Hot Takes on a Low Key Debate

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Speaker 19 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 23 I'm John Lovett.

Speaker 24 I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Detour.

Speaker 19 Okay, let's get right to it. We just watched the vice presidential debate together here in L.A.
To quote the moderators Margaret Brennan and Nora O'Donnell, gentlemen, we have a lot to get through.

Speaker 19 We're going to start with the only thing that truly matters.

Speaker 19 What did the insta-reaction poll say? Very scientific. Take them as gospel.
And basically, they're all tied. It's a tied debate.

Speaker 19 I'm not going to go through all the numbers, but that's what they all said. And even the focus groups, the undecided voters, they were mostly tied.

Speaker 19 There was one undecided voter who I was about to say in this debate, like the one thing I could say about this debate is that no one made up their mind based on this debate. Not true.

Speaker 19 There was an undecided voter in Michigan who said they're voting for he's voting for Kamala Harris now based on this debate because of J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance's answer on January 6th, which we're going to talk about in a bit.

Speaker 23 So that one person plucked from them all is making us all feel like everything's going to be okay. It's fine.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 19 It looks like, you know, CBS also did favorability ratings. It looks like both Walls and Vance, their favorability improved based on this debate.

Speaker 19 All of that said, we got our own panel of undecided voters right here.

Speaker 19 What did you all think? Who wants to start?

Speaker 24 I think the meta-narrative coming out of tonight will be the respectful tone and the fact that it kind of reminded people of normal political discourse. You saw that in some of the focus groups.

Speaker 24 They were like, oh, these people seem nice. They were nice to each other.
They talked. They didn't were disrespectful.
I thought it was interesting that J.D.

Speaker 24 Vance went into tonight doing the media head fake, fake, being like, I'm going to savage him about lying about his military service. Then he did none of that.
He was conspicuously nice to Tim Walls.

Speaker 24 He praised him constantly. He agreed with him.

Speaker 24 And so, you know, it's like hard watching these debates not to let your gut reaction be entirely grading it on style points.

Speaker 24 And Walls seemed a little nervous at the top, which is totally understandable. It's his first debate on a national stage.
And the first question was like, would you bomb Iran?

Speaker 24 You know, he's a fucking Minnesota governor. That's not his comfort zone.

Speaker 24 But he smoothed it out as he went. He sometimes speaks in sentence fragments.
He had some answers that were a little hard to follow. There was the China question that we'll talk about.

Speaker 24 That was probably his worst answer tonight. There were a few times I think all of us were yelling at the TV, being like, say this, but you know, he was, he went a different path.

Speaker 19 He also had some really

Speaker 24 strong moments, though, on healthcare, abortion access, gun violence.

Speaker 24 And his best moment was the close with that January 6th question that, again, we'll get into. So I think J.D.

Speaker 24 Vance was like smooth and polished and clearly like the guy who was in debate club, but it's not clear to me that that necessarily plays well with the voters or that he did much for Trump tonight, because ultimately what people will remember out of this debate will be like one moment, and it'll probably be this January 6th clip that we will talk about later in the show.

Speaker 19 I agree with Tommy.

Speaker 19 I too was moved by the tone of the debate.

Speaker 19 Jan was crying.

Speaker 19 I tried to set up a drink with Mitch McConnell afterwards.

Speaker 19 We're all heading to the red hand after this.

Speaker 19 It was the put aside the tone. What was interesting about it really was sort of a pre-Trump debate.
It was a debate that it could have been Romney Obama in 2012. It could have been Obama McCain.

Speaker 19 It just, it was pre-Trump in two ways. One, no one was screaming at the other person or stalking around or doing incredibly weird shit, which happens in Trump debates.

Speaker 19 But also, no one really tried to have a whole bunch of trying to give each other COVID

Speaker 19 and stuff.

Speaker 19 We don't know yet. Sweating.

