Pod Save America - “Will you shut up, man?” (Debate recap special)

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan break down the lows and lower lows of the worst presidential debate in history between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we got the whole gang together to talk about last night's high-minded, inspiring debate, where it leaves the race, and where we go from here. Quick note before we start, we have added two new funds to Vote Save America to help you maximize the impact of your donations between now and the election.

If you head to votesaveamerica.com slash donate, you'll find our new housekeeping fund that helps Democrats in some of the most competitive house races and our fuck gerrymandering fund, which will help flip state legislatures and a few key states that could lead to fair congressional maps and Medicaid expansion. Now is the time to donate. And these funds are the best way to make sure that 100% of your donation is used strategically. You can get the most bang for your buck just go to votesaveamerica.com slash donate for more information john did you forget to plug the

chris wallace appreciation fund or is that later in the show that is later in the show yeah no we're um if if you want chris wallace to have his own podcast on crooked media we um we have a fun for yeah we're gonna have a bust of him sculpted for the lobby of the house. All right, here we go. Joe Biden and Donald Trump met in Ohio last night. Meet me in Ohio. Met in Ohio last night for the first of three debates during which the president was able to unify most Americans

and not wanting to watch the other two. Fox News' Chris Wallace, whose job was supposedly to moderate the debate, lost control early as Trump spent more than 90 minutes shouting down Wallace, interrupting Biden, and spewing all kinds of lies, insults, conspiracies, and complaints, including moments where he refused to condemn white supremacists and urged his supporters to go stalk voters at the polls on Election Day. In other words, it was trump being

trump here's a clip of when the debate really went off the rails and uh and joe biden spoke for most of america and so the election is all you don't know it's on the ballot why is it in the ballot because why is it on the ballot it's not on the ballot it's on the ballot in the court i don't think so in the court well there's nothing nothing happening there. And you don't know her view on Roe v. Wade. You don't know her view. You should go out and vote. You're in voting now. Vote and let your

senators know how strongly you feel. Vote now. Make sure you, in fact, let people know you're a senator. I'm not going to answer the question. Because the question is the question is, the question is, the question is, who is your, listen. Dan, do you have any initial reactions to the overall debate before we dig into some of the specific moments? Look, it was chaotic.

It was a lack of decorum. Made people hate politics. Who's to blame? I don't know, John. Was that my opinion or was I just reading you the lead of some stories today? I mean, it was Donald Trump is a lunatic and he acted like a lunatic. And, you know, we can talk about what the political implications of it are for, but he made it impossible to have anything resembling a normal debate, a normal conversation about issues because he didn't abide by the rules. The words he said did not make sense. And he was just a seemingly very confused, very angry, very mean person last night, which, I mean, I haven't seen a poll, but that doesn't seem like something that people like.

I mean, Lovett, my view was the that doesn't seem like something that people like. I mean, love it. My view was the debate was a mess because Donald Trump participated in it. Like he's not he wasn't that much different than any of the debates he participated in in 2016. Remember, like, yeah, he stalked Hillary, like on the in the second debate behind the stage. Like he's he was Donald Trump. How did the debate match up with, like, your expectations of how you thought it would go? Was there was there any difference there? Well, you know, there's expecting a house to burn down and then it's feeling the flames lapping at your face as it's happening. Like we

knew that this was going to be a disaster. I think it is still stunning to see it in real time. I will say it is very frustrating. So obviously what Dan pointed out was very frustrating, you know, the kind of sparks fly, you know, sparks fly between arsonist and wooded area. But what was also frustrating is I saw a lot of pundits, a lot of journalists who I think were actually sincerely disgusted by the debate and actually didn't say both sides are to blame. They did a pretty good job about it. But what bothered me about it was there were so many lamenting what has become of the presidency. This is the darkest moment in American history. No, no. The problem was putting this person in the job. The tragedy is what he has been doing every single day since he became

president. When it is plain to see, when it is too obvious for journalists to pretend to be obtuse about it, when it is too obvious for even people like Rick Santorum to defend it, that may make us feel shitty in the moment. But ultimately, it is good for people to see this person exposed. Tommy, what did you think? So I rewatched the debate this morning because, you know, I'm the kind of guy who does the work, John. Oh my goodness. Tommy, I rewatched it last night at midnight. I was sitting in this office watching this.

So my views on the debate evolved. And so I think last night I thought Joe Biden did a better job than I thought having rewatched it this morning. And that was colored by the fact that I think Donald Trump delivered the worst debate performance in presidential campaign history. And I don't know if there's a close second. And our brains are so broken by 2016 that we act like that, like our instincts are off. But we saw the worst human being we've ever seen on a stage last night. He was interrupted. He was rude. He was vicious. He was cruel. And that that bore out in some of the data. CBS did a snap poll. They asked, did tonight's debate make you think better or worse of him? 24% said better for Trump, 42% worse. His Twitter feed was the human being that showed up last night. And even Trump fans don't like his Twitter feed. But it wasn't just the tone. His response to issues on substance were terrible. Trump's response to a conversation and a critique about the coronavirus response was to mock Joe Biden for where he went to college.

I can't think of a dumber, more glib, more divorced from the reality of what people are dealing with response than that. And so Trump was terrible. Now, I don't mean to criticize Biden. I think he had some very good moments, but it was almost impossible to get across what you needed to get across about policy and tell listeners more about who you are and what you're going to do. time he tried to say something and Chris Wallace didn't do anything about it until like an hour and 15 into the debate where he finally outlined for the viewers what the rules were supposed to be before this thing turned into a debacle. So it was a mess. It was hard to watch. It sucked. But like ultimately Biden wins this debate overwhelmingly because he did better and Trump is losing and he

needed to pick up votes last night and he looked like a lunatic. He looked like an actual lunatic. losing and he needed to pick up votes last night. And he looked like a lunatic. He looked like an actual lunatic. Yeah, Tommy, I was going to ask you next about how Chris Wallace did as a moderator, which I still want to hear your thoughts on. But like it's what I was thinking is you replace Chris Wallace with a better moderator. Maybe if we had like if it was Hillary instead of Biden or Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren or literally any other Democrat, you could argue like maybe someone would have had sharper answers here or someone would have been worse here or whatever. But like any two combinations of people you put on that stage with Donald Trump, candidate and moderator, you're going to end up with pretty much the same result because Donald Trump went in there deciding that he was going to shout over everyone for 90 minutes and act like a lunatic. And like I have plenty of complaints about Chris Wallace as a moderator. I think he did a poor job.

