The Press Box - Biden-Trump Debate Instant Reaction

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker react to the first presidential debate of the 2020 election with Trump and Biden. They offer their impressions and reactions, as well as predictions for the upcoming debates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

uh sir sir mr shoemaker if i may mr shoemaker your side agreed to the rules to this debate beforehand hello media consumers this is the press box brian curtis and david shoemaker here with your instant reaction to the first debate between donald trump and joe biden such as it was let's jump right in david what was your first impression of that mess oh man my first impression or my last impression. They're kind of the same probably, I'm guessing. That was a mess, man. That was a mess. The whole thing made me so uncomfortable that I feel really ill-equipped to talk about it right now, although I will say, if anything is booing my spirits. It's that the chorus on Fox News right now is saying, I'm not sure if either one changed. I'm not sure if anyone's minds were changed

on either side over and over again, which means I believe when graded on the curve that Joe Biden just mop the floor with President Trump today. That's what you say when you lose. I'm not sure anybody's minds were changed by this debate tonight. Let's dispense with both sides of them right away. This debate was a huge mess because Donald Trump came in determined to hijack the debate. Sure. To go crazy, to talk over everybody, talk over the moderator, talk over Biden. and he executed his plan.

To perfection. He did this. He did this. This was all Donald Trump's idea. And you watched Biden in some of those exchanges and he's in a terrible position, right? Because if you let Trump rant and sort of have the last word, then he winds up getting in all these random shots at Hunter Biden or whatever he's doing. And you leave them in answer.

So then Joe Biden has to answer the thing. So then you just get this incredible word salad. that our old colleague, Alex Papademus, said, this is like if Robert Altman's drug of choice was meth, which I loved. Yeah, I, I'm kind of of two minds about this, actually. Watching it, I totally agree with what you just said. But I do think that there's like,

I do think that there's a case that by not responding, angrily or not trying to talk over him. Biden actually made a really canny move, which is to say Trump's like lunatic rants are not part of what makes him popular, right? I mean, at least not with anybody who's going to be helping decide this election. And by letting him just go out there on a limb, I mean, when he's, when he's yelling over Joe Biden and talking about Hunter, quick sidebar, it cannot be overstated how amazing it is, that Donald Trump cares more about Hunter Biden than he does about the coronavirus. I mean, it's just amazing. But when he's shouting over Joe Biden, that's effective. When he gets, when he gets the runway to go out there and just try to put together a

coherent thought about Hunter Biden, that is not a man you want as your president. I find it really hard to imagine that that anything resembling a swing voter would be, would look upon that kind of seen positively. So I think that Biden did a good job getting out of the way. And actually when he engaged with any specificity and any of the crazy stuff that Trump said, when they were talking about ballots and he was like, well, no, you just have to have it postmarked by election day. And if it comes in, that's a mugs game. He should not be engaging in the details of Trump's idiocy. I mean, whatever conspiracy theory he's on in that moment. I don't think he should be engaged in that many details in general. I mean, I think, but he should let Trump,

rant to some extent. As long as he appears, the tough thing with Biden throughout the night, and we'll get to this, was you have to somehow be engaged, even when Trump is doing Trump. Yes. You can't just let him bully you on the stage.

That doesn't work. And obviously Biden got talking points before this debate. It was really clear that says, when Donald Trump is attacking you or trying to bully you, just answer every time. Don't ever let a charge go answer.

