The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo on Trump’s Debate Meltdown

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Chris Cuomo unpacks the heated debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, pointing out the critical and surprising errors Trump made throughout the night. From his failure to capitalize on key moments to his inability to control the narrative, Cuomo reveals how Trump’s approach may have cost him significant ground in the 2024 presidential race. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the game. to wager Ontario only gambling problem call connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. Bed FGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was an absolute shocker. I couldn't have gotten it more wrong about what it was going to be. And yet it wound up becoming exactly what I thought. Does that make sense? No, but I think we can work it through together. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Oracle. AI, man, it's the most important new computer technology.

AI, artificial intelligence, is storming every industry. Literally billions are being invested. So buckle up, what's the problem? AI needs a lot of speed, processing power. How are you gonna compete? Without costs, doing the same thing. Speeding up, spiraling out of control. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure database application development and of course AI needs.

OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds. One consistent price instead of variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more, spend less. Like who? Oh, Uber, 8x8, Databricks, Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash CCP. Oracle.com slash CCP. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Shopify. You know, when you think of great duos, Batman and Robin, Jordan and Pippin and the perfect pairing

when it comes to growing your business, you and Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business development. Why do I like it? Because I like people who are the best at what they do. And I also love that Shopify is there from the beginning.

They just don't want to cherry pick businesses that are already most of the way there and just want to help them maximize. Shopify gives you everything you need to go from seed to big old forest. And I like it. So if you want to take your business to the next level, Shopify is the choice.

Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. Now that's market share. Sign up for a $1 a month trial period at Shopify.com slash Chris C. All lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Chris C. Grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash Chris C.

Check it out. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from AG1. Man, I'm about my nutrition and supplementation. However, every diet, every plan has gaps. Nothing is perfect. That's why you've got a supplement. That's why I start my day one and done with AG1. One spoonful in water for me.

You can put it in anything you want. I like it warm and I get support for whole body health. And I know I'm starting the day right. AG1 is foundational nutrition, daily nutrients, gut health support, backed by multiple research studies. So you can trust that you're putting something that is helpful, not hurtful, into your body. If there's one product I trust to support

my whole body health, it's AG1. And that's why I'm bugging them to do more business with me. And that's why I've partnered with them for so long. It's easy and satisfying to start your journey with AG1. Try AG1 and you will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase at drinkag1.com slash CCP. Drinkag1.com slash CCP. Please check it out.

I'm Chris Cuomo, welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. We saw the truth. This debate was the absolute truth of the proposition of what this election is about, which was what I had hoped for, not an outcome for one or the other. Listen, I know it frustrates you guys, but I'm not about the choices. I don't believe in the potential for change in this two-party system the way it is right now. Opposition is too much of a built-in legit position. You will vote for someone because they pledge to you

to stop someone else from doing something. That doesn't work for me, but it does work in our politics right now. So I don't believe that it matters that much who is the president. Could I be wrong? Of course, it happens with stunning frequency. And I was wrong about the debate

because I believed that Kamala Harris is definitely a more cogent, a better debater. The idea that Donald Trump is a good debater is demonstrably false. I don't know why any of you Trump voters believe that. Lean into what he is. He is a spirit animal of grievance and a change agent for disruption.

That's what he is. He's not the antidote. He's not a cure. He is a virus that a lot of people want injected into the political corpus, the political body, to make it sick so that it changes, that the resulting fever, metaphorically, of what his disruption is, makes it better. That's what you're hoping for, that it survives the virus. And I get it. And it was always wrong for people who are not Trump supporters

to confuse the supporters of Trump with him. It is a mistake, because they are not necessarily like him. They may find him entertaining in a way that you don't. They may value him in a way that you don't, but it does not make you a bigot or someone who says stupid, mean things because you support Trump, because a lot of people who do,

do it because they're so pissed off by everybody else and everything else. And I get it, I get it. I just wish they had a better change agent choice. And that's what we saw in this debate. From the first moment, it was exactly what Trump should have never allowed it to be. When Kamala Harris walked over, hello, Kamala, Kamala, hi, and from that moment, it was a

what the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? Just forget politics. Forget politics. Imagine what your wife, what your husband would say if you were in a situation like that and the woman came up to you to shake hands and you treated her like that.

