The Dispatch Podcast - Who Moderates the Moderators | Roundtable

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah break down the first (and possibly only) debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and whether or not it will move the needle. The Agenda: —Kamala Harris won —Will the Trump-Harris debate actually matter? —Steve missed the eating pets controversy —Trump’s debate prep —No clarity on abortion policy —The rise of independent voters —Is media bias worth your time? Show Notes: —“Keep the cat memes flowing” —Chris Rufo’s $5,000 cat-eating bounty —The Federalist: ABC Should Be Prosecuted For Illegal Contributions To Harris In ‘Debate’ —Post-debate Dispatch Live —Fact-checking the Harris-Trump ABC News debate —The RFK Jr. dead bear cub story The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And ask your family eye care professional for SLOR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. They're eating the dog. the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating, they're eating the pets. I have concepts of a plan. She's going to my philosophy now. I was gonna send her a MAGA hat. She's a Marxist.

We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. I said that. Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020? No, I don't acknowledge that at all. But you did say that. I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me.

Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. It's Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes, obviously starting with the debate. I want to know before we talk about who won or lost, what does it mean to win or lose a general election presidential debate? Are we scoring this on like Oxford rules of who actually did a better job debating? Or are we scoring this on undecided voters and what they thought of it? Are we scoring it on whether it has an impact on the election? What does it mean to win a debate before I ask who won?

I think that's a good question. I would say the last definition doesn't have any impact on the election. That's what really matters about it. You can win and there's a long history of candidates winning debates on points and not winning the debate in the sense that it helped their election prospects. So I would say winning and having some effect, winning means having some effect on the outcome of the election. Jonah.

Yeah, I mean, I'm open to any definition that people want to have. You know, the question is not, to me, the question is not what is winning because you can say executing successful strategy, not screwing the pooch, winning over persuadable voters, you know, getting a message out, whatever. You can come up with all sorts of metrics about winning, not winning. It seems to me the second order question is, what version of winning matters, which is probably what you meant. But like, I just, the reason I'm splitting hairs here is I'm really been stunned with the response. I wrote, you know, one could level the charge that it was a slap dash G-file, but I wrote a quick G-file about the debate.

And I just sort of said, look, regardless of whatever metric, you want to come up with Kamala Harris won right i mean the focus group said she won even the most of the serious people on fox news said she won lots of people in trump's campaign said she won kamala harris wants a second debate which is something that if you think you won you won you right she you know baited success you know she she did all the things that she wanted to do and she didn't screw the pooch which is an important thing too and um The number of people who are just livid sending me these notes saying, how could you possibly think that she won?

And their definitions of winning are like contingent on, you know, sort of high school like track and field rules. Like, but her foot was over the line and therefore, you know, she's disqualified. And it's like, no, no, no, like most voters watching this thing say, yeah, that lady won, that old dude lost. And, you know, politically, which is the only thing, like, was relevant here is I think it was a good night for her and a bad night for Trump. And people, you know, and forget the conspiracy. You know, many people are telling me that she had microphones in her earrings and all of this stuff.

And like, and I'm, oh, she got the questions in advance so she could just rehearse her answers. I mean, and these are, this is from people who are longtime subscribers to the G-vile, which is just really, it was really shocking to me. The response I got from what I would think would be a selectively, relatively sane bunch of people, but this debate argument, not even getting into the media bias stuff with the moderators, is driving some people bonkers, and it's really surprising to me. So, Steve, I want to give you my version of who won the debate and see what you think. Because I think by Oxford debating rules, you know, Harris won the debate, but that's not relevant at all to me.

and I think that some of those focus groups on undecided voters were far more of a draw than most pundits want to admit because they're scoring this on Oxford debating roles kind of slash their own expectations and that she exceeded their expectations she didn't give word salad answers where words don't mean anything or giggled too much or whatever it was only the second time we'd seen her off teleprompter

since becoming the Democratic nominee. And he underperformed expectations such that they were. Here's what I actually think happened. I think that this debate had very little chance of making any difference to the election. As I said, you know, previously in our dispatch newsletter, when the debate between Trump and Biden happened in national polling average,

Trump was up by 1.5%. And at the peak of the, you know, maw between the two of them after the most important debate in terms of impact in American history went from 1.5% to 3.4%. So fewer than 2% of people were moved. And I would argue, by the way, also if you dig into there, it's not that Biden voters move to Trump. Biden voters moved to undecided and some undecideds moved to Trump. Slight nuance there. I say all that because I found I was always doubting that this debate would matter much. But debates can lock in narratives.

And so even though the polling doesn't move, and it's a little hard to actually have data to support it, debates can still lock things in, move things, make things harder to move chess pieces. So my argument to you is that there was some chance that Harris, who had this euphoric, I mean, I truly mean that word, euphoric July, and was plateauing in August and starting to even dip a little, there was some

chance that Trump could sort of capture the momentum coming out of the debate and cause that to continue. And what she was able to do at the debate was prevent him from getting momentum. And therefore, if the debate mattered, what I would expect to see is continued plateauing, and that that actually is a big win for Harris. So if I accept my own definition for whether, how you win or lose debates, which is does it affect the outcome of the election, I'm open to your case. I think the argument you make is plausible. And I think if you're a team Harris, you probably would accept that. Like if they buy what you're selling, you probably think, yeah, that's all right.

I'm happy with that. Having said that, there is just part of me that wonders if you're being too clever by half. Like, is this the kind of analysis that we provide now in 2024 that requires us to ignore, you know, observable reality and, you know, the things that most people would judge a debate on? And I'm not talking here about Oxford rules. I'm talking about, you know, basic levels of sanity, right? I mean, I was watching the debate with my family. I came into the whole, I came into the night, having been busy with other stuff all day, and I had largely missed the entire eating pets controversy.

So I'd seen some of it on Twitter with, you know, maybe an hour or two before the debate, but I really had missed it, missed most of it. And my family hadn't seen any of it. And so we're watching the debate and it's going along and they're making the kinds of observations that I think, again, sort of sane normal people would make. Wow, Trump seems really angry. He's screaming and shouting. Kamala Harris is talking about substance here.