If he mentions Hunter Biden's name, you say that is not true, period, every single time. I think we can pull this apart in two ways, the hijacking of the debate. Number one, as you said, this seems like a really weird strategy to try to close a fairly large deficit in this election in October to just completely go in there and try to yell your way back into the election and hijack the debate. I think that's a, it sounds like a really, really bad strategy. The second thing, though, that I want to bring up.

to you is that this whole idea as we sit here tonight it seems to me that the debate is potentially broken as an institution that Donald Trump has done what he's done with so many things which is he comes in and says you you expect me

you you naive person you to play by the rules to honor your norms and I'm just going to change the rules right I'm not going to let him speak for two minutes I'm not going to let the moderator ask the questions I'm not going to do anything and I'm going to try to win by just destroying the institution, in this case, the presidential

debates. So because we have two more of these between these two and one more between the vice presidential cants, what do we do for the next couple of weeks with this institution? Well, the vice presidential one is going to be super interesting because, I mean, just the reaction to it. I think we can almost script it out now, but are people going to, look at it and say take from that now this is this is the only debate of substance so we're going to actually there's a lot to be gleaned from it we're going to take this one seriously and i'm speaking of voters in general in some sort of vague way but or are they going to look at that and just be like you know this is boring and change the channel you know i mean is this is not what a debate's supposed

to be we like you said the debate's broken we like it broken you know let's get trump back up there the other two presidential debates are going to be more of this i mean a sure of, you know, actually having some apparatus to cut mics when you're not supposed to be speaking. And I'm guessing that neither party, I mean, neither campaign would agree to those terms. I don't see how a debate could be more on the rails, if that's an effective turn or phrase, than it was tonight. You're right. I mean, if Trump's just going to talk over everybody.

And listen, it doesn't, again, I don't think this reflects well on him. It does not reflect well on the leader of the free war. world to be getting in a slap fight with Chris Wallace, you know, and losing, you know, I mean, it doesn't, it's not, I don't know that, that, listen, if the, I mean, the plan was certainly to disrupt, right, and he accomplished that, but on a more granular level, he looked like such a dope doing it, you know, I mean, and I know that this, that's not what the, this is not a time from, you know, any sort of certainty or confidence or anything. But man, I mean, I thought that there was certainly a version of events where Trump did exactly what he did. And if Biden had reacted

differently, it would have felt like a huge loss for Biden. But I think Biden did just enough. He started off the debate responding to some of these outbursts with the old Biden gaffa, the one that, you know, the chuckle that we mentioned from his vice presidential debate debating. But then, and I was watching with my wife who was not, not compelled by the laugh. She was like, that's like, that's a Clinton move, a Hillary Clinton move. Like, you got to come at him. You got to go.

And then he started going at him. You know, he started just directly responding either at minimum saying that's a lie, but more often saying, like, what does this loser think he's doing? You know, and things like that. And it sounds funny because in a normal podcast, you would be saying that as a comic exaggeration. That is basically what Joe Biden. said. I wrote down a few of them, will you shut up, man? Do you have any idea what this clown is doing? It's hard to get any word in with this clown. Yeah. Keep yapping, man. Yeah. That is something the former

vice president of United States said to the current president of the United States tonight during a debate. And that, and those lines were not the most memorable lines. Think about that for a second. I mean, you could see throughout that Trump, I mean, I don't know if they were as effective and, you know, if Trump heard them specifically and reacted to them. But you could tell throughout the night Trump was reacting to Biden in a way that you don't normally see him react. Like he was, he felt challenged by, and not by anything that he said. I think content-wise, Trump thought that he had a winning argument, even though he didn't

on just about every point or, you know, had a winning, had a way to turn it in his favor. But he felt, you could just see it. He felt, he felt challenged. He felt like his manhood was challenged while he was up there. and every every twist of his face just scream that out loud. So I think Biden's plan was really interesting tonight. I thought he looked a little rickety during that first segment, which was about the Supreme Court.

He was alternating between the guffawing strategy and also this kind of just look of shock where he's looking on the split screen TV over at Trump, like he's just seen this horrible, you know, awful thing happening, which is not a really great just facial gesture during a presidential debate. But when he recovered his footing, his plan was something like this, I think.

Focus as much as possible on pocketbook middle class issues, working a bunch of obviously pre-planned scripted lines that he had come up with. And as many times as he could, stop talking to Trump and directly address the camera, which is a very venerable Biden trick, right? Here's the deal, folks. I'm going to look into the camera,

and I am going to try to make this about you and me as much as possible and not that guy over there. You know what the weirdest part about that technique was, and maybe this isn't weird. Maybe this is something that a psychologist would explain is totally right. But it worked. When he looked into the camera and started talking, it was like someone started, you know, playing the flute. And Donald Trump just started dancing silently. And I'm like, it was, it was, he shut up, you know. He shut up when he started talking to the camera.

