Pod Save America - “Abraham Lincoln over here.” (Debate recap special)

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan break down what will hopefully be the last presidential debate ever to include Donald Trump.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Tony Bablinski. I'm John. I was going to say, I'm John Favreau because I've all thrown off. Well, I'm not ready for you to go off script. I'm John Lovett. I'm just the guy who's happy these debates are over named Tommy. So good to see you guys. I'm just Dan Pfeiffer. I have no jokes. On today's pod, the gang's all here to talk about the last presidential debate we will ever see that includes Donald Trump. Probably. Probably.

Has to be, right? He can run in 2024. Look at the third term. That's why I said probably. Third term. There is the, there's the third term thing, but there's the run in 2024,

which is, who knows? Anyway, before that, we got some big news. Dan Lovett, you want to tell everyone who you're interviewing today?

We, look, it took, it was a tough scheduling thing took about a year but we're talking to joe biden maybe you know him the winner of last night's debate there's a picture going around on twitter um i don't know if this is russian disinformation but it is it is joe biden shaking hands with a very young dan pfeiffer which with a suit that's a couple sizes too big.

Do you know what size that suit is, John? 1995. That's what size that suit is. Is that is a picture from 1995? So the backstory of that picture is I was an intern in college in Joe Biden's office because I'm a proud Delawarean. And I never received my intern photo because I think I moved in college and I was a knucklehead. And I never received my intern photo because I think I moved in college and I was a knucklehead, so I didn't get it.

So on my last day in the White House, Joe Biden's staff found that photo in his archives and he gave it to me as a going away gift, which was very nice. The last nice thing was then he also tweeted it out to his like 12 million followers, which was less cool, but I decided to own this and get ahead of it. So I shared the,

I shared the photo with the very social media savvy folks at crooked media. Dan went directly from that to a Coolio concert because again, it was 1995. Wow. I look like the childhood of a defense attorney on NYPD blue. That's what I look like. You look, you look like you look like you sold

the most copies of Dianetics. Anyway, if you're listening to this podcast, go online. Go to our Twitter feed at Pod Save America. Check out the picture. And that interview with Joe Biden will be out Saturday morning,

first thing. So check it out. One more note before we start. We have 11 days left to vote. And the single most important thing we can do right now is to make sure the people in our lives get out there and vote uh especially the people in our lives who live in swing states uh go to votesaveamerica.com volunteer anytime between now and election day and you can find opportunities to help get out the vote whenever you're available

you have no excuses we have a volunteer hub it's easy just go. We will plug you into a shift somewhere in some state. You just click. Just click. Just click. VoteTagMurray.com slash volunteer. If we volunteer, if we vote, we will win. All right. Let's get to the news.

The final debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden took place in Nashville last night. And it was much less awful than the first debate, thanks to skilled moderating by NBC's Kristen Welker, muted microphones, and what I'm guessing was a shock collar that the Trump campaign forced their candidate to wear. And yet, Trump on his best behavior included the president telling more lies than he did in the first debate, interrupting Joe Biden 34 times, floating baseless conspiracy theories about the vice president's family, declaring himself the least racist person in the debate hall, and telling America that the pandemic is almost over, despite a surge in cases across the country. Lovett, what was your overall impression of the debate? How did Chris and Welker do? What did you think of the muted mics at the beginning of each of the two minute segments? First impressions.

Yeah, it was normal. It was normal adjacent. normal. It was normal adjacent. And it was very, it was nice to not be confronted by the most monstrous person at his absolute worst. It was the most monstrous person at his medium worst. I think Welker did an incredible job. I think it's remarkable that she's receiving bipartisan praise. She even received praise on the stage by Donald Trump while he was losing the debate, which I think he instantly regretted after because Sean Hannity was desperate to blame Kristen Welker. But Trump took away that talking point. I will say, though, like we shouldn't be lulled. First of all, only in politics, if you catastrophically fuck up your first job interview and then only do merely terribly in

your second job interview, does anyone suggest that you've recovered? And also just that he delivered a lot of the same hits. He was trying to do a lot of the same thing he did in the first debate. He just had a better tone. It's like it's like the director, like whispered in his ear, like, we love what you're doing out there, but this time just just make it smaller, just throw it away. So, you know, I thought first debate Trump lost this debate Biden won. Tommy, was this the night that Donald Trump became president? What did you think of the performance? And we got another new tone cycle.

I agree that he was more restrained last night compared to the first debate. Part of that was muted mic. Part of it was new rules. Part of it was Kristen Welker doing a great job. But the suggestion that he has the discipline to maintain a new tone or that a new tone for 11 days can undo four or five years of assholery is just beyond stupid. I also just thought like like Biden's strength last night to me was this sort of core contrast on character that he made a couple of times. And I thought that broke overwhelmingly in his favor. thought that broke overwhelmingly in his favor. Biden also brought up like issues that are very popular and Donald Trump took the wrong position, like increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Donald Trump loudly came out against that last night. He attacked Dr. Fauci. He all Trump also spoke a language that is best described as OAN or Fox News, right? Like 18 angry Democrats, Russia, Russia, Russia, the laptop from hell. No one knows what the fuck you're talking about, man. I'm sorry. They just don't. And then like, again, they spent weeks and weeks, if not months, suggesting that Joe Biden has dementia. You could not watch Joe Biden's performance last night and come away thinking he is anything but pretty sharp and knowledgeable on the issue. So I thought it was a great night for Joe Biden. Dan, what do you think Joe Biden's plan was heading into the debate and how well did