And then we get to the eating pets portion of the debate. And Trump makes these sort of power. mentioning mentions of Aurora and Springfield, as if anybody knows why he's talking about Aurora and Springfield, and then, you know, busts out with his big declaration, they're eating the pets. They're eating the dogs. And my entire family just bursts out laughing. Like, wait, what did, did he just say they're eating the pets? What is, what is he talking about? And look, I suppose it's possible. And I would say in the days since the debate, Trump, Team Trump, and generally not everybody on the right, but the sort of Trumpy right are doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on this whole eating pets thing. I mean, J.D. Vance had a moment where he seemed to waver and acknowledge that, yes, okay, these were just some reports coming to my office. They might just be rumors. They may or may not be true, but keep going with the memes, was his argument, basically, which I I think is like such a great, it captures the ethos of the Republican Party over the past eight years

so perfectly. It may or may not be true. People may or may not be eating pets. The argument we've made that I think is racist is possibly verifiable, possibly not, but keep doing it anyway. Well, his argument, though, in fairness, was when we were talking about these people, you know, these immigrants overrunning the community, the schools where they don't speak English. And so the teachers are struggling and the hospitals. You guys didn't care and you weren't covering it. It was only when we started saying that they were eating cats that you guys then came by to like mock us

and the cat memes really bother you. So we're going to keep doing the cat memes because it's the only way we can get you to have this conversation. I mean, sure. Because when it comes to then what Donald Trump said about Harris wants to have the government pay for transgender

surgery for illegal aliens in prison, and everyone, you know, laughed at that and included it in their absurd moments and fact checks. There were multiple news outlets that had to go back and issue corrections on their fact checks. Because I would argue when it comes to Trump, who does lie a lot, right? I understand why they just decided to go with their gut feeling on whether it was true. But surely the first rule of journalism is don't assume and be curious. Fair. Totally fair. Particularly fair. Particularly fair. Completely true. Completely true. I agree with you on all that. It's an argument I've made many times. I think the media over the past decade has done itself. No favors and has helped, has accelerated the diminishing

credibility that most people see it with. Having said that, let's take your two examples, Sarah. there's a big difference between them. Do you know what the difference is? Yes, there's evidence for the latter. Right. One of them is actually true, right? Kamala Harris did support that. Chris Rufo has said that he will pay $5,000 to anyone who can offer hard evidence of cat eating in Springfield.

Or he included dog eating, I believe also. But I loved where he had to follow up because someone tweeted, heading to Springfield with my cat and a boiling pot because $5,000 is $5,000 and Chris Rufo had to add the evidence must be from before the debate. No eating cats, people. So my problem with the Rufo thing, I mean, I thought that was very funny,

but my problem with the Rufo thing is, let's say they come back and they find evidence of one person, well, there is evidence of one person, in Ohio eating a cat, but she was a native-born American white person and not a Haitian immigrant, but that aside. There's a goose video. Someone walking down

the sidewalk. I don't think she was white, but she was from a different part of the state. She's not Haitian. She was born in Ohio. Fair enough. Okay. So, yeah. If I was doing the fact checker, I would have, fact check on that, I would have nailed it down. Regardless. Dona lacked curiosity about cat eating. Let the record reflect. Make whatever

conclusions from that, you will. You don't even know what recipe she used. All I know is that Suvi is not the way to go. But Vince he doesn't get to say I've been vindicated if Rufo finds one anecdote or something like that

because the point is he went out and spread this stuff knowing it wasn't true or not knowing if it was false, right? I mean he just freelanced it and you can't go out and saying it, the truth doesn't matter and then you know, Deus X.

McKina, it turns out you find some corroboration of something that you didn't bother to find yourself until later. It's sort of like, you know, Hugh Hewitt and some of those guys are going around saying the fact checkers need to correct themselves. Look at these stories about Haitian immigrants eating geese, stealing them from a public park. I was like, I'm against stealing geese from a public park, but like stealing geese from a public park is different than breaking into my house and taking my cat or my dog and killing it. Can I tell you the, the goose eating situation, the goose stealing situation, reminded me a little bit of Trump's answer about why he didn't

pay taxes. Basically, like, you'd be a sucker to pay taxes. Like, maybe there's a law against eating public geese. But goose is a food that people eat, like a nice food that people eat. So you could go to the grocery store and spend a whole lot of money for a pre-processed goose, or, again, if there's no law against it, you can go to the public park and go wrestle with one of those guys. And, like, you'd be a sucker if you're willing to do the flucking. Sure, it's like people, yeah, it's like people fishing for river carp. I mean, kudos them. Look, let me make two big points. One.

Or it's like RFK finding a roadkill bear. Not finding. Nope. Nope. Not finding the roadkill bear. Did he hit the bear? Is it? Yeah. Okay. I have not followed these vital issues of public policy closely as I should have. He hit the bear, put it in a cub, bear cub, put it in the back of his car. to eat it later or something then realizes he's late to a dinner reservation at Peter Lugar,

sorry, so go straight to Peter Lugers, and then after Peter Lugers, realizes he stayed too late at dinner and he has to go straight to the airport and can't go back, and he doesn't want to leave the dead bear cub rotting in his car for when he returns to JFK. So that's when, and I don't understand if you know where Peter Lugers is and any airport,

he goes back into town to go to Central Park to ditch the bear cub and put a bike over it, And then, oddly, his niece ends up being the New York Times reporter who writes the story about a dead bear cub in Central Park being found. It's all weird that he endorsed Trump. Let me make two big picture points here, one about what Jonah says with respect to J.D. Vance. Part of what we're seeing here, Jonah, you said, you can't claim, you can't make a. claim and then sort of backfill with the evidence. And you're right, but I think in a prescriptive sense, right? I mean, you're talking in a normative way about our policy. You know, politically be

very good for J.D. Vance if they found a Haitian who ate a cat for sure. But it used to be the case, I would say, in sort of the pre-Trump world, that, that, you know, there was this sort of a basic assumption of some evidence, like something that touches upon the truth. And the job of journalist as often as not, was to try to determine, okay, how exaggerated is this? Like, there's a kernel of truth there. How exaggerated is it? Is this spin? Are they exaggerating? And then write a story about it. Now, basically what you see, and I think this has been true, again, of the Trump era and Trump world, is you have someone, in this case, it's J.D. Vance, then followed by Donald Trump, make these totally batch crazy claims. And you have this sort of right-wing

apparatus that races to backfill, right? And they don't care at this point whether this is, whether the stuff is true or whether it's not true. I think I may have told the story before, but I'll give me just one second to examine it. There was early in the Trump administration, when Donald Trump made the claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Tower, it was one of these things that there wasn't evidence for. There were, certainly there's evidence that the FBI was monitoring people in Trump world, et cetera, et cetera. But it wasn't the case that the FBI had wiretapsed Trump Tower. What happened that day that he made the claim, I got calls from two very senior people in Trump world, one of them a top White House official, one of them, a senior

