The Daily - Chaos and Contempt: The First Presidential Debate

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

This episode contains strong language.Both presidential candidates had clear goals for their first debate on Tuesday.For Joseph R. Biden Jr., the contest was an opportunity to consolidate his lead in polls before Election Day. President Trump’s task was, politically, a taller order — to change the course of a race that he seems to be losing. His tactics for doing that emerged quickly: interrupt and destabilize.The result was a chaotic 90-minute back-and-forth, an often ugly melee in which the two major party nominees expressed levels of acrid contempt for each other.We speak to our correspondent Alexander Burns about the mood and themes of the debate and whether any of it moved the dial for the election.Guest: Alexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: With cross talk, lies and mockery, President Trump made little attempt to reassure swing voters about his leadership. Mr. Biden hit back: “This is so unpresidential.”In his second time moderating a presidential debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News struggled to rein in the president’s behavior.Here are six takeaways from the debate.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Our nation needs to be credible and strong. When we say we're somebody's friend, everybody's got to believe it. I see a future when the world is at peace with the United States of America, promoting the values of democracy and human rights and freedom all around the world. Over the past several decades of presidential debates. The president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception.

Sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you think they're right. Americans have watched as candidates display differences of policy. I want to go through the federal budget line by line, page by page. Programs that don't work, we should cut. Programs that we need, we should make them work better. A government spending has gone completely out of control. Ten trillion dollar debt were given to our kids. Half a trillion dollars we owe China.

Personality. I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. And style. There was even a time when he didn't get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row, and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged. Should have gotten it. But the first debate of this year's general election stood out for an unprecedented level of chaos.

It's Wednesday, September 30th. Alex, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for making time for us. I just feel invigorated by that exercise in democracy. So I could go for a while. Well, we're going to try to not have you go for a while because it is 1210 in the morning. I think I probably have watched 30-plus presidential debates in my life,

but I don't think I've ever felt so physically or emotionally depleted as I did after this one, almost like in an altered state. It was pretty grim. I mean, there was not a lot looking back on that debate to feel like it was a serious exchange of views between the two people who are vying to lead the most powerful country in the world for the next four years. And to be explicit about it, obviously, the reason why the evening took that course was because the president decided to shove it down that course. Well, let's talk about that. Heading into this debate, in your mind, what was it about for both candidates? What were they trying to do?

Well, let's start with Joe Biden because I think that's in some ways the simpler one. This was an opportunity for him to try to close the deal with the American people. Most voters are either committed to him or leaning towards him in this campaign. The president's unpopular. Joe Biden's the alternative. He's doing well.

And he's generally seen in favorable terms by the public. So the debate was an opportunity to tell people a little bit more about what he actually wants to do as the president. And ideally, he would want to put to rest any concerns that people may have about the fact that he'd be the oldest president ever elected. So I think those were really his goals going into the debate. And for President Trump, it's a taller order politically to try to transform or at least in some way change a race that he is right now pretty clearly losing. So I think going into the night, it was not clear whether that would take the shape of just straight up attacks on Joe Biden, whether it would look like hearing something new or different from him on any of the major themes of the campaign, whether it's the pandemic or the economy or law and order, or whether it would be the sort of flip over the table and start a bar fight approach to just, you know, create chaos, right? To change the race from a pretty stable race that he is losing

to just a messy race that is messy for the sake of being messy. And I think we obviously know which approach he took. So in summary, goals, seal the deal for Biden, change the subject, make a mess for Donald Trump. Right. Good evening. I'm Chris Wallace of Fox News, and I welcome you to the first of the 2020 presidential debates between President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. And how do those strategies play out in the actual debate? As you were alluding to, President Trump's strategy fell far more present as a viewer. Gentlemen, you realize if you're both speaking at the same time. as a viewer. Gentlemen, you realize if you're both speaking at the same time... Right, I think it was clearly a choice by the president to put on this display of

pugilism and just raw personal dominance of the stage, kind of based on any pretext at any time. He doesn't know how to do that. He has never offered a plan. He has never done a single thing. It seems the president's number one tactic here was just interrupt, interrupt, interrupt, constantly. And so the election is all ready to be done. You don't know it's on the ballot. Why is it on the ballot?

Because you said... Why is it on the ballot? It's not on the ballot. It's on the ballot in the court. I don't think so. In the court. There's nothing happening there. Donald, would you just reply for me? And you don't know her view on Roe v. Wade.