Speaker 19 Let's test results come back

Speaker 19 and there weren't a lot of like lines and zincers set up for social media like there weren't you all the debates even going back to 2012 were sort of like reverse engineered from these moments you would try to get that could then go viral on whatever the social platform was of that election cycle and neither of the candidates really either tried to execute that or did execute it and so it really was just sort of a two guys talking to each other.

Speaker 19 I do think that there is this huge gap between how the pundits assessed

Speaker 19 Vance's performance and how the voters did. And I think it speaks to the ways in the incorrect ways in which pundits judge debates.

Speaker 19 They are, I mean, media folks are all probably members of the same debate club that J.D. Vance was.
They judge it on that, on points and style and poise and language precision.

Speaker 19 And voters are just kind of looking at it to get some information to make a big decision. And on that front, I think Wall scored more points than the initial pundit reaction suggested that he did.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 23 it's funny that you say it feels like a pre-Trump debate because what I was thinking while watching it is that it actually feels like a post-Trump.

Speaker 19 I was just gonna say that.

Speaker 19 Because the I don't believe there's a post-Trump. Well, just like

Speaker 19 that

Speaker 23 there was, I think, like JD Vance is obviously hyper-ambitious. He's doing all of this for his own benefit.
He's completely adapted to Donald Trump.

Speaker 23 But you kind of saw that play out, I think, in an unexpected way, which is that a lot of what this debate felt like to me was J.D. Vance repairing J.D.
Vance's image, right?

Speaker 23 He He didn't want to be the attack version of J.D. Vance.
He articulated more his philosophies. He has thoughts on Finland.
Oh, you brought up Finland? I have thoughts about

Speaker 23 gun safety in Finland. I have actually very sophisticated views on family policy.

Speaker 19 He took Walls' Finland bait.

Speaker 23 And then, and we'll get to, I think, some of the ways that it affects the race, which is how he tried to defend a version of Trump that doesn't exist. But it really was, I think, you see,

Speaker 23 what J.D. Vance felt like he was doing up there was, this is how I wish Donald Trump existed.

Speaker 23 This is the kind of politics I wish I was free to be able to practice without having to defend Donald Trump's words and deeds. And I think that will do a lot to repair J.D.

Speaker 23 Vance's image as a weird dipshit. But I don't know that ultimately, like, oh, some on style points, J.D.
Vance landed some punches. How does that help Trump?

Speaker 23 It doesn't matter how people come away seeing these two figures. It was who articulated a better case for Kamala versus Trump.
And I think Tim Walls had that as his plan. And J.D.

Speaker 23 Vance, I don't think as much did.

Speaker 19 I was not surprised by J.D. Vance's performance.
Like, the guy loves to argue, has no problem lying, clearly has no shame since he's Donald Trump's running mate after calling him America's Hitler.

Speaker 19 I also think,

Speaker 19 Lovett, you always talk about Trump's intellectual Zambonis. Yeah.
This is like

Speaker 19 in the intellectual Zamboni is Trump says something crazy and then some pundit at the

Speaker 19 national review like Hugh Hewitt usually

Speaker 19 usually comes in and there's like actually a theory and an intellectual case behind that and it's all bullshit. That's like the job J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance has been running for ever since he went from being a never Trumper to a Trumper. And I also think that like for most of J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance's career, he went from trying to impress the center right, center left establishment as a never-trumper to then. arguing with them and fighting with them as a, as a Trumper.

Speaker 19 And so he knows how to impress the establishment, which is what he tried to do tonight. Like he tried to, he tried to perform a normal version of J.D.
Vance.

Speaker 19 And I think he was relatively good at that, again, because he was able to lie a lot.

Speaker 23 Yeah, it's sort of why, like, as the debate was wrapping up, I think, I think Walls got better as the debate went on. And his best moment was in the very end of the debate.

Speaker 23 But I walked away with this feeling, like, oh, did I just watch something where I like, I was like, what is this feeling I'm having? And do I trust it?