Republican in Congress, called me and said, can you help us find evidence? Is there, Is he right that the FBI wiretapped Trump Tower? You've been covering this stuff. How can we, in effect, how can we spin this? And I said, well, it's not true what he said. So you shouldn't try to spend it. What he said was incorrect. Anyway, that is, I think there's just a point to be made that that's the way that Trump world operates generally with as it relates to the truth. They can make these outlandish claims. Then they backfill. Then they get, you know, places like the Federalist and not other crazy right wing outlets to to try to support them, regardless of. what arguments they're making. Two, can I take this back to your original question, Sarah? Well, it kind of goes to the point, right? It does go. It goes to my point. Like, if this is what people come away from, and I don't, look, I am, we should all, if we do this for a living, we should be humble about our ability to predict things and making straight line projections from point A to point B about what's going to matter is a fool's errand at this point. Having said that, if it's the case that of a lot of what's happened in the 48 to 72 hours after the debate ends

is elaborate what are we on our 15 minute discussion of eating pets and the veracity of the claims that led to that debate this plays perfectly into the arguments that Kamala Harris and Tim Walts were making about Republicans being weird about J.D. Vance and Donald Trump being weird. There's no basis for these claims. Now they're you know they've been over back 86 times to try to verify something that may end up being unverifiable entirely. And if this is what people are talking about and breaking news, it is what people are talking about. People are talking about other stuff too. And we should talk about other stuff too. But people are talking about this. That's probably not a good development for Donald Trump. And it seems entirely possible to me that we will be looking back doing our post-election

arguments, I mean, podcasts. If Trump loses, we'll point back to stuff. like this and say, well, one of the reasons Trump lost with the fact that after the main debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a lot of people were talking about eating pets. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one.

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So this I think gets to the next point that I want us to talk about on the debate, which is there's been plenty of complaints with, I think, real substance to back them up, that the moderators went far harder on Trump. They fact-checked him more often, even though she said things that were untrue. They sort of provided editorial comment when he wouldn't answer a question, even though she didn't answer questions as well. That being said, they also gave Trump a lot more speaking time than they gave her. And this is my point about the cat-eating thing. That's how Trump used

his additional speaking time. So the moderators were unfair. Sure, I'll, like, let's just give that at 100, right? I don't even need to argue it. And that's not why Trump lost the debate. He lost the debate because we're talking about cat eating. Why are we talking about cat eating? Because Trump said that.

Because every time that she would try to bait him, which I find hilarious, they said publicly over and over and over again, that they were going to try to bait him, that that was their strategy. And by the way, it just doesn't take any sort of rocket science to be like, hey, if someone were going to try to bait my client, what do you think they'd do? What do you think they'd say? The number one thing,

if we were playing family feud, would be rally size. And that's exactly the first thing she went with. And so what happened was, every time she would throw out some Trump bait, he wouldn't prosecute the case against Harris and instead would take the Trump bait and start talking about rally sizes or things like that.

So he got all of this extra time, blew it on stuff that doesn't move any voters and this goes, Jonah, I think, to a conversation you were sort of having about counter-punching and that, right, their argument is that that's what Trump does, right? That's what makes him popular.

That's what makes it work. He's a counter-puncher. If you, you know, throw anything at him, he has to punch back. If he doesn't, then he's establishment, he's weak. It's, you know, he has to punch back. So I guess part of my question is,

could he, would it have worked if he had simply let it go about people leaving his rallies? Maybe they have a point. Maybe he had to take that. And like, yep, he was able to wrestle the extra time away. And so, fine for him to then counterpunch. So I want to say, Steve's point about how we should all be humble, but we predict about this stuff. I agree with that. I find it very difficult to watch these kinds of things precisely because I think Trump is such an ignoramus. And so I just, I don't see. the emperor's fancy clothes in all of this stuff. And so guessing how people who do see the clothes are going to respond always leaves me

feeling unsure of myself. And so, and that's, you know, what we want to call it the air of gaslighting or whatever you want to call it, that's part of the factor. Look, I think Trump could have counterpunched on that stuff. I think he could have taken the bait effectively and turned it back on her. But one of the things he would have needed to do in order to pull that. off is prepare for a presidential debate. Like, actually do the homework. Actually, like, you know, do a mock debate with somebody who's going to, and we're going to, and like, get him situationally

aware where, you know, they're like, Mr. President, and remember, I'm going to say a bunch of stuff to you because I'm trying to bait you to get you off topic so that you don't talk about your core issues, like real wage growth during your presidency or, you know, the problem with the Biden's failed border stuff. So I'm going to bring up stuff that I know is going to piss you off, and we're going to practice you not taking the bait. Instead, he hangs out with Laura Lumer and a whole bunch of head past the sphincter ass kissers who tell him everything he wants to hear, tell him how brilliant he is,

tell him how awesome he is, tell him how stupid Kamala Harris is, and how she's going to blow it, and tell him you're absolutely right. right, Mr. President, doing interviews with sycophantic, obscure right-wing MAGA bloggers is the same thing as preparing for a presidential debate. And he goes in there with the supreme, invincible self-confidence that he can handle is better because he cannot take advice that ever involves admitting that he might be wrong or might have said something wrong or anything like that. And he goes in and he takes the bait.