And like, there's things that Biden could have done better. But like, there was a maniac up on stage last night. Like, and you're right. Like, we've so like, we think that Trump is magic because he beat all expectations and won in 2016. And but like any other candidate who was up there, who was seven or eight points behind in the polls in the first presidential debate

and gave that performance, we'd be like, oh, it's over. It's fucking over, you know? And look, Donald Trump could still win, but like not because of that debate. I'm going to get this off my chest and then shut up about moderators forever. I get that Chris Wallace had a tough job, but he failed. And I'm sick of hearing excuses like we

don't grade Super Bowl refs on a curve and we shouldn't grade him on one either. The debate commission preemptively absolved him of any fact checking responsibility, which is stupid and pathetic. So his job was to enforce the rules and facilitate a discussion. And he failed at that. You can argue that he needed more authority or tools to cut Trump off or whatever, but he should have more forcefully tried to prevent Trump from talking over Biden. And even if you cannot prevent Trump from breaking the rules, you need to explain them to the American people, help them understand that Trump is doing something that is not allowed, something he agreed to these rules and he is now cheating. He also asked questions that were like straight out of Fox News primetime. He asserted that Biden supports big government.

He asserted that climate change plans will kill jobs. He acts like Joe Biden has the authority to call up the fucking mayor of Portland and ask him to send in the National Guard. What are you talking about, man? And when Trump said, stand back and stand by to the proud boys, a Nazi group. Chris Wallace just moved on. You didn't have any interest in figuring out what that meant? No follow up there, Chris Wallace? This was a disaster.

It's going to get worse because the next couple of moderators are nice, but they don't have even Chris Wallace's standing or reputation for being tough. I know the debate commission just announced that they're going to make some changes, but that can't happen again, even with the town hall setting. What possible changes could they add that would make a difference? Like a trap door over a pit of sharks? I was thinking one of those dog things that zaps you, maybe. Yeah, it's like, you know, Donald Trump, you throw a few more rules at the guy and he's going to behave.

That's it. You can strain him just a little more with some norms and rules and stuff like that. Like they're going to, they shut off Donald Trump's mic. He's going to take the mic off and start screaming. He'll scream into Joe Biden's mic. I'll walk across. Dan, was there any like discernible strategy from Donald Trump last night that you saw? last night that you saw? Not a strategy to win the election, for sure. I think there was like a semblance of a tactic for the debate itself, which was basically to try to wear Joe Biden into a mistake. Like the Republicans have convinced themselves that Joe Biden is senile. He's too old. He doesn't have the stamina. He can't do this. And therefore, you know, Rick Santorum, who only says stupid things, I think said this on CNN beforehand.

And I think it was said to him by a stupid person who works for Trump, which is what Trump was going to try to do was to go all out at Biden to try to wear him out early on. And so I don't want to reverse engineer a strategy from Trump's natural assholery. But to the extent that you could possibly do that, it would be that I'm going to try to force Biden into a mistake, right? Either make him get overly defensive, pull him into the muck with me, get him flustered. But what Trump forgets is he's trying to make the race about Biden. But when he does that, he keeps the focus on himself,

which has been true of this entire period of the general election, where he's been unable to walk out of the spotlight for more than a second to allow there to be a conversation about something other than why Trump is a terrible president. Yeah, I thought it was it was not just trying to go Biden into a mistake. It was also trying to get him really angry, like he really wanted to get under his skin. And Biden got annoyed a few times, for sure. That's what the shut up man and the clown thing were all about. But he didn't go full. He didn't lose it at any moment. I think the other big strategy from Trump, if you like, and if you want to call it a strategy, is he wanted to attach Joe Biden to what he thinks

is the radical left. Right. And that didn't work out so well. That was actually a huge failure of a strategy, because every time Biden said, I am the Democratic Party, I have my own climate plan, whatever it may be, Trump was like, no, you don't. I don't believe you. Or then he said, oh, you just lost the left. Trump decided to play pundit at one point. You just lost the left, which like doesn't really make Trump's case for him at all. I liked when he was like, you won't even say law and order. And Biden's like law and order. He's like, see, he wouldn't say it. What do you just watch this? Totally falls apart. Love it. What was Biden's strategy as you saw it? And how well do you think he executed overall?

I think he got stronger and stronger as the night went on. I realized as I was watching the debate that my that my pulse is an undecided voter and my pulse was quite worried in the first few minutes, especially early on, because I do think the kind of Trump feral genius, as Axe would call him on Hacks on Tap, mode was to basically, you know, look, Joe Biden has incredible strengths up there. I think that he had moments where he the moment where he talked about both Bo and Hunter was incredibly powerful. It was like it was a victory for decency and compassion. The moment where he just talked about sensitivity, sensitivity as a good thing. The moments where he looked straight to camera and said, don't worry about this. This is about you. I think that was his strategy. It was a strategy around decency. It was a

strategy about not getting pulled in to the Trump shenanigans, which he mostly did. It was about addressing the American people directly. I think that worked. I think early on, it was clear that, you know, I think in the, that Trump and Trump's people don't view Joe Biden as a live debater. And so their goal was to kind of interrupt him, throw shit at him, get him to, to, to be interrupted halfway through making a point, try to rattle him, try to get him to make mistake, become less articulate. I think that there were moments early on, especially where that worked for a moment, it did work. But ultimately I think because Trump became so heinous as the night wore on and actually also lost some steam later in the debate,

Biden was able, I think, to get stronger as the night wore on. And as they both heated up, Trump got worse and worse and more belligerent. And I think Biden got stronger and stronger and stronger and remembered as he went to the core strategy, kind of go to the camera, go to the people, push that aside. And I think that was really good. Tommy, what did you think of Biden's strategy? You said you thought you thought on the second viewing he didn't do quite as well as your first viewing. Is that what you look? I thought he's some really good moments. Like I thought that close where he talked about how he would accept the the results of the election and then just encouraged everyone to go vote because the power is in their hands. It was an incredibly sharp answer. It was a strong contrast to Trump.