And that, I mean, who knows? to me that underlined the poignancy of what he was doing because the message of course is I'm talking to you the voter the American you know the American citizen and you know all this mumbo jumbo that's going on up here is sort of secondary but it's also there's also this it sort of represents the fact that like that line of communication can cut through everything else right and and you know maybe Trump thought it was it was look bad if he was shouting over a direct address to the American people. I think probably it was more of a reactor. I mean, a reactive like he's not talking to me. So I don't have any of the yell about

moment, reaction. But yeah, I mean, Trump probably would have done better to be yelling over that stuff too. It's literally the oldest and most basic form of political communication. I am going to look you in the eye, potential voter, and I am going to connect with you. And I am going to tell you what my plan and my presidency would mean to you. Like that's, that's what's so funny about Joe Biden, right? He is the oldest school politician humanly possible.

I know Donald Trump like doesn't use email. Donald Trump is a creature of Twitter and television, those kinds of things. Joe Biden is not, Joe Biden is like a creature of, of the soapbox. You know, I'm going to stand here and I'm going to point at you and I'm going to tell you this.

And that was his trick tonight, right? that was his move. Yeah. I will say he was a lot better when he got to speak first, which I think he did during the even numbered segments tonight. Okay. Because he would get to go first and he would get to sort of lay out, you know, what was clearly a, if not rehearsed, a pretty practiced, you know, bill of particulars against

Trump, get his lines off, right? When Trump went first, Biden felt like he was just on his heels. And it always took him like 30 seconds to recover because, as you said, sometimes he would take the bait and address what Trump had just said, and sometimes he would just look just kind of discombobulated. But he did, when he went first, he was at his best, I thought. Yeah. There was also this whole notion of senior moments and Biden's, you know, mental deterioration that the Trump people tried to pedal. The only time I saw that tonight, look, Biden is clearly slower than he was four and eight years ago, right?

He has slowed down some. Or eight and 12, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I only saw him really get confused in that second to last segment where Wallace and Trump were talking about the Green New Deal and Biden comes back and it sounds like Biden is supporting the Green New Deal. But, of course, he doesn't. And then he kind of backtracked. And that other than that, I didn't see too many moments like that. No, I mean, I think that's right.

He's a little bit slower than he was. And that's, you know, I mean, it's not ideal. And that's not what you want. But I don't think that he seemed like he was a lot slower than his competition tonight. You know, I mean, he, he was, he was up to the, he seemed like he was up to the task. You know, I think there's, there's little things that he needs to really be wary of moving forward. One is it like, he has this sort of move. You talked about the way he looked wide, he stared wide-eyed at the camera when Trump was talking.

The wide-eyed was better than the move where he sort of nods his head and leans forward. And it almost looks like he's sort of like dozing, you know, and he's like, and I think the move, I think the idea is that he looks like he is, he's being serious, right? He is like listening seriously. It looks like he, it looks like he's asleep. He doesn't need to be doing that.

Like that's a bad, that's just a bad look for him. There's also, like every time that he said, and by the way, it goes bad. Someone needs to get in, just get in front of him. He is,

this is again, specificity going into details is not, does not, I don't think really behoove anybody in this debate. I think it's a given that we, I mean, we, we understand, it's baked in that Joe Biden understands more things than Donald Trump. Maybe not. Maybe, maybe I'm crazy. But every time he would go on a tangent, he always prefaces it with, and by the way, and whatever, almost every time, the thing that was happening before and by the way,

was much more important than the thing that came after it, right? He was like getting to a point. And then he'd be like, and by the way, and make another totally fine point. But you did, you made, we lost the first point in the process, right? And the other, and the secondary point and was always secondaries, much smaller. So, you know, can I, can I just say one thing? Sure. You know how in football, we talk about one cut running backs? Yes.