From that joke, you're giving it away. You know the idea of fake it till you make it? You wanna be president of the United States? Nobody wants someone representing them who's gonna treat that woman like that in that moment. We both knew it. Why? From the moment it started, he allowed it to be the only thing that he could not let

it be. Shocked me. Yes, I know he doesn't like to prepare. Yes, I know the people around him were nervous that he had set way too low a bar for her. That's what he does. But I could have never imagined that it would be such a distillation of the truth of the two propositions presented to you in this election. How so? Well, one more point on style.

Why did Trump have such an amazing opportunity? One shot, like eight mile, one shot, one shot, to show that you are right about her, that she is not ready. One shot, she's never done this before. She's never even met you. And for the first 10, 15, 20 minutes, just like the other unprecedented opportunity we've seen Trump have and blow

to expand his base at the RNC after being shot in the head. The first 15 minutes, 10, 15, 20 even, he was nailing it. He was not, look, I didn't like not looking at her. I have a problem with that. I see a value in ethical treatment of one another, okay? I'm not gonna show you disrespect just because I don't respect your position. I believe in behaving better if you're gonna be a leader,

okay? So I didn't like that part, but it was working for him. I'm so bored by everything she's saying. It's such bullshit. She does not have any plans. They're in so bored by everything she's saying. It's such bullshit. She does not have any plans. They're in there now and she's pretending like they're not responsible for any of this. This is a fucking joke and this is why things were better when I was there. Chef's kiss. He walks away with the debate if he stays like that. Now what happens? Kamala Harris is now getting all of this depth,

all of this love, all of this riz by getting in his mind. I gotta tell you, I don't know that this was the plan. I think this is who she is and how she is. I think she's aggressive. That's an attribute. But for whatever reason, the guy decides to be the worst version of himself if you're not in rally mode.

You can't rationally believe that you're going to get independent voters like you guys watching and listening to this right now, by being unrelentingly negative about America, lying your ass off, and saying all of the worst things you are capable of saying. You can't think you're going to get independence that way. You know that independents are the largest chunk of people who are even close to open-minded about this. You know it's locked up like this, right? This election is crazy close, which is why Trump's inability to not cause chaos is going to be a real problem because the chance that he accepts the outcome of this election, if he loses, is so small because that would be about him being bigger than himself and we've never seen that.

See, the part I don't accept that you guys do who support former President Trump, I don't believe he's doing this for you. Now, you could argue none of them do. There's something vain about all of this. There's something egocentric about all of it, self-centered about all of it. Okay, fair, fair, fair. But it's a matter of degree.

So what did we see as a matter of degree? He goes from ignoring her and giving every kind of verbal and nonverbal communication that he is not impressed, to taking what's being called the bait. Now, again, I don't think she had this master plan. She obviously prepared. In fact, she probably overprepared, which is a common problem with debate prep.

Her first answer, second answer, I'll give her a little bit for stage fright, but she's been, she hasn't for stage fright, but she's been, she hasn't done this before, but she's been on big stages. And you know, you could say, oh yeah, well, she got kicked out because of her debate performance in the first election. That's not true. She distinguished herself for her debate performance. It was just that she wasn't doing well with the demographics and she had to drop out before the first primary, which was, you know, should have been embarrassing for her. But here we are.

I don't think she had a master plan to get under his skin. I think he hurt himself. Okay, she was definitely trying, but it's not like that woman moment, you know, or somehow she is to be blamed for how she did this. She tricked him. That's all bullshit, okay? She did what he should have known she was gonna do.

And he was playing it right until he wasn't. And that boggles the mind, and it must give independent voters pause. Because if this guy can be so thrown off to become such a caricature of a caricature by that, because Kamala Harris was the truth. She was a string of question marks about herself. Look, everybody's always unsatisfied by the policy. Let's be honest, why? Because policy is hard and you guys are fine voting on bullshit.

You guys are fine, or you've been conditioned, or you feel resigned to vote on, okay, I'll go for him, I'll go for her. One smells less shitty than the other. That's where we are. And she has question marks about her plans, about her consistency of rationale, about changing positions that I think

reflect a change in values. I don't think she's articulated that well. I don't think that she has given us a good understanding of her understanding of why the economy is where it is and what will help it get better and what has worked to this point. I think that's real. I think the immigration stuff is a fucking nightmare.

