The NPR Politics Podcast - Surprise: There Was A Lot Of Policy Talk At The Final Presidential Debate

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden sparred over immigration, energy, and pandemic policy in the final presidential debate. But in race with historically stable polling, the debate had few surprises and seems unlikely to change the state of the race.Read Our Coverage Of The DebateThis episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey everybody, it's Susan Davis, and before we start the show, I have a request. The NPR Politics Podcast will be right here with you through Election Day and beyond, providing all the latest reporting and analysis you need to stay informed about what's happening. And the reason we can do that is because of your financial support. We know so many of you are struggling right now, but if you're in a position to do so, please take a moment and donate to your local NPR station today. You'll be funding the reporting you get from this podcast and so much more. Just go to donate.npr.org slash politics to get started. And thank you. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And it is 11.27 p.m. on Thursday, October 22nd, and the final presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, has just concluded. And unlike that first debate, tonight was much more traditional. There was a lot of substantive policy debate and, of course, some personal attacks. You know, Joe, I ran because of you. I ran because of Barack Obama, because you did a poor job. If I thought you did a good job, I would have never run.

You know who I am. You know who he is. You know his character. You know my character. You know our reputations for honor and telling the truth. In this debate, it really, as the first debate ended, I felt like I'd kind of been, you know, run over by a truck. Like it was brutal. And this debate was not brutal. It was like normal.

Yeah, it was like normal. Donald Trump was relatively restrained. But don't forget, there was a reason for that. The new rules set by the debate commission said that when a candidate is giving his two-minute opening statement for each segment of the debate, the other guy's mic was muted. So there were fewer interruptions than there were the first debate. Yeah. Kristen Welker, the moderator, did a great job, but she also benefited by having rules that helped her control the flow of the discussion. Plus, I think you have to assume that President Trump saw how people reacted to his performance in the first debate. Oh, it backfired. It backfired. You know,

he came into that debate hoping he could dominate Biden, show that he was weak, throw him off his game. And instead, it they put it, crisp way. Mara has talked a lot about the way that the bar has been set low for Biden over the course of the campaign on that front. You know, I think the Biden campaign would have loved President Trump to do what he did the first debate. He did not. But on all of these really extended policy conversations, you really saw on display how wide the gap is between these two candidates. And I think we're going to tick through some of these, but on health care, on the response to the coronavirus, on climate policy, the Biden campaign feels like the American people are on their side of this. So I think they were very happy to have these contrasts laid out. And when you talk about those contrasts, like when it came to the pandemic, that was the first part of the debate.

And you really saw then the differences laid out. You had President Trump talking about, we're rounding the corner, things are getting better. If you take a look at what we've done in terms of goggles and masks and gowns and everything else, and in particular ventilators. We're now making ventilators all over the world, thousands and thousands a month, distributing them all over the world. It will go away. And as I say, we're rounding the turn, we're rounding the corner. It's going away. He said, you know, we're learning to live with the coronavirus, that by the end of the year, we'll have a vaccine. Obviously, on this podcast,

we have fact-checked that a bunch and how experts say it's going to take much longer for that to be distributed widely, the vaccine to be distributed widely. But Trump, once again, said he thinks it'll be faster. And you had Biden saying, you know, basically laying the deaths that have happened in the country at President Trump's feet. 220,000 Americans dead. You hear nothing else I say tonight. Hear this. Anyone who's responsible for not taking control, in fact, not saying I'm, I take no responsibility initially. Anyone who's responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America. One little moment when Biden said, this is a president who said, I take no responsibility.

And then Trump was asked about it. He actually said, I take full responsibility, but then added, but it's not my fault. And you say, I take no responsibility. Let me talk about your... Excuse me, I take full responsibility. It's not my fault that it came here. It's China's fault. And you know what? It's not Joe's fault that it came here either. It's China's fault. I thought that the debate was really good in that it served the purpose that it's supposed to serve, which is giving the public very clear answers to very complicated questions. Right. And I think that tonight fulfilled that. It's certainly a serious anchor for the president, that they were, both candidates were asked about their health care plans and if the Supreme Court rules next month to basically throw out Obamacare. And the problem that not only Donald Trump has, but I think the Republican Party has, is they still haven't been able to put up

what their plan is going to be if that happens. And for better or for worse, Joe Biden has a very clear plan. What I'm going to do is pass Obamacare with a public option, become Bidencare. The public option is an option that says that if you in fact do not have the wherewithal to be, if you qualify for Medicaid and you do not have the wherewithal in your state to get Medicaid, you automatically are enrolled the wherewithal in your state to get Medicaid, you automatically are enrolled, providing competition for insurance companies. That's what's going to happen. That's a controversial position, but it is a position.