Speaker 19 And I like,

Speaker 23 we are the kind of people that are

Speaker 23 naturally inclined to like watch a debate based on points to like be to like be impressed by style to be impressed by clean articulation and like this has sort of I think been a fault of ours when we went back to the 2020 debates and not seeing when like kind of being worried about Joe Biden but actually Joe Biden appealing to people that are coming to it in a different way and I feel like that was my hope coming out of the debate that actually if you look at like maybe J.D.

Speaker 23 Vance is I think a little bit tighter of a debater, but Walls is more genuine, a little bit more heartfelt, a little bit more real, even if he stumbles now and again, he kind of delivers something in a a way that's more persuasive.

Speaker 23 And I think that that ultimately is why it looks like a draw.

Speaker 19 I also think J.D. Vance just highlighted that his running mate is deranged and has deteriorated and should never be president.

Speaker 19 Like, I don't know, I'm sure that's not what he intended, but I think the effect of this debate on some people who watched who may be undecided, and I don't, again, I don't think it probably moved a lot of people, but they're probably like, oh, well, Donald Trump wasn't like that.

Speaker 19 He's got all the positions that Donald Trump has, but he sounds, he doesn't sound like a maniac. Yeah.
So I don't know if that really helps Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 And I don't know if Donald Trump, even though he's seemingly happy with the performance, is going to be really happy with the performance.

Speaker 23 I'm like curious about the next 48 hours, about like J.D. Vance taking the spotlight, J.D.
Vance saying that Tulsi and RFK Jr. endorse me, vote for me.

Speaker 23 Like, I think there's going to be a little bit of Donald Trump like not liking this tall grass.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 So we've been talking about the big moment in the debate, which came at the end. It was the last exchange of the night.
The topic was democracy and Trump's responsibility for January 6th.

Speaker 19 Let's listen.

Speaker 25 Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads.

Speaker 25 And if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I'm on board.

Speaker 25 But if we want to say, as Tim Waltz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don't buy that.

Speaker 25 Governor. January 6th was not Facebook ads.
This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say.

Speaker 25 He is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that.
Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future.

Speaker 25 Did Connell Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

Speaker 25 That is a damning non-answer. So America, I think you've got a really clear choice on this election of who's going to honor that democracy and who's going to honor Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 So all the dial groups, the Harris campaign dial groups, other undecided voters, all agreed that that was the worst moment for J.D. Vance.

Speaker 19 I think not only because it was an obvious lie, but because he sounded like a fucking politician. I'm focused on the future.

Speaker 24 I don't think there's anything worse you could have said that I'm focused on the future. Yeah.
A slippery, smarmy, ridiculous line.

Speaker 19 Yeah. It would have honestly been better if he was like, he did win that election.

Speaker 24 Yeah. I stand by it.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 How much do you guys think that matters, Van? And I mean, to the extent that anything matters in this debate, I think it matters more than anything else.

Speaker 19 I mean, you have the big lie is a signifier of extremism for most voters. In polling, generally,

Speaker 19 six in 10 voters believe Joe Biden legitimately won the election. That number is higher among independents, right?

Speaker 19 The exact undecided voters we're talking about, they do not think that the election was stolen. And they think it's really fucking weird that Donald Trump is still talking about that four years later.

Speaker 19 And J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance being unable to answer the question in the most blatant way possible, just might as well just hold up a sign that says, I'm a smartie politician when you answer the question the way he did, is certainly not helpful to the cause.

Speaker 24 It's not the size of the lies, the motion in the ocean. I think this will get shared on the aforementioned Facebook, Twitter.

Speaker 19 I was going to go to talk to them. I'm like, Tommy's got the face.
He's about to say something funny. It's so hot in here.
It's like really late.

Speaker 19 No, I do.

Speaker 19 It did come at the end, but I was like, you know what? Speaking of.

Speaker 19 It's the second time I've done that in two pods.

Speaker 19 I'm still not not over the P-Buddha chest thing. I know.
I've heard about that.

Speaker 24 Tim Miller grades all of our podcast episodes and tells us when we did good, and he really liked that one.

