Tangle - EMERGENCY PODCAST: The Biden v. Trump debate

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Last night, Tangle editors Ari Weitzman and Will Kaback were tuned into the debate along with Isaac. We thought it’d be extra informative, even fun, to supplement today's newsletter with some additional commentary and thoughts from our editors.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can catch our latest YouTube video on Juneteenth here.Check out Episode 4 of our podcast series The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment! You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Coming up, Will joins the pod.

We talk about that debate. I mean, I don't know what else to say besides that. We're going to talk about the debate. Jesus. Here we go. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and I am joined today by Ari Weitzman and Will Kabak, two of Tangle's editors. We're going Three Musketeers style today because, holy cow, we had a presidential debate last night that I think demands a kind of emergency pod treatment and some in-depth conversation. Will, Ari, good to have you guys here.

Good to be here, Isaac. Great to be here. Excited to make my Sunday pod debut. Yeah, and this is- On a Friday, nonetheless. Yeah, on a Friday. Hopefully we get this up ASAP. We're going to turn the screws on our lovely podcast producer, John Law, to get this out today so people can hear it. I don't even know where to start. So we'll pull the curtain back a little bit, I guess. And I'm traveling right now. I mentioned this on the podcast last week, and John's been covering a little bit for me. I'm

actually in Portugal. My best friend's getting married this weekend, and I'm officiating the wedding. So I had the experience of going to bed last night without seeing the debate, and then waking up this morning at 3 a.m. East Coast time, 8 a.m. Portugal time, and just logging onto YouTube and starting the debate. 8 a.m. Portugal time and just logging onto YouTube and starting the debate. And I just couldn't help myself, but just go type in newyorktimes.com as the debate was starting and open our work Slack channel to see kind of first impressions of what I missed. And the first things that I saw literally were Thomas Friedman calling for Biden to drop out and a bunch of Slack messages that were basically just screenshots or short video clips of Joe Biden looking unbelievably frail and lost

on stage. And I thought, oh my God, it happened. We got like the bad performance that could kill his campaign and hurt him really badly. And so that's kind of, I guess, where we're at. Those are the things I saw. I have tons of thoughts. I'd be curious to get your guys' first impressions. I mean, maybe we'll start with you, Ari, and you can just talk a little bit about what stood out to you most.

What's like the burning memory moment thing you will hold with you going forward from this debate? And then we'll get wills so five minutes in our aforementioned executive producer john said in our work slack that if people only tune in for the first five minutes trump wins and i think that was kind of end thread almost we could add things to that but they'd feel superfluous. And in the interest of being superfluous, I'll say that what really showed just this burned into my head after the debate were the images of Biden listening to Trump, honestly. I think

we may have gotten so used to the way that Trump speaks over the last eight years that him constantly exaggerating things or denying stuff that probably did happen or definitely happened or spinning his own version of events just felt like what we expected. But the version of Joe Biden we've gotten over the past 20 plus years in the public eye has been variable. And we aren't sure what version of Joe Biden we're going to see. And the one that we saw is going to be a hard one to forget. And it's less about the way that he spoke, even though that is something that I'm sure we'll be talking about today. But the burning memory for me is just his vacant expression while listening. It just felt bad. It felt like I wanted to close the laptop and stop just out of mercy more than

anything. It just felt like we should just stop this, just take them back. Let's just, let's just agree to do something different. I don't feel good anymore. Well, yeah. Um, I, I had the sense of watching like a rookie quarterback or just an extremely outmatched quarterback where you do just feel bad and you're just hoping that they don't get hurt. And when they try to complete a screen pass, it goes five yards over their receiver, their running back's head, and it gets picked off and run back for a touchdown. And it's just this sense of, oh, this person shouldn't be out on the stage. And who allowed them to go out on this stage? How could this have happened? It was extremely difficult to watch from the moment it started. And the people I was watching

with in my apartment who aren't really political junkies or very tuned in, were kind of asking me, has he always been this way? Is this like par for the course? And I think that's probably the reaction of most people who aren't super tapped into politics who watch the debate. So I think this is a potentially fatal blow to Biden. I don't know what the viewership numbers are going to be. It'll be very interesting when we get some of those ratings. I'm not sure if they're out yet, but they won't capture the magnitude of the kind of social media YouTube clipping of Biden's worst moments that is going to be seen by tens, if not hundreds of millions of people that I think is going to be really, truly devastating

for him. I don't know if this is a death blow. devastating for him. I don't know if this is a death blow. I think people are going to, you know, we talk about this all the time. After the Robert Herr report, I think I got out over my skis a little bit on it and regretted that and wrote about regretting that. And I think it's important to kind of keep a level head in moments like this where there's five months till the election. So, so much can happen between now and then. I mean, who knows what kind of Trump controversy we might get that could change the shape of the debate or, you know, this could just get worse for Biden. I mean, we could get a second