But he could have said, you know, he could have gone meta. Right? Which he tried to do with the, he tried to break the fourth wall with the like, I'm speaking now thing. Only problem was that Harris had never said it. And it, and then he had to say, you see what I did there, right? Which is like the same thing that like Waltz did with the, the Vance couch sex joke, right? It's like show, don't tell, right? When you, when you, when you explain your joke, you now seem like it wasn't a smart or funny quip. But he could have said, hey, look, you guys talked about how you're going to bait me, into this stuff. We know, I know what you're doing. You're lying. Let's get to the question they asked.

There are all sorts of things I could come up with in about five minutes to that, that would have checked the box of being a counterpuncher, but also would have been effective. The problem is, is that Trump just wants to indulge his id and ego and has no discipline for this kind of stuff, other than in the first six minutes of any given debate. And so I think he could be on brand. He could just be better at it. You know, we've been saying for almost a decade now, imagine if Trump had, you know, the same ideological points of view, but the capacity for strategic thinking, long-term thinking, you know, sort of Pap Buchanan's, you know, you get Pap Buchanan's ideology,

but also Pap Buchanan's willingness to delay gratification, you know, and that kind of stuff, Trump would have been far more formidable, but he is lazy and self-indulgent, and that's his real problem in these debates. I want to talk some policy issues here, and I want to start with abortion and where the two candidates actually are, I think is somewhat hard to pin down. The debate moderators to their credit tried, or at least gave both candidates the opening to try. Harris, for instance, was asked, sort of by Trump, actually, whether there's any limits on when she would support a right to an abortion. That's a question she did not answer, for example. Trump said that there were states where you could kill a baby after it was born if you wanted

an abortion. And the moderator fact-checked that and said there is no state where you can kill a baby after it's born. But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth. It's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born is okay. There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born. To some extent, I felt like this summarized our debate over abortion. Instead of actually talking about what the candidates actually support, we ended up in these little tunnels. And the fact checking on the born alive stuff is interesting. As someone has pointed out, eight babies have been born in the state of Minnesota, for instance, that during an attempted

abortion, basically, the baby wasn't killed before it exited the canal, and then they did not provide any life-saving efforts, and the baby died on its own then after. We can debate till the cows come home, whether that fits with what Trump said or didn't. Probably, though, the moderator's fact check was as misleading as what Trump said, if you think that's misleading. Steve, what are the two candidates' positions on this, and are they closer than we've seen abortion positions with the Republican and Democratic Party in the past, or just rhetorically muddled? So we don't know. And I would actually push back on your opening claim that the moderators tried and tried well. I think the moderators stepped in at precisely the wrong moment,

and it was one of the worst moments for the moderators in the debate. There was all this back and forth. They tried to get Donald Trump to elucidate or clarify his position. He did it because he doesn't know what his position is. He doesn't have a position, right? He was on four different sides of what he's going to do on the Florida referendum within the span of a week. He's clarified when he got all sorts of pressure from pro-life groups, but he still can't talk about it. He doesn't want to be in the position that he's in.

He doesn't, I think his honest position is probably pretty close to Kamala Harris's position. But that's not where he ends up, and that's not the policies he wants to push, and he knows he risks potentially alienating some of his base if he ends up there rhetorically as he's tried to do. I mean, he's used reproductive rights. We protect reproductive rights. He's used the language of the pro-choice side of the debate, and it's gotten him in trouble. Kamala Harris, I think we did get some insight into maybe not her policies, but how she approaches the issue. Because I do think, and Joe and I think you pointed this out on Dispax Live the other night, you know, her first set of answers on the economy was really shaky.

And that is why I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy. Because here's the thing. We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing. And the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children. It lacked substance, which is all the weirder given that they gave her the answers and the questions in advance, right? Right. Of course. I mean, but boy, she did, she came to the debate. It seemed to me very, very well prepared. How you could not be prepared for a question on the economy is like crazy. But she wasn't and she stumbled and she had a bad moment. And then the second topic was abortion. And the way that she talked about abortion was night and day. The majority of Americans believe in a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, and that is why, in every state where this issue has been on the ballot in red and blue states both, the people of America have voted for freedom.

Because she knows the issue and she knows what she thinks. Exactly right. Exactly right. And I actually think, you know, I don't agree with her positions. But I think she made a couple pretty powerful points that were likely to appeal to non-pro-life voters for. really in the exchange. But where the moderators stepped in and really screwed it up is after all of this confusing sort of back and forth, where I don't think we got a lot, a better sense of the positions. Donald Trump said to the moderators, you should ask her, and I'm paraphrasing here, in effect, about late-term abortion because she likes abortion in the seventh month, the eighth month, the nine months. And it looked to me like Kamala Harris was starting to object to what Trump was saying. And I would have been very interested to hear what she said if she, in fact,

continued to object to what Donald Trump was saying. But the moderators jumped in and wouldn't let her. And then Kamala Harris turned the original question back on Donald Trump and said, will you sign, do you favor a national abortion ban, which Trump had basically dodged earlier in the conversation. So I don't think we got much clarity. I don't think we know much about where the candidates actually stand. And I think the moderators actually got in the way of us learning more rather than help us understand better. And I should have added, by the way, that Harris didn't answer what limits she would have on abortion. Trump didn't answer whether he would veto a national abortion ban if it were passed by Congress, but I thought it actually did provide him one of his stronger moments where he kind of removed the charade about Congress doing anything. And it was like, what's she talking about? She's saying Congress is going to do this? Like, good luck getting the votes on that. That's not going to happen.

And I thought it did make her look politiciany, talking about some hypothetical that he's really. right, isn't going to happen. Jonah, what were the policy conversations that stood out to you? Stood out as a strong, strong term. It was interesting. Let's just put that way, that she went aggressive against Trump on Afghanistan. Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine. He calls himself a dealmaker, even his name.

