What A Day - Presidential Interruption

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

The first presidential debate took place in Cleveland last night. It was an extremely bumpy ride, with Trump failing to condemn white supremacy and suggesting once again he might not accept the election results. We discuss the highlights and lowlights of a night that was almost all lowlights. And in headlines: Kentucky’s AG to release grand jury proceedings from Breonna Taylor’s case, the UK and Canada impose sanctions on Belarusian officials, and David Attenborough kills it on Instagram.

It's Wednesday, September 30th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Reznik, and this is What A Day with a special episode that's actually moderated by Chris Wallace. Yeah, you won't hear him because he likes to stay in the background, but he is here on our Zoom. Chris, thank you in advance for not saying anything at all during today's ep. Yeah, I appreciate it when you get paid to do nothing. On today's show, the first presidential debate.

Yikes. Then some headlines. Sir? Chris, that was the worst part of Obama. Let me ask my question well i'll ask joe i i know individual mandate was the most unpopular aspect of obamacare i got rid of it i'd like you to we will protect people i'm the moderator of this debate and i would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer go ahead oh what a nightmare all right so that was chris wallace and donald trump i think just yelling at each other yes and that about sums it up so last night you can answer. Go ahead. What a nightmare. All right. So that was Chris Wallace and Donald Trump,

I think, just yelling at each other. Yes. And that about sums it up. So last night, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and President Trump faced off in Cleveland, Ohio, for the first of their three debates. Congrats to everyone at home. You are one third of the way there. And there was quite a backdrop of events going into the night. The coronavirus pandemic, which has now taken the lives of over 200,000 Americans, is still very much out of control with recent upticks in many states, plus some concerning new clusters in New York City. Next, there's the New York Times bombshell story on Trump not paying his taxes, a story that Trump denies, as well as Biden and Harris dropping their own tax returns just hours before the debate as a contrast. Add to that a

contentious Supreme Court nomination, the great earpiece saga of 2020. And for some reason, Disney announced that they are making another Lion King. Yeah, as if our lives aren't terrible enough in 2020. And the night included discussion, I guess if you could call it that of all of these things and more minus Lion King. But before we get into the details of all of it, we have to start with an overall impression. Akilah, do you want to go first? I don't want to go, but I'm going to. I have a lot of thoughts. I honestly wish I could go back in time to 2016 with just like a video of the debate and show people how lousy 2020 ends up being. The debate was an embarrassment. If someone started playing, you know, like, I'm proud to be an American right now, I'd tell them to turn that shit down.

Chris Wallace was a piss poor moderator. And I almost felt bad for him because Trump was so erratic and unhinged that he couldn't even get a word in edgewise. But then when he did get a word in edgewise, he said the word blacks to mean black people, which is one, like incorrect according to the AP style guide and also to black people everywhere. But two, it's 2020. So like, get your shit together. You had time to prepare for this. If you tuned in because you actually wanted to hear where the candidates stand on the issues, you didn't really get that either. Donald Trump failed to produce a health care plan or really any vision for the future at all, and essentially just yelled like an abusive husband about how greedy he is for 90 minutes. Joe Biden was coherent and present, but we hardly got to

hear from him the entire time because of the bumbling clownery that was happening at the podium beside him. Yeah, it was a mess. And I feel bad for the people transcribing it, for one thing. It did feel like a farce for much of it and made me feel bad to be alive. It was extremely out of control. And, you know, I'm not totally sure what could be done differently in order to prevent that from happening, because it's sort of the easiest play for Trump, right? To just spew and spew until the people that are listening are tired of it and maybe stop paying attention, which would be bad. In those moments, particularly at the beginning. It became hard to get a sense of what anyone was saying, frankly. But like we said on the show yesterday, it's sort of unclear how many voters were waiting for this to make their choice.

And I also think that, you know, for better or worse, a lot of what was said gets packaged into smaller, maybe more intelligible clips for people later on. All that being said, it's important to try to parse what we can at this moment with our own heads still spinning. So let's begin with a question posed to the president about white supremacy and militia violence. Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland. Are you prepared to do that? I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing. So what are you saying? I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace. Then do it, sir. Do it. Say it. Do you want to call him? What do you want

to call him? Give me a name. Give me a me a white supremacist and white supremacist and right proud boys stand back and stand by but i'll tell you what i'll tell you what somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem this is a left bi director this is a left wing so as we all witnessed donald trump failed to condemn white supremacist violence, which has been deemed the biggest domestic terror threat to America by Trump's own FBI director and the Department of Homeland Security, which is a travesty. And anyone who supports Donald Trump should frankly be ashamed. But based on responses from the Proud Boys on Twitter last night, they're not.

