and several of them said that that was the moment where they felt that they were going to turn for Kamala Harris. I mean, part of the problem is that Donald Trump's answers, it does turn out that if you are going to do a debate for the presidency of the United States,

it's worth prepping. And he didn't prep. And that showed time and again during the course of this debate. It wasn't that there weren't moments for him during the debate. There were moments. He could have pushed harder on Afghanistan. He could have pushed harder on the administration's record on prices and affordability. He just didn't do it. I mean, there were openings for him to take something and he hadn't prepped. And that was so obvious. I think it started to freak him out. He just didn't know how to make his point. But again, let's not whitewash history. He's never prepped for anything. His staffers said they couldn't even put a one pager in front of him in the White House because he wouldn't read it. And so he's not going to prep. He never was going to prep. He wasn't capable of prepping and he doesn't care

about learning the issues. He does not know them. He is as shallow and vacuous as anybody that's ever stepped onto a debate stage. And it showed. So talk about that. But also that last answer you said while that clip was being played, that her answer on abortion would be one in the future that candidates would be shown. Absolutely. 30 years from now, people will show those clips of Kamala Harris ripping him apart on abortion as the prototypical example of how to do this. The substance, the passion, looking straight at him, making it very personal. Your story about the emergency rooms, you could see swing voters moving. We've not seen an evisceration like this in modern American political history.

The Washington Post uncommitted poll, 92 percent of uncommitted voters said she won that debate. Joe, you and I couldn't get 92% of Americans to agree on free beer. It is unbelievable what that was and how they did it. And you continue to watch him. I mean, in the lead up to the debate, the Harris campaign kept saying, we're going to bait him. We're going to bait him. The very first time she did, he just on crowd sizes, he collapsed. He went into the worst version of him, the version that every swing voter was worried existed. He just proved it over and over again. The debate was over on those two moments, abortion and crowd sizes. The rest was just a victory lap. Yeah, Willie. Yeah, there's no question that that was a pivotal moment.

She knew exactly what she was doing, planting that seed about crowds leaving his rallies. The thing that's most important to him, crowd size completely set him off. And as many people noted last night, that became then a rally version of Donald Trump, which is to say, talking about these obscure subjects that the average normie voter, as we like to call them here, who has a life and isn't tuned into this every day, says, what is he talking about? I don't even know. I don't understand what he's what he's getting at here. So, John Heilman, you're there in Philadelphia. You were in the spin room last night. What was the sense of things from both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign afterward? Well, good morning. And I, know would joe talk before about how you watch something you

an old political consultant's trick which is to watch debates with the sound off and and you can get a lot on the visual there that's been that's a true that's true and it definitely was the case watching this debate i'll tell you what else you could watch with the sound off and have a good sense of how things went last night. The activity in the spin room where the Trump forces were dejected, defeated, deflated, dispirited. I posted a photo last night of Matt Gaetz and Stephen Miller coming in a few minutes before Donald Trump came into the spin room that went wildly viral on Twitter because they look like sort of sort of saggy road. It was like a shot of kind of this is what this is what defeat looks like, folks. These people have been talking about Donald Trump before the debate, like he's Muhammad Ali. He's the greatest

debater in the history of presidential debates. He's done it more than anybody else ever. He's going to wipe the floor with her. There will be surprises. Jason Miller said she won't know what hit her. And they looked like they had had their dogs and cats eaten over the course of that debate. It's also the case, I will tell you that I can report definitively that there is one point of agreement inside the Trump war room and the Harris war room, where both of those war rooms were looking at their dial groups in real time last night. The dial groups that the campaigns are looking at last night showed the same thing, that in real time, the undecided voters that they were looking at, Harris crushed

Trump throughout the night. I mean, David Plouffe and David Binder are not champagne cork popping kind of guys. I'm not suggesting they actually popped any champagne corks last night, but their attitude was that of metaphorical champagne poppers last night. And the people in the Trump war room last night were popping something different, which I think might have been Klonopin or or or Malox, one of the two. It was an overwhelming sense of what happened last night was that the floor got wiped i titled the podcast i have coming out this morning slaughterhouse 45 okay that it was as gene said as thorough a demolishment a decimation of a candidate i've

ever seen whether it's going to affect the outcome of the election or not guys i don't know the the vote is very inelastic. Whether they're going to see movement in the polls, I don't know. But I'll tell you this. The Harris campaign wanted to, they had a number of strategic objectives here. One of them was the further introduction of her to a lot of voters who still think they need to know more about her. They did some work on that last night. But the most important thing they did last night, and I heard this from donors and senior campaign people, from the Democrats, elected Democrats all over the country, which was this is a test of plausibility.