I thought he was smart to bring up the Affordable Care Act early on and the fact that the Supreme Court would overturn it. But I don't think that those answers were delivered cogently necessarily. And sometimes there were some words left out that led you to be a little confused. Again, that was because he was getting interrupted literally constantly. I also thought he lost his cool at times. And I think saying shut up or calling him a clown, like it wasn't a big deal in the moment, but you can see in coverage this morning that it allows the media to both sides it and say they were both retreating insults. Like just so we're not all doing happy talk for Democrats, like Dave Weigel pointed out

that Google trends had the number one thing Google last night was where Biden attended college and whether he called African-Americans super predators. Now, that doesn't mean swing voters are Googling those things. You also will learn that Trump was lying in both these instances, but it's notable that that's what people took away. I also think that Biden's goal was to make sure that people understood not just who he was and his values, but his plan for the country, especially when it came to the economy. And Trump being a psychopath prevented him from doing that in a lot of a lot of ways. I think that debating Trump puts you in a vice that you have two options when he's trying to goad you and interrupt you into freaking out. Right. So you can either get angry, shout him down, try to put him in his

place, which may work, but then will almost guarantee that the next day the media says that you got down in the mud with Trump and it was both sides and everyone was fighting. So you can either do that or you can ignore him and just try to get a word in and then you risk appearing weak like Trump trampled all over you. And I think it's very hard to sort of get out of that. What I would my only thing with Biden is when he finally got time to say what he wanted to say, which is love it, as you pointed out, was like towards the middle and end of the debate. I wouldn't have used so much of that time attacking Trump. I would have used more of that time sort of talking about what I was going to do.

And I do think in the next debate in the town hall format, that'll come more naturally to him because he'll be answering a person's question and he'll be able to just talk about what he's going to do. But that was that's sort of the only criticism I had of Biden that he should talk more about his plans. I would just say I think you're right, John. I do think that there's a third path when dealing with Trump in that way, which I felt like Biden did at times, which is also just calling out the game, right? You don't have to pretend the attacks aren't happening. You also

don't have to engage with him. I think, you know, his moments where he turned to camera were effective. I wish that they had been. I think he could have made more of a moment when he turned to the camera and talked to people directly and have been a bit clearer with some more prepared lines like this is this is about distraction. This is about chaos. This is what we have to stop. Here's what I'll do. Like, I think there was a way to, I think, to be a bit more defiant in those moments. That's what I wanted to see. But I, again, it was like 90 minutes of fucking chaos. So I think he did a great job. It's just, I do think that there's something in between going into the mud and completely disregarding it. That's all.

Dan, what were you going to say? As you know, every candidate goes into a debate with a, well, every candidate except Trump, goes into a debate with a set of strategic objectives that they want to accomplish, right? And a set of moments that sort of like, they're your best lines you have in your back pocket you're trying to use. And I think for Biden, you know, those sort of strategic objectives were don't lose your cool, right? Don't try to avoid getting pulled down into the absurd.

And I think he did that as well as any human possibly could. The second is sort of main, which is related, sort of maintain the stature gap, right? Biden is essentially running as the president that Trump won't be. And I think that has really benefited him through this process. And he came out by not falling into Trump's trap. He sort of, he stayed above the fray in a way that what I thought was good. And the third one is educate people about your plans. And that one was that he did not go as far on, but I don't really know how you do it differently under that scenario. And you have three debates to do that. As you know, I am not someone prone to happy talk generally,

generally. But I think that we I feel better today about Biden's position after the first debate than I ever thought was what thought was possible. This is I feel the same. I have I have I am worried about everything. I have zero concerns about that debate. Can I ask you can I ask you a question about that, actually, which is I feel the same way. Are we able to separate the fact that we went into this debate knowing that Biden is ahead by basically all polling and that Trump needs to shift the dynamic with the actual debate itself? Like, how do we think we would feel if this debate was unfolding and it was a bit closer right now? Well, I think that that you can't you I don't think you can separate. Well, at least I can't separate those because the goal is to win the election. Of course.

And you go into the debate with a strategy dependent on your position right now to do that. And so like you were just saying like we're going to score this debate on points for the – as some sort of like high school debating competition. You might look at it differently. When you look at it in the context of where Biden is and what Trump needs to do, we believe, based on polling, to shift the dynamic, you feel very good about it. I obviously feel worse about America and democracy and myself for having watched it, but I feel better about Biden's position in the race. Because the presidential campaign is a decathlon, and the debates were going to be Biden's weakest events. And he came out of them where, I believe, at least as we sit here today on Wednesday morning, either where he was

going in or a little bit ahead of that place. Now, as Tommy points out, based on the Google trends, another thing is there's a huge battle to come over the net between now and the second debate about shaping that narrative, what information breaks through, how it breaks through to people. And this is where Trump has a huge advantage because of the right wing media machine and Facebook. But right now on Wednesday morning, I feel better than I thought I could possibly feel after that first debate because I've been very nervous about it for a long, long time. I mean, one of Biden's favorite Bidenisms, which Chris Wallace quoted last night during one of the questions is, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. And like for Biden in that debate, like that's what a debate is, right?

And like we were all pretty hard on Biden during all the primary debates. We know that sometimes he can give answers that aren't like the most cogent. But I think compared to Donald Trump on last night's debate, there is no contest. Like at worst case for Biden, you had some undecided voters saying, I'm still undecided or I didn't like both of them. At the best case, you had a bunch of undecided voters saying now I'm for Biden. You didn't have many people saying, oh, Trump was great. Now I'm off the off the sidelines and I'm for Trump. Yeah, you just didn't have that.

So the most horrifically memorable moment of the night came when trump was asked by chris wallace if he'd condemn white supremacists and right-wing militia groups here's his answer along with joe biden's answer on the issue of systemic racism but are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland. Are you prepared to do that? I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing. What are you saying? I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace. Then do it, sir. Say it. Do it. Say it.

Do you want to call him? What do you want to call him? Give me a name. Give me a name. White supremacist. Who would you like me to condemn? White supremacist and right. Stand back and stand by. But I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left. It's a little bit like how this guy and his friends look down on so many people. They look down on so many people. They look down their nose on people like Irish Catholics like me who grew up in Scranton. They look down on people who don't have money.

They look down on people who are of a different faith. They look down on people who are a different color. In fact, we're all Americans. The only way we're going to bring this country together is bring everybody together. There's nothing we cannot do if we do it together. We can take this on and we can defeat racism in America. Vice President, I mean President Trump, sir. During the Obama-Biden administration, there was tremendous division. There was hatred. You look at Ferguson, you look at, you go to very many places. Look at Oakland,

look what happened in Oakland, look what happened in Baltimore, look what look what happened frankly it was more violent than what i'm even seeing now but the reason this is that the democrats that run these cities don't want to talk like you about law and order violent crime i haven't mentioned violent are you in favor of law and order i'm in favor of law you follow you in favor of law and You follow a little bit of law and order. Go ahead. I'm a question. Let him finish. Law and order. Let him. Law and order with justice where people get treated fairly.

