The Opinions - 'I Feel Like She Humiliated Him': How Trump Lost the Debate

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Michelle Goldberg, the Times Opinion columnist, and Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, discuss the best and worst moments of the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Will Harris’s apparent debate night victory matter to the swing state voters who can make the difference?Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Patrick Healy, the deputy editor of New York Times Opinion, and I've covered American politics for decades as a reporter and editor and running our New York Times focus groups. So the first and maybe only Harris-Trump debate just ended, and I'm joined by my colleague, opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, to talk through what we just saw and what it means. for the presidential race.

Michelle, thank you so much for joining me so late in the evening. Thrilled to be here. So tonight was a crucial moment in this strange, chaotic, unpredictable presidential race. All eyes have been on Kamala Harris. And given her short time as a candidate, she hasn't had many of these spontaneous and unscripted moments to really show herself and prove herself to a lot of voters. And Michelle, you said before the debate that, you know, beyond any specifics on policy, the only thing that mattered that really mattered is if Kamala Harris wins it. So how are you feeling about how she did tonight?

I mean, she won it. I don't think there's any question about that. And, you know, I was extremely anxious coming into this because the stakes are so incredibly high. And Kamala Harris hasn't always been the best at speaking exemporaneously. She can sometimes lapse into sort of word salad. and she was maybe I think you could tell she was a little bit nervous, a little bit shaky at the very beginning. But then she found her footing. She baited Trump and he took the bait every single time.

He ranted incoherently. She gave these kind of crisp, concise answers. She didn't get hung up on explaining her past positions. But I also don't think that she came off as evasive. I mean, maybe somebody who was, you know, kind of. Lesson raptured of finally seeing somebody take it to Donald Trump would have seen it differently. But one sign of how well she did is that conservatives are apoplectic about the moderators and saying how unfair this was to Trump. When really I think the one place where the moderators really did do Kamala Harris a favor was in letting Trump talk so much.

And I believe he spoke much more than she did. And the more he spoke, the more angry and unhinged he seemed. You know, you're so right about just from the moment that the debate started, she went on offense. She had that kind of great boss moment at the beginning where she came right over to Trump and shook his hand and introduced herself. She just went on offense kind of so quickly and over and over again put out that bait. And it's so strange because Trump and his advisors knew that that kind of strategy was coming at them. And yet he just fell for it. over and over again, did that surprise you or was just Donald Trump can't help himself?

So can I just say something about that moment? Because to me, I mean, this whole debate was very cathartic. I think not just for somebody who watched in horror the debate that ended Joe Biden's campaign. But to me, it really felt like coming full circle from that debate where Trump stalked Hillary Clinton around the stage, right, and tried to physically intimidate her. And what Kamala Harris did right from the get-go was sort of physically get in Donald Trump's space. Like physically sees the initiative.

And you kept seeing, you could see on the split screen. She's looking at him. He can't look at her. He's so disconfident by her. And yes, this was no secret. Her campaign was saying

over and over again, they're going to bait him, they're going to try to get under his skin. Maybe I worried a little bit that it wouldn't work in part because it was so telegraphed Could Donald Trump maintain the challenge of seeming normal for 90 minutes? He's done it sort of at certain points in the past.

But I think that, you know, Donald Trump doesn't change. And they made a bet, which I think is a good one, on the force of his incredible narcissism overcoming whatever preparation he managed to sit through, you know, because time after time, I mean, he had to answer on. the Central Park 5. He had to answer on the inheritance that he got from his father. You know, every time that they were on territory that might have been a little bit more favorable to him or dangerous to her, she was able to completely sidetrack him by making him defend these really irrelevant points. Did Harris take Trump down, Michelle? Well, I mean, what does it mean to take Trump down, right? I mean, I feel like she humiliated. him. I feel like there was something very cathartic in having somebody finally say to his face,

you know, that you're a disgrace. There was one moment where she seemed to be kind of searching for the right put down. And finally she just said, and this former president, as president, invited them to Camp David. Right. There was that long pause. Right. And I think that that as much as anything else, you know, there was, there's a bunch of answers he gave that we're going to be hearing again and again and again. We're going to be hearing again and again again that he wouldn't answer the question of whether he would veto an abortion ban and actually disassociated himself from the answer J.D. Vance gave when J.D. Mann said that he would veto an abortion ban. We're going to be hearing a lot. And I think that this was a really key moment because there's been so much criticism of Harris for not having a more fleshed. out policy agenda, you know, unlike, you know, not that Donald Trump has one, you know, or actually he does have one as Project 2025, but he wants to disavow it. But it is very, it is going to be, I think, difficult for the Trump campaign to hit Harris for not having a plan when his

answer on what his alternative to Obamacare would be is, I have the concept of a plan. So just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan. I have concepts of a plan. I'm not president right now. You know, we're going to, I think that that phrase is one that we're going to hear a lot. You know, I feel like she revealed the real Trump in full, just the way that he descended into lies and incoherence and the kind of extremism on issues like abortion that I think turn off so many American voters. including a lot of moderate and independent voters that both candidates are going for. At the same time, the strongest moment that I felt Trump had, maybe no surprise, was in his closing statement.