performance that's somehow even worse than this. So I don't know how it will define the election in five months. I want to say something quickly that I mentioned in the newsletter that I just, I feel like isn't being talked about enough. I've seen one Axios article where a source was quoted saying something very similar to what I said, which was, who prepped him for this? And what were they doing? The only preparation that Biden should have had was eight hours of sleep for a week straight. I mean, that's literally it. They should have, I don't know what he did during the State of the Union to come out and present himself the way he did. I know there's all this rumors about him being drugged up and whatever. I don't buy that. I think he probably just had a good day

and maybe there was something about the way they prepared him for that. Not just that he was reading prepared remarks, but that he looked energetic and fresh. And I think that was the only thing he needed for this debate. He didn't need all these talks. He didn't need to memorize all these stats about the economy and immigration and all this stuff. It's not a standard debate. He had one thing to do, which was to convince people that he was up for the job and he got a resounding F on it. And so I feel a little bit like somewhere something got fumbled on that element of this. And yeah, I mean, if you're an undecided voter, even if you're a never Trump voter and you just watch that, I think a lot of people are going to be moved to like an RFK, a write-in, you know, or just not vote, just throw their hands up and say, forget it. Like,

I can't believe this is what we have. My wife, also not a political junkie, not super tuned in. So a ton of the stuff going on that she knows probably more than politics about your average person just because she's in law school and she has to live with me. But I mean, she hadn't seen Biden, I think, speak publicly in a little while. And she was watching it in the hotel room in Lisbon. And she was just like, how is this the two people we have? How is it possible that this is it? And I don't know. I don't have a good answer. Yeah, I think Biden is a... I think he has a decent record to run on in certain elements, but he doesn't seem capable of running on anything. I mean, he couldn't even score points on abortion. I don't

know how this goes on. So, you know, in five months of Biden's still the nominee, I don't think this is going to be what determines the election, but I think there's a real genuine question of whether Democrats pull the plug. I think the conversation is hitting a fever pitch in a way that the convention is in two months. So that's a lot of time to get organized ahead of that and walk out somebody else who isn't Biden. And I think they have to be really considering it now. That's just my perspective. Yeah, there's a ton there. So starting with the opportunity you just gave us to talk about the undecided voters, how will this play with them? We'll find out because we're going to be talking to our sample of undecided voters over the next

week or so about this debate, and we'll make sure that we share those findings with everybody in that podcast series. But great, there is lots of time between now and the election there's plenty of time for us to have a new story that comes up there's plenty of time for a new trump scandal though the obvious counterpoint is what else could we possibly get that we haven't already and what we've already gotten has not moved the needle for that but you're ruminating on it you just threw it out there sort of implied it but i think it's something we should move to super text here and actually talk about is the concept of potentially pulling the plug on Biden. There's some discussion about that early this year, and we sort of moved past it. The State of the Union Herr report that there's going to be more commentary about Biden's fitness, and then it sort of drifted away, but it never fully went away. And I think if there's one thing that I would love for us to institutionally take from this process, it's that we should change this expectation of an incumbent automatically getting to run again if he chooses

to, or he or she chooses to in the next presidential election. I think that assumption is something that the Democratic Party had a really, really difficult time handling and how it could potentially primary its sitting president who is interested in running for re-election. There was no strong answer to that. Dean Phillips attempted it and was sort of waved off. Marianne Williamson has been running. No attention. RFK tried to run as a Democrat, and the party's just not interested in having those challenges. And this is kind of where it gets you. It's a little bit of stubbornness from Biden, but a lot of institutional inertia. And I wonder if there's going to be any self reflection from either party about that moving forward. But certainly in the next couple months,

there's going to be, I mean, I don't know, I can't say certainly in the next couple months, but certainly in the next couple days, we're going to have to continue to talk about this idea of should the Democrats put somebody else up the conventions not too far away. And I think that's going to be the big question following this debate. Yeah, I saw a tweet from Derek Thompson this morning that was just a screen grab of the opinion pages of left-leaning publications, which all of them have some variation of the piece saying Biden should step down or he should be replaced. And the idea that Thompson is saying is there hasn't been this kind of a concerted push from the press and the Biden aligned press

to date with this kind of idea and that that could be the tipping point and that could signal that there is enough organization behind that effort and enough popular support on the left to tip the scales finally. And honestly, the way I'm feeling right now is that there is. I think that this feels like a really, really important day in this election and in our politics, and that there is going to be major ramifications from that performance. I think one thing that didn't happen that i sort of expected to happen was that biden was going to be able to just kind of nail the most basic talking points against trump i mean i i didn't think he was gonna have a good performance very rarely has he had great debate performances

but i there's like a there's some really basic stuff that he could just say on repeat like this guy's a convicted felon he he had one of his best barbs in there i mean the moment of the night for me for biden was when he just described for the country trump's adultery and his convictions and then told him that he had the morals of an alley cat, which is just an all time. It was actually, I laughed out loud when I heard it. Um, but it was a very funny kind of timey line. And I think that's good. I think he did. He, he, he, he had that moment, which, you know, was 30 seconds of a 90 minute debate. I think he should have literally just said almost nothing except those things over and over again. And then the other thing is just like what he