You know, like they're good at making one cut. Biden is a one cut presidential candidate. Yes. Yes. You just hit the hole. You just hit the hole and go. Yeah. You can't be Barry Sanders, Joe Biden.

No. You're more like Emmett Smith. You know, you just, just run it against. And being like Emmett Smith is totally fine. Yeah, no, and he's, he's, I mean, between his, I mean, he seemed like he was totally cogent and, you know, all the conspiracy theories about his mental capacity seemed totally overblown. But for whatever reason, when he gets to the second point, the third point, it's not even that, like, you or I might be able to follow where he's going. But it's not, I think a lot of voters probably will to, but it's just not necessary.

You make the point that you want to make against President Trump. I mean, and he got to the point. He got to the point a few times. but almost every time he and and usually that was a really succinct point he doesn't have a plan he hasn't done anything you know i mean he's basically taken just like the the operations of government i mean trump has done minimally more than just sort of like turning on the lights and let his and and letting his you know attaches do their jobs and and and he talks about it like he's you know fDR and and i think that that's

When he makes those sort of direct points, it's effective, you know? And the one big thing that I thought he did well, and obviously didn't harp on a lot, I'm guessing this is going to come back, is talking about the Trump tax cuts, not just in terms of the tax cuts that Trump passed, but the kind of tax cuts that help Trump, right? I mean, they kind of like leave that definition open. Anytime you can, I mean, Trump loves branding stuff with his own name. I think this is a great opportunity for Biden to brand. ransom negative things with his name.

I totally agree with what you said about Biden trying to do too many things. He had this one part. Remember when he said this, under this president, we've become sicker, weaker, poor, and more violent.

And I was like, wow, that's a good line. And then Biden decided to define how we had become sicker, weaker, poor, and more violent individually. Websters defines more comfortable.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, no, no, no. We didn't need that. Funniest thing about Biden's performance to me, David,

it was a classic Biden performance in every way, except it was PG-13 Biden. Oh, yeah. Like they just said, okay, you do everything you did against Paul Ryan, except you didn't call Paul Ryan a clown. You're allowed to call Donald Trump a clown tonight.

You're allowed to just belittle Donald Trump in a way. It was almost like they just changed the rating of the movie. Yeah. That was entertaining to me. Let's talk a little bit about Donald Trump, if we can. His plan, if there was one, was to interrupt constantly and try to keep Biden off kilter with really random attacks. Let us list some of them, making fun of Biden for wearing too big of a coronavirus mask.

That was actually something that was that accusing Biden of playing too much golf, contra Trump, apparently, who plays just the right amount of golf, saying that Biden wasn't smart. That took me back. He's talking about where Biden graduated in his law class at Syracuse. So we expected like Hunter Biden, we expected the crime bill to come up tonight. But his whole thing was I am going to just throw as many random attacks at you and hope that you sort of stumble and maybe take the bait, right?

And that's the plan. That's it. Yeah. I mean, I think the mask thing had come up in rallies. And certainly a lot of his plan was, you know, a plan that he's been, you know, working out in public for a long time. You know, he's been, he's been workshopping. well, you know, he has this tick that he's had for the long, I mean, probably for as long as he's been, at least for the past four years, where his MO is that the way to get people, let's say, like, the way to get people in Ohio to vote for him, he thinks is to say people in Ohio like me, right? The way, the way, the way to, like, secure any voting block or to like prove anything is just to say that a piece of it is true. And then the rest, I guess, we'll fall. I mean, that's sort of his business plan, you know, his business model, too. And then he did, you know, at the, at the, at the,

Towards the end, he took on the swamp. And that's obviously been something that he's been dealing with for a long time. I mean, he's been talking about for a long time. It's, I mean, you, you, first of all, I mean, it just makes him look like such a baby, right? Oh, here's the quote. I had to fight both flanks behind me and above, which was a really nice turn of phrase for President Trump, right? Yeah, he wrote that. But he's such a freaking baby, man.