Joe, you've had 308,000 military people dying because you couldn't provide them proper health care. That's right. It really shaped the evening more than anything else. It was just the president's penchant for interrupting, taunting Biden while he was speaking. I'm here standing facing you. Pocahontas would have left two days earlier. You would have lost every primary on Super Tuesday. Look, here's the deal. breath as a way of distracting from whatever Biden and the moderator, Chris Wallace, were doing.

Whether that's a tactic that translates to doing anything productive in a debate, in an election that you're losing, I'm not so sure. I'm not going to answer the question. Why wouldn't you answer that question? Because the question is, the question is, the question is, will you shut up, man? Listen, who is on your list, Joe? This is so right. Gentlemen, I think this is so unpresidential. He's going to pack the court. We're not up, man? Listen, who is on your list, Joe? This is so right. Gentlemen, I think we've ended this one. He's going to pack the court and he's not going to give a list.

Alex, I notice that in these moments sometimes Joe Biden would kind of lash out. Folks, do you have any idea what this clown's doing? Call the president a clown or say, shut up already. You're the worst

president America has ever had. Come on. Let me just tell you, Joe. But a lot of other times, he just seemed to close his eyes and almost meditate as if he'd been trained by someone to not lose his cool. Almost as if he had been trained by someone, almost as if he had been practicing that extensively. No, this was a major area of focus for Joe Biden going into the debate. Look, Joe Biden has a real temper. And I think that we have seen at times what it looks like for Biden to lash out to the full extent of his ability. And he didn't do that during the debate. extent of his ability. And he didn't do that during the debate. And I think that is something of a disappointment to the Trump camp that, you know, the president was pushing a bunch of buttons,

especially about the Biden family, that they thought really had the potential to get Biden to go off the handle. China ate your lunch, Joe. And no wonder your son goes in and he takes out what he takes out billions of dollars, takes out billions of dollars to manage... You saw a number of points in the debate. The president go after Joe Biden's living son, Hunter, for his overseas business activity, sometimes in really false or exaggerated terms, but there are questions about Hunter's overseas business activity.

The mayor of Moscow's wife gave your son $3.5 million. That is not true. What did he do to deserve it? What did he do with Barista to deserve $100 million? business activity. The mayor of Moscow's wife gave your son three and a half million dollars. What did he do to deserve it? What did he do with Barista to deserve $183,000? None of that is true. None of that is true. All of that seemed like it might be building up to some bigger blow up between the two men about Hunter Biden. What happened instead? And speaking of my son, the way you talk about the military, the way you talk about them being losers and being and just being suckers. Was that Joe Biden talked about his other son, Beau. My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got the Bronze Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal.

He was not a loser. He was a patriot. And the people left behind there were heroes. And I resent White Hill. Are you talking about Hunter? I'm talking about my son, Beau Biden. You're talking about people. I don't know. I don't know, Beau. I know Hunter. Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged. That's not true. He wasn't dishonorably discharged. And his response was really dismissive. He said, I don't know Bo, I know Hunter, and then immediately leans back into a really harsh personal attack on Joe Biden's living son. He made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow. That is simply not true. He made a fortune. My son. And he in Moscow, and various other places.

He made a fortune, gentlemen, and he didn't have a job. My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people we know at home, had a drug problem. He's overtaken it. He's fixed it. He's worked on it. And I'm proud of him. But why was he given tens of millions of dollars? But he wasn't given tens of millions of dollars. He was given tens of millions of dollars.

But he wasn't given tens of millions of dollars. He was given tens of millions of dollars. It's interesting in this extremely intense moment involving the president's son. Not only did Joe Biden not lose his cool, he seemed to go out of his way not to retaliate in a way that, I guess if you're a political strategist, might have felt kind of intuitive. I think that's right. And he really actually drew attention to that fact at a couple different points, saying, you know— Here's the deal. We want to talk about families and ethics. I don't want to do that.

I mean, his family we could talk about all night. His family's already— My family lost a fortune by coming down and helping us with governance. And that's such a— They're right here. That's such a great— Every single one of them lost a fortune by coming down and helping us with government. And that's such a great— Every single one of them lost a fortune. This is not about my family or his family. It's about your family, the American people. He doesn't—that's not true.