inherited. I mean, the most basic message about Biden's record to me, if I'm putting like, I'm a democratic strategist, how do I frame what's going on right now? It's I inherited an all time bad economy in complete freefall with whatever it was, like 15% unemployment rate, markets collapsing all over the world, a global pandemic with thousands of people dying a day. And, you know, Putin already on the building up troops and like some seeds planted of some of the global conflict that we're seeing now already in place. And January 6, post-January 6 world, where our politics are as divided as they've ever been, Congress can't get anything done together. That's what Biden inherited. And whether you like Biden or not, the simple reality is Trump walked into a presidency with like a relatively stable economy, immigration under control, no global pandemic, none of this, like, like Congress was

becoming more and more divided, but there were, there were still like a lot of bipartisan working groups, like things happening, balls being moved. Biden got none of that. Like he walked into a total disaster that, you know, I don't necessarily blame all on Trump. Nobody handled the pandemic well, but he inherited a genuinely awful situation and he made it okay. That's the talking point. If I'm a democratic strategist, Biden like tried to say it at one point and just sort of fumbled over his words and got distracted and went off down some other track. But throughout the night, I mean, he didn't, he just had to land that. It's just like, what you gave me was horrific. Let's remind everybody where we were then. Like we were, we were in the weeks after the January 6th riots in the midst of

a global pandemic with a terrible economy. And that's a bad hand to be dealt as a president. And, you know, things are normal-ish now. The border's a bad hand to be dealt as a president. And, you know, things are normal-ish now. The border's a mess. But aside from that, like a lot of stuff is relatively normal. And so I don't know, that would be my talking point. And I just didn't hear it. And I think, yeah, Trump just obliterated him across the board. I mean, Trump is better at communicating about the bad parts of his record than Biden at communicating about the bad parts of his record than Biden is about communicating the good parts of his record. And it's just astounding. I think I could actually disagree on that a bit because we agree a lot about the general

contours of this debate. Like if anybody's saying that anybody other than Donald Trump won, they're spinning a yarn unless they're trying to say RFK won, which is a whole other thing. But I think on the economy, I would say that Biden sort of forced the stalemate is the way that I read it. I think he made that message of I inherited something terrible and inflation's under control, but inflation was only low during your presidency, Mr. Trump, because your unemployment rates are high and your pandemic response was terrible. He did say that. That's true. Yeah. And they did go back and forth a little bit on that. And Trump saying, I would have had a great

economy if not for the pandemic, everything was going fine. And then it just sort of, it became stalemate. I don't think it was a substantive debate. I don't think there was a whole lot that got said with details that we can learn from, but no one was expecting that. And the fact that the economy has been a weakness for Biden and it came out kind of in the wash, I think is the biggest win for him. Though, if his biggest win is a tie, that kind of tells you more about the rest of the night. But I think that's an area where I wouldn't go in on that criticism with you. Yeah, that's fair. I do think that's a good example of him kind of messaging the way that I think he should

have messaged. I actually, it's a nice segue because I want to pivot to Trump a little bit. I think we're in, the three of us are in agreement about how bad this is for Biden. close Biden ally and friend. And it's basically in every liberal paper. And among the liberal pundits, there's at least one or two people at every media outlet calling for Biden to step down. I mean, that's as bad as it gets, in my opinion. So I actually want to talk a little bit about Trump and his performance and just focus on him for a minute. I didn't learn anything new about Donald Trump last night. I mean, he takes no responsibility for anything that goes wrong. He's incredibly good at communicating all the things that went well. When he talks about the things that he did well, he can't talk about them without embellishing and lying in a way that

is just, it makes, it reminds me of like an eight-year-old. Like I just laugh. It's like everything is the best ever or the worst ever, the best economy they've ever seen. I aced the, you know, the mental acuity test, the mental fitness test. They told me they'd never seen anybody score as high as I did on that. I mean, it's just like, he can't even talk about like the basic stuff. Immigration was the lowest it's ever, it's like, he can't even talk about like the basic stuff. Immigration was the lowest it's ever been. It's like, no, it wasn't even like the lowest in the last 15 years, but he, he just like, that's where he goes. Um, so I learned almost nothing new about him.

I think the biggest criticism I could offer, and this is also not new, but it's just like somebody could make a highlight reel of him not answering any tight questions, like difficult questions. And if I were the Biden campaign, that's what I'd be working on right now. He got questions about abortion, what's he going to do with the abortion pill in the wake of Roe v. Wade, about January 6th, about climate change, social security, inflation, you know, racial justice. He got asked really pointed questions. And on almost every single occasion, he just pivoted to something without he kept having to be getting drawn back by the moderators who were like, actually, we just asked you about, you know, 75,000 people dying of opioids,

and you just ranted for a minute about China. And that happened over and over throughout the debate. And that to me would be like, if I'm DNC, that's the highlight reel. It's the only kind of redeeming thing that happened is Trump just dodging. And I did think that was a little bit of, you know, Biden's performance overshadowed that element. But it's amazing to me that, you know, eight years later after his first presidential campaign, after being elected, four years on the sidelines to prep for this, he still can't answer the most basic questions about his record in a straightforward way. It's kind of shocking. I wasn't surprised by that. I don't think it matters. I think in the same vein that it's