In fact, they're emboldened and are embracing Trump's instructions to, quote, stand back and stand by. It's a fucking joke at this point, and I'd be ashamed of myself if I didn't say so. Yeah, and in other dangerous remarks that came at the end of the debate, Trump also again said he might not accept the election results, which is not new, but remains to be quite bad. Yeah, and in that section, he also said that neither should his supporters, which is some real dictatorship from the man who doesn't even pay taxes in this country. Joe Biden, in contrast, said that violence is never the answer at protests, to which Trump officially complained that all protest is violent and that people were, quote, being killed all over the place, which is not based in reality so much as it is a talking point on your brain the unbelievable gall to bring up violence at protests when the GOP has consistently lauded Kyle Rittenhouse, who used an illegally possessed gun to kill two protesters as a hero. We knew this race and violence section was going to be horseshit, and we were right. But maybe the hottest topic of the night, and one that Trump really has no

like to stand on, was COVID-19, the pandemic that is seemingly endless in this country, because there has been no federal leadership to help curb the spread. So Gideon, what did they have to say? Yeah, so we have heard Biden and Trump separately, of course, talk about the pandemic, but this was our first opportunity to see them address it to each other. And Trump didn't come up with any better answers than he had in the past on this. At one point when Biden talked about the overwhelming amount of death that we have seen, Trump tried to question his intelligence on issues like masks and the development of a vaccine. Biden cited the scientists and officials in Trump's own administration while Trump continued to question them. When Biden tried to connect the economic

crisis of COVID to the public health crisis, Trump at one point said that he had brought back Big Ten football, which is beside the point, but very funny to imagine Trump watching that. And voters, to be clear, do not like how Trump has responded, or maybe better put, not responded to the pandemic. And it's one of the clear and consistent aspects of his presidency that this election remains a referendum on. And in this stretch of the debate, there wasn't anything new or reassuring about how this would get handled, which amounts to a failure. Here's a clip from Biden from the section. 200,000 dead. As you said, over 7 million infected in the United States. Here's a clip from Biden from this section. about between 750 and 1,000 people today are dying. When he was presented with that number, he said, it is what it is.

Well, it is what it is because you are who you are. That's why it is. The president has no plan. He hasn't laid out anything. He knew all the way back in February how serious this crisis was. He knew it was a deadly disease. What did he do? He's on tape, he's acknowledging

he knew it. He said he didn't tell us or give people a warning of it because he didn't want to panic the American people. You don't panic. He panicked. Yeah. I mean, there it is. Yeah. So before we get to what comes next, any final observations from all of this? Yeah. All right. So one final topic that we were hoping would come up and we're surprised that it did in the whole kerfuffle was climate change. So Chris Wallace, who, again, was barely present, asked Trump what he believes regarding it. Trump stuck to the sweeping the forest floors nonsense. Biden did say he's not in support of the Green New Deal, but at least he had an actual plan in place to tackle climate change. Trump at one point argued that because Russia also has high emissions, we shouldn't have to have lower ones.

It is also childish, and I don't understand why anyone hates themselves enough to vote for him. Yeah, I hope that people didn't fully turn this debate off at this point because the question came so late. But it's insane that a president could even say that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change, quote, to an extent. Now, Biden and Democrats could continue to go bigger and bolder on climate change. Price tags don't matter when you don't have a planet. But I hope that this gets returned to in greater depth later. Yeah. And one more point on the climate section. So Trump tried to call Biden out when Biden said he wasn't for the Green New Deal. And I think that if there was a strategy at all for Donald Trump, this was it. So the whole night it was basically painting Joe Biden as incredibly radical.

And then when Biden would correct that, Trump would be like, oh, well, you just lost the left. You just lost the progressive left. You just lost the radical left. Like that's some sort of strategy. Right. And it doesn't necessarily work because people voted for Biden throughout the primary knowing these things.

And I think it's sort of baked into even the left's understanding of who he is and where he could go and how they could work with his administration. Right. Well, that was debate one. We didn't even scratch the surface on what was said about Trump's taxes or the SCOTUS debate that is literally happening right now. So definitely read into that or watch some of the sections back. I'm sorry, you have to, but we ran out of time. But let's talk a little bit about what comes next. Yeah. So in terms of what these campaigns are going to be doing, Biden is set to kick off a tour of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania aboard a train, very 1920s corn pop energy there. He's calling it the quote, build back better train tour. And he'll make several stops to talk to

voters about his jobs plan and economic policies. And then Trump has more rallies planned, including one in Duluth, Minnesota today. And one more thing that may be slightly encouraging, the next presidential debate has a different format. It's going to be a town hall style one with supposedly undecided voters, which means in theory, more difficult to evade their questions. We're going to be following that, of course, and the first and only vice presidential debate next week. But that is the latest for now. It's Wednesday, WOD Squad. We are exhausted after a deeply discouraging debate. So for today's Tim Check, we're going hard silly with our story and discussing a recent incident where five parrots were removed from a zoo in England because they were constantly swearing.

According to the zookeepers, the birds' preferred swear word was fuck off, but they would say, quote, anything you can think of. Customers like the swearing birds, but the zoo split them up out of concern for younger visitors. So Giddy, do you think children need to be protected from foul mouth parrots? Absolutely not. These children, with all due respect, are going to hear these words somewhere and they learning fuck and then, you know, like testing the waters with that where you would say it to like another child or in your own household and, you know, seeing the kind of trouble that you would get in. And I think if I could blame it on, you know, hearing it from a bird as opposed to from something I shouldn't have been watching or another miscreant child at school, I would maybe have gotten out of trouble more easily.