This was a test where she had to stand up and come through 90 minutes where she looked like I can picture that person as the president of the United States. And that test she passed with flying colors. That's the thing that Bill Clinton, that Barack Obama, they said the first year, first debate, presidential debate. That's what you're trying to do is you're trying to establish that you can command the stage. And what people remember is command. Who are people going to remember about who commanded this first debate? Kamala Harris commanded the first debate. And the last thing I'll say, Donald Trump, when he attacked her, as key a moment as the dogs and cats moment was, look at the thing that he did at the end of the thing, at the end of the speech, when he said, finally, in the 20, 86th minute of a 90 minute debate, he finally did the thing he was supposed to do from the very beginning, which was say,

you are Joe Biden. You're wedded to his policies. It took him 86 minutes to say it. And then he said it in such a clumsy way that she was able to just knock it back with a hand flick and just say, well, I'm obviously not Joe Biden, sir. And that was that. That was one of the things he was supposed to do here. Say she has his record. She has to own his economic policies. He took him 86 minutes to remember that. It was a little bit like the way Joe Biden kind of forgot to how to frame the debate the first time around in Atlanta. And in so many ways, this debate mirrored that one. And, you know, Joe, your point about the split screens, boy, you know, the split screen with Kamala Harris did to Donald Trump last night. What the split screen with Donald Trump did to Joe Biden in Atlanta.

Yes. And that's split street with Donald Trump did to Joe Biden in Atlanta. Yes. And that's not good for Donald Trump. Who would have guessed that we would have had two of the most momentous presidential debates in the past few months when, of course, usually we sit here and that debates don't matter. The last two debates have mattered a great deal. We'll see how it does impact voters. But initial word from both camps, the dial groups were overwhelmingly supportive of Harris. I will say, too, yesterday I talked about style. Most of these debates come down to style. Kamala Harris, and we'll keep talking about this on the other side of the break, I thought

it was brilliant. In the midst of all of that madness. She kept going back to issues that mattered the most to to to Americans. As far as her framing, she she talked about first time homebuyers. She kept coming back to it. We have a tax break for first time homebuyers. We're going to help you. And if you're a small business owner and see this is again, this is something that's so important because Democrats have always been painted as tax and spend Democrats. And you can talk about taxing billionaires, everything else, but that always has to be countered with what Kamala Harris is doing more effectively than any Democrat I've ever seen running on the national stage. And she's talking about we need tax cuts for small business owners. We need tax cuts for entrepreneurs. We need tax cuts for job creators. That message kept cutting through.

And that's a message that cuts through in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, as well as in Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, with people on the edge going, well, is she a tax and spend Democrat? Wait a second. I've got a small business. I'll take the $50,000 tax break because I really need it because I'm growing my business. I'm hiring customers. I'm hiring people. I'm getting more customers. And here you have somebody that's not saying, hey, small business owner, I'm from the government. Here are 12 more OSHA regulations. I'm from the federal government. Here are 10 more new taxes. No, this is somebody saying,

let me be president and things up for you. And I'm going to give you a break as a small business owner. And she didn't say once. She kept going back to it over and over again. And that's an important thread that ran through this debate. We have a lot more ahead, but a lot has been talked about in terms of the coverage of these candidates. And I think at a moment like this, it's important to point out what we do here. The morning after Joe Biden's debate, we said it like it was. We all we all saw what we saw and we didn't say anything otherwise than what we saw. It was brutal. He had a terrible night. Well, it was a very hard thing to do, but we did it because that was the truth. And we didn't say anything otherwise than what we saw. It was brutal. He had a terrible night. Well, it was a very hard thing to do, but we did it because that was the truth.

And we've known Biden a very long time. And I said he needed to consider leaving the race the morning after morning after. So if you are trying to say anything but Kamala Harris was commanding in that debate, you're lying this morning. And you have to live with the fact that you're going to lose people. It doesn't work. People see what they see, and then they see lies about it. And so this will be a very stark, important moment in terms of watching coverage. And I'm just saying, you have to say it like it is. We try our best to. And we've seen a really bad debate on the Democratic side.