really difficult to learn anything new about Trump at this point. I think voters have the image of him in their mind that is not going to be shaken no matter what he says. And they know what he represents, especially his supporters. So I just think it's we've evolved from this place in 2016 and 2015, where any of the things he said last night would have been incredibly shocking and would have led the headlines and would have been the subject of all these panel debates. And I don't know if it's because we've become desensitized or because just the whole framework of how we think about our politics and presidential elections has shifted, but it really, it didn't even register for me. In fact, you know, I was mainly just focused on, oh, wow, he's projecting strength. He sounds like he's in a commanding position. And that's where, that's where we've gotten to. like he's in a commanding position. And that's where we've gotten to. And so I think, you know,

in that way, it was an incredibly disciplined and in command performance by Trump because it didn't really matter what he said. You know, I would give him a C if I was trying to grade his debate, maybe a C minus. I think the, I agree about his discipline, but it's relative to what he's shown. I think his willingness to not get in the muck with Biden was something that was a little new. And I think that showed a little bit of surprising discipline, as you said. But also, like Isaac said, he was not only dodging questions left and right, but if you watch the debate, increasingly so as the night went on, which I think does show the trademark inability to focus on things that he doesn't want to. He was asked a question on climate change, and he spent his answer discussing the police entirely until they asked him about it again. And then he said, we had great water

during my presidency. And that was the biggest visualization of his inability to discipline his mind to talk about the question at hand. But at the same time, you could say that's a good political pivot to just deflect into the thing he was doing. And he had an opponent who was unable to hold his feet to the fire on those things. who was unable to hold his feet to the fire on those things. If Trump scored a C or a C-, Biden absolutely got an F. So we're just comparing the two of them against each other. And I think in terms of Trump's discipline, I think he only looks disciplined in comparison to how he'd been before. And in terms of his strength, he only looked strong in comparison to the way his opponent was performing. It's like if you went to a circus and you saw one act where somebody was juggling two balls and you're like, that's not that impressive. And then in the next tent, you see a person literally sleeping. You're like, okay, I'm going to go back to the juggler. Actually, that's kind of how the debate felt.

I wanted to talk about, I wrote this down during the debate, a perfect, like an absolutely piss perfect Trump moment that I think really encapsulates him as a politician and a campaigner. And it came really close to the end of the debate. I want to be clear, I'm not talking about Trump as a policymaker, where he is, what his positions are. I'm just talking about him as a politician, like the strict political speaker communicator elements of it, of that job. Towards the very end of the debate, he said, he went on this like soliloquy about how he wished he didn't have to be there. He said, I wish Joe Biden was a great president. If he was, I wouldn't be here. I would rather have that. I'd rather be at all my beautiful places, you know, relaxing in my beautiful home in Mar-a-Lago. The only reason that I'm here is that he's so bad as

a president and we have to make America great again. And when he said it, and I was just like, you know, I'd been watching the debate. It was towards the end. It was like an hour of the debate and I'm watching him say it. And I'm feeling, I'm thinking in my head, like, that's pretty good. Like I, and you know what? And I felt myself like almost believing him for a moment. Like, like, oh yeah, he, he probably doesn't want to be there. He probably would. He maybe is rooting for Biden. He wishes the country was doing better and all this stuff. And then I just like snapped out of that. I was like, oh, wait, he like rejected the results of the election. He can't register to campaign for 2024, like immediately after he left office, like the earliest any president ever has.

He gave absolutely no room or space for Biden to succeed in any way possible and immediately decide that he was going to run again in 2024 and has been calling him the worst president in American history since January 21st, like the day after he got inaugurated. And I was like, oh, none of what he just said is true. But I believed it. I was listening to him, and he delivers it in a way, it's so earnest. And I'm like, he's so good at it that I was just like, wow, yeah, I bet he doesn't want to be there. And I bet he is rooting for Biden. And I was hypnotized for a moment. And then I was like, oh, no, that's all just complete bullshit. When I thought about the actual facts of what he's done since he lost the

2020 race. And I think that's perfect Trump. It's like when he does that about stuff that he's telling the truth about or about the things that he's strong on, the policy issues he's strong on, it makes him so much more resonant and it's so good. And when he does it about stuff when like that, where he's just completely lying, it's like convincing for a moment, even for people like me who are very skeptical of him. And I imagine for the people that love him and support him, it's just like, he's, you know, they, they believe it. They take it hook, line and sinker. And it's remarkable. I don't know if anybody I've seen is as good at it as he is, honestly. I think for me, that moment that I had, I had a similar moment and it was when he was telling Joe Biden, he hasn't fired anybody. And he was saying, I have to, it's not fun,

but you have to be tough and you have to get rid of people who are doing a fired anybody. And he was saying, I have to, it's not fun, but you have to be tough and you have to get rid of people who are doing a bad job. And this was in response to him being dragged by Biden for getting rid of so many of his cabinet positions. That's a good critique. And I think when you reflect on it, you might say it's actually probably reflects more on oversensitivity to get rid of so many cabinet positions and leaders in different federal departments and maybe an inability to pick the right person in the first place if this hit rate is going to be so low. But when he said it, I felt myself thinking the same thing like, oh, yeah, that's a really

good point. Maybe that's something that Biden's been failing at. It was that same moment of just him showing his skill as a politician. I thought that was actually a great example too of how Trump has evolved as a politician and become quite good at it in some ways where he comes in and you just think of him as the very blunt, you're fired guy. It's almost this over the top machismo. But now he's translated that into a message of I can make the tough decisions and I can hold people accountable. And that's a message that I think works much better with a broader swath of the country versus just, oh,