It's a nightmare. Why didn't Biden do the executive orders that he did that made a definite change earlier? Why? You want to know the answer? I'll give it to you. Because he's got a big picture. executive orders that he did that made a definite change earlier. Why? You want to know the answer? I'll give it to you. Because he's got a big chunk of his party that does not prioritize it

and is actually bothered by it. And he catered to them. That's the truth. Wasn't a priority. And they don't like the feel of it. Oh, that's because they have the great replacement theory. I think that's bullshit. But you set yourself up of it. Oh, that's because there you have the great replacement theory. I think that's bullshit, but you setting yourself up for it.

But even on that, Trump, because he gets so wound up, he's so spun up, he says, in Ohio, they're eating dogs. What the fuck are you talking about, man? Let me just chime in as producer on the subway on the way here. I heard two separate people on their phones without using headphones, you should use your headphones on the subway,

listening to this clip. Truly, I get on the train, they're eating dogs, they're eating dogs. That's it. That's in my pit. That's the takeaway of this. And it's the dumbest thing you could buy. I know the story is loaded and everything and bullshit,

but that's the sound bite. That is the sound bite that the average person, at least in New York, is like blasting on the train right now. And if I'm not mistaken, that question came, or that statement came as he was talking about immigration. It was an immigration question that Harris then like threw him down the path of like, hey, what about your rallies?

And then he ended up on eating dogs. Like, can you speak to like how, like easily he got distracted, but also like, he's a TV guy, like he's a media guy and he's able to like get so thrown off course, he starts talking about something that becomes the viral clip the next day. You know why?

Cause that's the truth. That's who he is. Is that once he's triggered, and look, a lot of you guys will use this as an excuse. To me, it's not he is. Is that once he's triggered, and look, a lot of you guys will use this as an excuse. To me, it's not an excuse, it's an explanation, but it's a problem, okay? For independent voters, you're looking at this guy, you're like, he cannot keep his shit together.

Because this was nothing, this was a tap in the side of his head. And then Muir, ABC News Muir, the moderator says, well we talked to the county supervisor or whoever the position is, they don't have any reports of anything like that. Well, that's a convenient thing for him to say, but there's a lot of reports. The fuck are you talking about? This is your issue. Forget the dogs. Dogs wound up being the best and worst line of the night for him.

His first one was run, spot, run, which was a great way of debasing the shallow repetition of Biden's policy as now Harris's. Run, spot, run, meaning do the most basic, obvious, facile thing. That was trending. Then he went up himself with another dog line. They're eating dogs. This is your best truth.

Why fuck it up? Now you may be thinking, why are you telling them not to fuck it up? I want them to lose. I want us to win. You should not have 20,000 people in jail. I don't care if they're Haitian. I don't care if they're Italian. I don't care what they are.

You can't add 15 to 60 with no infrastructure boost, no help, and think that it's going to help a place that's already struggling. And yes, they need new blood. And yes, they need skilled labor. Springfield, Ohio is a metaphor for America. There are Springfields all over the place. Top two dozen cities in a major state. What is Ohio? The top 10 certainly in population, 11, 12 million people. This has 60,000. Springfield, Ohio. It's like where you live all over the country, the same issues, higher unemployment, higher

underemployment, bigger income disparity, bigger education gap, lack of skilled workers. That's the discussion. And then you dump 15,000 people on them without any help. The immigration system is fucking broken. Change the rules for asylum. Give them more resources to adjudicate at the border, to hold people at the border and to return people from the border

and do what Harris was supposed to do. Border czar was never about that. The truth is enough. And you got the truth in this debate. There are two propositions. We suck, we suck, we suck, and it's only me. And I can make it less sucky by stopping them. And Harris who said, I believe we can do better.

And she's a string of question marks about whether she can, but at least that's her ambition. And that is the truth of the propositions in this. Question marks about whether she can, but what she's talking about is about getting you to a better place, and him getting you to buy into the fact that everything here sucks.

He didn't say a single positive thing about the country he wants to lead. I have never heard a Republican do that before, never. You guys own the flag as your party symbol, which the Democrats were so fucking stupid to give you. Now you have a guy who wants to lead you, who has an unmitigated contempt for the state of the country. I've never heard it before, but that is the truth of the proposition.

Immigration is a nightmare. Her being the border czar was about working with the home countries to get better home country deals. We'll pay you to process people there. We'll build the infrastructure. We'll staff it. We'll do all this shit for you. Oh, I don't want to pay them.

You have to. It's the only way to do it. You've got to control what's happening in those countries as much as you can before it comes here. And the it is good and bad. We need the blood. We need the labor poisoning our blood. To me, that's a fuck you line.