Speaker 19 I was flagging it. Yeah, so it was at the very end of the debate.
It was the last exchange. But it seems like in this media environment, it could be the clip that defines the debate.
It could be the

Speaker 19 same thing. I mean, certainly that's what the Harris Walls campaign's going to want to do.
But I think that so far in the media coverage we've seen

Speaker 19 before recording, it seems like that's going to be the big moment.

Speaker 23 Yeah. And I also would say probably like if you, if we're just sort of trying to be straight shooters here, Tim Walls', like that is J.D.

Speaker 23 Vance's worst moment by far, and it was the worst moment of the debate. Tim Walls' worst moment was probably his answer that we'll get to on kind of

Speaker 23 when he was in China. And like it was a bad and fumfering answer, but it was an answer about him in a kind of strange and sort of personal way.

Speaker 23 Like that answer goes to the heart of the case against Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 Well, let's talk about that. Let's play that answer from Tim Walls.

Speaker 26 Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy?

Speaker 25 All I said on this was, is I got there that summer and misspoke on this. So I will just, that's what I've said.

Speaker 25 So I was in

Speaker 25 Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.

Speaker 19 Tommy, before we get into like whether that was good or bad or how bad that was or whatever,

Speaker 19 what was that all about? I I couldn't even follow.

Speaker 24 So I asked Governor Walls about this when I interviewed him back in February because I was

Speaker 19 default.

Speaker 24 Yeah, this was partially, yes. I had read that he had been in China around the Tiananmen Square massacre, which occurred

Speaker 24 on June 4th. So I basically said, like, were you there during the protests in the Tiananmen Square massacre? He said, I was in Hong Kong.
I was in Hong Kong when it happened.

Speaker 24 I was in Hong Kong on June 4th when Tiananmen happened.

Speaker 19 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 24 And it turns out that there's some reports from local Nebraska news outlets that say he was in Nebraska on May 16th and he didn't travel to Hong Kong until August of 1989.

Speaker 24 So a couple months after the protests. He did go from Hong Kong into China.
He did teach at a school. He did set up this exchange program after and like try to build ties between U.S.

Speaker 24 students and Chinese students. I think what happened is he just kind of misremembered.
the story over the years, mistold it a few times, and it just stuck in his brain wrong.

Speaker 19 Like that happens to people all the time.

Speaker 24 Our memories suck. We get things wrong all the time.
And I'm sure it was pretty uncomfortable for him.

Speaker 19 He didn't seem like totally well prepared.

Speaker 24 He didn't just like explain it clearly. He kind of doled a bunch of bio, and it was mostly confusing.

Speaker 24 I'm guessing most people watching just couldn't really follow what was happening there. I think maybe

Speaker 24 people will care. I seriously doubt it.
If the Trump campaign decides to really drive this, I guess they could make it a thing, but like, what a waste of time.

Speaker 19 I mean, I read the CNN story about it before the debate and then watched the exchange, and I still couldn't follow exactly what happened.

Speaker 19 But I do, I don't fault him for misremembering because my memory is shit. And I can't remember things that happened like two years ago and the stories and where I was.

Speaker 19 I do think that he knew this was coming. And I would have just been a little clearer on like, you know what? I got that one wrong.
I messed up. And then just 35 years ago, I've been to China.

Speaker 23 There were democracies.

Speaker 19 I missed it. But I messed up.
But I messed up. I messed up.
Yeah. As advice to all politicians, that's always the best answer.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Just if you made a mistake, just own it and move on and be done with it. And you're going to have to answer it.
You can't just like dance around it for a long time and hope the clock runs out. Yeah.

Speaker 23 I also like the opening question ended up being about foreign policy. He answered that question.
Vance says, before I get to your foreign policy question, I'm going to do my bio.

Speaker 23 Walls was looking for a place to kind of do his bio. He realized about to talk about being a teacher, so he does his bio.
So it doesn't totally work. So fine.

Speaker 23 Like it's not the, it's not the way to articulate the question.

Speaker 19 This question just really threw it.

Speaker 19 But imagine you're, this is your biggest moment of your professional life.