Yeah, I think that that's fair. I mean, it's just, you know, these are words that kids are going to hear, but also it's a zoo. Like, you know, if you really have so many problems with the birds, free them. Right, exactly. That should have been the mission. Let these cursing birds go out into the wilderness and let children that are not yours hear the foul mouths that these birds have. But same question for you, Akilah. Are you perturbed by these children hearing these nasty mouth beasts? No. I mean, like, you're spending your money to go to a zoo and you get to see animals perform tricks.

And maybe those tricks are words that you don't want your kids to learn. But that's the tricks that these birds have. So I think you're getting what you paid for. And again, like it's a zoo. If you don't want the animals to like reflect the ugly things of humanity, free them. Right. And let me pose another idea to the parents out there. Sometimes you got to bring your kids to a zoo. That kind of sucks, right? Like having to drag the kids around all day. So, you know, you could think of it as like, uh, this is the parent activity of this, right? If you're so worried about it, bring some earmuffs along or like send the kids to the tiger exhibit or whatever. And

you check out these birds cursing at you. And what I can only assume are British accents, if parents have British accents. Yeah, honestly, I hope that, you know, I think that parents just aren't listening to the birds even now. If they were listening now outside of the zoo, they might hear some curse words. They're just not paying attention until it's at the zoo, which I think is the real problem. Yeah, we all need to be more attuned to nature and its nasty mouth. Yeah, well, just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. If you're a bird that wants to curse, do it. You know, let your free flag fly.

And we will be back with another tip check tomorrow. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. One of the jurors in Breonna Taylor's case says Kentucky's attorney general may have misrepresented her case, presenting it differently to jurors than he has to the public. That juror is requesting that all the recordings, transcripts and reports of the grand jury be released to the public. And yesterday, Attorney General Daniel Cameron said he actually did not recommend murder charges against the police to the grand jury. He instead recommended that the grand jury indict one officer on unrelated charges, while claiming that the officers who killed Taylor were, quote, justified in their acts. That completely contradicts what he said at a news conference last week, which was that he walked the jurors through every possible charge.

Today, Cameron is expected to release a recording of the grand jury proceedings to the public. The UK and Canada have imposed sanctions on several Belarusian officials, including President Alexander Lukashenko. Both countries were responding to the recent reportedly rigged presidential election in Belarus and the government's repressive response to protests. Britain's foreign secretary said the sanctions represent a coordinated effort to send a clear message that Lukashenko's rule is violent and fraudulent. The EU said last week that it does not that Lukashenko's rule is violent and fraudulent. The EU said last

week that it does not recognize Lukashenko as president, but they have yet to impose their own set of sanctions. So far, Lukashenko has ignored every call by foreign powers asking him to step down. The happiest place on earth got sadder yesterday with Disney announcing it would lay off 28,000 employees after losing billions this year because of COVID. The job cuts will affect theme park workers at both Disneyland and Disney World, but the company put blame on California officials for their, quote, unwillingness to lift restrictions that would allow Disneyland to open. True, we should definitely be following Florida's example in reopening with a you-can't-infect-all-of-us-at-once approach. In other bad corporate news, a new report from Reveal showed that automation strategies

that Amazon said would make its warehouses safer have actually made injury rates increase significantly. Per the report, 14,000 workers were injured at Amazon fulfillment centers last year at a rate 33% higher than in 2016. Injury rates spiked around heavy shipping holidays like Christmas and Prime Day, which goes directly against what Amazon has claimed previously. Also spiking is Jeff Bezos' net worth, which has gone up almost $50 billion since the start of the pandemic. At least one guy is winning out. Everyone's talking about the disruptive

influencer who just shattered the record for fastest time to reach 1 million followers on Instagram. It's 94-year-old British naturalist David Attenborough, who beat prior record holder and Just OK! Animal scholar Jennifer Aniston when he created his account last week. As you know, most large IG accounts get their followings using thirst traps or inspirational memes about entrepreneurship. Let's see what kind of eye-catching content Attenborough put out in his first post to attract maximum engagement. continents are on fire glaciers are melting coral reefs are dying fish are disappearing from our oceans the list goes on and on all right so he's definitely taking a more serious approach but attenborough says that's the point of his account to teach young people about environmental

crises and how we can fix them and he said the fact that he attracted followers so fast gave him, quote, important hope, which, as we all know, is a feeling most scientists associate with early stage social media addiction. Attenborough is quickly closing in on five million followers on IG in his new documentary, A Life on Our Planet, premieres on Netflix on October 4th. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, tweet us your favorite animal scholar, and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading and not just inspirational memes about entrepreneurship like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And thanks for joining us, Chris Wallace. Super effective. You can unmute now, Chris. Bye.