he execute on it? I think his plan was, I would say he didn't really know what he was going to face with Trump. So he probably had two plans. There was this version of Trump and then the insane first debate version of Trump. Step one, don't lose your cool, right? He has maintained this stature gap throughout this whole campaign. He doesn't want to lose that. And he came close to doing it a couple of times that first debate. Second is to have a series of moments. And he worked really hard to get those in. The first question on COVID was a moment where Biden could lay out his case. He clearly wanted that moment comparing their characters. You know me, you know him. That worked very well for him. And to find a couple places to needle Trump a little bit to see if he could get him

out of that new tone back into the other version of Trump. And he had some decent success with that. He didn't get Trump to completely melt down and flip out, but he got Trump to be angry and off his game. And the angrier Trump gets, the less coherent he gets. And that sort of was ramping up throughout that debate. Yeah, I think that Biden had like a few moments where he might have went on too long or rambled or didn't make the point like as crisp as he needed to. But I thought he was much stronger than the first debate. He was much sharper. He had clearly practiced a series of moments, like you said, delivered on almost all of those moments. And I think for Trump, it's like, yeah, I guess trump was

a little more restrained because like but yeah he didn't like you know throw throw shit at the wall but like he's the the that might have been the best that trump could have done and his best was still awful right he was still like lying he was still angry at times he was still like tommy's and he was like doing all the the fox news language like he was not i just don't buy this bullshit that like he was somehow that much better it's like we all are have fucking stockholm syndrome like we've been living with donald trump for so long that we can't you know like we don't understand that he still spends most of his time lying yeah it's trump it's trump goggles right he's graded on a curve. That's always been true. I do also think too, like, you know, the two biggest issues facing the country right now, right, are the pandemic and the economy. Both of those came up in pretty direct comparisons. You know,

Donald Trump has asked directly, what is your plan to cover pre-existing conditions? He issues gobbledygook. Biden responds by delivering a very clean description of his plan in bullets. Trump has asked, what is your plan for COVID? He says, it's not my fault and I feel better. Immediately, Joe Biden responds with a key, like his plan in bullets. And like that is, you know, regardless of scoring the debate on points, like those are the two biggest questions, you know, over and over again, we've heard this. These are the two biggest questions people have. And on the key issues facing the country, Joe Biden was as excellent in this

debate as he has been in any debate in all of 2020. Let's talk about some of the more notable moments. Chris and Welk are open by asking both candidates about the pandemic, which is once again surging in almost every state. Yesterday was the highest number of cases since the early summer. Here's how both candidates responded. I say we're learning to live with it. We have no choice. We can't lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does. He has the he has the ability to lock himself up. I don't know. He's obviously made a lot of money someplace, but he has this thing about living in a basement. People can't do that. By the way, I, as the president, couldn't do that. I'd love to put myself in the basement or in a beautiful room in the White House

and go away for a year and a half until it disappears. He says that we're, you know, we're learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it. You folks home will have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning. That man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch their out of habit where their wife or husband was is gone. Learning to live with it. Come on.

We're dying with it. And you say, I take no responsibility. Let me talk about your two. Excuse me. I take full responsibility. It's not my fault that he came here. It's China's fault. What I would say is I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country.

It's his ineptitude that caused the country to have to shut down in large part. Why businesses have gone under, why schools are closed, why so many people have lost their living, and why they're concerned. Tommy, I feel like on another planet, the president saying we're learning to live with it about a virus that's killed over 200,000 Americans

and put him in the hospital would be, you know, game over. But new tone, I guess. What did you think of the COVID? New tone. Yeah, look, Trump's strongest moments in the debate and the places where I thought he actually scored some points were when he was when he could say, you've been around for 47 years, you didn't accomplish anything. You're a typical politician.

That's just not an avenue that's open to Donald Trump here. He still wants credit seemingly for not having 2 million people die when 200,000 died. And I thought, you know, Biden coming right out of the box and saying anyone who has this record of 200,000 people dead does not deserve to be reelected. I thought that was quite clear. And then Trump just can't help himself but to pivot to attacking various other enemies who are not currently his opponent in the 2020 presidential campaign. He's attacking China. He's attacking Governor Cuomo. He was attacking Dr. Fauci for a while. It was just like he was attacking Pelosi. He was

just sort of like misplaced rage while, you know, this was, I thought Biden's, like he was struggling to warm up during this part of the debate, right? Not everything came out crisply, but I still thought that you at least heard something that sounded like a plan. You heard about support for states. You heard about getting money for schools and states to reopen. Like, I didn't think, Trump did not score any points here, I didn't think. No, I think Biden was warming up in this section too, but I think Trump was awful in this section. I mean, he complained about the cost of plexiglass at one point. And he pivoted to an attack on Gold Star families again. Again, that's not something you want to do in a debate.