I mean, he's like his, it's, his, his platform four years ago was drain the swamp. And his platform basically now is like, the swamp has been mean to me. The swamp has bullied me. You know, I mean, like, there's not like, I don't even understand. Like, he just complains about it. Like, there's not like, there's no verdict, you know. Complain the swamp. Yeah.

We should make t-shirts. But yeah, he did that. And then, and then, listen, he was, he was excited and energetic about discussing law and order, which I'm sure we've discussed, I know we've discussed law and order in presidential debates as far back as we've been alive, but law and order as a, as like a discreet, like section of the debate

just seemed a little bit bizarre. I'm not sure. Anyway, that was definitely, it felt really odd. That was that part of, part of Trump's plan was definitely to turn the debate towards law and order. The more time they spent there,

I think, at least the more comfortable and kind of commanding he looked. And I thought that that was. go ahead. Well, I just have a note about law and order because Trump had this rhetorical move where he says, my opponent will not say the words

law and order. He will not say he believes in law and order. And then they go to Joe Biden and he said, well, I believe in law and order with justice. And then 30 seconds later, Donald Trump says, my opponent won't say the words law and order

because he'll lose his radical left supporters. He had just said it. Yeah. Like talk about senior moments. like you're you just you're just regurgitating the script like joe biden had just said those words fairly dramatically at the challenge of donald trump yeah law and order in that order and don't know what his next uh what his next line of attack there was so he just repeated it yeah that was really bizarre um but he you know i think he kind of did it on purpose he's he's trying

I mean, the same with Hunter Biden was the best example. Yeah. Where he just kept saying the same thing over and over again, even after, you know, it was, it was answered and the debate tried to move on. Chris Wallace tried to move on. He kept, you know, going back to the same thing. I mean, I think that you said that he was saying, you know, going after Biden with really just kind of bizarre attacks, and they were bizarre attacks.

But the entire, I mean, more so than any other weird moment in this presidency, this the night that it became really clear that, and we know he doesn't like the mainstream media or like just media in general, this is the night where it became clear that Trump like is, like only gets his news from conspiracy websites, right? I mean, the only things that he seems to care about are like the stock market and like just wacko conspiracies. And, um, you know, a lot of the stuff, I mean, and God, I mean, I guess there's some other websites too, uh, certainly that proud boys stand back, stand by and stand back, whatever line is not going to age well.

Do we want to get into that? We want to take a moment to talk about that? Yeah, let's go. So it's actually a very clever question by Chris Wallace, the moderator, because he pointed out that Trump is constantly trying to tell Joe Biden to denounce Antifa. Antifa has

Antiva has nothing to do with Joe Biden at all, but he's telling him you must denounce Antifa. So Chris Wallace turns out around and says, Donald Trump, will you denounce white supremacist. And Trump kind of babbles and babbles and babbles. And then he says, well, name a group.

Who are you talking about? Apparently the category white supremacist was not, it was too broad for Trump to just completely write off right as a class. So the proud boys comes up. And Donald Trump told them to

stand back and stand by. Now, does that sound like somebody who is denouncing the out boys? It does not. And all, and knowing abs, I mean, I'm just going to proceed as if stand back and standby is a thing that just came out of his head and does not have some sort of bizarre historical connotation.

But it sounds like something that has a bizarre historical connotation that is almost certainly racist, right? Doesn't it sound like a thing? I mean, like it, like it sounds like a thing. We're going to find some sheriff or somebody said that in the last, you know, 50 years ago. Yes. It sounds like it sounds like. We're going to find some very unflattering context here in the next 20 minutes.

I mean, it's unbler. I mean, you can almost read, if you want to be generous to the president, you can read, you can read his, that weird stand back and stand. The unwillingness just to say, yes, I, you know, disavow white supremacy or whatever, as just a sort of general intransigence. But, I mean, he's, how we've not, how we've not. we were at this point now, four years and more, to his, you know, public life. And he's still incapable of saying this really basic thing.