Now, those closing statements are written by a lot of advisors. They're poll tested. They're memorized by candidates. We've seen it over and over again. But it's where he tried to pivot back to argue. Kamala Harris has been there in the White House for three and a half years. they've had three and a half years to fix the border. They've had three and a half years to create jobs.

Why hasn't she done it? Why hasn't she done it? That kind of, why hasn't she done it? I'm sure a lot of Donald Trump supporters liked that moment. But was that too late in the debate? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that they liked it too. But I would imagine that if you were a Donald Trump supporter, which is, you know, not necessarily an easy subjectivity for me to imagine my way into.

But I would imagine that it was extreme, you know, that you had expected him to be hammering that home for an hour and a half. I just, I feel like you'd be tearing your hair out because there were so many things that she might be vulnerable on that he just couldn't land any punches, in part because he thinks in such broad and hyperbolic and kind of like neon terms. So rather than zeroing in on specific left wing positions that she might have taken in the past, he says you're a Marxist, right? Which sounds ridiculous to people because she's obviously not a Marxist. Or he says your dad was a Marxist. Yeah, I think that that was a better moment for him at the end, but I think it just probably reminded his supporters of what they had wanted him to do for the entire debate. And, you know,

they're not going to break with him. But I imagine that they feel, at least some of them, kind of demoralized. Michelle, what were you watching for in the debate in terms of how you would have defined success because I think we we talk a lot about debates and I think we have a little bit of a difference of opinion here. So who did Trump and who did Harris need to convince tonight? Well, I mean, this is one of the tragic things about our political system, right, that they needed to convince a small sliver of the most checked out voters in the states that actually matter, right? I mean, this is no way to run a democracy, but it is what it is. I fundamentally don't believe that people whose minds aren't made up in this election are waiting to hear a certain policy

position. If you're making up your mind between voting for Kamala Harris and voting for Donald Trump, you are somebody who probably doesn't care a lot about politics or pay a lot of attention to politics. your sources of information are probably kind of not necessarily mainstream sources of information. It's probably podcasts and social media and things you hear from your friends and sort of strange notions that stick with you. And so it's very difficult if you are, you know, kind of one of the odd people that follows politics really intensely to then say what sort of policy positions are going to play with them. Nevertheless, I mean, I've written, I think one of the reasons that, you know, Donald Trump was so hulking and intimidating with Hillary Clinton. And even though I believe that most people kind of felt like that most of the postmortems were that she had won that debate, he had looked imposing and made her look rattled. That's what I think Donald Trump traffics in. He traffics in dominance. And so the fact that he was clearly, he was

clearly not the dominant figure on that stage, I could be wrong, but I've got to think that that leaves an impression with people. Michelle, I want to ask another strategy question because I went into the debate with this question on my mind, and I'm coming out of the debate with the question still on my mind, which is, can Kamala Harris win the election largely, if not totally, on a pure democratic, base turnout? Is it just about energizing Democrats the way that she has over the last several weeks or winning swing voters? You think she's getting swing voters with these answers? Well, I don't know if she's getting, I mean, I think that she is talking a lot about bipartisanship, right? I mean, the DNC was there was tons of Republicans, tons of outreach. You know, she's obviously tacked to the center on fracking.

on policing, on the border, certainly. She tried to kind of outflank Trump on the right on China. And so, you know, I mean, swing voters are idiosyncratic. How many people will be persuaded by this is hard to say. But I certainly don't think that she's running a base-only strategy. Michelle, what do you think this debate will be remembered for? I mean, I think it will be remembered for concept of a plan. It will be remembered for the talk of eating pets.