He made it about himself. He made it about his own COVID experience. He complained that Dr. Fauci's a Democrat. He called Dr. Fauci a Democrat, which I know, love it. That was for me. That was for me. That was for me. At some point, he started bragging about how he could raise more money than Biden,

that he'd be better off. I could raise more money than you if I wanted to on the campaign. You're talking about a fucking virus that is like ravaging the country right now. And you're bragging about how you could raise more money if you wanted. And even just throwing in that little hit inside of it about Joe Biden making money because like, how else could he afford to stay in his basement? It's just like, you have to know a lot. You have to be very well versed in the Trump lingo to understand anything that he was talking about there. Dan, did you ever want something on COVID? No, I think the problem for Trump is that he is 100% wrong on this issue. Like, I agree with

your take that Biden, it wasn't his Christmas moment, but just standing on stage with Trump, while Trump says those things, even if Biden said nothing, he would win that exchange, right? It's just like not being the guy complaining about the skyrocketing cost of plexiglass in a pandemic is a, you're a winner. You've won. Yeah. I think even in real time, like I liked that answer a lot and I didn't feel as though, I think he maybe like kind of petered out a bit towards the end, but just going through, here are the things that I would do on COVID. Here is a plan. I don't care if there was some sloppiness in it. I don't care if he struggled to land it. Like that is what I think people want to hear from him.

I'm glad he did that. The contrast is staggering. Biden had two crisp lines in that section. One was like, I don't want to shut down the country. I want to shut down the virus. And then he said, Americans don't panic. He panicked about Trump, which I thought were two really good lines. I think one of the lessons we always have to remind ourselves that many people have pointed

out over the course of the entire Biden candidacy is people like us, particularly political professionals, including speechwriters, care a lot more about the crispness of lines than voters, right? Like Biden is not, he never has been the clearest speaker. Sometimes it's a little elliptical sometimes he mangles his words and for like he overcame a stutter. That's obvious. But voters care less about that than we do. And so the the impression of that answer and the substance is that he is someone who will take it seriously and he cares, which is the exact opposite of Trump. The day we hit them, we did a new record. You're a senior watching this. You're already wanting to flee to Joe Biden. One person said, don't worry, we'll live with it.

You're terrified because you're in the age group that is most likely to die. Who who did he bring home? Nobody. Nobody. So the Trump campaign and the right wing media all hope that the big moment of the night would be about Hunter Biden's laptop, which may have emails on it that may reveal that Joe Biden once met a business associate of his son's in 2017 after he was vice president. That's it. That's the that's the big scandal. Trump campaign believed this was so scandalous that they invited a debate guest named Tony Bobulinski, a disgruntled former associate of Hunter's. It's sort of just funny when you say it. If you're having if you're having trouble following the details of the story.

So is Donald Trump. Here's here's how the exchange went. They were paying you a lot of money and they probably still are. So is Donald Trump. Here explanation to the American people. Why is it somebody just had a news conference a little while ago who was essentially supposed to work with you and your family, but what he said was damning? I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever. Number one.

Number two. This is a president. I have released all of my tax returns. 22 years. Go look at them have released all of my tax returns. 22 years, go look at them. 22 years of my tax return. You have not released a single solitary year of your tax return. What are you hiding? Why are you unwilling?

The foreign countries are paying you a lot. Russia's paying you a lot. China's paying you a lot. And your hotels and all your businesses all around the country, all around the world. And China is building a new road to a new golf course you have overseas. So what's going on here? Why don't release your tax return or stop talking about corruption? So that was it. That was a big moment. Tommy, what becomes of Tony Bobulinski and the big email scandal? I don't know that Tony B is making it to the next round here. I mean, they tried to spoon feed whatever these allegations are. I barely understand them to Kim Strassel, who might as well be,

you know, a member of the Trump family. She's just a hack on the editorial side of the Wall Street Journal. And then the Wall Street Journal's actual news reporters, their political reporters, wrote a hard news article about the same allegations that completely undercut any argument that Joe Biden did anything wrong. There's no evidence at all in these emails that Trump is referencing there that Joe Biden did anything wrong. So this thing fell completely flat. And then I thought the rejoinder of just release your tax returns was so simple. And it sounds crazy four years into being president to still be claiming about an audit. And again, he's speaking MAGA saying I get treated worse than the Tea Party was treated. No one knows what you're talking about.

This is a reference to some made up scandal from like 2010, 2009. Yeah, I don't. Trump did not win this exchange. Not even close. It's a it's a very funny, too. I think they've been chopping this story around so hard and they just sort of like, well, we've, we've hit a dead end in the nonfiction sections of the newspapers. We'll have to move to the fiction. Dan, I found it amazing that Trump trots this out and then he ends up on the defensive complaining about, I called my accountant and I did all this. Like it ended up being worse for Trump than it was supposed to be for Biden. I also thought, by the way, you could tell that Biden's most practiced moments were defensive moments trying to anticipate what Trump was going to come at him with. Because I thought some of the best moments Biden had were in response to Trump.