It doesn't want to talk about what you need, you, the American people. It's about you. That's what we're talking about. Alex, what do you make of that approach to not strike back in moments like this when the president is being so pugilistic? Is that a missed opportunity potentially to damage the president? The honest answer to that question is I don't know. I think the theory of the debate and of the campaign on the Biden side of this is that when they're talking about the president and the coronavirus and the economy, they are winning. And when they are talking about the president's chosen topics, then that gives the president at least some political oxygen that he

wouldn't ordinarily have. So why would you have a protracted debate about family ethics when you are winning the debate on the main issue of the election. So let's talk about the pandemic, because it seems that one of the ways that President Trump would need to change the nature of this campaign, which you said was his goal in this debate, given the polling, is by changing how people think about his handling of the coronavirus. So how did that go? President Trump did a phenomenal job. We did. We got the gowns. We got the masks. We made the ventilators. You wouldn't have made ventilators. Well, for the most part, we heard from the president what we have heard before on the pandemic. So we built the greatest economy

in history. We closed it down because of the China plague. When the plague came in, we closed it down, which was very hard. But what happened is we closed it down because of the China plague. When the plague came in, we closed it down, which was very hard. But what happened is we closed it down, and now we're reopening, and we're doing record business. He defended his handling. And now we're weeks away from a vaccine. We're doing therapeutics already. He dangled the possibility of a fast vaccine.

We know that there are a lot of reasons to believe that that is not an imminent development. We should be providing all the protective gear, we should be providing the money the House has passed in order to... We heard from Joe Biden, I think, a somewhat more restrained critique of the president than we might have expected. He talked about the importance of wearing masks. He talked about the importance of social distancing. There wasn't the kind of top to bottom denunciation of the president's handling that I think some of us might have expected coming into the debate.

You folks at home, how many of you got up this morning and had an empty chair at the kitchen table because someone died of COVID? He did use that segment to talk directly to people who had lost family members and loved ones in the pandemic. How many of you were in a situation where you lost your mom or dad and you couldn't even speak to them? You had a nurse holding a phone up so you could, in fact, say goodbye. You would have lost far more people.

Far more people. You would have been months late. His own CDC director says we could lose as many as another 200,000. But there, too, we saw him really struggle to keep his focus and flow amid the president's interruption. I don't trust him at all, nor do you. I know you don't. What we trust is a scientist. You don't trust Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer?

Okay, gentlemen, let me move on to questions about the future, because you both have touched on one there are Americans for whom the pandemic is clearly the issue, the leading issue in this election, but they aren't quite sure what Joe Biden would do about it. Right. I think that there are clear contrasts about, you know, who is respectful of medical science generally, who believes in measures like mask wearing and social distancing. I don't know that there is, in the minds of most voters, a more cohesive sense of what would a Biden-led America have done starting in February or earlier and running through today and what might our lives look like under those circumstances. I do think it's one of those opportunities that's still just kind of sitting out there for Biden to talk in a more extensive and far-reaching way about how different Americans' lives might be if we had handled this

the way other countries did. We'll be right back. So next up, Alex, in this strategy of the president's in this debate, seemed to be his effort to paint Biden as a tool of the left and to convince voters that he would govern outside the mainstream. Right. Number one. Joe, you agreed with Bernie Sanders who's far left on the manifesto, we call it,

and that gives you socialized medicine. Look, if there was a through line to the president's attacks on Biden tonight, that was it, this idea that when it comes to health care... You agreed with Bernie Sanders on a plan... Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are way to the left. Do you have any idea what this mom's doing? Do you have any idea what they do?

Socialized medicine. They want to end private insurance and do Medicare for all. He's talking about the Green New Deal. When it comes to energy, they want to. It's $100 trillion. We've talked about implementing the Green New Deal, and he talked about more specifically. Where airplanes are out of business, where two-car systems are out, where they want to take out the cows, too.

You know, that's not true either, right? Like getting rid of cows and some other sort of outlandish caricatures of what the left wing of the Democratic Party wants to do, and on law and order. So we have to be engaged in private— That's not what they're talking about, Chris. That's not what they're talking about. He's talking about defunding the police. That is not true. And he doesn't want to say law and order because he can't, because he'll lose his radical left supporters.

And once he does that, it's over with. But if he ever got to run this country and they ran it the way he would want to run it, we would have, our suburbs would be gone. By the way, our suburbs would be gone. Over and over, we heard the president accuse Biden of taking these far left positions. And Biden would just say, no, I don't. Right. That's not my position.

Right. The fact of the matter is, I beat Bernie Sanders. Not by much. I beat him a whole hell of a lot. I'm here standing facing you all. To me, one of the most telling moments of the debate was when Biden was distancing himself from one or another of those proposals. And the president was saying, well, you know, your party is that far left. That is simply a lie.