It will be remembered for his accusation of Kamala Harris wanting to perform sex change surgeries on illegal immigrants. I think it will be remembered for Trump refusing to give an answer on whether he would sign a national. abortion ban, and I think it will probably be remembered by him saying something along the lines of I'm leading on fertilization. Yep. I mean, I think he literally just said, I am a leader on IVF, I am a leader on fertilization, right? Like, he couldn't even get his own, like, bullshit right. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say that on that on this podcast, but like he couldn't even get his own, you know, his own unrealization.

is completely unrealistic, spontaneous promises right. Michelle, you have written deeply and powerfully about abortion, abortion rights, reproductive freedom in this race. If there's something memorable for me tonight, it was how effectively Harris put the question to all voters in America, which is, why would you trust Donald Trump on reproductive rights. Why would you trust him on that? Well, I just think we have never, we have never heard someone speaking like that about abortion on a national stage. Absolutely. Not even Hillary Clinton. Yep. And I think that was probably the moment when the debate

kind of changed, you know, where she, yes, was so powerful. And Donald Trump keeps repeating this lie. And I'm curious how you think this lands. Because, you know, she never even pointed out that this was a lie. And maybe she doesn't have to because I think people, know intuitively that, like, no, everybody didn't want Roe versus Weight overturned. Like, no Democrats didn't want Roversus' weight overturned. Those abortion answers were her best moments and his worst moments. She was talking about real people, having real tragedies that whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you probably know some people who have really struggled with reproduction,

with fertility, with tragic miscarriages, with health issues. If you live in states with, as she said, the Trump bans, having terrible consequences come to you. And Trump is talking about how, first he said West Virginia, then he said Virginia, where live babies are being put to death, which is just a total lie. And if you're... Right, it's a total lie. And it's, I feel like if you followed his rhetoric for a long time, you can trace the germ of it in something that the former Virginia governor said,

and then it was amplified into this kind of right-wing urban legend. Again, if you're conversant and that stuff, you know what he was talking about. It's just crazy. It crystallized it for me. If Kamala Harris spends the last four weeks of this campaign, basically arguing over and over again, you can't trust Donald Trump.

You can't trust him on abortion rights. You can't trust him on the economy. You can't trust him with Vladimir Putin. You can't trust him on the Gaza. Israel War. You can't trust them on crime. You can't trust them on tariffs, on China, on Ukraine. There is some power in that argument. I think we started seeing some of the seeds of it in this debate tonight where I think for a lot of Democrats, a lot of undecided voters, independence, late-breaking voters, they want to at least trust that their president has their interests on their

side. And boy, after nine years of Donald Trump, it's a pretty powerful. argument to say you can't trust the guy. I mean, I don't know. Do you think that that argument lands with the kind of people who've been in your focus groups? I think it lands with, we just did a focus group of Pennsylvania moderate voters who I think are looking for reasons to vote for Harris. They want a kind of permission to not vote for Donald Trump. They want to turn the page on Donald Trump. They repeated that rhetoric to me the other night when we were talking.

And yet they still weren't sold, they felt, on Kamala Harris. I think she's more likely to become president after this debate than she was going into it. But let me ask you this, Michelle, Kamala Harris is widely being declared the victor in this debate. What would you say to people who feel they still don't know enough about where she stands? I mean, I find this. So, okay, so it's 1144 as we're saying this. Maybe I need a better night's sleep before I can because I just am like, you know, I mean, there's that David Sedaris joke about, you know, you're offered.

I actually can't say this on the podcast, but I'll say something analogous. You know, somebody offers you like a sort of like maggot, infested dead rat or chicken. And you ask how the chicken is cooked. like who don't know where they, who feel like they don't know enough of where she stands. Like I cannot, it's very hard for me to empathize with somebody who doesn't know enough of where she stands to not surrender American democracy to this madman who has been, you know, not circumspect about his desire to end it. You know, nevertheless, I understand those people are out there. And what I'm hoping, I would first of all say, you know, watch the debate. and hopefully she will continue in the next few weeks to give those people more and more ways to hopefully get to yes.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Michelle, so right after the debate, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamal Harris. Wait, are you kidding? Are you serious? She signed the post Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady. There's a great image. Wait, is this happened?

And I missed this? It happened as we were, I think as we were taping. Here's the image if you can see it. Oh my God. That is just like the cherry on the top of the Sunday. Can this night get better? I think we knew it was coming, right? But it like is perfectly timed.

It really is something. What does the Taylor Swift endorsement mean, do you think? Big thing, small thing matters to people already support her? I think it's big. You are now going to have a bunch of these swifties who get really deep into politics, who get really deep into Kamala Harris. you know, who are, you know, not just voting, but registering other people to vote.

I mean, this is just, I don't think that there is a more influential, I can't think of a more influential endorsement in the entire country. I think you're right. And the swing voters, the undecided voters, the people who aren't paying close attention to the news, they do pay a lot of attention to Taylor Swift or at least know a couple of our songs. These are the kind of things that break through.

We don't see a lot of debates. where a candidate does herself a world of good and her opponent, a world of hurt. There still may be questions about who Kamala Harris is, but there's no question going into this debate and coming out of it. She's just standing a lot stronger. Yeah, absolutely, and I'm sleeping a lot better.

Michelle, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Bishaka, Fibbe, Fibylette, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota.

The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.