Well, it was probably pretty easy for the Biden team to do that because the Trump advisors just have a direct red line phone to Axios to tell them the entire debate strategy on a minute by minute basis. So yeah, it wasn't hard to anticipate this was coming. I think my takeaway from that whole exchange is that Trump is the laziest man in America. He was too lazy to even come up with a coherent lie about his favorite conspiracy theory. Like if you were, if you, let's say you were someone who was prepping Trump for a debate, that would mean that you were a pretty stupid racist person without self-worth or shame. But let's say you were doing that for a second. You, there were two moments you would prepare for, right? They're the two key moments. Your number one offensive moment is you

were going to nail Joe Biden on this laptop. Trump didn't learn how to pronounce the guy's name. So he couldn't say it. He did like, he had no store. There was no story to tell. Trump didn't learn how to pronounce the guy's name, so he couldn't say it. There was no story to tell. He didn't bother to learn the Cliff Notes version of the fake conspiracy theory to attack him. And then the other moment, which I think we're going to talk about, is healthcare, where Trump has gotten his ass handed to him on healthcare twice in the last five days. Savannah Guthrie did it, and then Leslie Stahl did it, and you know it's coming. And he didn't even bother to learn three bullet points for that answer. It's like he mailed it in, like new tone aside, not throwing a temper tantrum, but he had put no effort into trying to do

anything on that debate stage to win this election. Well, I think this is an example of where not only does his staff not help him, but the MAGA media doesn't help him either because they don't have a good story for this. Right. Like all of these opinion columns and all the other stuff like they tell like an indecipherable story about this. There's no real corruption there. The hard straight news reporters at Wall Street Journal, Fox and New York Post have all debunked this story. So there really isn't a good story for Trump to even grab onto. So all he's left to is just be like, the emails are bad, the laptop from hell. You made a lot of money like he can't understand the scandal. But as you pointed out, like at some point, Joe Biden tried to move the debate away from major issues like Hunter's laptop to more trivial things like health care and the economy. Trump was not a fan of that approach. Here's the exchange.

There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. There's a reason for it. He doesn't want to talk about the substance of issues. It's not about his family and my family. It's about your family and your family's hurting badly. If you're making less than if you you're a middle-class family, you're getting hurt badly right now. You're sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding, well, we can't get new tires, they're bald, because we have to wait another month or so.

Or are we going to be able to pay the mortgage? Or who's going to tell her she can't go back to community college? They're the decisions you're making. And the middle-class families like I grew up in Scranton and Claymont. They're in trouble. We should be talking about your families, but that's the last thing he wants to talk about. I want to talk about North Korea. I do want to turn to 10 seconds, Mr. President. That's a typical political statement. Let's get off this China thing. And then he looks the family around the table, everything, just a typical politician. When I see that, I'm Just a typical politician when I see that. Let's talk about North Korea now.

I'm not a typical politician. That's why I got elected. Let's talk about it. Let's get off the subject of China. Let's talk around sitting around the table. That was the new tone that everyone is celebrating today. The new tone. Love it.

Matt Iglesias at Vox pointed out that one big difference between 2016 Trump and 2020 Trump is that Trump used to pretend to be populist back then. But right there, he was mocking Biden for talking about struggling families. He also later complained that raising the minimum wage would hurt businesses. I don't know, it seemed like an underrated, damaging moment for him. Look, he was trying to do his roast comic thing, trying to say that it's phony. Like, I'm like, it is him mocking Joe Biden for talking about people's, like, kind of core economic concerns. But at the same time, I really think the problem there is Joe Biden turns the camera and says, I want to talk about what we're going to do for your families. I want to

talk to you directly. I want to talk about the problems you're facing. And throughout this debate, I mean, like to what to what Dan said earlier, like Trump is refusing to do the basics of normal politics, right? Like, that's where he's really losing. Like he won't, he's been asked about preexisting conditions over and over and over again. Joe Biden, he's asked about court packing again and again and again. And finally they come up with an answer, an answer that they can dispense with that issue and move forward. They do some normal politics. Trump now doesn't have an answer on his tax returns. He doesn't have an answer on preexisting conditions. He doesn't have an answer for what he wants to do in his second term. So what he's really left with is this kind of Dennis

Leary shtick. And I feel like the kind of the tickets are not selling like they once were. It just doesn't work. It's just so small and so petty on that stage. Yeah, Tommy, I feel like he didn't really like at no point did Trump try to turn this on. Well, here's what I'm going to do for you or here's what I've done for you. Like at one point, Biden's talking about how well billionaires have done under Trump. And Trump responds by saying, you're not really from Scranton. Yeah. I mean, he's like, excuse me, excuse me. Let me interrupt and say something incredibly damaging about myself and my campaign. I mean, like you don't have to like Joe Biden, but I think you come away thinking that he actually is in politics to do things for

real people. And Trump is not. He views politics as a competition. You know, his rejoinders are about how he could fundraise more if he played by a different set of rules. He could raise more from Wall Street if you would give them kickbacks, right? Like it's all about the game and the sport of it for him. And so, yes, it's a prepared line to like speak to the people at home directly about their concerns. But you come away thinking Joe Biden means it. And I think those sorts of unity moments and bringing it back to first principles about why we're all here to give people more health care, to give them better wages, to deal with climate change are what people want to hear. And Trump just like doesn't get that. It's all a sport. Trump giving Joe Biden a rotten tomato on a performance moment is not an argument for Donald Trump to continue being

president. It's just nothing. It doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about. Dan, that's what really struck me. And this is also going to come up in the 60 Minutes interview on Sunday that Trump released early because he had a tantrum. Like I didn't watch in that debate last night for 90 minutes. Like if you were looking for any hint of a second term agenda from Donald Trump, like what did you hear? Nothing. If you were looking for a hint of a plan to win reelection, you would find nothing. Right. I mean, it's just like it is just Trump standing on stage being Trump. Sometimes he's giant asshole Trump. Sometimes he's subtle asshole Trump, but it's just the same thing. He like, he really has no, I mean, I guess it's, I guess it is the

entitlement of an insecure rich kid, which is what, you know, that's essentially what Trump is, is that he thinks he deserves reelection just because he's him. Like he's not doing anything to try to get it. He's not like, if you paid any, had any sort of self-awareness, you would say, boy, people keep asking me this question about what I'm going to do with the second term that I'm asking people to give me. I'm not currently leading in the effort to get that. So is there something I should do differently? Maybe I should come up with an answer. And he doesn't – like he's offended at the idea that he has to answer that question.