Tommy, you mentioned this earlier, but was this the most important moment of the debate when Trump refused to condemn white supremacists and Proud Boys? I mean, I think it was the most important moment for people who understood the moment. There's probably a lot of people who have no idea who the Proud Boys are. And, you know, I wish that were the case for everybody in the country. And they're a neo-Nazi white supremacist group. And it's horrible that this debate gave them the most attention and PR that they've ever had in history. So that's awful. But no one should have been surprised by this. I mean, remember when Jake Tapper back in 2016 asked Trump to condemn David Duke, who came out in support of him, and Trump pretended he didn't know who he was. He always plays footsie with these groups. This is a pattern. It's something he did in Charlottesville. It's something he did last night with the Proud Boys. And we should just believe him that he wants the support of the Proud Boys. He like and his people this morning are all over the place on this. Some are claiming he did condemn them.

I think Don Jr. was saying he misspoke. It's just a total mess. It's a total mess. But, you know, who's excited about this? The Proud Boys, a neo-Nazi group. Great. Great job, Trump. I thought, I mean, turning toiden there i thought biden's answers the two answers that we heard were like some of his strongest answers about how trump looks down on people and then also it's about law and order and being treated fairly um we're actually like fairly succinct answers i mean this this segment that chris wallace titled race and violence in our cities clearly a the most fox News way to say it, was supposed to be sort of a segment that helped Trump, I think, or at least that some pundits

would imagine would help Trump. I don't I think it ended up being maybe his worst segment. Dan, what did you think? Yeah, I think if you somehow kind of sort of endorse a neo-Nazi organization in a segment, that's bad. Like that was not that was not a good thing for him. I'm not going to look at the polls. I'm just going to off the cuff here.

I think it's bad. I think one of the most telling comments about this was from a number of Republicans who cite this question as an example of bias from Chris Wallace because they say, look, Chris Wallace knows Trump doesn't like to disavow people who support him. Yeah, right. That's what Rick Santorum said on CNN. That's literally what he said. It's like, wait, do you realize what you just said and why that's not a good thing for Trump? Yeah, it was a backside, man. I thought Biden's moment was very good there. That was actually one of the few times where Biden got a chance to actually say several sentences in a row without

Trump trying to shout over him. And I thought, you know, it's very clear that that was a moment that they wanted to have in this debate. And I think it played well. And it's helpful that it is appended to Trump's huge flub here because it means it is a moment that people will see, you know, even if all social media for the next 10 days here. So the night started on pretty good territory for Biden with a discussion of two top issues for voters, health care and the pandemic. Trump was unable to articulate what kind of health care would replace the Affordable Care Act if the Supreme Court strikes down the law, and he was unable to defend his handling of COVID-19. Here's a few clips.

He is not for any help for people needing health care because his because he in fact already has cost 10 million people their health care that they had from their employers because of his recession number one number two there are 20 million people getting health care through obamacare now that he wants to take it away he won't ever look you in the eye and say that's what he wants to do take it away i want to give them better health care at a much lower price. He doesn't know how he doesn't know how to do that. 200,000 dead, as you said, over 7 million infected in the United States. We, in fact, have 5 percent, 4 percent of the world's population, 20 percent of the deaths.

4% of the world's population, 20% of the deaths. 40,000 people a day are contracting COVID. In addition to that, about between 750 and 1,000 people a day are dying. When he was presented with that number, he said, it is what it is. Well, it is what it is because you are who you are. He panicked or he just looked at the stock market. One of the two, because guess what? A lot of people died and a lot more are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter, a lot quicker. Mr. President, did you use the word smart?

So you said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn't go to Delaware State. You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don't ever use the word smart with me. Love it. I was going to ask, how did Trump and Biden do on those exchanges? But yeah, you know, what's what's there to say here? Biden told the truth. Trump tried to interrupt him. The truth is quite damning. There is no amount of interrupting to overwhelm the, the actual record, which is abysmal and ongoing. So yeah, it was a good

moment for Biden. I think the line, you know, it is what it is because you are who you are, was clearly a prepared line. I think he delivered that well. Um, what's left to say really about Trump and COVID. I mean, you know, people have pointed out there was no period of time where he was more kind of, uh, frenetic and more inclined to interrupt than whenever COVID came up. COVID is the, is clearly what they recognize as his great weakness. It is the reason, um, it is a reason his campaign has shifted from I'm an asshole, but things are good to I'm an asshole. Uh, it's, it's the it's the reason he's down so much. It is the core of his failures as president captures everything wrong with him. So, yeah, it was a bad moment for Donald Trump. It was a good moment for Joe Biden. And I'm glad

he did it a couple of times with COVID where like I just can't imagine it helps him that when the discussion is about how hundreds of thousands of americans have died of a deadly virus he switches the topic to talk about joe biden's fucking college and like yeah maybe a lot of people were then their interest was peaked and they googled it but like i can't imagine that anyone saw that and was like yeah that that makes sense to transition to fucking hitting him about where he went to college after we're talking about covid later chris chris wallace is talking about uh donald trump's rallies and how like the health and safety precautions and and Trump starts making fun of Joe Biden's crowd sizes. Yeah, the mask. And he picks a fight on masks, which is insane.

It is an absolutely politically insane thing to do. Even Trump supporters almost overwhelmingly think masks are a good idea. But he is so – like Trump lives in an alternative world where he is handsome and smart and successful and that world is Fox News. But every once in a while, he gets a glimpse at the real Trump and he sort of sees what everyone else sees about him. And COVID is that – is sort of his Achilles heel there because he knows he fucked this up. And in fact, it was reported – and I think it was the Biden campaign who said this yesterday – that during the debate negotiations, Trump's campaign tried to get the moderators to not say the number of COVID deaths in America. Oh, right. Yeah.

Which is a real sign that they know it's a trigger for him. And so he acted like that was a terrible segment for him, both what he said about COVID, his inability to even just have one ounce of empathy for one person who died from COVID in this country. Also, he just erased Herman Cain. Yeah. Herman Cain's looking up and being like, hey, come on. There's no spinning his COVID response, right? So he just has nowhere to go here. So he just sort of defaults to some childish political hit. I thought Biden was generally quite strong on his COVID answers. There were a few times he referred to Xi without really explaining. He was talking about Xi Jinping, the president of China, and that was probably just confusing. There was kind of a clunky line, the get out of your bunker, get out

of your sand trap. I was like, that's a little too cute for me. But Trump just punctuated all his answers with whining and grievance about how the press treated him. And there was this one moment that really drove me crazy. They were talking about the vaccine timeline. And Trump is so untrustworthy on this. It's so clear he's trying to force a vaccine to come out before the election. And Trump goes, you don't trust Johnson & Johnson?