I'm second generation in this country. My grandparents came here with nothing. They were the opposite of skilled labor. They offered this country nothing in terms of the stuff that he's saying he wants now. But what did they offer? The only thing that's ever made a bit of difference in America.

Head and heart united in a dream of better. Give me an opportunity. Give me an opportunity to succeed or fail on my own merits. They did the rest and one generation later, they had a son who was governor of one of the greatest states, if not the greatest state, in the history of the country. He didn't even speak English until he was eight.

And now you're going to say that these people poison our blood because they enter illegally because the system is broken and you can't get here and they're that desperate. And you have corporations that lure them across, corporations you won't do shit to because they're your boys because they're in those fucking suites at the conventions, mocking your intentions to change. That's the issue. And Springfield, there's Springfields all over the country, but we're talking about eating fucking dogs, cheapening it, debasing it, debasing human beings, blowing your own issue that is actually true and real and relevant?

What the fuck was he thinking? I'll tell you what he was thinking. This is who I am, this is what I am. And this is what I'll always be. And that debate was the truth. Harris is a string of question marks. No question. No pun intended. String of question marks. No question. No pun intended. String of question marks.

But Trump blew an opportunity, but it was a blessing to you because now you see. This is who these two cats are. This cat, don't eat them by the way, but this cat, question marks. I don't know that she has the plans. I don't know that she has the capability. I don't know that she can see it through. I don't know that she's just not saying it this't know that she has the capability. I don't know that she can see it through.

I don't know that she's just not saying it this time like she did the last time. Fracking no fracking. Medicare for all, not Medicare for all. One gun policy, another gun policy. I am a gun owner. That doesn't mean shit. I'm a gun owner. I have buddies who have gun owners also.

They have completely different feelings than I do about what should be done vis-à-vis the Second Amendment. I don't even believe Scalia's decision you want to talk about decisions the other truth bomb of the night who the fuck told Donald Trump that Democrats wanted Roe v. Wade gone and Why does he keep saying it? It's Killing him with women. Can you imagine, as a guy who is a shitty husband, okay, and a shitty parent, and I'm always trying to get better, right? Because it should be easy, because I'm fucking pathetic. Can you imagine telling the woman in your life that this is what you want? Let me tell you what you want. Let me tell you what you want for your own body.

Are you? I mean, if you are asking, if you want a fucking ass beating, that is the most direct avenue to that outcome. Let me tell you what you wanted that is absolutely against your interest in something you've said you'd ever want. Sick. And then he does it. against your interest in something you've said you'd ever want. I'm sick. And then he does it.

Because that's the truth of who he is. And she showed you the truth of who she is. Agile on her feet, adept, condescending, it's in there, and there's a fake it till you make it feel there. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth, I love it, why? It helps make your house a home. Isn't that one of the things that we really want

once we get home after all the crazy is to get cozy? I love the sheets, especially the bamboo sheet set, okay? 100% premium viscose bamboo. Breathable, uniquely soft. It's softer with every wash, and they don't crush the environment. I love the sleepwear also. Gotta be honest, it's loose where you need it to be, and it's warm, and it's easy, and it washes well. I dig it.

But the sheets are one of one. And that they're using bamboo is huge for me. Because I care. I care about what my money is doing to help with the problems that face all of us. So, your piece of mind matters. Make a wise choice this election season, or at least one of them.

Embrace the comfort of Cozy Earth and feel the difference. Go to CozyEarth.com slash Chris, use the code Chris, and you'll get an exclusive discount of up to 40% off. And you can't lose. If you get a post-purchase survey, say you heard about Cozy Earth from the Chris Cuomo project, please. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from factor.

Let me tell you, you gotta fuel up, man. You gotta fuel up to meet your needs. Food matters. You cannot out train the kitchen. And Factor is the main factor. No prep, no mess. You will meet your wellness goals faster and better if you use the factor.

Options. Calorie smart. All right. I want to get slim. Protein plus. I want to be jacked like Como. Keto. I believe in my metabolism.

Factors fresh. Never frozen meals. Dietitian approved. All right. Now that's something to think about. Okay. Well, a lot of us are buying food, we don't know if there's any kind of accountability, right? Who you counting on?

The government? Come on. Dietitian approved, ready to eat in just two minutes. Head to factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50 and use the code Cuomo 50. Guess how much you get off? 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. That's code Cuomo50 at factormeals.com slash Cuomo50.