I know. Like racism is bad. The only time he mentioned, he had to ask a question about racism and pivoted to law and order before the law and order segment of the debate. And then, and the only time he, I think he said, he taught, oh, yeah, Chris Watts asked him if he believed in institutional racism or whatever in the United States. and he said and he talked about how the racial sensitivity training that he's now outlawed in the government is itself racist. Like that was the only time he said racist. At least Joe Biden, I mean, congratulations to Joe Biden for actually being willing to say, I don't know if he called him a racist, but he certainly said that he was, you know, he stoked racist hatred and racist division.

I mean, he said it as bad as directly as he could. I'm pretty sure he did call him a racist. And you notice when Wallace teat up that. question. He was like, well, go ahead and denounce him. Right. Let's do it right here, which is, which is a great debating trick. Now, Trump could, because it's really hard to move on from that one, right? It's much harder to move on than when Biden squirmed away from, do you endorse court packing or endorse ending the filibuster, which he did not answer tonight at all, right? Yeah. It is, will you denounce the white supremacist? And Biden said, come on, let's do it. Let's do it.

And Trump did not do it. He told them to stand back and stand by. that is I just that's something and that and that to me if anything will be the sound bite that will go around television tonight you know that because that will be another one of those inhale moments where you're like oh wow oh wow and he's going to get asked about that I mean we've seen that I don't know how much it really affects his general standing but right now we're we're everybody's eyes are on a very specific a very narrow slice of the vote of the electorate right and and um you I hate to give too much credit to the folks on Fox News, but I don't know that a lot of minds were changed. At least Trump didn't change any minds tonight. I find it impossible to believe that he changed anybody's mind. And it's Trump's job to change minds. Because he's behind in the polls.

Yes. Yes. Trump has a mandate to change minds. Yeah. These are very different goals for the two people here. Joe Biden, we saw and we have seen a poll after poll has a very stable lead, not only in the popular vote, but in the swing states in the Midwest that he needs to win, right? A couple of really good polls from Pennsylvania in the last 24 hours for him,

which is the one that seemed to lag behind the others. So Donald Trump needed to do something. And I'm not sure if he did it. I do want to ask you about Chris Wallace, the lucky moderator of tonight's debate. Were you watching one of the feeds where the anchor threw it to Chris Wallace at the beginning of the debate? And we got like five or six panic seconds.

Yes. Wallace was just staying hysteria at the camera. Yeah. That was probably a bad start. Then right near the top of the debate, I wrote down Chris Wallace saying, Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate. Now, David, is it a good sign when you have to tell one of the candidates that at the top of the debate?

Chris Wallace was, I commend him for his decorum. He was about a second away from getting in probably. I mean, it felt like he was about a second away from getting in what would have probably been the biggest like the biggest gotcha of the debate which is when he was just like your campaign agreed to these terms and if you can't manage them that probably says more about you than it does about what's going on in this debate right now right I mean like I know that Trump was just going to talk over them whatever happened it doesn't really matter so they probably didn't even like no one had a conversation with Trump about the terms of the debate like let's certainly not but

like Trump's sitting there as if like oh he's like how was I supposed to it? Like, I never agree to that. Like, I'm just going to talk whatever I want. It's just like, well, you can't, like, you can't run your campaign. You can't run a White House. You certainly can't run a country. We've seen you can't run the Trump organization. You know, it's like, it's just so silly.

And like I said, getting into it with Chris Wallace. I mean, he puts Chris Wallace in a position of having to defend his turf, you know? I mean, it's like, it's sort of not because, it's unbecoming of everyone involved. And especially when it just, there was times that were just dragged on and on and on. Trump, I mean, it's just, it's a weird, it's just a very weird decision for Trump to kind of go in that hard on that. A great tweet from the baseball writer Joe Shee in. Chris Wallace has gone full on Zoom kindergarten teacher. Can confirm that that is an accurate analogy. From 538's Claire Malone, Chris Wallace now feels the pain of women in meetings.