And Republicans are making sort of promises, but they can't actually articulate how they're going to get there. And I think, you know, poll after poll still tells us that health care is the number one issue for so many voters, especially tied to the pandemic. And it's a problem for Republicans. And the president responded when Biden talked about his health care plan, which interestingly, he repeatedly called Biden care tonight. I hadn't heard him say that before. His campaign tells me he has used that term a few times, but certainly not on a stage like this. The president responded, as he often

does, attacking Biden for a socialist takeover of health care, as he put it. Very quickly, then I want to talk about what's happening on Capitol Hill. He's talking about socialized medicine and health care. When he talks about a public option, he's talking about destroying your Medicare, totally destroyed, and destroying your social security. And this whole country will come down. You know, Bernie Sanders tried it in his state. He tried it in his state. His governor was a very liberal...

I think that led to one of Biden's better zingers of the night, if you will. It's impossible to work. It doesn't work. He's a very confused guy. He thinks he's running against somebody else. He's running against Joe Biden. I beat all those other people

because I disagreed with them. Joe Biden, He's running against Joe Biden. I beat all those other people because I disagreed with them. Joe Biden, he's running against. Look, Sue, we've talked a lot about the fact that Democrats feel like they won back control of the House of Representatives almost solely on the health care question. In 2018, they continue to think it's something that really benefits them compared to the Republicans. President Trump hasn't laid out a plan. You know, it's funny, over the last couple weeks, as the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett has made its way through the Senate, Democrats have kept saying, Republicans, you want to get rid of Obamacare. And Republicans said, well, I don't know if it's quite like that. And then President Trump repeatedly

today says, I hope the Supreme Court overturns Obamacare. It was like the exact ad that Joe Biden is running in key states right now. And another issue worth mentioning where there was a really stark contrast tonight was on immigration, where Biden and Trump really got into it on the issue of the family separations at the border. Right. And this is an issue that hasn't been talked about much on the campaign trail, but it's back in the news because it was announced that about 500 kids, the government has announced that they have no idea where their parents are. These are 500 kids that were taken into custody when they crossed the border illegally. And what was interesting about it was this is an family separation, which was a policy of the Trump administration, is extremely unpopular.

It's been stopped. And the president's goal in the debate was to somehow say that this is a policy that had been started by the Obama administration. That's not true. And then Joe Biden was very passionate when he talked about just the horror of having kids, you know, separated from their parents. So I thought that was a moment in this debate. And to me, that was a big display of really, I think the empathy gap is the way to talk about it between the ways that Joe Biden and Donald Trump talk about policy. What was also interesting is that this was the rare moment where Biden put some distance between himself and Barack Obama. He's done this in fits and starts in moments on the campaign trail,

but not on this stage and not this bluntly, really saying that, first of all, like Mara said, fact checking that family separation was not an Obama administration policy, but saying that he would have wanted to do more on the very crackdown approach that Obama's administration took to immigration as a whole, and also not getting that comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress. All right, well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about the standout moments from the last presidential debate. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. Google's free tools are designed to help millions of businesses around the country adapt to a new way of working. From updating their business hours to switching to curbside pickup to activating online booking,

small businesses are staying connected to their customers with Google. They can even add gift card and donation links on Google so they can get support from their community. Explore Google's free tools for small businesses at google.com slash grow. And we're back. And we should say there was a lot of anticipation going into the debate tonight, partly because the Trump campaign seemed to foreshadow that it was coming, that they were really going to go after Joe Biden and his family. And, you know, he did certainly make some attempts tonight, but it wasn't necessarily the slugfest we were anticipating.