You don't trust Pfizer? Hey guys, I looked it up. The pharmaceutical industry is now the most poorly regarded industry in American eyes, ranking last on the list of 25 industries that Gallup tests annually. He is not a political genius. He's an asshole who won one election because of a lot of factors that came together in a very different time. It was a terrible performance.

So that's a moment that's a moment Tommy, where, um, I thought like, if you're going to critique Biden, he didn't do anything wrong, but it's just like missed opportunity to then jump on Trump saying that about the pharmaceutical companies and then immediately say, here's what I would do on drugs. Now, again, the problem is like Chris Wallace tried to move on everyone's shouting, everyone's screaming. So it's just really hard to do this. But if I were, if I were Biden preparing for next time, I'd have like two or three issues, whether it's health care, COVID, whatever it may be, where like you have a quick line about what you're going to do as president that you're ready to just give the second you get a breath

and the second they give you a chance to do it. I think that would be like great. That would sort of improve a tenfold. Yeah, this is hard for Biden because no one, no one adheres to debate rules as much as Joe Biden. Like remember the primary, he would just cut himself off in his mental head and be like, well, they said 60 seconds and I'm like, it's at second 70. So I better just stop talking. And so it's like, it is just, he is, he is in an impossible situation and you're right. Having a, like a narrower, shorter menu of things you want to hit

is probably better when debating Trump because you're just going to get so few opportunities. So it's like, instead of trying to do seven things, I'm going to try to do three things. And I'm going to shoehorn them in, even if it's awkward, right? Like, oh, you brought up my college thing or some other absurd thing. I'm just going to do my COVID answer right here because there are 70 million people watching and I want them to hear it regardless of what the moderator thinks. I'll also say too that Trump interrupting and like, oh, where'd you go to college, Hunter, all the little kind of whatever, like kind of snake bites, just sort of jumping, jumping in, jumping in. They were really clips. They were issued by somebody inside of a

news bubble that a lot of other people are not in. Like, I don't know what you're talking about when you talk about where Joe Biden went to college. I don't understand what you're talking about when Mike Flynn comes up. Like, I don't follow these issues. Like, his son was dishonorably discharged. That doesn't, like, if you're,

nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about. I was gonna say, when you say, I don't follow these issues, like, we pay more attention to politics than most people in the universe. And i didn't get what some of what fucking donald trump was saying i didn't get the flynn thing i didn't get the call like i i don't even know what some of these conspiracies are i spend time looking at fox news so it's like the hope that like you need a phd in fox yeah like is the hope that okay people google some of these

words and then fall down the facebook rabbit hole and get sucked into the conspiracy that's's like a lot of work. That's quite a bank shot when you have 100 million people watching and you don't deliver a clean hit over the course of the entire night. So the Trump campaign told everyone who'd listen that the president would be going after Joe Biden's son Hunter during the debate. And he certainly delivered. Here's an exchange that started with Biden talking about Trump disparaging the military service of his other son, Bo, who passed away of cancer a few years ago. And speaking of my son, the way you talk about the military, the way you talk about them being losers and being and just being suckers. My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got he got the Bronze Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser.

He was a patriot. And the people left behind there were heroes. And I resent White Hill. Are you talking about Hunter? I'm talking about my son, Beau Biden. You're talking about heroes. I don't know Beau. I know Hunter.

Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged. That's not true. He wasn't dishonorably discharged. For cocaine use. And he didn't have a job until you became vice president. Once you became vice president, he made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow. That is simply not true.

He made a fortune. My son. And he didn't have a job. My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people we know at home, had a drug problem. He's overtaken it. He's fixed it. He's overtaken it. He's, he's, he's fixed it.

He's worked on it. And I'm proud of him. But why was it? Dan, how do you think, how do you think Biden handled the Hunter stuff? I don't want to adopt the new cable news habit of reading texts from random people to, to judge a debate,

but this is so funny. Yeah. Good. But I will say I heard from a lot of people about that exchange about Hunter and dealing with his addiction because so many of us know people in our lives who have struggled with addiction. And for Joe Biden to stand on that stage under a withering assault from a lunatic and talk about how proud he is of his son, I think meant a lot to a lot of people. And that's one of those moments that may not get a ton of national attention. It may not be the thing that Twitter talks about or the thing that's on cable news, but we'll get a lot of circulation among people within their networks. And so the way that, so the fact that he was able to handle that

with that, that much grace and dignity and not just completely lose it on Trump is a true, is a real statement to that man. Tommy, what did you think? Yeah, look, I just thought one, Joe Biden looks so human and being honest about challenges that Hunter has had too, but Trump looked so vicious and so cruel in these moments. And I think there are probably very few voters for whom drug use by a candidate's kid matters. And when it's delivered in a way that is just so nakedly cruel and harsh and caustic like Trump did, it just makes you think less of Trump. That's what happened here. Voters don't like negative politics. This was about as nasty as it gets.

I don't think this helps Trump in any way, shape, or form. I don't care if people are Googling it, searching Hunter Biden. I don't think any of it matters. They're electing Joe Biden or Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is showing himself to be a horrible human being. Love it. Were you going to say something? Yeah. It was really striking to me. I was thinking about this actually before the debate, you know, Brad Parscale, Trump's former campaign manager, senior advisor, uh, uh, was having a mental health emergency and had to be taken to a hospital. Uh, the HHS spokesperson for Donald Trump again, started issuing paranoid conspiracy theories, had to take

a leave for health. So much of Trump and his movement is about denying pain. It's about denying their own pain, right? Like, oh, you feel bad. You feel a loss of purpose. You feel like America's leaving you behind. It's not on you. You hate some other people. Point your anger elsewhere. And a lot of it is also about trying to convince people that they don't matter. That's why you don't need masks at the rallies. That's why you don't have to take COVID seriously. Convince yourself that you're so strong, you're so tough, that you don't feel pain. You don't need to worry about pain.