I'm Trump. I come in and I'm the guy who fires everybody. So I think it's actually kind of an example of how he's evolved as a politician, too. Yeah, I mean, I the firing thing I wrote down as my best Trump moment of the night. I thought that was like his one of the high points for him. I thought it was like a really smart way to kind of reframe what he did. And the reason it was good was because it was kind of like holding. I mean, first of all, it was good because it's true. Like nobody got fired for the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nobody got has gotten fired for what happened at the border. Biden hasn't really shaken up his team. It's like he has had these really bad things that every president does, but he's had like two like I mean, the border is

complete mess. And the withdrawal from Afghanistan was like, one of the worst blemishes any American president, you know, has on their record in terms of just like a major event like that happening. I mean, that's just like a classic, you know, horrible mark on, you know, your record as president. That's like a there's every president has like one or two of those, I think some more. But like for Biden, that's definitely going to be the thing that's held above his head. And nobody paid the price. And I think that's a good talking point from Trump. You know, I think that that landed for me. I was you know, I was like, yeah, that's true. And

and it's one of those moments from Trump where he doesn't have to embellish or lie. He just has to be really direct and blunt about it. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. I want to talk for a minute about the moderators and some of the interactions that they had,

because we didn't really get into this in the newsletter today, but it was another sort of under-discussed moment for me. I talked about it a little bit in some of my answers, which is just like, I thought this format was awesome. My personal opinion when I left was that's the most I've heard candidates be able to articulate their positions and talk openly. I don't think Biden or Trump took advantage of it the way they could have. I mean, like you said, Ari, I think Trump, maybe a C, C-minus performance. Biden got an F. That being said, they weren't able to interrupt each other in ways that really derailed the conversation. There wasn't this obnoxious crowd cheering, going nuts for every punchline that's just worthless, meaningless, political punchline crap. They talked a lot

uninterrupted, and we got to see who they were and hear who they were. And if these were two new candidates who we had never seen before, I think it would have been really, really super valuable to have this format. I don't think it was because they're not new candidates, but I thought it was awesome. I thought the CNN, like the tech, the technical people did a great job cutting off the mics, the way the camera work was done. All of it just struck me as like really well done. I, you know, say what you want about Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and CNN. I've criticized them endlessly. I thought they asked good questions and I don't, I didn't leave feeling like they, I knew what their politics

were. I mean, I know what their politics are obviously, but if I had no idea who they were, I wouldn't have known based on the questions they asked and how the debate went. And nobody's really talking about that. I hope they keep this. I don't know what ABC is going to do, but I think these are good rules to have for presidential debates, and this is how it should be going forward. It's like a referee. After the game, if you're not talking about the ref, they did a great job. I think that's kind of similar with moderators. That's a good way to put it yeah ari's coming with some strong analogies to that um another thing too that struck me another moment i guess and stuck out that's sort of related to the moderators was the opioid thing where they

it's it's it the the conversation about the moderators made me think about it because they did this really good thing where they let Trump just rant for a minute about China and trade. And I think it was right before they started going in on all the golf stuff, which was totally embarrassing. rapper Dana Bash. I don't even remember which, but they, one of the buyers just said, uh, the question was about, you know, what you're going to do about the 75,000 people who died of hope. And it was like, they didn't say a word about that. I think it was Trump didn't say a word about it. And then they, they kind of brought it back and it was really well done. It was almost like, Oh, it was another moment where I just laughed out loud because of how ridiculous what we were watching was. Uh,. But what was also interesting about that moment and the question, which nobody really talked about, is that it was another abortion-esque moment where Biden had talking points in his hand that he could use that he just fumbled.

Opioid deaths are down in the US. Nobody talks about that. We just got all this new data about how we had the fewest opioid deaths since 2018 or something like that. They've come down in the last year or two in a way that nobody was expecting. He talked a little bit about- And huge financial penalties too against the opioid producers. Right. We've gotten some justice on the actual people who helped create this crisis. He talked a little bit about the Border Patrol bill and the fentanyl detecting machines that they wanted to fund and put in more ports of entry, but his delivery on it was so bad that I don't think, you know, I knew what he was saying because I know so much about

that issue, but I don't think people who didn't know what he was talking about heard anything valuable like, oh, we had a bill that we agreed on with Republicans that would have actually helped solve this problem. And Trump tanked it because he thought it was going to be bad for him in election season. Biden tried to communicate that, but he didn't say it the way I just did. And he couldn't get it out. And it was like it was just like another moment where I was like, he's not ready for this. Like, he's not up for this for Like he's not up for this, for the

campaign. It just like he, those talking points were right there. We actually have good news on the opioid crisis that has happened in the last four years. And Biden was incapable of communicating that to voters. And, um, that stuck with me, man. I was just like, this is not like, if he can't do this, if he can't tout some of the low hanging fruit wins on his record, I don't know how he's going to get through the next five months. And it's been a long evening and quick morning already. So forgive me if we already did this, but did we even talk about his biggest fumble, which was his abortion answer yet? I don't know if we have. I mean, we, we, we talked about it a lot in the newsletter. I think both Will and I brought it up. But yeah, I guess we haven't talked about it on the podcast.