National Security Advisor said, it was a weak, terrible deal. And here's how it went down. He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban. The negotiation involved the Taliban getting 5,000 terrorists, Taliban terrorists released. And get this. No, get this. And the president at the time invited the Taliban to Camp David. I think there are, she has points in her favor. on that side. It's a more, it's not black and white because the Trump administration did leave them with a mess with Afghanistan and a bad deal and all that. And that's all fair game. It's not really a defense of how the Biden administration withdrew from Afghanistan because if you're the

commander in chief and you're aware of the problems of there in Afghanistan, you don't withdraw that way. And if you're not aware of them, then you can't blame the Trump people for creating them. And you can be blamed for not being, not doing your due diligence before, you know, you did that. I thought the thing about how there, I mean, this, the place where it overlaps the most with the previous conversation about the fact checking and the bias of the moderators, if you're going to fact check, first of all, you should get all your fact check right. I think that's a fair statement that's hard to rebut. But you should also fact check equally. And her claim that there are no American troops anywhere in combat places, combat zones, was just not true. You know, I mean,

maybe there's some legal technical language that she used that went over everybody's head. But the impression she was trying to give is that there are no troops deployed in dangerous places anywhere in the world. That's just a lie. You know, I mean, like the Pentagon has like four areas where five or six areas where they designate as essentially war zones. Half our Navy is fighting, you know, the Houthis in the Red Sea. We're deployed all over the place. We've had people die in Syria. We've had people die in various places.

This year. I just said three service members killed in Jordan just weeks a couple months ago. And you can and you can so easily provide a slightly less impressive sounding factoid that happens to be true, right? But you didn't do that. And so I thought that, like, what I thought was interesting about that beyond the sort of it exposed about the moderators, is that that seemed to me to be one of these talking points that's vestigial of her being the Biden vice president, where that's the kind of talking point Biden used to explain why he should be elected again. It's the kind of talking point Biden used, you know, like, where you talk about how he saved NATO and all of these kinds of things, right? He is speaking to future historians trying to tell them how to look at his presidency,

and she was water carrying for that sort of messaging, and I don't think it helped her. I don't think it's true. But beyond that, I mean, like, who goes to presidential debates to find interesting policy discussions? I mean, like, what would you say we do here? I mean, I mean, the pet stuff, that's where it's at, man. Steve, we also watch debates so differently. I mean, this was a question that I had from the beginning before the debate even happened. Viewership numbers continue to be quite high for these debates.

But if you're an undecided voter, why would I think you're tuning into this debate? Right? Like, if you haven't paid attention enough to have an opinion enough about these two people to decide who you're going to vote for, that's probably because you haven't really been spending. a lot of your time, absorbing a lot of information. And so in that sense, I feel like the same way we've talked about how there's a rise in independent voters. There's now more independent voters than Republicans or Democrats, but do not be fooled. They're not middle of the road voters. They're in fact people who are disenchanted with either party. They hold political opinions

across the political spectrum. They're not just some third party waiting to come into existence. similarly undecided voters fall into a couple camps as well there's no question that there's a few voters perhaps some on this podcast that have too much information about the two candidates really hate both their choices and are undecided in that sense like they're willing to wait a few months just to make sure there's no total deal breaker because it's not hard to imagine one side or the other having some total deal breaker so you know they're not going to early vote and they're undecided in that sense, but they have strong opinions about the two candidates. They're just negative opinions about the two candidates. I think that's a relatively small number

of undecided voters, quote unquote. I think the vast majority of truly undecided voters are low information, low propensity voters. Do they watch the debate or do they get their debate information from sort of what I call trickle-down media? I don't even think they're watching the media the next day or reading news articles the next day again or else they'd have opinions about these guys to begin with. It's like their friends and family might have watched, maybe didn't even watch the debate. They might have gotten, though, some media or saw something on TikTok, and it comes up in some casual conversation about cat eating

is sort of like maybe how some of these undecided voters are thinking about it, which is why. Maybe while sitting over a really fine plate of cat. With a little basil. Jonah keeps going back there. There's a little worrisome. Someone check on Gracie. I loved Alf, right?

I mean, it was the first alien to eat cats in American mainstream culture. But anyway, I'm sorry, go on. I will just tell you that Frannie, my 17 and a half-year-old cat, I did inform her. She sat with me for the debate. She only comes out after dark, after everyone else has gone to sleep. And I told her that it turns out this whole time. I've been protecting her. And it's funny because I've joked, Franny's, she's scared of everything.

She hates everyone. We always tease Franny that we're just waiting until the day we're going to eat her. And so, like, her fear is totally. justified she should be afraid because any day now we're going to eat her but now frankly she's too stringy yeah i mean it would be really tough meat um i just don't think it would be worth it so i guess she's gotten away with another one uh on the undecided voters i think the focus groups even if they are true undecided voters are really unhelpful because it's like a heisenberg principle of sitting the undecided voter down to watch the debate that they otherwise would not have

watched. And so a true undecided voter wouldn't have watched the debate. And so you've, by monitoring the undecided voter, you have changed the behavior of the undecided voter. So I have a slightly different criticism of the undecided voter focus groups. They ask undecided voters, voter focus group members, what did you make at the debate? And they know they're on national television. They are going to say the things that they think sounds smart. they're going to they're going to think okay what would be they're going to try to sound like pundits they're going to try to sound like pundits they're going to repeat back pundit things that they've heard here or there um it also bothers me because when you ask them who won the debate ask them who they're going to vote for i don't care who they think won the debate if it doesn't affect their vote ask them what they learned about each candidate how their opinion changed of each candidate and have they made up their mind asking them who won the debate which is what sort of the headlines of all of those focus groups were is not just misleading, it's like totallyness is the point.

Yeah, it's like, which candidate do you think was taller? Yeah. Huh? Okay. So, Sarah, I agree with you entirely about the likelihood that there were throngs of voters, were that a high percentage of the total number of people watching the debate were low propensity voters. I think probably not. But let's make the assessment.

assumption that 1% of them were, and that they, you know, I mean, and you can imagine they could fit into all sorts of different categories. They could have been Robert F. Kennedy voters who don't really buy his endorsement of Trump. They could be progressives who are unhappy with Kamala Harris, who, because she's not more progressive on Israel, Gaza. They could be Nikki Haley voters who are, don't want to vote for Donald Trump, frustrated with Donald Trump, reluctant to be kind of the come home Republicans that we're talking about. If one percent of the estimated 67 million people who watched the debate were undecided voters, that's almost 700,000 voters. You know, Wisconsin, I think, was decided by 20,000 votes in 2020. I might be off on that.