Get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. Well, Chris, I mean, we were talking before we started recording about the debate prep that probably went into all this. And there are all these reports that Trump did know debate prep. He had some sort of policy time, which reminds me of when he was president. He had that executive time, which just meant he was like watching TV or like hanging out

in the White House. And I want you to, because you're going on about like, okay, these are some of the policies they went over. But whatever, whoever prepped Trump for this, can you get into like, you've sat in on debate prep before, you know what goes into this and for him to show up and be so-

He didn't do any. Yeah. And look, again, this guy is the luckiest guy in the history of the game. And I will also say more than one thing can be true at the same time. I've never seen anybody take the beating that this guy has. I've never seen the media.

And yes, I believe in lawfare. I believe that some of these lawsuits against him would not have been brought against anybody else. And I think it's wrong that they were, especially the New York suits. And this guy can take a beating. The way he got, he got shot in the head, he got up and away, I'd still be in the fetal position.

So I respect that. I respect his toughness. I do. But this guy has weaknesses that are passed off as qualities that I've never seen in politics before. This guy is rude to women and men. And that's not a nice thing to say. Okay.

Well, he's a piece of shit to everybody. That's not a nice thing to say. Okay, well, he's a piece of shit to everybody. That's not a positive, okay? Oh, well, he doesn't like to read. And who would you ever put in control of anything? Just knowing that one thing. This guy doesn't like to read. Oh, well, he should run the company anyway. Never, nothing.

You wouldn't want him teaching your kid. You wouldn't want him mowing your fucking lawn if he doesn't have any curiosity about what he does. But, he gets a pass. Why? Because what he represents to people is so much bigger than his own flaws. And in some weird, twisted way, they believe that it is fitting, it is appropriate, that he is the animal that he is because of the jungle that they want him in. And it's like, who would you hire to break my legs because of how I threatened your wife? A guy who does that kind of thing. And that's this thing.

Like, well, I'm not looking for Mary Queen of Scots because I want a guy to go in and fuck up this whole system that I hate. That's who I'm looking for here. I'm not looking for FDR. I don't need a guy to re-architect our entire understanding of our mutuality. I need a guy to go in there and fuck up these people who disrespect me. That's why they forgive all these things in him. But the guy shows up to this debate.

Literally, he didn't have a knife at a gunfight. He literally had a sweaty palm at a gunfight. And he did everything the worst that he could. Everything he did. Because what? What did he need to do? Two things. She's not ready.

She's a bunch of question marks. Okay. And, and it's okay to vote for me. It's okay. I'm not a mad man. I don't hate things. You know, I'm not detached from reality. I'm not this toxic egomaniac. You can vote for me. I've done this before. I know what we need to do. Okay. You're not going to like my style. You're not going to like how I am. I'm a different kind of person. I get it. I'm not running to be your best friend. I can do this You can vote for me. It's okay That's what he needed to say to us as independent voters Look, I get it. You may like some of my ideas. You may not but it's okay. I'm not crazy

I'm not going to destroy the democracy. I'm not I don't want to be a despot Okay, then the guy says He won't want to be a despot. Okay? Then the guy says, he won't say that Ukraine should win the war. We want the war to end. Yeah. How do you think it ends? It's going to end with a winner and a loser. That's how every war ends.

That's our problem in the Middle East, too, by the way. Right? We don't want Israel to win, and we don't want Palestine to lose. That's why it's going to continue the way it is. But how does he expect independent voters to vote for him when he knows overwhelmingly people know and believe that Russia invaded Ukraine for bad reason? Oh yeah, but Ukraine is kind of toxic and corrupt too. Everybody's kind of toxic and corrupt. We're kind of toxic and corrupt.

There's a right and a wrong. There's a good guy and there's a bad guy in situations. Oh, but it's more complicated than that. Yeah, until you punch me in the face. And then it gets real simple, real fast. And we have a guy who wants to be president of the United States who's going to hand Kamala Harris that he won't say that Ukraine should win the one that was invaded. I don't know what the fuck he was thinking. What did you think about those reports that came out

before the debate that were saying, you know, when he talked about Hillary Clinton debating her back in the day, that he actually thought she was smart. She was intelligent, he had some respect for her. But Kamala Harris, he thought she was stupid. Like he thinks she's a dumb person. He doesn't think that now.