And like that permeated itself throughout the debate. Like everyone is – and I think we can debate how terrible the press coverage or punditry about the debate is, and it's probably a mixed bag. But the substance was actually just as bad or worse this time too. Sahil Kapur with NBC pointed this out. The most Google searched issue last night was wages, right? So there's like people sitting home hearing a conversation about minimum wage where Donald Trump complains about it and Joe Biden saying, I'm going to raise minimum wage to $15.

And they're not caring about fucking Hunter's laptop or any of the bullshit Trump's saying, like they're Googling wages because that matters to them. I mean, like politics is not that complicated. You want to be a likable person who supports popular policies that people trust, right? Right.

It's like, that's the goal, right? It's not that, like sometimes it's hard to achieve, but it's not hard to put on the whiteboard. And Trump was unlikable lied. And he specifically jumped on the unpopular side of popular issues. There's a minimum wage initiative, $15 minimum wage initiative on the Florida ballot this year. The last poll I saw for it saw two thirds of Floridians supporting a $15 minimum wage. The last poll I saw for it saw two thirds of Floridians supporting a $15 minimum wage. These absolute must win state of which Trump is a voter and a resident. He picked the one third side of a two third side issue.

Which he had previously been for. Yeah. And 43% of Republicans want to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It's a wildly popular position. Yes, John, you're right. That's why it's so stupid. He already had the popular position and he abandoned it. Because he't know he can't he can't remember which positions he's taken he's fucking i would also just point out that the reason he walked out on leslie stall is because

she asked a hard hard question about health care and that question was how how are you gonna do it how? Ow. This is unfair. This is unfair. I can't answer this. Gotcha. You're so angry. So there was a section on race in America last night. Welker also asked Trump about the over 500 immigrant children

who still have not been reunited with their parents because of the administration's family separation policy. Trump responded to that by blaming Biden. And here's how he responded to Welker's questions about race relations. Nobody has done more for the black community than Donald Trump. And if you look, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, possible exception, but the exception of Abraham Lincoln, nobody has done what I've done. I am the least racist person. I can't even see the audience because it's so dark.

But I don't care who's in the audience. I'm the least racist person in this room. Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern history. He pours fuel on every single racist fire. You made a reference to Abraham Lincoln. Where did that come in? I mean, you said you're Abraham Lincoln. No, no. I said not since Abraham Lincoln has anybody done what I've done for the black community. And I'm saying I'm Abraham Lincoln. Love it. I wanted to ask you about this because we've talked before about how Trump can be genuinely funny at times. Right.

I thought in that moment that was one of Biden's most genuinely funny moments of the debate or the campaign. And Trump didn't really get the humor of making the Abraham Lincoln joke. Well, whether he gets it or not, one thing he cannot understand is a joke at his own expense, right? That doesn't compute. What do you mean? My rhetoric was quite clear. I didn't say I was Abraham Lincoln. I said I was as good as, if not better than Abraham Lincoln. Your joke doesn't make sense. I award you no points for your joke as a comedy person. That's what he was doing. But yeah, like, you know, look, Trump, Trump is occasionally funny, more often than not, funny by accident. And we've never seen him laugh. Right. So that tells you just how receptive he is to a joke about himself.

Tommy, Trump campaign strategy has been to reduce Biden's margins among Black and Latino voters, particularly younger Black and Latino men. Do you think he did anything to further that goal with any of his answers last night in those sections? I think, you know, it's hard for me to judge. I think there's a fair critique of Joe Biden's record when it comes to the crime bill. But instead, Trump keeps accusing him of using the term super predators, which isn't accurate. And I don't know why you wouldn't stick to a much more relevant criticism when it comes to that 1994 bill. And when Trump talks about his accomplishment when it comes to helping the African-American community,

he focuses on such narrow things. It's like a slight increase in HBCU funding over the years, a tiny incremental bit of progress when it comes to criminal justice reform. So I don't know that he made the case particularly well. It like it ended in a bunch of complaining that, you know, people he had worked with when it came to criminal justice reform no longer are nice to him publicly. Right. Like that was the thrust of the where he ended up with his answer. Dan, I also thought this was the section on both immigration and criminal justice reform, where Trump really dug into the, you know, Joe Biden had eight years as vice president and did nothing. He's all talk, no action. What did you think about sort of that line of attack from Trump, which he really sort of hammered home in that section?