Anyway, that population could matter. So to the extent that they were watching and that this, again, in the absence of a real policy debate, I hate the discussion of this as a vibes election, but I think it sort of fits in unfortunate ways. And if you look at what they saw, Trump's talking about eating cats. and, you know, this crazy stuff. If going in, the question was, boy, is Donald Trump crazier than he appeared when he was president? I think the answer is yes. We got rally Trump in this debate. We got sort of right-wing infotainment bubble Trump in this debate.

And I think if, you know, if you were not progressive, don't want to vote for Democrat, don't like Kamala Harris for whatever reason, disagree with their policies. and you tuned into this because you wanted some just basic reassurance that Trump isn't crazy. Well, you didn't get that and you really didn't get that. And I think for Kamala, look, I think she had some problems. She definitely misstated some facts. But overall, I thought she had a very, very strong performance, much better than I would have imagined. And I think she went out of her way to reassure Republicans that she's likely to govern. And I don't buy this, by the way.

But I think what she was trying to do is reassure disaffected Republicans and independents who lean Republican that she's more likely to govern like her Democratic convention speech and her revised policy positions than she is the candidate who ran in 2019. Again, I don't buy that, but that's what she set out to do. And I think she largely succeeded. Yeah, so like this gets back to what everyone, you're clearly rolled her eyes at about my, it depends what you mean by win. because I think she won on a bunch of different levels. And one of them is you just do the counterfactual. If she had screwed up, I think the race would be over, right? So, like, it is a win just actually crushing the-

But preventing him from getting momentum is the win. Keeping the race what it is is the win. I agree with that. I agree with that. I would say it's one of the wins. But then there are these little things. Like, we all agree that we're in an era of narrow casting rather than broadcasting, and, you know,

we're talking about the people who are left who are not necessarily, you know, they're not voters who think about this stuff remotely the way that we do, right? We are hyper-obsessed when Trump goes on his rants with his shorthand that he thinks everybody knows because they, he thinks everybody has Fox News on 12 hours a day, right?

Jesse and Sean and Russia, Russia, Russia, you know, like, he thinks everybody understands what the hell he's talking about, right? but like there were things that Kamala Harris did that I think will have zero effect on the median normal normie voter regardless of race whatever that will have value for her nonetheless when she brought up the Central Park Five most Americans barely remember the Central Park Five they understand okay some some convictions were like overturned and Trump maybe if they're political junkies Trump wrote a letter blah blah blah blah in the African American community the Central Park

five is up there with like the Tuskegee experiments and all sorts of things like that and it has much greater resonance and if on Charlemagne the gods radio show and that kind of stuff they can play those clips and if that boosts black turnout from you know by two percentage points in Philly um then that's a huge win right you know and so there are a lot of those little things that the normie voters like why bringing up i mean of all the things to troll Trump on why do it on the Central Park 5, which by the way, I will just stipulate,

I think the story the Central Park 5 is more complicated than the Morning Joe version of it, but we're not going to get into those weeds. But it was smart politically to do and trolling him on that kind of stuff, baiting him, also just like announcing

that you're going to bait the guy and then successfully baiting him is a win in certain ways, right? But then the other thing that I think is a win, is like Trump has been going around saying how stupid she is, right? How she's just not smart. She doesn't have the IQ to be president, all these kinds of things.

He'll still keep saying it. But then a lot of like Normie voters, then why'd she beat you in a debate? You know, why did she win the debate? You know, and then if the answer is, well, that's because she had listening devices in her earrings or because ABC gave her the questions in advance, it makes defenses of Trump's, ego crap sound even more conspiratorial and that's sort of at the margins

a win. It can also fuel a real annoying smug assenity among mainstream media journalists who go too far with it. But I mean, where is the metric by which Trump didn't lose? And I keep

asking people this. People, and I like people, when I say it's obvious Harris won, I get all of this like, well, come on. And I'm like, well, give me, give me a concrete measurement by which that's not true. And I've yet to hear one that I find particularly persuasive. All right. Time for a little worth your time. And this is going to be media bias. Is the conversation about media bias from the debate worth our time? Steve, I said I was

happy to cede the entire argument and that that's still not why Trump lost the debate if you think he lost it, but we're certainly seeing conversations around the moderator's choices. We've seen some right-wing news outlets say that ABC should lose their broadcasting license and they should be prosecuted for in-kind contributions to the Harris campaign, criminally prosecuted. In print, like published it, it went through some editorial process. Is the conversation about media bias worth our time, or is it so baked in that, frankly, Republicans who can't overcome the media bias shouldn't get to run for president. And are we okay with that

being the standard? I mean, it's part of the way they win Republican primaries. But before I, I'll answer your question. Did ABC help Donald Trump? I'll answer your question. I'll answer it directly. But first, you have to answer my question. You introduced this segment this time, not by saying not worth your time, but by saying worth your time. Totally bias. Are we to read into that, you think this is worth our time this time? No, you're to read into it that in my head, I was like,

wait, have I been saying not worth your time the whole time or worth your time the whole time? I can't remember just pick one. We should get a jingle. A little bit how I fell down the stairs. I knew it was dark and I knew I couldn't see the bottom situation. And I was like, is there one more step or not? 50, 50.

I'll just assume there's not, which was like, why do I keep assuming things in the dark, like whether it's not worth your time or worth your time? And you know what, Steve, Sarah did not address at all there, is the fact that she takes money from ABC News, right? She just completely ignored that fact, even though you didn't ask about it. But that just shows you where she's really coming from. On the take. That's why she said, worth your time. I should have disclosed that.

I don't know why I assume that listeners know that I am an ABC News contributor. We should, like, go back to the beginning so I can disclose that. Sorry, but yes, I literally do get paid by ABC News, which is why I'm criticizing them. I'm an NBC news contributor, Joan, as a CNN contributor, disclosures out of the way. We've done them before. We'll continue to do them. So to answer your question directly, I think the moderators did a poor job. I think they were biased.

There's no question that Donald Trump lied more than Kamala Harris. There's no question that Donald Trump exaggerated more than Kamala Harris. If the moderators went into the debate thinking that it was important that they fact-checked the candidates, I can understand why they fact-checked Donald Trump, more than they fact-checked Kamala Harris. Full stop, end of argument. Having said that, Kamala Harris made mistakes, too. She said things, and you guys mentioned the no-combat troops. She made sort of exaggerated statements about unemployment.