I know, but like the mindset again, to like going into a taking an issue like Ukraine, where it's like, there's a lot at play here. There's a lot. You can take so many different angles to like telling this story. But for the fact that he would go, well, she's stupid. So it doesn't matter. Like, I won't even bother to prepare for this.

Look, the metaphor is better than the reality, which is how you prepare politically. The metaphor that's more instructive is how you prepare for a fight. When you go into a fight, you are absolutely trying to make the opponent believe that they made a bad fucking choice. You should have never gotten into this ring with me. This is going to be the worst thing you imagined. Everything that you're bad at, I'm great at. But at the same time, you are living in constant fear of your own inadequacies.

And you are working and working and grinding and grinding. And you've got guys drilling you and they're drilling you, cover, cover, cover. He will knock you the fuck out. He will knock. That part is more important than what you think you're doing to them, is what are you doing to yourself?

Now you have an added dimension that is not in the ring. Cause in the ring, it's me and you, okay? And that's all that's going to decide this is me and you, all right? And one of us is going to go down and knock it back up. That's how it works. But that's not this. This is me setting a low bar for everyone who decides the fight. By saying that Kamala Harris is dumb, she can't do this, she makes no sense, she's a gaffe

machine, he lowered the bar. And she was given mixed signals, first 10 minutes or so. She was suffering from over preparation to Greg's point. Let me get out all this information I got stored in my head. Classic mistake in debating, but she got over it. And she acclimatized and she acclimated herself and she got better. And because he had such as a low bar, she got over it. And then he psyched himself out, took the bait, whatever you want to say. But he had everybody believe in one thing would be true.

A different one was true and he was at his worst. And this is the second time this guy has blown an unprecedented opportunity to close this out. After he was shot in the head at the RNC, he had a moment that he did for 10 minutes. Enough. Enough. Look, I know nobody's more outraged than I am. I am the spirit animal of your grievance. I am the agent of your animus. But we cannot be shooting at people because we disagree. And it ends now. And I'm going to do my part and you need to do your part and we'll get to a better

place together. Election's over. I don't even think they shift Biden out. It's not worth it. And he blows it by going into this crazy, unending, interminable screed of every kind of grievance that's about him more than it is anybody else. Independent voters don't want that. When is this going to sink in?

Then the second opportunity was this debate. All he had to do was ignore her, invalidate anything that she was trying to say that should have mattered to him and said to independency, she doesn't have it. It's okay to vote for me. I'm not psycho. I get angry. Yeah, I got a lot to be angry about. There's a lot of shit that's got to change in this country.

It's fucked up to look at it in any way that all this is all okay. It's not okay. That's all he had to do. There would have been a slice of independence who would have been like, the tax policy and foreign policy, these know what I mean, these conflicts weren't happening on his watch and that southern border is ridiculous and I can't believe that the Democrats are aware of it and didn't do anything until like the last second. That's enough.

Or it could have been. But how can you expect an independent voter to believe that now? This debate was a shocker. Because remember, the assessment is fundamentally relative. It doesn't matter what you think of me. I may not look like an NFL quarterback as a 54-year-old guy who's clearly dying on the vine. But if my competition for the job as Jets quarterback

is a guy with one leg who doesn't have one of those cool cheetah springy legs on the other one, I'm probably in good shape to win. Let's take away his arm too. And he doesn't have a throwing arm. Now you'll probably give me the job because I'm great? No, because as Joe Biden loves to say,

don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative. And that was the story of this debate. He allowed Kamala Harris to win by comparison. She is a string of question marks. We do not know that she has plans, that she has the command, but we know she does compared to you because of what you allowed to be true. Now, does that mean it's over?

No. Why? Very tight, still a grievance election. And if you're pissed off about shit, you're gonna be pissed off at Harris and Biden. And she does own that. And if you're concerned about radicalism, she does own that. And Walls, I don't think is helpful to her in that regard. However, you don't get a lot of that bet.

The next one, I don't think he's gonna take another debate. You think that's it? I mean, we have Walls and JD Vance in October. So that's the next one. But here's the problem. Have you ever voted in a presidential election based on what you saw in the vice presidential debate? Uh, I'm going through my head of my favorite VPs.

It's like, we're really reaching here. We're really reaching now, you know, what's a really interesting one. And I could have done a whole segment about this, by the way, listen to this crazy, crazy perverse logic that the Republican ticket's going to have to do heading into that debate. Here's what their argument's going to be. You know, the vice presidential pick really matters more than ever before in this election because somebody just tried to kill former President Trump.