We also just saw a really good one still ahead on Morning Joe. We'll have much more from last night's debate, including the moment Donald Trump said he didn't care about Kamala Harris's race, despite previously questioning her background and saying she decided to be black. The Reverend Al Sharpton will weigh in on that. Plus, presidential historian John. By the way, next week, I'm going to decide to be black. The Reverend Al Sharpton will weigh in on that, plus presidential historian John Meacham. By the way, next week, I'm going to decide to be white. You are? I'm just letting you know. Put it on your calendar.

I would have had no idea. John Meacham will join the conversation. And Meacham's going to decide to be a wasp. Yeah, exactly. We'll be right back in 90 seconds. It was my best debate ever, I think. And we had a, it was very interesting. It showed how weak they are, how pathetic they are,

and what they're doing to destroy our country and the border with foreign trade, with everything. And I think it was the best debate I've ever, personally, that I've had. Jake, I didn't think I was ever going to witness a debate as devastating as the one that you and Dana moderated back in June, where Joe Biden basically tanked his reelection campaign. I think tonight was just as devastating. I think that Kamala Harris pitched a shutout on almost every subject I can think of. She shut Trump down on abortion. She shut Trump down on January 6th and democracy. She shut him down on national security and turned to

the former president and said, the military leaders who served with you think that you're a disgrace. And then, as Dana mentioned, very powerfully at the end made the point that she is the candidate of change and we need to turn the page from a decade of division and polarization on substance. I think she pitched a shout out and I think she did on style as well. I mean, the image of the debate to me is she's there, happy, smiling, expressive, shaking her head in dismay at things Trump was saying. And Trump looked angry, scowling. She was looking directly at the audience. He was looking at the moderators and arguing with them and something else. Donald Trump looked old tonight.

Make no mistake about it. Trump had a bad night. He rose to debate repeatedly when she baited him, something I'm sure his advisers had begged him not to do. You know, in the first debate when Biden attacked him, he just kept his cool and kept going. And in this debate, he rose to debating. And we heard so many of the old grievances that that we'd long thought that Trump had learned were not winners politically. She came out of this in pretty good shape. Now, how long this will last is anybody's guess. But for tonight, at least, this was pretty much her night.

Gene Robinson, the refs have called that. Yeah, right. Anonymous TKO. Yeah. People can be screaming in the cheap seats and blaming, blaming, you know. Blame the moderators, right? Blame the moderators who I think interjected like three facts or something like that to correct Egris's horrible, stupid lies. They let him jump in many times.

You can just see, even in the spin room, it was probably his decision to go into the spin room, you could see how rattled he is. And he goes, that's probably my best debate. Obviously, nobody thinks that. He's so used to being able to sort of create his own weather, create his own reality. And it was Kamala Harris who did that last night, starting with the handshake, starting with going into his space and compelling him to shake hands with her. And he was I think he was off balance from that moment, to tell you the truth. I think he realized he was not in control of anything on that stage,

certainly wasn't in control of anything on that stage. Certainly wasn't in control of himself when she pushed his buttons. It's hard to imagine how it could have gone worse for him. I suppose he could have passed out or something. But it was just as bad as you could think. I mean, you know, Jim, the weirdos, insurrectionists and freaks, as I've always called them, the people that lie for a living trying to prop up this man. They're struggling. The fact is that the truth is in the dial groups, as you said, but also in the reaction from Trump's campaign. He did everything they have been begging him not to do.

Brit Hume was talking about it. Repeatedly, they've asked him to stay away from these hot button issues. And he even went after the dogs. I mean, seriously, just a completely unhinged performance. And again, physically, as Brit Hume said and Chris Wallace said, he just was hunched over. He looked old he really didn't voters pick up on that they understand very clearly that's the version of donald trump they didn't want she did two other things last night that i think are more crucial the first is she passed the commander-in-chief test she had to be to pass that test after barack obama had his first debate with john mcc, people saw him as president.

That race was over after that. The second thing is she was able to frame this race in future versus the past. And that is where voters want to go. When I was running Obama, Bill Clinton would call me up in the middle of the night and say, all elections are about the future. Win the future and you will win the election. And he played right into that. He played right into the past, the anger, the continuing to litigate the 2020 election. Voters hate that. It's not about them. That's about him. And he just continued to double down on it over and over, doing himself damage that even he couldn't get out. You know, you're in trouble in the campaign when you have to put the candidate in the spin room to spin himself. That is a panic moment. You know it's a bad win. Willie?