I mean, in terms of own goals and having talking points set up to take a question on abortion and talk about just spinning it into immigration and illegal, like, unauthorized migrants coming across the border killing people. It's just an incredible choice from Biden. Yeah, we should, well, let's actually have John drop in that clip, the audio of that clip into the podcast right here, and then we can talk about it. President Biden, it's been a terrible thing what you've done. The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars support it real when it was decided.

Support it real. And that's this idea thate when it was decided. Supported Roe. And that's this idea that they were all against it. It's just ridiculous. And this is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We're in a state where in six weeks you don't even know whether you're pregnant or not, but you cannot see a doctor and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help. The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying we're going to turn civil rights back to the states, that each state have a different rule.

Look, there's so many young women who have been, including a young woman who just was murdered, and he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in, they talk about that. But here's the deal. There's a lot of young women being raped by their in-laws, by their spouses, brothers and sisters.

It's just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. And they try to arrest them on a cross-state line. Thank you. All right. So just, like, listening to that, I mean, first of all, I just want to highlight the moment where this turns when he says, and this I'm reading directly from the transcript now, he says, look, there's so many young women who have been, including a young

woman who was just murdered. And he, he went to the funeral, the idea that she was murdered by a, by an immigrant coming in and they talk about that but here's the deal there's a lot of young women who are being raped by their in-laws which i'm just like at this point i am like jaw open staring at the screen like what is happening right now um yeah i mean maybe his second worst moment to me in the debate besides the one where trump said i don't know what he just said and i don't think he does either, which was like a, you know, a knockout punch. Uh, yeah, but, uh, how, how does he, he can't score points on abortion. Like this is the worst issue Republicans have had in a decade and he doesn't have anything he can articulate. And it's not just that, but then it's on his own bringing up an issue that

he's vulnerable on. Yeah's it was it was unbelievable it was almost like he was thinking about oh i i shouldn't go in this direction i should make sure that i don't say anything about this and then it just came out of his mouth because he was thinking about how he shouldn't say it like it was inexplicable and uh and i i do think that that happened throughout most of his answers it obviously wasn't as bad as that throughout the night but 30 seconds in or two or three sentences in the the trail of thought would just be gone and you were just strapped in waiting to see what he was going to say and you know it obviously goes beyond a gaffe or, you know, misspeaking or just having like a rough performance.

Like there was something just fundamentally off. And I we obviously can't speculate about like whether that's an overarching problem that he's having. I mean, many people probably have their own opinion about that. But in the debate itself, there was something fundamentally not working about his thoughts and communicating them on the stage. mentally not working about his thoughts and communicating them on the stage. Yeah, there's a, there's a great quote that came out, um, that was in Politico. Um, and it was an advisor to a major democratic party donor who was texting from Atlanta, some reporters at Politico. And this was the quote from the, from the, uh, the advisor to the democratic party. And if you have kids, I'm about to curse. So you might want to,

you know, cover their ears. Uh, the, the donor advisor already. Yeah. Sorry. The donor advisor said, quote, our only hope is that he bows out. We have a brokered convention or dies. The donor said, otherwise we are fucking dead. That's wow. Is that good? Is that a good? I don't think that's good. Yeah, a complete. I mean, yeah, you know, I think the Axios headline was, you know, DEFCON one moment for Democrats, which tracks for me. I mean, based on what I'm seeing and how I felt watching it, I think it was similarly that bad. Really quick. So we talked about Trump, covered some of the, obviously talking a lot about Biden, some of the undercover stories and stuff people aren't

really chatting about. Before we move on, I want everybody on the record here. It's Friday, June 28th as we record this. I am curious, are you first then will, in as few words as possible, is Joe Biden the Democratic nominee in November, in your opinion? Yes. I think the inertia of the political machine is too strong. the inertia of the political machines too strong. Something that you said at the top of the call was that there are five months between now and the election, plus a week, and a lot can happen in those five months plus a week. And we are currently in what so far in this campaign has been the absolute low water mark for Joe Biden. And it's important to remember that it's not going to get worse tomorrow. We're not going to wake up and experience another debate like we just had last night. There's going to be

another thing to discuss. This is a whole other diversion, so we don't even have to discuss it right now, but the Supreme Court just overturned the Chevron deference, so there's going to be more news. There's going to be more things to come up, and it won't even necessarily be something about Biden. It's just going to be the fact that there's other stuff for us to focus on. And as that happens, the pressure is going to just drop a little bit for the DNC. I think there's going to be a push at the nominating convention, but I honestly believe that this is the guy we're going to see the Democrats run in November. If they weren't going to make the change earlier, if they didn't show any interest in making the change earlier, I don't think we're going to see a change of heart now.