You'll be okay to deny services, to deny help, to deny compassion to other people. That is so core to what Trump does. And I really did. That was like an incredibly moving moment to see because at a few moments there, there's an old kind of politics that would give credence to the way Trump talked about drug abuse, that views it as a personal failing, that views it as a failing as a parent. And both on that issue, on just talking about racial sensitivity and saying it's a good thing to learn from other people. It was an acceptance of a kind of new way of thinking, a better way of thinking about these problems. And I, and I, it resonated for me. I hope it resonated for other people because it was a defense of

the idea that it's OK to talk about the pain people have had in their lives. I think, Lovett, that you said this earlier, but we're so numb to what Trump has done that if you just pull yourself out of this and just have like a common sense reaction to that, Joe Biden is talking about his son who served in iraq and died and then donald trump president states on a debate stage turns to him and says i don't know bow i know hunter the one who did cocaine like that is such an ugly disgusting thing to say to any human being at any time and like dan the same thing happened to me not to be all about like are the texts from friends and family but like that is what I heard most from people in the last since the debate last night about that moment.

And then Biden talking about how Hunter overcame it. And I heard it from people who are in like red states were not real liberal. Like, I actually think it's it's one of the more undercover moments of the debate that when you see that and you see Donald Trump do that to Joe Biden, you see how Joe Biden respond. You're like, fuck that guy. He is just bad. He's a bad person. Yeah. You know, when we have this conversation, people like about why Trump is a bad person, he showed he's an asshole. And then everyone will then point out, well, in 2016, that's the message you guys are in. There was that ad that the Clinton campaign ran with all those kids watching Trump and it didn't work because Hillary lost. And there are two problems with that. One, when candidates lose, we then assume everything they did was wrong and did not

possibly work. But it's also, this is a very different race. And Joe Biden is a different candidate than Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden is running in part on his decency as a human being, particularly in a moment where America desperately needs it. And so therefore, when Trump acts like that, it is reinforcing Biden's message. That's not the campaign that Hillary was running. It's not a campaign that was available to her because of 30 years of Republican attacks. But it is consistent. This is not just like, oh, Democrats want nice people

or progressive softies or anything like that. It is a core part of the campaign. And when Trump acts like that, he reinforces what the majority of voters like about Biden right now. Oh, and just a last thought, just because we're not trying to be viewed as nice people. Don Jr. looks like he just left Studio 54 every time he does a Fox interview. Maybe Donald Trump should sit his kids down and talk a minute about the dangers of amphetamine use, because holy shit, shit man that jaw is going and you gotta simmer down just take a beat i mean it actually says so much more about biden not that he did not freak out but the trump's sons are eric and don jr who are some of the dumbest criminals in america and don't leave a bunk out of this even avail himself of that very obvious response. I will just say, Dan, to your point, like the other big

difference between now and 2016 is in 2016, Trump was an asshole. He was proud of how much of an asshole he was, but he was trying to be his message was that he was an asshole on behalf of other people. Right. Like he had a message in those debates with Hillary Clinton. It was I'm the outsider who can take on Washington, take on this corruption. You're part of this corruption. I'm not going to say things that are nice and polite, but I'm going to get the fucking job done. Now he's just an asshole for himself.

Talking about Hunter Biden that way, dismissing Beau Biden that way, that doesn't do anything for any of his supporters. That doesn't do anything for anyone in the country. That's just him being a petulant asshole for himself. That's the big difference. It's also, I've also, one other thing I would say too, is like, there's a frame that I think the media falls for. It's easy to fall for it. For a lot of people, we all can fall for it. It's the idea that toughness is the opposite of

kindness, that decency is the opposite of being strong. And what I appreciated about that moment is Biden was compassionate and decent and strong, and Trump was mean-spirited and weak. And I think so often, even in how they're talking about the next debate matter, like, oh, the next debate matter is nice, and you can't be nice and tough. And like, that's how Trump sees the world, but we don't have to see the world that way.

Yeah, and Biden saying, this is not about my family or your family, this is about the American people's family and looking directly at a camera was a great way to end that and made him look decent and focused on the right stuff. All right, the final section of the debate, the candidates were asked about the integrity of the election and our democracy. Trump, who has declined multiple opportunities to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election,

took the exchange as an opportunity to encourage his supporters to stalk voters at polling places on his behalf. Here's what he had to say. I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. As you know, today there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They were called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing.

They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. They were called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things. And I am urging, I am urging my people, I hope it's going to be a fair election. If it's a fair election, I am 100% on board. But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can't go along with that. So Biden, Tommy, you referenced this earlier, gave a pretty on-message response about the power of voting. Let's hear that. Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote. If you're able to vote early in your state, vote early. If you're able to vote in person, vote in person. Vote whatever way is the best way for you, because you will, he cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election.

And in terms of whether or not when the votes are counted and they're all counted, that will be accepted. If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that'll be accepted. But by the way, if in fact he says he's not sure what he's going to accept, well, let me tell you something. It doesn't matter because if we get the votes, it's going to be all over. He's going to go. He can't stay in power. It won't happen. It won't happen.

So vote. Just make sure you understand you have it in your control to determine what this country is going to look like the next four years. Is it going to change? You're going to get four more years of these lies. Somebody reads Message Box, right, Dan? I was going to say, look at that. Copping Joe Biden's description was the best thing I did. Listen to your conversation with a knot right there.

For sure. So bad things happen in Philadelphia. Obviously an incredibly dangerous answer from Donald Trump about the election, but from a political standpoint, great idea to say that bad things happen in Philadelphia. Obviously, an incredibly dangerous answer from Donald Trump about the election, but from a political standpoint, great idea to say that bad things happen in Philadelphia in a swing state that may decide the election. I just assumed that was a Philadelphia 76ers reference, and I fully agree with it.