Yeah, I just say, too, on the blaming of the refs is that what we saw beginning really 30 minutes in on media, on social media, we have allies of President Trump saying this is three on one. The moderators are on the side of Kamala Harris. there were a handful of gentle fact checks, including this. Ask yourself if this is partisan. After Donald Trump suggested he got the state wrong, he said the governor of West Virginia is talking about Ralph Northam, the former governor of Virginia, when he said they're going to execute babies after they're born. Lindsay Davis said, quote, There is no state where it's legal to kill a baby after it's born and then moved on. So if you think that's a partisan hit, then obviously something didn't go well for you last night.

One of those grievances Brit Hume referenced was the 2020 election. Donald Trump's still talking about it, asked about his repeated false claims that he won that race. Here is his answer, followed by the response from Vice President Harris. In the past couple of weeks leading up to this debate, you have said, quote, you lost by a whisker, that you, quote, didn't quite make it, that you came up a little bit short. I said that. Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020? No, I don't acknowledge it at all. I said that sarcastically. You know that. We said, oh, we lost by a whisker.

That was said sarcastically. Look, there's so much proof. All you have to do is look at it. And they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes, the most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which was what I got in 2016, you can't be beaten. The election, people should never be thinking about an election is fraudulent. We need two things. We need walls. We need, and we have to have it. We have to have borders and we have to have good elections. Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people.

So let's be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that. But we cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election. So, John, it was just dry humor when Donald Trump said several times that he lost the election. It's so fascinating, just as a sidebar here, he continues now for years to say, I won 75 million votes. How could I have lost that election? Well, because, as Vice President Harris pointed out, the other person in the race got 81 million votes. That's how he lost the race. But

he does insist on going down this well and digging into a subject that people closest to him really do wish he would stop talking about, looking back four years while Kamala Harris is trying to look forward. And she made that pretty clear last night. Yeah. Another moment there where she she needled him with the American people fired you. Yeah. Which clearly he didn't like they're getting under his skin. And first, just on this issue, still pushing the big lie, pushing the idea that he won the 2020 election. It's not just the Trump's advisers wanting to stop talking about that. Polls suggest Americans want him to stop talking about that. That turns off that thin slice of independent swing voters that he needs to win. And that's they don't want to hear that. But it also was another moment where

that Harris was able to make herself the change candidate, the insurgent candidate. That's something that Trump has been to this point. Like we've talked a lot about how this election was going to be was if it was going to be a referendum on Joe Biden that perhaps would be problems for the Democrats and the Democrats wanted to make it a choice election. Harris, at least for last night, not only made it a choice election, but made this a referendum about Trump's record, which is pretty remarkable for someone who, of course, is the sitting vice president who serves the incumbent president. Yes, in Trump's closing argument, he made, I think, his best line of the night where he said to Harris, I'm paraphrasing,

well, you and Joe Biden have had three and a half years to change things. You say you have all these good ideas to make things better. Well, why haven't you done them? But that was in the closing argument, in the last moments of the debate. The matter felt very settled right then, like the Democrats were already taking their victory lap. A lot of Americans had probably turned the channel at that point. But he wasn't able to do that throughout the debate prior to that. And instead, Joe, it was Harris who was able to sort of grab the mantle of the change candidate to say, look, it's Trump who represents tired, old playbook, old ideas, old person. And that's not where we want to go. And she repeatedly used the phrase that she uses all the time on the campaign trail. We're not going

back. She worked that into several answers last night. Well, I just want to follow up on what Jim was saying and quoting Bill Clinton about elections being about the future. First time I ran, I started 29 years old. No, no experience, no bio. I was a lawyer. No reason anybody should have ever voted for me. I knocked on 10,000 doors and I found out immediately they did not care that I was running against a 16 year incumbent. They did not care about, you know, that when he started in Congress, I was playing t-ball. They wanted to know what the future was going to look like for them. Nobody ever stopped me and said, you're only 29 and then you're only 30. You're only 31. They cared about the future. And Donald Trump is always been about the past, always been

about grievance, always been about 2020. And there's just no elections are won there, Gene, none. Well, and the other thing is Donald Trump has always been about himself. And I thought, well, exactly. I thought Vice President Harris did an effective job several times during the evening of saying to the camera, you know, Americans, this is about you. You know, this is not, you know, and I'm working for you as opposed to a candidate who thinks only of himself. And I thought, you know, she clearly was a point she wanted to hammer home. And I think it was like three or four times. There were several poignant moments, I thought, where she really when she talked about herself and tried to share who she

is with the American people. And she had worked as a former prosecutor and worked in the legal field, attorney general. And she said, you know, I worked for the people. And whenever I represented someone, I didn't care whether they were Democrat or Republican. My question to them was, are you OK? And I thought that was powerful standing next to a man who could give a flying hoot about anybody but himself. Well, and that's another word I would use. She also brought up middle class. She was raised in the middle class. I can tell you, it makes it. You never forget when you're raised in the middle class. You never forget when your dad who's worked his ass off his entire life gets laid off when he's 40 years old.