Your party doesn't say it. Your party wants to go socialist medicine and socialist health care. And Biden's response was, I am the Democratic Party right now. I am the Democratic Party right now. I am the Democratic Party right now. The platform of the Democratic Party is what I, in fact, approved of. What I approved of. Which, you know, is something of a questionable assertion. I don't know that it's really the case that the totality of the Democratic Party is best represented by Joe Biden at this time. But as a practical matter, it's true.

Joe Biden is the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. If the next president is a Democrat, it will be him. And I'm not sure that the president has figured out how to work around the reality that his opponent is a pretty mainstream political figure. Mm-hmm. Well, let's talk more about the most memorable exchanges they had when it comes to the issue on which it really feels like the president has worked the hardest to portray Biden and all Democrats as extremists and as dangerous, which is law and order.

We have heard the president really stake his candidacy on this idea that Democrats aren't just far to the left, but they will make you unsafe in your home and in your communities. And we heard him really go at Biden quite hard and quite insistently. He has no law enforcement support. That's not true. Almost nothing. On this notion that you are not adequately supportive of the police, law enforcement is not supportive of you. Name one group that supports you.

Name one group that came out and supported you. Go ahead. Think. We have time. We group that came out and supported you. Go ahead. Think. We have time. We don't have time to do anything. All right, sir. All right, folks. Name one law enforcement group that came out and supported you.

Gentlemen, I think I'm going to take back the moderator's role. There aren't. I don't think there are any. And I want to get— You know, the president was correct when he was sort of challenging Biden to name law enforcement organizations that support him. There are law enforcement officials that support Joe Biden, but the big police unions and police federations are largely supporting Donald Trump in the campaign.

So that's something that the president sees as an important political asset for him. I sent in the U.S. Marshals to get the killer of the young man in the middle of the street, and they shot him. And for three days, Portlandley wouldn't do anything. I had to send in the U.S. Marshals. They took care of business. Go ahead, sir. You know, but Michael, the law and order argument is not an uncomplicated one for the president politically.

That there's a reason why we have seen in our own polling that more voters trust Joe Biden on the issue than trust the president. More voters trust Joe Biden on the issue than trust the president. And it's because they don't see him as somebody who is actually interested in calming the country down, making things less violent, less disruptive. You know, his own former spokesperson said, you know, riots and chaos and violence help us cause. That's what this is all about. I don't know who said that. I do. Who? I think Kellyanne Conway. I don't think who said that. I do. Who? I think Kellyanne Conway.

I don't think she said that. And just generally safer. And I think we really saw that dynamic on display when the president was asked to condemn violence by white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland. Are you prepared to specifically do it? I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right. He gave this kind of initially very blasé answer that, you know, Chris Wallace was asking him, do you denounce white supremacy, far-right groups? And the president said, sure. I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace. Then do it, sir. Say it. Do

it. Say it. And Chris Wallace said, go ahead. Do you want to call him? What do you want to call him? Give me a name. Give me a name. White supremacist and right supremacist. And that's when Joe Biden mentioned the Proud Boys. This is an extreme right group that sees itself as being affiliated with the president and his political movement. And the president did not denounce them. Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I'll tell you what. He said, stand back and stand by.

That was his message to them. What does that mean? You know, that's going to be a question for the president to answer, but I don't know any formulation of the apparent discomfort with the political norm of simply rejecting people who are dangerous and outside the mainstream. Somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem. This is a left wing problem. This is a left wing problem. Antifa is an idea, not an organization. Oh, you got it. Not malicious. That's what his FBI, his FBI director said. Well, then you know what? We're done, sir. We're moving on to the next.

Well, that actually reminds me of something that the president said in the final exchange of the night as well. And I want to talk about that exchange. It was pretty remarkable. It was about the integrity of the election itself. And it seemed this back and forth to really some of the two approaches that these candidates were taking all night. It really did. It really did. And the president's answer, I think, was not a reassuring one to people who are concerned about having an orderly and respectful resolution to this election in November. What are you prepared to do to reassure the American people that the next president will be the legitimate winner of this election?

Joe Biden responded to that question by... If you're able to vote early in your state, vote early. Talking about the importance of voting and voting by whatever means are available to you and said that yes. If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that will be accepted. The president didn't say that. This is going to be a fraud

like you've never seen. He strung together a bunch of misleading suggestions. Take a look at what happened in Manhattan. Take a look at what happened in New Jersey. Take a look at what happened in Virginia and other places. About impropriety in the election that's already underway and said that he wants his supporters to go to the polls.