I enjoyed that. There was also this time where Chris Wallace would be trying to ask Trump a nice question or basically, set up Trump to talk about something that Trump wanted to talk about. Oh yeah. Which Trump was still interrupting. So Alex Perrine summed it up this way. Mr. President, please shut up. I'm trying to pitch you a softball. Which I thought was really funny.

Do we think Chris Wallace did a bad job tonight or did he do about as good a job as you can do when somebody, when the president of the United States is just yelling and not playing by even the, barest minimum of the rules. I mean, I think that if this had been a really standard debate, we would probably be sitting here taking exception to the law and order segment of the debate. Or, you know, I think Chris Wallace made the statement that the economy is currently recovering

faster than expected. You know, there were a couple of lines like that where it's, you know, stripes sort of shown through. but I think overall he did really well. And I'm not sure that anybody else in his position could have done any better, or at least could have done as well with probably as little blowback as well else is going to end up getting. And part of that has to do with the ideology of the network he works for.

I agree. I think that's right to use the catchphrase of the press box. because I don't know how many anchors. There are some of them, no doubt, but I don't know how many anchors when faced with the Trump onslaught would have as quickly as he did. And I'm thinking it took him,

what do you think, like 10 minutes, maybe mostly most of that first segment to start to just stand up to the president of the United States on live television and say, you can't do this. You have to, Mr. President, you have to stop literally chastising him

and asking him to play by the rules. I don't think, many, I think many moderators would have said, excuse me, sir, excuse me, sir, and just sort of let Trump run all over them. And I think there's a tiny handful that would have done that. So I do, I do give him credit for doing that. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next debates because I don't think, I mean, I think people are going to watch this debate, the next, you know, the people who are going to be emceeing the future ones, and they're going to say, well, sitting back is not an option. I mean, because they're, because if,

If they just let Trump, you just let Trump go, then there wouldn't have, there wouldn't have been a second question in the debate. You know, I mean, there's got to be some point where you, where you actually have to intervene. But yeah, I mean, I think he did all right. I think he did all right. And I think that, you know, it's hard. I think he could have probably come to, I think he could have been more engaged with facts, you know. I think he could have been a little bit louder or more forthcoming about, you know, some of the, some of the provably wrong things that Trump said.

But as far as just like maintaining whatever, law and order, if you want to go there, as best as much as it was possible, I think he did totally fine. Can you imagine if you're one of the moderators of the upcoming debates? Like what are you thinking tonight? I mean, you've got to be like, oh my God. like I am supposed to walk in there and try to deal with this. And by the way, Chris, Chris Wallace's quote before this debate was, he wants to stay as invisible as possible.

If I've done my job right, at the end of the night, people will say that was a great debate. Who was the moderator? Do you think anybody will be saying that tonight about this debate? Absolutely not. No way. No way. Not at all.

I mean, he was, listen, like I said, he did a good job. And I'm, and I'm, um, I don't know if he did a good job. I think he did. I don't know if it was possible to do a good job, right? I think he did. Yeah. I think he turned chicken shit into chicken salad tonight.

I mean, that's, I just don't know. I don't know what, and I don't know what else he was supposed to do. I don't think that anybody's going to say who was the moderator of the debate, but I do think that there's going to be a lot less carping about, about who the moderator of the debate tomorrow than there would be if it were anybody else. But, but you know what was really funny? There was somebody put up a Brian Kilmead tweet during the debate who, was taking shots.

Really? Chris Wallace. It looks like two versus one at times tonight. Oh my God. And, you know, so that's going to be really interesting too. If Chris Wallace's own Fox pals are not absolutely in support of him.

By the way, great tweet by Rachel Maddow. Perhaps we could also debate by mail. I thought that was pretty funny. A couple of notes to end you with in the pod here, David. Surreal moment of the night. Trump pulling the mask out of his pocket. to show that he had a mask.