You never forget driving around the South for two years while he's looking for a job with his three little kids in the backyard. I mean, in the back seat, you never forget Christmas is where you don't really, you know, you see your older sister crying because she doesn't. You know, there are no real Christmas presents. But that stays with you. Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris never forgets being raised by a single mom. She never forgets working at working at McDonald's. She never forgets having to fight and scrap because there was no daddy to give her two hundred million dollars or four hundred million dollars. There was no daddy to give her 200 million dollars or 400 million dollars. There was no. You never forget that. And there are a lot of politicians that started that way that forgot it last night.

Make no mistake, Jim. She connected on that point. And I'm glad she brought up. I'm from the middle class. I've been through this. Doesn't matter how many positions I've held. I know where I started. I know where I came from and I know where he came from. And it's not where you came from, Scranton, Ohio. I mean, Scranton, Pennsylvania or Youngstown, Ohio. That's exactly right. She identified them. She is one of them. She's a voter just like them. That connection when she needled Trump about how much money his dad gave him, you could see he understood that moment. And she continued to go back to the didn't care what he was doing. She just went back to her message over and over and over, identified with the American people, made

her case and said, I can be the commander in chief. And he couldn't look at her. No. So she was prepped and she was disciplined. And she was clear and she was coherent. Now, if that translates into governing and you think that there are people there who are sitting there saying,

which of the people here on this stage is better equipped to actually then run the country? I would think that those are qualities that would reassure people that she has the ability to do that. She may have spoken for a few less minutes. Women often do speak for a few less minutes. He spoke for 42. She spoke for 37 minutes. She didn't need to because a lot of what he said was rambling. He was actually hard to listen to. I had a really interesting conversation yesterday with a woman who came over who's a pollster for Keir Starmer, who helped Keir Starmer win black all of those working class voters in the North. And she's come over to try and do a similar thing here

for the Harris campaign. And she said the thing that people, two things that people focused on is they want their middle class life back, the life that they felt they'd lost. She talked about that repeatedly. And they don't want to go back to chaos, that they feel that they've gone through this period with COVID and world economic insecurity and wars, and it's been chaotic. And he last night, just by sounding rambling, he kind of projects chaos. And I think that the moderators, you know, by bringing in January the 6th, by bringing in the 2020 election, it is a reminder of those things. I think she did last night exactly what Keir Starmer was trying to do in those working class industrial counties. And on that, we want our middle class life back by Kamala Harris talking

repeatedly about helping small business owners, helping startups, helping entrepreneurs, helping first time homebuyers. You want to know the youth vote, why there are a lot of younger Americans who may be liberal or progressive on social issues, but scared to death economically. They're in the 30s, 40s, whatever they and I say anybody under 60 is young. They can't afford their first house. It's insanity how much things have changed over over the past generation. And that's what she kept speaking to last night. And John Heilman, I'll let you pick up on all this. I do want to circle back, though, to the insanity of Trumpers in media and on social media going, oh, ABC, they oh, I can't believe how horrible. First of all, if he is so weak and old

and frail that he's worried about. Those two moderators, he's got bigger problems, first of all. Secondly, the things they corrected him on were so basic. Lies about crime sky dropping across the rest of the world. Really? And lie and then lies about crime skyrocketing here. Well, just the opposite is true. That's a lie that babies can be executed after they're born. That did Virginia Democrats want to execute? It's just a complete total. I mean, you go down the list of these gentle, brief corrections, dogs being eaten in Springfield, Ohio.