Something that you shared in our team Slack was a clip of Gavin Newsom asking or being asked that same question, Isaac, and his response, which you said, this is a great communicator that the Democrats should maybe learn from, was unequivocal support for Biden. And if he is sort of the mouthpiece for center Democrats, that is going to be the stance. I don't think that it's going to get any worse. And I don't think they're going to change. Sorry. I feel like a CNN moderator here, but I want to remind you, I said it in as few words as possible. I'm under my 90 seconds. Maybe. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, this was like, this was like when, uh, when we were doing interviews,

Ari, when we were hiring our intern cohort and we had a question that explicitly asked people to and, uh, I think the long, the shortest was probably eight to nine sentences, but it's hard to do that. Um, but no, I'll do it. I'll do it right now. Yes, I think he will be the nominee because I don't think that the Democrats have it in them to do what it takes to make the swap out. I just fundamentally don't think that they have that in the party right now. And I agree with everything Ari said. And I agree with everything Ari said. I think that what it would require at this point in the race is beyond them.

And for the record, Will agreeing with everything I said means he said it too. So it's credit for all those senses also. That's true. I also say yes, he's the nominee. also say yes he's the nominee i caveat it by saying i think i'm i i was 90 10 two days ago and i'm 60 40 now and to me the 40 is the combined odds of major like health thing that pushes us over the edge either like him dying or him literally having something like because he looks that bad to me that I think that is actually a legitimate concern now. The combination of that with all the political pressures for him to drop out with the DNC convention still coming and the possibility that we see like some serious, you know, ground moving uproar protests there, Democrats break and

like try and force the issue, whatever. I think the combo of all those things could push the odds up to like 40% for me. Uh, though I do still agree that I think he's going to barrel through and be the nominee. It's funny, actually, just real quick. I, um, I was more confident or I would have pegged those odds as higher that he wasn't the nominee, uh, at nominee at earlier points in this race. I think like there have been moments for me where I've had that realization that maybe other people had last night or that was clarifying for people about the state that he's in at the beginning of this year, even going back into last fall, where I was just really convinced that someone was going to make a move around the time that Dean got into the race.

I thought that might be like a watershed moment where more people hopped in. Um, but now that we've gotten to this point and there hasn't been any movement and all the challenges, you know, no matter how weak they were just flamed out. I just don't see it happening. I think that that moment would have come already if it was going to come. Really appreciate you being on a first name basis with Dean, by the way. How about the quote from Dean Phillips, who we brought on the show when he was running, he got a text from Barry Weiss asking if he was too old for the job, if he wanted to comment on whatever. And Phillips responded, Gandhi said to speak only what it improves upon the silence, which is unbelievable text message from Dean Phillips to send to a reporter.

Only respond to my text with Gandhi quotes, please. Yeah. A couple more things before we get out of here. The Joe Biden, the Joe Biden odds of winning the presidency have completely tanked, at least in the betting markets. I think Trump went up to negative 140, minus 140, negative 140, minus 140 last night. And the betting markets completely, I mean, it's like a total divergence from the center with Trump going north and Biden going south. So people clearly think this is going to have an impact. I still think there's so much time that it's just hard for me to get too, too riled up about it, though I'm watching with great curiosity the many

really influential Democratic pundits who are now calling for him to drop out. for him to drop out. I think before we get out of here, I'd be interested to hear what you guys see in the next coming weeks. Maybe, you know, not so much the question of whether Biden drops out, but just the spin zone, like where this goes. What are Democrats going to do? What are Republicans going to do? Does Biden just refocus or Trump refocus his entire campaign just on Biden, Biden's, you know, mental health and, you know, physical abilities? And I mean, like, if I'm the Trump campaign, I'm considering that. We joked, Ari joked in the in our team Slack about how the cold narrative was going to get some traction. I don't know if for those of you who didn't see, apparently the Biden team is telling reporters that he had a cold

and that's part of why he sounded and looked so terrible, I guess is what they're implying. Yeah. I'm just interested to hear from you guys sort of, yeah, spin zone. What are we going to see the next couple of weeks? How is this going to play out? Well, if if Biden is truly able to run for president, then he should be as public and visible as possible as as they can make him the next few weeks. And then that would be the only way to counteract some of these concerns would be to show him appearing vital. And it's interesting. I think we talked about this in Slack today too, or on Twitter about the video of him at the post-debate event with his wife. And he, you know, has a 30-second remarks to the crowd where he seems much better, much better than he did at any point during the debate. And I was a little curious about where that came from after,

if he had a cold, number one, and also after he should have been fired up to start the debate and, and carry through. But, uh, you know, I think he needs to be public and he needs to be giving speeches and taking questions and doing interviews. Uh, but I'm not confident that they are confident in him to do that. I don't think we're going to see that, but I think that would be the best course of action, you know, if they could do it. Yeah. And just to pick up the baton there, I think since they probably aren't confident that they can do that, he can do that. We're going to see more of the same. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And for what we've seen during the Biden campaign, it's relatively few public moments and some quick clips showing some statements that Biden thinks