There were other claims that she made. I thought she grossly misused Donald Trump's statements from a couple of months ago about a bloodbath if he's not elected, took that out of context, distorted it badly. If you're going to be in the business of fact-checking as a debate moderator, I think it's incumbent upon you to fact-check the candidates. Now, Trump's lies were worse. I mean, the guy spent another minute talking about how we won the election. He didn't win the election. It wasn't stolen. The stuff he was saying was nonsense. He said, well, the judges didn't take the cases because of standing. It was a technicalic. Those are all lies. Totally appropriate for ABC

to fact-check them if they're going to do it. He also lied about the pet eating. Totally appropriate, if that's what you're going to do. I think the problem is between the imbalance in fact-checking, and then I would say broadly the way they framed some of their questions, the way they editorialized after the questions, at least twice. One of the moderators, said when Donald Trump was wrapping up an answer, Mr. Trump, we need to move on to other important issues in a sort of schoolmarm, finger-wagging sort of way that they didn't do with Kamala Harris. There was one question where the way that they posed the question was Donald Trump says he's going to prosecute his enemies. This was a question to Kamala Harris. He's going to prosecute his

enemies. Your campaign pain lawyer said that that's terrible and thinks that's likely an attempt to suppress the vote. Do you agree with your campaign lawyer? Like that was the question. Come on. I mean, that's not even trying. So I think it's, I think Republicans are right to say that the moderators were biased. I think it's a huge problem. I think it contributes generally to the distrust of mainstream media outlets that we see. But should ABC be shut down, lose its license? First of all, the lose its license thing doesn't even actually understand how the licensing works. But even if it did, the great irony for me is the people who are making that argument, like the clowns at the Federalist, are the same people who react so viscerally and strongly when anybody says, boy, there's an authoritarian streak on the Trumpy right. They said, no, there's not.

That's outrageous. There's no evidence for that point to something. And then literally, because they don't like a few debate questions, they're going to say, like, yeah, shut down ABC News. it's ridiculous. That's what you expect, I think, from that crowd. They're undoubtedly getting the clicks that they want by making those silly arguments, but they don't do anything to advance the debate. Jonah, though, did it help Trump?

I mean, that's the funny thing, right? In their effort to, I mean, if we take this at the most biased version, which I'm not sure is accurate, let's say their goal was to hurt Donald Trump in doing this, rather than just sort of they actually didn't know that anything Harris said was mistaken. which is the problem, by the way, but like that's still a bias, but it's a little bit of a different bias. But let's say, nope, they strongly want to use their platform to hurt Donald Trump slash help Harris. I don't know. It kind of feels like it helps Trump. Yeah, it totally helps Trump. I mean, this is, I mean, this is the life you've lived on your legal niche podcast for years now

about how these attempts to sort of cut corners to go after Trump end up helping Trump. The same thing works journalistically. Like, it better just play it straight. It kind of reminds me, you know, there are these scenes in, it's sort of a cliche in movies and TV, it was in the last Dune movie, it's in Game of Thrones, where this knight wants to have a straight up fair fight duel with somebody else. And then one of his guards intervenes and like stabs,

you know, Ned Stark in the leg or whatever. And it pisses off the guy because it takes away the glory of having won a fair fight. Kamala Harris would be in better shape today if they had bent over backwards to be tougher on her and let Trump run free, right? Because this gives permission to a whole bunch of Trump people to say that the story was the bias of the moderators. And it's part of the conversation now is that but for the moderators, Trump would have won or something

like that, which I think is nonsense. But the worth your time question gets at something more vexing, which is, I mean, I know I'm the oldest person on this podcast. So you just got to take my word for it. It's mentioned in books, too. The media did not like Ronald Reagan. The media really didn't like Richard Nixon.

the media was much, much more powerful when there were only three broadcast networks and three news channels, essentially, and a handful of newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times set the entire media agenda, also time and Newsweek, right? There's about 10 institutions determined how news was consumed and framed in this country. Richard Nixon won re-election and a landslide in 1972. Ronald Reagan, despite the hostility of the press, won 49 states in 1984. This is not news that the media doesn't like Republicans, but for some reason, it's now considered an insurmountable headwind

when the right has more channels, more platforms, more ability to get its message out by going around the mainstream media than ever before they're whining and bitching and blaming the mainstream media for all of their problems has gone to 11. It's really weird.

Maybe just man up and think for a second, maybe if we had a better candidate, maybe if we didn't allow him to intercept this sausage-spined whining into our entire worldview, we would be making more persuasive arguments, better arguments, and we'd be winning outside of our little cozy friggin' bubbles. But they don't want to accept that. And that's, I think, one of the biggest problems with both parties is that they actually don't want to engage with people outside of their

bubbles. And that's why neither party wants to be a majority party. And everyone wants to bitch and moan about how the media isn't ratifying every aspect of their lives. Liberal media bias is a thing. It's not going away. I've been writing about it for 30 friggin years. The only thing left that annoys me about it is when people will claim it doesn't exist. But come on. It's just deal with it. We used to have Republicans who knew how to do that. I was going to say nobody stopped Trump from saying, hey, I noticed you fact-checked me a couple times, but you haven't fact-checked her yet. Or it's funny that you say I didn't answer the question because she never answered the question this time either. He didn't do that. And again, it goes to this like,

he got more speaking time. So while they were more visually biased, if you want, rhetorically biased against him in terms of things they were saying out loud, he got more opportunities by a huge percentage to push back on that just with the sheer amount of time he was able to talk. Yeah, but the Galaxy Brain MAGA response to that is... Is that that that was actually intended to hurt him? That was intended because they wanted him to take the bait and they wanted to give him the opportunity to take the bait. If you don't want the American people, you don't want the American people to hear enough

from your candidate, like do some soul searching on that one. I do, though, Steve, think this is interesting with so many on the right talking about how biased the moderators were implicit in that is this idea that, and that's why he lost, meaning they're acknowledging he lost. That is a little bit new on the right to even acknowledge that Trump didn't perform well. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a tacit nod to reality. I mean, it's hard, hard for people to, anybody who watched the debate to claim that Trump won. I mean, I found the instapoles, you know, the Harris people were sending out. the insta polls on CNN and elsewhere showing that she won, you know, 63% of voters thought

that she won the debate. I can't imagine who's in the other 37%. I can't imagine anybody watching that and thinking that Donald Trump actually prevailed. You know, Lindsay Graham was in the spin room after the debate calling a disaster. There are many, many reports that Trump, team Trump, campaign Trump, privately conceding that he lost and lost really badly and that they're worried about actual damage. RFK said, sure, she won on things like composure, debating skill, arguments, presentation. Organization facts. Yeah, it was a loss.