Trust the process, John. That's right. He's referring to the Al Horford contract. He's saying that Tom Hanks was unfairly denied employment until Denzel Washington finally stood up to him and his own ingrained homophobia. I mean, like he's obviously setting things up to challenge mail in ballots in a close election. But doesn't that kind of answer sort of make it less likely the election is that close in the first place? Like, I just don't know how much this is a dangerous message. I don't know how

much it helps him. I don't know, John. I think ending your voting message by complaining about a coup, name dropping the Logan Act, lying about unsolicited ballots and then, you know, urging vigilante poll watcher justice is exactly how I would have closed. I mean, he's a fucking lunatic. Biden looked like a president. He looked like a decent man. He did a good job undercutting the straw man, like Trump is a strong man argument that everyone sort of gets sucked into. Hey, thanks again, Chris Wallace, for letting Trump just take a shot at democracy itself. No Russian propaganda in the history of time has more thoroughly undercut the American system than what Trump did in that closing anti-democratic rant. So that wasn't great. But yeah, he looked like a goddamn lunatic. What's scarier, too, is like Trump is a coward, right? Trump hides behind his Twitter feed. He hides behind his fucking rallies. He is a weak

authoritarian, as we've said a million times. But all it takes is a few tweets out there to tell people, like, don't accept the results of this election, storm the streets. And like, Trump is too cowardly to do shit like that. But his supporters might. Like, it was pretty, I am, I am not one to get, like, overly torqued about sort of the like, how Trump is going to steal the election, the Barton Gellman Atlantic piece, all that kind of stuff. But what he said last night, I thought was chilling. Yeah, look, there is. It was. It's chilling. Of course it is. And there is no difference between Donald Trump saying things to stoke violence, stoke uncertainty, stoke fear, stoke chaos so that he can steal the election and doing all of those things just so that he can save

face when he ultimately leaves, so that he can claim the election was stolen, so that he can claim that somehow he didn't really lose. And when he says these things, you know, we can't tell the difference. And right-wing nationalists, a bunch of broken people and racists, they can't tell the difference either, right? They don't know if he means it or not because they're going to take it to its logical conclusion. Can I just make like one little policy point on this, which is that for, I think like 40 years, Republicans were governed by something called a consent decree that basically disallowed the RNC and other Republican entities from doing like election integrity work, where you send a bunch

of poll watchers to intimidate voters, usually voters of color on the way in. This is the first election cycle in a long time where they are no longer bound by that consent decree. You're seeing all kinds of crazy reporting about like ex-Navy SEALs being sent to the polls as poll watchers. So there's gonna be a lot of intimidation. And that to me was him, you know, sounding the alarm and gathering everybody up to start that crap right away. And that's, yes, it's very scary. And by the way, Tommy, to that point, it's worth saying the reason he says Philadelphia is because the problem is black people voting in this country, Tim. That's the problem. Yeah. In numbers. Let's talk about post-debate reactions. Joe Biden dominated the snap polls. CNN showed 60%

of debate watchers thought he won compared to just 28% for Trump. CBS was a little closer, but Biden still won 48 to 41. Our friends at Data for Progress did a poll that actually weighted the demographics by education in order to make sure you get enough non-college voters who tend to support Trump. Still found that Biden won the debate by 52 to 39. Frank Luntz's focus group of undecided voters called Trump arrogant, un-American, and a crackhead, while they said Biden was better than expected, more professional, compassionate, coherent, and a leader. And here's what one participant in a CNN focus group had to say when asked how he felt about Biden calling Trump a clown. Did it bother you at all to hear Joe Biden calling the sitting president of the United States names, calling him a clown and that type of thing?

You know, I think we pretty much have gotten past that now, haven't we? I mean, he spent the last five years calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas and, you know, talking about AOC and all the other people. And, you know, so is it great that Joe called him a clown? No, but when the shoe fits, when the clown shoe fits. So proud of that guy. Get that fucking joke. Great job. Great job. Save that whole fucking focus group. Those people were were like wide eyed and not forming enough opinions. And then that guy came in and made everybody laugh at Donald Trump. And I really appreciated it. Dan, was anything surprising or interesting to you from the polling or focus groups post debate?

No, I think it kind of fit with where we thought it would be. I thought that it was very smart of Data for Progress to wait for education because these previous snap polls tend to focus on people who watch the debate, which over-indexes on demographically likely Democratic voters, and so they can be somewhat misleading. I thought it was interesting and encouraging that Biden got a slight edge on the economy in the Data for Progress poll, even though there was very limited opportunity to talk about the economy, which is at least in a coherent way without a crazy man shouting at you. And so that was positive. That's the one place where Biden still lags a little bit with Trump on the issues. And so if he scored some points there, then that that's a real positive sign. But it's

I think it sort of fit with what we thought. I think the one thing that I want to see in more polling and focus groups going forward is, did the debate make you more or less enthusiastic to vote? Because if you're going to harbor one concern about this is that the debate is going to – was such a mess. It will be covered as such a mess by the press that for the – more than 50% of the electorate that did not watch this debate, it could be deflating for some who were not previously fully committed to voting. And so I want to see some polling, some of which I know is going in the field soon, that will ask people whether the debate, whether they, did they watch it in person? Did they consume stuff afterwards? Does that make you more or less enthusiastic to vote? Because Trump, you know, that is one thing Trump can do is make everything in politics

seem terrible. And that can turn off voters we need to win this election. I mean, look, I think there's just no doubt that that Biden won the debate. All the data suggests that. I also think if you're Donald Trump and the majority of your day two stories about the debate are focused on the proud boys and, you know, your sort of insane behavior, that's not good either. You know, at the risk of, you know, again, like not wanting happy talk. There was someone in that Frank Luntz focus group and take everything Frank Luntz says with a healthy grain of salt. But they described Biden as a nice guy lacking vision. And I think that was kind of the downside coming out of this debate last night, which is a lot of

people want to hear from Biden. What are you going to do for me? They're not familiar with them. They don't know his policies or plans. And because he was debating an unhinged madman, he didn't have the chance to do that. And that sucks for Biden. But I still think, net, like he absolutely came out better for the last night. Yeah, looking at some of the focus groups, the Luntz focus group and the CNN one and just some of the polling, like there's I felt this way before the debate, but there's two cohorts of voter groups that sort of are still concern me. Right.

One is a group of voters who voted for Trump in 2016, think he's a complete asshole, but sort of like his policies. And you actually heard a woman on CNN last night say, I really find myself I agree with a lot of what Trump says, but I hate the way he says it. Right. And so you worry that those voters could go back home to Trump. And then, you know, there was an African-American woman in the Luntz focus group who said, like, I didn't hear anything from either candidate on what they would do for the black community. Like, what would they would do for me? And so that's a group of voters who like they all think Donald Trump's an asshole, too. But their question is like, yeah, I have an asshole president. But like, what's the new president going to do to actually improve my life?