are going to be strong or the team thinks are going to be strong. I think the state of play, this is going to be really cynical, but I kind of believe it, is for both parties. They have two candidates that both are buckling under the weight of their own baggage, and both parties are going to try to stay out of the way and let the other candidates self-destruct. And it will be a matter of, because I think both candidates, when they try to attack, open themselves up for more weakness than they do in terms of scoring political points on the front foot. So I think Trump's going to be on the campaign trail. That's going to be where he's always lived. The Democrats are probably going

to hope that he's going to score some own goals and say some stuff. They can try to clip and get the base out to try to vote against Trump and just keep Biden a little bit out of the spotlight. I kind of wasn't joking about the cold thing too. I think that's probably going to get a little bit of traction and they're going to say, ah, it was an off night. He wasn't feeling great. He had the sniffles and he's, the president's busy. He's back at work. He can't be out in public. Come on. We've got other things to do. And hope that Trump collapses under his own baggage. Yeah. I honestly have no idea. I don't know what that...

I mean, if I were... I've been talking a lot about putting myself in Democratic strategist mode, and I don't know what I would do. I mean, this is like an unbelievably hard thing to handle. So, so difficult to tell voters that they're not seeing exactly what's right in front of them. I mean, thank God for them that Trump, I think, is a really weak candidate in a lot of ways. Convicted felon, had a really terrible end to his presidency, is a little bit nutty. Not a little bit. He's pretty nutty every time he is in front of a camera. And I think there's

a lot of fodder for stuff they can show Democrats to scare them into sticking with Biden, even though he looks and appears unable to do the job. One last thing that just occurred to me, well, it didn't just occur to me, but I wanted to mention on the pod, like a week, two weeks ago, maybe, about two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal released this piece about all these concerns various members of Congress and politicians had about Biden behind closed doors. And Democrats and liberal supporters in a unified voice framed this story with like 40 sources is a total hit job, completely detached from reality. This is the guy who was described in that story, like to a T. This is exactly what all those sources said. Some of whom, by the way, were Democrats. I tweeted the story out.

I got bombarded with a bunch of people from the left in my mentions who were, you know, you're falling for Republican propaganda. Can't believe you're quoting the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal news side is not conservative. They are like pretty down the middle. In fact, I know a lot of reporters who work there and many of them have left of center politics. They're really good reporters.

They did a really fair job on the story. You go read that now after watching what happened last night, which I did this morning. And it's all very believable. It's not like there's nothing in that piece that's like, oh, my God, this is like total made up reframe propaganda from the right. I think it was a well-reported story. I think the people who dismissed it as this kind of like Republican hit job have, you know, mud on their faces. And this is it. This is the guy we've got. And whether you're a Democrat or Republican or wherever you're leaning in this election, these are the two people we have, you know, Donald Trump and all of his baggage and all of his embellishment and his lies, all the stuff he's been convicted or

accused of the way that he left the country, and then Joe Biden, who, you know, I think has done an okay to mediocre job as president and doesn't appear up for even the next five months. And that's somehow our choice, which is just like an insane state of play to me. Yeah. Are you forgetting somebody? um yeah are you forgetting somebody yeah i'm forgetting will you could riff about your rfk we didn't even have will on the pod last week when we discussed his rfk junior piece which now yeah i mean uh if anybody's stock is rising it's robert f kennedy jr and will k back simultaneously how's that phil will your uh your stock is directly associated rfk jr it's funny because uh i think like the opening line of that piece is will anything

shake up the 2024 race and kind of setting up this idea that rfk might have been like this lurking game changer who's been there all along well i think last night we saw the event that could be the the shake-up or the game changer that people look back on, depending on the outcome of the election. So I don't think that, you know, it's only going to be RFK as a possibility anymore. I think there's more opportunities. Another debate still, you know, conceivably the convention where we could have things that shake up this race. convention where we could have things that shake up this race. But I just think as long as RFK Jr. hangs around and the dissatisfaction continues with both candidates, the possibility of him getting enough of the vote in the right states if he gets on the ballot is as high as it's been

since before the 21st century. And I think a lot of people don't take him that seriously because they don't think his policies are that serious or because they don't think he has a chance of winning the entire race but you know in terms of something that could affect the election i do think that he is being undercovered or at least under discussed the potential impact that he could have if that line creeps up who knows right yeah it's it's it interesting. I just think it's something worth paying attention to. And now it will be very interesting to see if he can capitalize on the opportunity of maybe some people fleeing Biden, but not wanting to support Trump either and taking a look at him. I think he has an opportunity now, but I'm not confident at all about whether that's going to

be beneficial for him in the long run. All right. Will K. back. Ari Weitzman, as good a place as any to wrap this up. We got a newsletter to finish and get out to the people. Thanks for coming on, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks. It was fun. You are welcome. Take care. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. Take care. Peace. media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, Thanks for watching. his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older Thank you.