And I wonder, Mara, if there's a reason behind that. I mean, did the Trump campaign just calculate that maybe to come out swinging again wasn't the best way to do this? Well, or there's just nothing there to this latest attack on Joe Biden that they've come up with, which Trump referred to as the laptop from hell. Something about emails from Hunter Biden that showed that Joe Biden made money off of China when he was the vice president. The emails were from 2017. He wasn't even the vice president then. So it was very confusing. It was unclear what he was actually accusing Joe Biden of. And it's coming with just a little over a week before election Day. It's funny because he did bring a Biden accuser to

the debate. It was kind of a pale shadow of bringing the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual impropriety. It's kind of like the sequel is never as good as the original. It's almost as if they're running a pale shadow of the 2016 playbook, and it's just not working. It is true that so many of the tactics do seem to be like echoes of what happened in 2016, especially in this closing weeks. Faint echoes. Yeah. Along with the fact that there's a lot of questions still unknown about where exactly these emails came from, whether they're all actually legitimate and whether there's some

foreign interference going on here. Which was Biden's defense of this, saying that this is Russian disinformation and dozens of former intelligence officials have described it that way. Another topic tonight that came up, but has come up in the past, but I think it just speaks to how central it is to this presidential campaign, is criminal justice reform and race issues, especially when it comes to President Trump. When he talked when President Trump talks about race, he is obviously a lot of it is aimed at reassuring those voters on the right or conservative voters who may be concerned that President Trump is racist or espouses racist rhetoric. And so what you hear from President Trump, which is what he said

tonight very clearly, he said, I'm not a racist. The least racist. Yeah. So yeah, he is the least racist person. I am the least racist person. I can't even see the audience because it's so dark, but I don't care who's in the audience. I'm the least racist person in this room. But he also did make some pointed references to black men and really hammering home Joe Biden on the 1994 crime bill. And at one point he actually said, you know, you locked up all of these black men in particular and they remember that. And that's why I'm doing better, you know, in the polls with them.

Like they remember that. You have done nothing other than the crime bill, which put tens of thousands of black men mostly in jail. All right. You know what? Let me ask Vice President Biden a question. Because if you look at what's happening with the voting right now, they remember that you treated them very, very badly. Just take a look at what's happening out there. And that's something that they have been trying to drive home about Biden. It is something the 1994 crime bill is something that Biden has had to answer

for. It is, you know, President Trump does have a bit stronger support when it comes from Black men than he had, you know, even in 2016. So that is an area on the margins. Now, whether it can make up for everything else or his losses elsewhere, we don't know. But he did have this pointed mark where he did, you know, specifically name black men. Scott, if Trump feels his most sort of on the attack against Biden when he's talking about him being a career politician and you've been around for 47 years, Biden seems to feel like his most comfortable on the attack against Trump when he's talking about him being a career politician, and you've been around for 47 years. Biden seems to feel like his most comfortable on the attack against Trump when he's talking about race. Yeah, and you heard Biden circle back to the major themes of his presidency, talking about character and trying to bring the country together. And you heard him go beyond that

and kind of tick through some things that President Trump did and said throughout his life and in the contemporary period of that crime bill, specifically calling out President Trump for repeatedly demanding the death penalty for the Central Park Five, who were, of course, all innocent of the crime that they were convicted of in a major story in the 1990s. He pours fuel on every single racist fire, every single one. Started off his campaign coming down the escalator saying he's going to get rid of those Mexican rapists. He's banned Muslims because they're Muslims. He has moved around and made everything worse across the board. All right, Mara, so I'm going to put the big, big, big question to you.

Do you think this debate will have an impact on this presidential race? It's hard to see this debate as a game changer. For that, I think Biden had to collapse or lose his train of thought. And he didn't. And Biden didn't need to, quote, win this debate. He's ahead. And nothing in this debate, I think, undermined that position. Donald Trump did do better than his first debate. But I don't know if he did well enough that he can change the dynamic of this race, which is still a referendum on him and his leadership. And he has not been able to turn it into a binary choice between him and Biden where he can disqualify Joe Biden. That's the bottom line. All right, I think we're gonna leave it there. But we will be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup. And

remember that you can support all of us on this podcast by supporting your local NPR station. You can get started by heading to donate.npr.org slash politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.