Right. And so I do think that both of those issues can be solved by sort of Joe Biden just being able to talk more about his vision. So I still think it was that. But like, look, that's sort of around the margins, too. And if this was, Lovett, as you were saying earlier, a tied race, you might be even more nervous about those groups of voters. you might be even more nervous about those groups of voters. But, you know, with a lead like this, some of those some of those undecided voters going back home to Trump is going to tighten the race a little bit, but but not significantly. I mean, even in the Luntz focus group, there's 15 undecided voters, four broke to Biden, two went to Trump and then nine are still undecided. Nine people being still undecided after that is wild to me. But there you go. Love it. If you were the Biden campaign, how would you be prepping for the next debate? What a question. Again, by the way, I feel quite

vindicated on suggesting that for debate prep, you just use a noisemaker for Trump and just have somebody have somebody around like a like a grogger during Purim. But it's interesting. You know, I saw a lot of people talking about like, oh, should they even be another debate? The town hall is a very different thing than a debate where Donald Trump can kind of like yell at Joe Biden, yell at the moderator, kind of mix it up. Donald Trump really struggled in that George Stephanopoulos town hall. Uh, and it's hard because you can't, you know, attack a registered nurse for being a tool of the radical left. You just can't, it doesn't, It doesn't work. And Trump is not- He might try.

You know, he's not as, no one's as smart as he thinks he is. He's not as dumb as we want him to be. I don't know. I think it goes back to what we've been talking about this whole time. Like, you know, Trump is a kind of, he's a known quantity for the American people. He's a known quantity as a debater. I think he has to go in there with a couple of key points he wants to make to talk directly to the American people. I think talking about Trump's COVID failures is an opportunity to talk about what he'd do differently. I think compassion and decency and kindness and why it's essential and why it will animate what he does as president. I think it's an opportunity to just talk to people who are going through something. They'll probably throw some hard questions at him, too.

And I just think relating to people is his strength. It's why I think he ultimately became, in part, the nominee. So I am like, I go into the town hall kind of not nearly as nervous as I did going into this debate, just because of the format itself. Tommy, what about you? How would you be prepping your candidate? I mean, my notes would be no insults, no shut up, no clown. Don't ever just don't take the bait.

Two, don't let Trump's interruptions change your answer, right? You're going to get a question from a real voter. You cannot let him knock you off course. That happened a lot last night. Three, I would say separate yourself from the left where you have policies that are different, but you don't have to be critical of Bernie or those policies themselves. And then lastly, wear an N95 mask because getting COVID is the fucking thing that scares me the most. So just stay healthy, Joe Biden. That's a good tip. Dan, what about you?

I think in a normal world, in a normal progression of presidential debates, you would see this town hall debate as your chance to show your empathy and your decency and your ability to feel people's pain. Right. Like this is where Bill Clinton excelled in the 92 and 96 debates with these town hall debates against noted cuddly types, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. And I think what I think Biden will do that naturally. He doesn't have to focus so much on that. But so I think his goal should be to do more policy specifics in this debate than you normally would. The first question is, Joe Biden, how are you doing? The answer should be $15 minimum wage, 12 weeks family paid leave, free college people making $125,000, buy American, requirement for products bought by the federal government. Just get your goals to get your economic plans in there somehow, some way,

as much as you possibly can, because this could be your... It's harder for Trump to shout over you, as you guys pointed out, in this format. So you got to take advantage of it to speak directly to those voters. It will sadly, I imagine, be a smaller audience because I have to believe that some people will not want to subject themselves to that again. But it's still, you know, will be the biggest audience that Biden talked to, not counting last night through this whole campaign, his whole career, frankly. I think he needs a couple lines to stop Trump from interrupting so much, but not sort of get into a back and forth. And I think he needs to make it about people like

I think as Trump keeps going and interrupting him and insulting him, he should say like, have some respect for the American people for once in your presidency. They are looking for a debate between the two of us about what we're going to do for the country. And I would also break that fourth wall more

like he did in last night's debate. Be like, you know, Donald Trump, he's got plenty of insults. He's got plenty of complaints. He's trying to monopolize all this time, but he doesn't't have any plans he doesn't have any plans for the future he won't tell you what he's going to do in a second term i'll tell you what i'm going to do here's what i'm going to do for you and he just he can't forget the last part yeah right he can't just he just attacked donald trump but it's got to be like this guy is doing this because he's losing and he has no plans and he has no agenda we all all know it. And there's like a moment or two where he could,

and Biden sort of did this last night, but there's a moment where he could look at the camera and just be like, aren't we sick of it? Aren't we tired of this? Do you like a gym from the office space? Yes, right. Like Donald Trump in this debate performance, basically reiterated all of the reasons people already don't like him as president, right?

Like they're sick of the chaos and he spent don't like him as president, right? Like they're sick of the chaos and he spent 90 minutes giving them more chaos, right? This is Donald Trump's problem. He keeps falling into his own traps. And so if he does it again in the town hall, he does in the third debate, you just look at, you're like, aren't we, do you want four more years of this? Do you want four more years? I'm not perfect. Words aren't going to come out great all the time. You know, you're not going to agree with me all the time, but I'm not going to be this. I'm not going to be this. I like that we've come full circle to we want him to say, there he goes again. There you go again. Can I read you something unbelievable that I just saw on Twitter?

Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller says that when Trump told the Proud Boys to stand by last night, he meant stand by the wayside and get out of the way of law enforcement. How's that for a spin? While we were sitting here, Trump went, I don't know if he's getting on Marine One or something, but he made a statement to the press disavowing the Proud Boys and saying law enforcement should look at or something like that. Great job, sir. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah. Well, then they know it was bad. i thought one of the best this wasn't a poll or a or a focus group but um buzzfeed apparently went to uh a trump viewing party with trump supporters and uh they couldn't find anyone to defend his performance it's not that people

still said they were going to vote for him they still liked him but even the trump supporters did not absolutely love that performance, which I thought was telling. Just Jacobin columnists. That's the only people that liked him. Well, just sort of what you don't see in a snap poll is like the people that didn't enjoy the Trump performance are not just like, well, I didn't find that very favorable. People were horrified, right? People that didn't like what, there's a horrifying thing. My mother called me like upset. Like people like, that isn't in the snap paul the fact that people were horrified and afraid for the future is just a disapprove so and the approval people are are good teammates for donald trump good for you

well not to fear because the commissioner on presidential debates promises quote additional structure to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues yeah for the next yeah it's an electrified cattle prod in Steve Scully's hands. He can fucking jam Trump in the haunches every time he tries to interrupt. Yeah, the 81-year-old Republican lobbyist who helps run this thing is really going to fix it. This will be great. Yeah, the only way you're going to fix it is replacing the candidate. All right, that's all the time we have for today.

Dan and I will see you guys on Friday, and then we'll be back on Monday. And then next week, VP debate. Oh, that's going to be, that's going to be something. That'll be something that will be something. So, all right, everyone.

Bye. Bye. 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.