It would be a better message than whatever his message has been about Biden. Right. Like the Trump's problem is he has been unable to pick a message about Biden and stick to it for a long period of time. Has dementia. Sleepy Joe doesn't leave the basement. Oh, he maybe he's too coherent to have dementia. Oh, he's a criminal mastermind with Hunter, or he's an Antifa super soldier. He's never figured it out. I've always thought that typical politician, 47 years in Washington, was potentially a more effective message. I don't know that it overrides Trump's own conduct or his failure to deal with this pandemic, but it would be one that probably had a little more chance of success. I think the mistake Trump made is

a better attack on Biden is he's been in Washington for 47 years and hasn't solved these problems. Then remember this presidency that was just four years ago that you're really nostalgic for and the president in that presidency has an approval rating in the 60s? That's bad. I think that is a too recent touchstone, and that administration's policies and president are too popular to make that be the specific part. But at least it was a, you could kind of, if you squint, you can see strategy in it. I'm sorry, I forgot one thing. I forgot that Trump just kept ranting over and over again, that he's the least racist person in the room, including the moderator, who is an African

American woman, which was normally if someone is shouting at you that they're the least racist person you've ever met, they're probably pretty racist. So I'm not sure that played particularly well in that answer. They're probably not wearing a mask at a Trader Joe. Tommy, there were a lot of like little moments like that in that section that just sort of went unremarked, like they're talking about immigrants showing up for their court hearings to find out whether they're going to be deported or allowed to stay. And Joe Biden's pointing out that most immigrants come back for their court hearings.

They don't just like go out into the country. And then Trump's like only the ones with the lowest IQ come back for their court hearings. That was very weird. Just incredibly offensive. So there are moments like that. But I do think like to the point, Dan, about the you know, you've been there for 47 years. Like Biden, I think, missed an opportunity in that section. And it's one I think he can seize in the final couple of days if Trump continues this line of attack.

Like it would work better for Trump if Trump was the challenger and Biden was the incumbent. But like, all you have to do is turn to Donald Trump and say like, yeah, I was vice president for eight years. You're president now. And we have 200,000 Americans dead of COVID. We have an economy in recession. You haven't done anything to come up with a deal for a stimulus package. What have you done these last four years? What are you talking about?

You haven't done anything. You haven't passed shit. Like, I just think there's an easy rejoinder to that, even though I do agree it can be an effective line of attack. Yeah, I was also a bit frustrated just because I thought that that was maybe when Biden said we had a Republican Congress and kind of looked at Trump like that was sort of a kind of a checkmate. I felt like it was a little bit of an excuse. And I I understand why he went there. But, you know, the fundamental attack, you didn't do anything in all of your time. Like there's a, I think, a substantive argument about like about how progress works in America,

that progress takes time and you solve a lot of problems as much as you can over eight years. But there's work to finish. Like you use the time as best as you can. Look how you failed over the last four years to use your time to do anything to help people. I want to keep doing building on the progress we made. Is the job done? Of course not. Like I think that there is a more a less defensive response to that kind of criticism. That's all. It's true, though. I will say Trump opened the section about the stimulus negotiations with the reason I haven't got it done yet is

because of Nancy Pelosi. He did the exact same thing. That's true. That's true. One reason the debate was pretty great is that we got our first ever section on climate change. The result was Donald Trump ranting about the dangers of wind and tiny windows and Joe Biden expressing support for a transition away from fossil fuels like oil, which is a position that's apparently controversial with not only Republicans, but many of the pundits and reporters covering the debate. Here's a clip. They want to knock down buildings and build new buildings with little, tiny, small windows. I mean, and many other things and many other things. Let me have the vice president respond. And we're running out of time and we have a lot

more questions. get to. We are energy independent. I know more about wind than you do. It's extremely expensive. Kills all the birds. It's very intermittent. It's got a lot of problems. And they happen to make the windmills in both Germany and China.

I have one final question. Would he close down the oil industry? It falls. Would you close down the oil industry? By the way, I would transition from the oil industry, yes. Oh, that's a big statement. I would transition. It is a big statement. That's a big statement. Because I would stop. Why would you do that? Because the oil industry pollutes significantly. I see. Here's the deal. That's a big statement. Well, if you let me finish the statement,

because it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time, over time. And I'd stop giving to the oil industry. I'd stop giving them federal subsidies. He won't give federal subsidies to the gas, excuse me, to the to solar and wind. Yeah. Why are we giving it to oil industry? We actually do give it to solar and wind.

We have maybe the biggest statement in terms of business. That's the biggest statement. Because basically what he's saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry. I do not know how you can listen to Donald Trump talk about tiny windows and wind killing birds and be like, yeah, that was a good performance right there. That guy nailed it. So, Dan, Biden did clarify after the debate that he was talking about ending federal subsidies to the oil industry. I'm really not sure why that was a clarification because we just heard him say that specifically in the answer. Why do you think so many pundits and reporters treated this as like

a potential gaffe? Because they need a gaffe and they hadn't had one yet, right? It's, look, they're, I mean, I think it's two separate but equally stupid things. One is this desperate desire for some sort of change in the narrative. Joe Biden has been winning by the same amount within a point or two for like six months now, right? And we keep waiting for the – us included, he went for the other shoe to drop. Will it be the debate? Will it be because of COVID or will COVID recede or a stimulus or all those things? And it has not happened. The race has been locked in and incredibly steady despite all the tumultuous news environment we're

in. And the other one is just this old school view of politics that thinks climate change is bad. It is a bad political issue. Democrats should be scared of climate change. And that's just the wrong way of thinking about it. It's an outdated view of the world. I mean, the fact that it is like the germ of that notion is embedded in your question, which is the first ever section on climate change in a presidential debate. We just had debates four years ago. The planet was also melting four years ago and we didn't talk about it. And the whole section was incredibly stupid because Trump, like he doesn't understand the issue. He like gets these little weird things in his head, like tiny windows or shower heads or having to wash your dishes twice or his deep, deceited concerns about toilet flushing that just they miss the point.