Oh my God, yeah. When his enthusiasm for masks was being questioned, like, oh, I have something right here that I'd like to show you. Pulls it out, does not put it on, and then criticizes Biden for wearing his mask too much. Folks, there is no such thing as wearing a mask too much during the coronavirus. My God. This was the kind of weird media moment of the night. Michael Grinbaum of the New York Times reported that Chris Christie, who is helping Trump run his debate prep, would also be an on-air analyst tonight for ABC News.

Wow. So Chris Christie prepping Trump and then grading the debate on television. Flashback to 1980 for you press junkies. George F. Will secretly coached Ronald Reagan during his debate and then went on the very same network and judged that Reagan had had a good debate. That was a huge scandal at the time. Now we're just doing it in the open. Yeah.

It's just like, oh, well, you know, Chris Christie, go on up there. the sunny side up take on the debate, okay? Okay. The sunny side down was George Stephanopoulos, who I heard on ABC saying that was the worst debate he'd ever seen in his lifetime. Here's sunny side up from David from, never Trump or and pundit. This is a great debate.

It's fabulously psychologically revealing. Everything voters need to know, it's all on view. One man is a little faded from what he was. The other is a monster. So that is, do you buy the positive take on the debate? I think that that's pretty right. I'm not sure.

It's impossible to predict, you know, what we're going to be talking about a week from now when we look back. But I think that, yeah, I mean, I don't think that Trump, I mean, I don't know, I mean, I don't know how anyone could watch this and say take away,

really much else than the fact that our president is just, all of his energy is reserved for just like yelling at the monitor when he has a conspiracy website pulled up on his, on his computer. Like, I don't, it's, it's, well, there was, I got to bring up a couple of things before we get out of here. One, at the very end, when he pulled the full Costanza and came back with the, we had the, the comeback about calling, about the calling soldiers losers thing. He was like, I have to respond to this thing.

And it was like a whole question before that Biden had talked about what Trump had called, Trump's reported remarks about soldiers. One other thing, a great Trump highlight where he was talking about his taxes and his financial situation. And by the way, Biden could have gone a lot harder on that. And so could, so could have Wallace. But what Trump's great line was, I'm totally under leveraged because the assets are very good, totally under leveraged, I think is going to just, I mean, I don't know if that's a metaphor for the whole debate. But totally under, if you ever find yourself having to say, I'm totally under leveraged,

I think there might be a problem. I am looking at one instant poll, David, at CBS, among debate watchers. These are people who watch the debate, 48% Biden, 41% Trump, which is not terribly far away from a bunch of presidential polls we've seen lately. So keep that in mind, and they'll probably be others. John Meacham moment of the night. You know, John Meacham, form editor newsweek? Of course. esteemed historian. I was kind of, we always kind of wait for him to emerge from the library with his take. Here we go.

It's very Meachemey. No hyperbole. The incumbent's behavior this evening is the lowest moment in the history of the presidency since Andrew Johnson's racist state papers. That is the John Meacham take of the evening. He has, he has reached back into history and found the worst moment in the presidency before tonight. I think we welcome Meacham to the resistance a couple months ago.

As soon as he probably, As soon as he decided to start making himself public on MSNBC again, I feel like he was, he had already decided we were at the end of history. And, and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, David, best accidentally correct media soundbite,

Tucker Carlson on Fox News before the debate called Donald Trump quote and I'm, I'm relying on a tweet here, so I hope this is right, an instinctive predator. An instinctive predator. An instinctive predator. now I'm not sure that is a way to compliment the current president of the United States

but if there's anything Donald Trump showed tonight during an hour and a half in front of the nation it is that he is an instinctive predator unbelievable he is David Chewaker I'm Brian Curtis Research by Chris Almeida production magic by Erica Servantes I want you to I want to encourage you excuse me I had my my little moment there to check out our pal Bakari sellers is live reaction to the debate. You know, he's going to be saying something interesting. And I can't wait to figure out what his take about this whole strange, hot mess of an evening. We'll clean it all up Thursday on a new edition of the press box.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.