I think it was a bad loss for Trump. So now I'm going to hold you to the question, is the conversation about media bias worth our time? Truly, like moving forward. I know we have it from time to time. but if y'all are saying it's just so baked in, should the conversation instead be about, is this candidate going to be capable of taking on?

And again, I think media bias conflates several different types of bias. We've talked about the type of journalists who actually believe it is their role to help the Harris campaign. In fact, we had a whole podcast about it. This does feel, to me, like a different type of media bias

that we're talking about, which is, For instance, all of the reporters who couldn't imagine that Harris believed that taxpayer dollars should pay for transgender surgery for illegal aliens being detained before being deported. That wasn't that they were trying to help Harris necessarily. It's that they live around certain people, went to certain schools, don't own guns, like all of those things. I mean, I was sort of shocked by the number of reporters who were like, wait, she owns a gun? Wow. Because it felt so countercultural to them. That's a different type of media bias. They genuinely aren't trying to help Harris or hurt Trump. It's like a lack of imagination media bias,

a liberal lack of imagination, like a liberal worldview. Bubble. Yeah. It is very much. But that's different than the activist journalism. So I don't know, we should have maybe different terms for them. I think media bias is more accurate for the bubble than the activism. Let me put it this way. I think it is entirely worth our time. Not to, I mean, we've done too much of it now. We should hold off for a couple episodes before we come back to it. But this is the life we've chosen. We're in the media business. You know, we, this is a startup media company that's designed to deal with some of the deficiencies of the mainstream media and right wing media. Like this is this, this is

the life we've chosen. And I, and that's fine. We're commentators. great. It is not worth the time of to talk about of these campaigns the way they do and of the parties the way they do and of the of the partisan boosters the way they do. Acknowledge it, sure, right? I mean, it's really if you're running in a primary, talk about it. Newt Gingrich almost became the presidential nominee in 2012 by just basically constantly attacking the debate moderators. But like at some point, if you actually want to be a majority party, you can acknowledge unfairness and then move on. But if you make it, your obsession, right? I mean, if you make it, like, I mean, I can't tell you many times back when I was at Fox,

you know, I would be on with panelists who someone would criticize or I would criticize or a politician would criticize Donald Trump. And the immediate response from, you know, the likely suspects would be, yeah, but what about the New York Times? I was like, well, New York Times is not the president United States. It's not even a candidate. It's not even a human being, right? I mean, it's like, and vests have no sleeves, right? But like people want to just talk about media bias as if it compensates for bad character, bad policy, bad arguments, lies. And so I, you know, my father's, one of my father's lifelong habits was hating the New York Times. It was a, it was a hobby of his, like a vocation.

So I get being critical about media, but like it doesn't it doesn't do what these people want it to do. All right, and with that, I do have one update to a previous podcast that we did, Jonah, and it is on

Fefe. Do you remember Fefei? The cologne, the perfume for pets, which you definitely don't want to use if you're going to eat them. So, we had an amazing listener who actually does this as a very serious hobby. And I just want to note, he says, I need to be clear, I realize how silly a hobby this is. I really just wanted the

excuse to learn how to edit videos and do photography and smelling good as a bonus. It's that Joe smells good on YouTube. Anyway, he was like, you guys are wrong about Fefe. Can I send you a little Fefe sampler, along with like a hundred other samples of very high-end perfumes. So I've been testing perfumes. Now, here's the thing about me. I guess because my mother wore a lot of perfume when I was growing up and I was car sick a lot growing up, but now I associate a lot of perfumy smells with feeling motion sick. I will tell you, Jonah, fefe is lovely. And wait, it's going to get so much worse. I now wear Fefe. I am a feffay wearer in public.

Steve and I are going to have to have a conversation about the good of the institution about whether we edit this out. It's so light. It dissipates quickly. It's not... Is this going to require me to go back and listen to earlier podcasts that I wasn't on? It's dog perfume, Steve. I'm wearing perfume for dogs. And it's even worse, I'm wearing like snobby perfume for dogs for the whole ad is like...

You bitch! Like, you want them to be tongue in cheek in making this ad for dog perfume, but I'm not really sure that they are. It might have been very sincere. Yeah, so anyway, now I wear dog perfume, Steve. That's the punchline. Yeah, I have no response to this.

I'd love, yeah, I'd love to make a joke. So I just, I want to be clear, I was so wrong in mocking Fefe and I'm so grateful that I've been shown the air of my way. So never say that I don't change my mind on issues. I do. I have evolved on any number of policy issues, and now I have evolved to smell like the things that they eat in Springfield alive.

Jonah, do you wear cologne? Not really, no. Cologne doesn't make me motion sick. Probably because it's not as floral as sweet. I think it's the sweetness that usually makes me motion sick, and I will tell you, Fefe is not sweet. I was at a fancy store in Door County, Wisconsin, and the only reason I paused is, like, for the first time in like eight years,

my wife put this tester thing of cologne in the pile of stuff that I was buying and I know where you were did you buy it yeah I bet I know where you were I bet I know the shop and I bet I know the cologne well it's funny you say that because I said there's no way Steve doesn't shop here because I've seen these this Johnny O stuff Johnny O and the Mountain khaki and all of the yes yes yes of course um yeah wow okay um we'll have to we'll talk offline about what You got, because I don't want to smell the same way you smell. And with that, thank you so much for joining us. And we'll talk to you again next week, maybe.

That was rough. I'm going to be able to be.