They're so disconnected from what people who care about the planet think. Well, the windmill thing is just a residue from not wanting windmills to be an eyesore near his golf course. It's like that's just an old bit of information that kind of crawled its way in there before the memory card got full. But Tommy, I also think it's like, you know, Biden's position on oil and climate in general, like is the popular position, right? If you ask Americans whether they want to expand fossil fuels

or develop alternative energy, 79% of Americans say they want to develop alternative energy. It's the more popular position. He's not running for president of Texas and Oklahoma, right? Like people don't love big oil. They don't love fossil fuel subsidies. So like I thought, I thought this was actually a strong section for, for Biden. And I'm not sure why the press corps, I guess they were right. Like they're reading polling from like the year 2000, if they thought that was a bad response. Also, it's another example of Trump speaking his weird language, right? He kept talking about AOC plus three. No one knows what you're talking about. The small windows hit. That's not what Democrats want.

Democrats are saying, let's invest and create a ton of jobs by replacing shitty old single pane windows with like triple pane windows that are better insulated. That takes investment and money and creates jobs like it's it's just none of the hits made any sense. Even Texas, like the number of clean energy jobs in Texas is through the roof. Like oil companies are investing in clean energy, too. You know, like it's just like the whole country is moving away from fossil fuels towards clean energy. It's like it's not only popular, it's already happening. And like, yes, there are going to be Democrats in, you know, fossil fuel producing states that say we still want to have some fossil fuels even as we move

towards a clean energy future. Right. Like there's obviously going to be Democrats that say that. But the vastly popular position for someone running for president is to invest in clean energy and to move away from fossil fuels. That is an extremely popular position. So the final question to Trump and Biden was about what they'd say at their inauguration to the people who didn't vote for them in this election. Here's the clip. We have to make a country totally successful as it was prior to the plague coming in from China. Now we're rebuilding it and we're doing record numbers, 11.4 million jobs at a short period of time etc But I will tell you go back

Before the plague came in just before I was getting calls from people that were not normally people that would call me They wanted to get together. We had the best black unemployment numbers in the history of our country. Hispanic, women, Asian, people with diplomas with no diplomas, MIT graduates number one in the class. Everybody had the best numbers. And you know what? The other side wanted to get together. They wanted to unify. Success is going to bring us together. We are on the road to success. But I'm cutting taxes, and he wants to raise everybody's taxes and he wants to put new regulations on everything. He will kill it. If he gets in,

you will have a depression, the likes of which you've never seen. Your 401ks will go to hell and it'll be a very, very sad day for this country. Inspiring. Do we have the Biden clip? Morning in America there. I will say I'm an American president. I represent all of you, whether you voted for me or against me. And I'm going to make sure that you're represented. I'm going to give you hope. We're going to move. We're going to choose science over fiction.

We're going to choose hope over fear. We're going to choose to move forward because we have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make things better. We can grow this economy. We can deal with the systemic racism. And at the same time, we can make sure that our economy is being run and moved and motivated by clean energy, creating millions of new jobs. And that's the fact. That's what we're going to do. And I'm going to say, as I said at the beginning, what is on the ballot here is the character of this country. Decency, honor, respect, treating people with dignity, making sure that everyone has an even chance. And I'm going to make sure you get that. You haven't been getting it the last four years. So every scientific poll

conducted after the debate showed Biden was the winner. CNN was 53-39. Data for Progress was 52-41. YouGov was 54-35. And the CNN focus group of undecided voters in North Carolina had nine going for Biden, two saying it was a tie and zero for Trump. Frank Luntz's focus group was a little more favorable to Trump. And, of course, Trump crushed it in the Twitter polls on right-wing media websites. Lovett, how does this debate set up the final week of the campaign? And what do you think about all these Republican operatives crowing about Donald Trump's performance today?

Yeah, I mean, look, this is what they've been given. This is the clay they'll have to mold into some kind of a pleasant shape. I've seen all of Trump's intellectual zambonis saying that the oil answer was a historic gaffe that will carry Trump through the rest of the campaign. Rick Santorum was incredibly laudatory on CNN about just how well Donald Trump had done. Like you could see it in their eyes by the end, even Trump in that final answer, kind of going back to do a hit on Biden, the sense that like he hadn't landed anything. Oh, I didn't do the tax hit I was supposed to do during the tax section. I fucked that up. I got to land this. He came back to China. He kept coming back to the hits that he just couldn't get to land. And I thought it was an

interesting twist on what happened in the first debate. In the first debate, Trump came there to throw Joe Biden off. In this debate, I think Joe Biden kind of tried to push Donald Trump's buttons. And by the end of the debate, I think it really had worked. You saw like Joe Biden felt really confident. He was interrupting just a little bit. He was pointing things out. He delivers that big sweeping close kind of disregarding what Donald Trump had done. So, you know, they didn't need a draw. They didn't need a close loss. They needed a Donald Trump to do something Donald Trump couldn't do, which is deliver an incredible transformative debate performance. Does that mean Trump can't still win? No, but it does mean that the dynamic shift that they needed to make in this debate did not happen. Tommy, what did you think? Yeah,