This is sort of a no brainer. Yeah, I mean, there were three times that they the moderators decided to really directly fact check gently, fact check Trump three and use name them, Joe, on things that if they hadn't if they hadn't named if they hadn't fact checked him, Mika and others would rightly have said that they were sane watching Trump. The crime rate is not up. It's down. Infanticide is illegal in America. And there is no there are no, according to the city manager in Springfield, there are no credible claims of dogs, cats or other pets being eaten by immigrants. So that's really going to get your knickers in a twist. You've got a problem. And I'll say, you know, Scott Jennings, the conservative analyst over on cnn who's still a conservative still a republican still pro-trump he made the point last night rather pitifully he said you know it's it's a little rich for our side to be

complaining about the refs when our team can't make a shot and that i think is what it comes down to here is that donald trump uh squand every opportunity, the things he wanted to try to get done last night. He failed systematically over and over again. And I said before that I agree with Jim about the importance of this moment for Harris. And what happens next in this race? We have eight weeks left in this race. We've had a trajectory since Harris came into the race. She has flattened out a little

bit in the week heading into this debate after having soared for five or six weeks. She's not been tanking, but things have kind of leveled out. You expected that to happen, right? What happens over the next eight weeks? There are three big things that can happen. One was Harris could screw up in some monumental way of this debate. Obviously, she did not. In fact, she established herself as the commanding presence in this debate. There is the possibility of external events, foreign policy crises, disinformation, cyber war, economic calamities around the world. She's still the sitting vice president. Joe Biden's still the president. They would have to deal with that in a different way than Donald Trump as an outsider, not holding any office. But I have to deal with that's a real thing. It's out of anybody's control, but it's a real thing.

The third thing that could change this race in Donald Trump's favor is whatever Republican has some form of candidate discipline, focus, rigor and consistency like he did for the two weeks at the end of 2016. He did that. He won the election in 2016 by them being able to get him to do those things for a brief but crucial moment. And they've been saying Trump eventually he'll find his way back. And I will say that if there's one conclusion that you would draw from this debate last night is that anybody who thinks Donald Trump still has the mental, psychic, emotional capacity to be a disciplined, rigorous, consistent candidate driving a message over these next eight weeks, you're out of your mind if you watch that debate and come to that conclusion. In the answer about the dogs and cats, do you know what the question was? The question was, Muir asked him about immigration. And instead of talking about immigration, he talked about crowd sizes. And from crowd sizes, he went to World War III.

And from World War III, he went back to crowd sizes and then eventually ended up with the dogs and cats that are allegedly being eaten but not being eaten by Haitian immigrants. And that racist lie about Springfield, that is someone who has lost his marbles and not the kind of candidate who's going to be able to run the kind of campaign necessary to beat. I will say I will say also, you know, people have been saying before this debate that Donald Trump would not be able to handle the presence of a black woman on this stage. Challenging him that he was just he was too racist. We'll see. We'll see. That's not what we saw when he was up against an older white man, he held his fire. He was disciplined. He could not.

It's like he was a five year old. He could not take Kamala Harris, a black woman, saying the truth about his crowds, that people get bored and they walk out and they leave. And that he says weird things. He couldn't handle it. I do want to say, following up on what he said, he quoted a Republican on CNN. And it's a perfect quote for all these whiners, you know. And it kind of reminds me of the Alabama game this past week. And we had a horrible game last week.

And it took us a long time to start playing. And when we were playing horribly, there would be a guy on Alabama. They'd make it like one good tackle. And then they'd get up and celebrate and dance all over the field. And it goes, sit, sit down. When you actually start playing good football, you can celebrate one good tackle, right? Don't blame the refs. Don't do anything. Well, that Republican on CNN, right? Don't blame the refs. Don't do anything.

Well, that Republican on CNN, it's a perfect point, Mika. It's rich for Republicans to blame the refs when they can't make a single shot. And again, the morning after the Biden debate, what did we say? We kept saying he missed layups, one layup after another layup after another layup. And that's what happened last night. Just to make this worse for Donald Trump, he had much more time than Kamala Harris to make layups. He had five precious minutes of an event that was being watched globally, five more minutes to speak than her. And also the exact numbers to speak. He had 42 minutes and Kamala Harris had 37.

The ABC announcers were that unfair. The moderators corrected him three times, very, very politely and very quickly. And every time I don't get the whole mic off thing, because every time Trump wanted to talk, they turned up his mic. And they didn't cut him off. They gave him a retort to every answer. And he wouldn't cut him off. There were no rules about retorts.

He just started talking later. I'm going to actually turn the mic off. But that is a really good point, is that he got everything he wanted and he's still whatever the bed, if you know what I mean. John Hellman, Messina, Eugene Robinson. Thank you all. Still ahead.