I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. And I think it does point to the very valid reasons why people are concerned about just what kind of conduct is going to go on on election day. And just because I don't want to have to read between the lines here, it seemed like the president was urging supporters to go to the polls and watch in a way that might end up feeling like a form of voter intimidation. You know, he didn't say that, right?

And I think there's a fine line between legitimate poll watching and poll monitoring and, yeah, activity that is explicitly designed to intimidate people and deter them from voting. That's a distinction with very, very serious legal implications. And those are legal implications that I expect will be plumbing on Election Day. And overall, it also feels reflective, this exchange, of another theme of this evening, which is the president does not seem to be making really any strong effort to appeal to voters outside his base. I mean, think about this strategy of interruption. Think about the way he talked about the Democratic Party throughout the night, not leaving a whole lot of room for people who identify as Democrats

to feel like they were being appealed to. Whereas Joe Biden was repeatedly making overtures of unity, never criticized the Republican Party. And I wonder how you think about it, when in the end, of course, the only debate viewers who really matter are moderate, undecided voters in these swing states. Michael, I would even point back to what we were talking about before, about the way the president was talking about the far left in the Democratic Party. Back in 2016, he was talking to supporters of Bernie Sanders and saying, if you feel fed up with this system, if you feel like the establishment has screwed you, then I'm your guy. Four years later, he is talking about that wing of the Democratic Party as a threat to public order in every city in America.

So I don't know that there was anything in his debate performance tonight that suggested he has in his own mind identified constituencies that are not currently supporting him that might be persuaded to support him. You say that's the end of it? This is the end of this debate? I want to see an honest ballot count. We're going to leave it there. And I think he does too. To be continued in more debates as we go on. President Trump, Vice President Biden, it's been an interesting hour and a half. I want to thank you both for participating. Thank you. participating. Thank you. It was hard to feel good about this debate. It was difficult to watch.

And I have to tell you, I don't get a lot of late night texts from my mother. She's not a political animal. And she's not somebody who curses in text messages. But I think she may have summed up a kind of general national mood about this debate with a message she sent me in the middle of it. She wrote, this is a shit show. No, I think your mom just about nailed it. This debate was a fiasco. I've never seen anything like it in a general election, and neither has anybody else. I'm not sure that there's any argument to be made that that debate really served the interests of the American voter. I don't think that there's any particular argument to make that it served the interests of either of the candidates particularly well. If you sort of think back to the way we were talking about this at the beginning as a debate about, you know, can Joe Biden close the deal? Can Donald Trump change the race? I don't know that either of those things happened.

I'm pretty sure that the president didn't change the race to his benefit. And because of the nature of his conduct on stage, he may have disrupted the debate enough to deny Joe Biden the chance to have a really powerful, stirring, close the deal kind of debate moment, but again, at a cost to himself. And we're now at a point in the campaign where we only have less than five weeks left until election day. More than a million people have already voted. The president is losing in the polls. And every day that he does not fundamentally change the structure of the race

is a day that he continues to lose. So in that not terribly inspiring calculus, it's probably a better night for Joe Biden than for the president. That doesn't mean it was a fantastic night for anybody. Or for the United States of America. It was a shit show for the United States of America. Well, Alex, I truly cannot wait to do this again with you

and then one more time after that. I'll look forward to it. Thank you, Alex. Thanks. The next presidential debate will be held on October 15th. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a significant uptick in the daily rate of positive tests for the coronavirus, to the highest number that the city has experienced since June. For the first time in months, you're going to see a daily number over 3 percent. And obviously, everyone is concerned about that. Obviously, everyone is concerned about that. The mayor said that much of the increase came from nine of the city's 146 zip codes, all

in Brooklyn and Queens. But it now threatens a citywide plan to reopen schools for in-person classes. Under guidelines established by the mayor, if the positive test rate exceeds 3 percent over a seven-day rolling average, public schools would automatically close. That is something we all have to work on together to address and something that says to us we have to be on high alert to make sure we fight back this challenge. And Disney said that it would lay off nearly 30,000 workers, most of them from its theme parks in Florida and California, because of the pandemic.

Disneyland in California has been closed for months because of restrictions put in place by the governor there. Meanwhile, Disney World in Florida reopened in July, but attendance has been weaker than Disney had expected. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.