Joe Biden was very good. And he talked about things people care about. And he did it in a way that seemed honest and earnest and like he would unite the country. And I think that ultimately is what a lot of people want to hear. The Trump strategy has been to tell us for months that Joe Biden has dementia and will never make it to the inauguration day, right? And instead, he got out-debated. Biden looks sharp. And all the hits that he brought to the debate about the Biden family, about traditional politician, about taxes, none of them really landed well and they ended up kind of jumbled. So it's hard for me. I'm trying to like not be a partisan Democrat here, but it was I don't feel good about how good I feel right now. Right. I feel like I should I feel like I should be more anxious about the state of the race 11 days out. But it was hard to watch that performance last night and not come away thinking like Joe Biden did a hell of a good job and Donald Trump is kind of flailing. Dan, let me let me ask it

this way. Do you think any of the Republican crowing today about how great Donald Trump did is not just posturing? Like, do you think there are some operatives out there who run campaigns and look at data and watch last night and thought, this might get us some more voters. This might stop the bleeding. This might be the beginning of a comeback. I feel good about this. Sort of.

I don't think they necessarily think that about Trump. I think that the people who are running races in red states for Republican senatorial and congressional and gubernatorial candidates were panicking that Trump was going to deliver a reform that's similar to the first one, which would further shift politics more broadly in the Democratic discussion. So I think Trump didn't do anything here that changes the dynamic of the race. And that is a gigantic, huge win for Biden. But he did make his situation worse. And we're looking at all these races in these red states in the polls we're seeing, like Montana and Alaska and South Carolina. These races are on the cusp.

In order for the Democrats to win those races, they need some number of Republicans to vote for them. And the crazier Trump seems, the more repellent his conduct is, the more he pours gasoline on fires, the easier it is to get some of those voters to come out. So I do think that there is some, I don't think it's celebration, I do think there is some relief from some Republicans running races that Trump was not as bad as he was the first time. I would be incredibly surprised if there was a single voter who was backing Joe Biden or leaning towards Joe Biden heading into that debate that said, I'm going to change my mind. I'm going to be with Trump now. And that is a problem for Donald Trump,

because if you believe the polls, Joe Biden is ahead. Right. I do think there is a there is a small cohort of undecided voters we've heard from who either are truly undecided or leaning Trump. And these people actually really like Donald Trump's policies. They think he's done a pretty OK job as president. And what they hate is that he's an asshole. Right. What bothers them is that is the Donald Trump we saw in the first debate. So for that group of voters who does who are Republican leaning, who love Trump's policies, who think he hasn't done that bad of a job, who just think he can be an asshole. Yeah, maybe they think he was normal enough last night that maybe I'll pull the lever. Were they going to pull the lever for him anyway?

Probably. Yeah. Probably. And again, like we've seen in some of these polls, there is this gap between the vote share Trump's getting, which is around 40, 41, 42, and his approval rating, which is like 43, 44, 45 in some of these. and his approval rating, which is like 43, 44, 45 in some of these. And you wonder if that gap closes a little bit and the vote share starts looking more like the approval rating. And those are sort of like soft Republicans coming home. That's the only thing. Yeah. In every election, there are some set of voters who are eventually going to come home. But Trump has done so many

crazy, stupid things on a weekly basis that he keeps delaying that process and delaying that process. And if he had had another terrible debate, he could have pushed some of those people into the non-voting category. But maybe if they were going to get to Trump anyway by Election Day, they might do it a few days sooner because of this. And of course, there's still time. There's still time for him to do some crazy shit. What is today? What is it? What is it the anniversary of? Today is that happy anniversary of the jim comey letter guys

wow not four years ago today it's four years ago with 11 days left in the campaign which is what we have jim comey posts some little haha funny fucking instagram i'm gonna lose my mind well how dare you tell me how about like talk about trump's new tone he already today as he's announcing some other foreign policy when i honestly didn't even pay attention to what it was he's on the phone with bb netanyahu and he's like you think sleepy joe could have gotten this deal done bb huh you think sleepy joe you can hear bb netanyahu hedging his bets in real time he's like oh mr president we support anything from the United States that is helpful to Israel. It's like he's not he's not on the MAGA train right now. He's looking at his polls. No, he's like he's definitely like, yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to be nice to

Joe Biden pretty soon. So I'm going to go ahead and say that, yeah, Sleepy Joe could get it done. Huge fan of Sleepy Joe. Trump Trump is going to Trump is going to a rally this weekend. He's going to go right back to the hits. And then we're going to have the 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night where he walks out of the interview. Just like the convention period, this ain't lasting long. The discipline Trump ain't lasting long. I mean, he has definitely gotten worse over the last four years. But I would note that this last period at the end of 2016, he kept his shit together for the last 11 days.

He did. So like that could happen again. He could now. It'll be tough. If he's really down, I don't know. It's going to be tough because you could tell last night at certain moments in the debate, he started gritting his teeth in the split screen like he was ready to blow. But he sort of held himself back. Yeah, it was like he was holding in an evil burp.

On that note, that's all we have, guys. Tune in tomorrow, Saturday, where we will have Dan and John's interview with hopefully the next president of the United States, Joe Biden. Finally. It's the final piece in the puzzle coming on Pod Save America. Smart of him to leave it to the very end. Like, you don't play your best card early in the game. You save it. The biggest audience, you know.

All right, everyone. And the easiest questions. You're not asking him about the laptop? What the fuck? Bye, everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Brian Semel, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.