He's an old guy. He's not who he was. He may not be there. I mean, people his age go down all the time. He's one of the oldest presidents we will have ever had. JD is young. I mean, this really could be his country to run. And the comparison between him and Walsh

could be everything because this could be it. So the whole conceit of why to vote for Trump early on, which is Biden's brain dead. Remember I used to say, dead man versus a mad man? Yeah. Now they're going to have to flip it and say that the vice presidential pick and that debate matters more than this one because Trump may not make it all four years. How crazy is that? But why would they do that?

Because it is a relative assessment. It's a comparison. And you're trying to find a way to make you a better, or much more accurately, less bad pick than the other side. Two radical lefties, two radical lefties, or Trump, who's anti-radical, and Vance, who may take over for him, so if he can beat walls in that debate, maybe you should vote for him. Crazy, perverse, but twisted because it's a relative assessment.

One leg, one arm, who gets to be quarterback? What I'm saying though, is that that's going to be a real big lift because last time we saw in the one moment with the two main people side by side, it was a truth bomb of the two different propositions in this election. And look, here's the story.

If you're working the refs, the moderators, you lost. If you're saying nobody won, you lost. If you're saying it didn't move the needle, you lost. Trump lost. And it was all on him. And they can say, yeah, but you know, she didn't tell the truth about this and this. It's a relative assessment.

Yeah, I know, but you know, her plan, she didn't really put a lot of meat on the bones. It's a relative assessment. Yeah, but you know, she said a couple of things that were kind of wacky and I didn't like when she was, it's a relative assessment. It's not, it doesn't matter if Harris got a 74 on the test. If you got a 61.

Well, but you should do better than 74. Which score do you want? 74 or 61? Those are your choices. PP sandwich, poo poo-pooh sandwich. Which do you want? Now hopefully it's a little better than that, because I probably not vote in that situation,

and most people will. That's why the debate was such a shocker. All Trump had to do was what he seemed most determined not to do. If he wasn't such a narcissist, I would say he must be an incredible self-loather like me, because he literally did everything he could to not do the only thing he needed to do. And I was shocked.

And yet, it provided exactly what I hoped it would for you, which is a real look at what this election is as a proposition. Harris is imperfect. She is question marks about things that matter. But it's a relative assessment to a man who just gave you every reason to believe he doesn't give a shit about getting us better. He just wants you to believe how bad we are. And he was insistent on that. They're ruining us. They're ruining us. they're ruining it, they're ruining it. Destroying, destroying, destroying. Terrible, terrible.

Country in decline, country in decline, nation in decline, nation in decline. Who votes for that? Oh, people who are pissed off. Not enough. This is America. We want to believe, we want optimism, we want reason to believe that things can get better,

and it is your job as a leader to make me feel that it's possible if not probable. Who has ever won any other way? away by the string of question marks versus horrible knowns. That's what Trump allowed to be the state of play because of this debate. And it was a gift to Harris. It was a gift. He blew immigration. He blew reproductive rights. He left. He blew immigration. He blew reproductive rights. Democrats wanted it removed. All women loved this. What was he thinking? He wasn't. Because he didn't prepare. And he doesn't believe in being anything than what he was on that stage. And it was a big moment. Debates are usually media fodder. You know, I heard

Don Lemon the other day say his prediction is that it's a Rorschach test. I couldn't disagree more. This debate was not whatever you want it to be. It was obvious. That was lazy analysis. The true analysis is, this is exactly what you saw. A relative assessment and one person trying their hardest to get you to not vote for them if you're undecided, and the other one trying to make the best case for themselves, which is absolutely imperfect, but it is a relative assessment. I'm Chris Cuomo.

Thank you very much for subscribing and following here at the Chris Cuomo project. Love the feedback, love to do it. Thank you for checking me out on NewsNation 8P and 11P every week, day, night. Thank you for being a critical thinker, being an independent, buying the free agent gear to wear your independence and let us use the money to give good shit. Like for those of you who say

that I'm some kind of APAC plant, why did we give 10 grand to my friend's foundation, Inara, I-N-A-R-A, to help the kids in Gaza? Because I'm not about that bullshit. I'm about getting to a better place, and so are you. And that's why I'm so happy that we're together in this. So let's keep going. Let's get after it.