Speaker 24 You're debating. You're the vice presidential nominee.
And Iran launches 200 ballistic missiles at Israel the day before. And suddenly you haven't prepped for this.

Speaker 19 You haven't prepared. You haven't thought about what you'd say about this.

Speaker 24 I'm sure it was like a massive

Speaker 24 wrench in their preparation.

Speaker 23 But the point I wanted to make about it is just like it's very much now kind of like bubbling on the hyper online, right? That like Tim Waltz.

Speaker 23 is a like doesn't tell the truth he's a serial liar serial exaggerator because he like like because they try to mischaracterize mischaracterize how he responded when he talked about his, his family using fertility treatments and a few, uh, and how they kind of have like exaggerated about how he's described his service and tried to lie and malign him for how he's talked about his service.

Speaker 23 And I, I do think that, like, if that's what they want to focus on, like, trying to paint Tim Walls in this way, like, I just don't think it works. I don't think it's viable.

Speaker 23 Like, he just comes across as an honest and straightforward guy, and they should be focusing on Kamala Harris. And they're defending the world's greatest liar.

Speaker 23 So I just think the whole thing is ultimately small and stupid.

Speaker 19 Also, J.D. Vance's entire life is a lie.

Speaker 19 There's that.

Speaker 23 I never got to the end of that book, though, but whatever happened there, they found him in that manger.

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Speaker 19 My critique of Tim Wallace was less about that and more, I just think he had some missed opportunities, right?

Speaker 19 And I think that he, you could tell when he, I hadn't noticed this before, but whether it was anxiety or what he was nervous, but he like he jumps to the next thought and there were sentence fragments and he didn't quite complete the thought.

Speaker 19 So sometimes it was hard to follow exactly what he was saying.

Speaker 19 And like even on the January 6th, which was his best answer, during that exchange, I was like, why isn't he talking about Donald Trump wanting to pardon the insurrectionists?

Speaker 19 That's the most unpopular policy that he has. And it's about moving forward.
You want to focus on the future, J.D. Vance.

Speaker 19 Your running mate wants to pardon the people who beat up cops.

Speaker 23 So, Tim Wallace, you take these lessons, and when you're debating Marjorie Taylor Greene in four years,

Speaker 19 hopefully,

Speaker 23 you can be a little bit more on top of this.

Speaker 19 But Walls was much better than that on a lot of the other answers.

Speaker 19 Reproductive rights, he was really strong.

Speaker 19 Just like the campaign's been doing in ads and at the convention, he talked about the individual stories of women who've been injured or lost their lives because of their state's abortion bans.

Speaker 19 Let's listen.

Speaker 25 If you don't know Amanda or a Hadley, you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies.

Speaker 25 It's going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate, access to infertility treatments.

Speaker 25 For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child. This is basic human right.

Speaker 25 We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about health care.

Speaker 25 Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it's diverse. And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia.

Speaker 25 Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona.

Speaker 25 And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy.

Speaker 25 How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography?

Speaker 19 I thought the geography thing was a great response to Vance, because clearly it was Walls had his prepared first answer there, but then going back and hitting him on geography because he did California and Georgia was, I thought, really strong.

Speaker 19 What did you guys think of that? It was an incredibly strong answer. It's right.
It fits with exactly how all the polling says you should talk about this.

Speaker 19 All the message testing says the ads and the speeches and the messages that lead with people's personal stories are by far the most powerful. It gets at freedom.

Speaker 19 The geography line undermines Trump's state's argument, which is really important. And the Harris campaign has been hammering Trump and Vance on abortion for months now, and it is working, right?

Speaker 19 We are seeing in polls increases in the number of voters who think Trump would pass a federal abortion ban, who think he's personally anti-choice, who thinks that abortion rights are actually at stake if he's on the ballot.

Speaker 19 And that matters because in those blue wall states, in the New York Times Sienna poll that came out over the weekend, abortion is the second issue by far. And

Speaker 19 so, raising the salience of that issue and driving home and pushing on that advantage is incredibly important. So, this was this also goes to the point that J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance scored points in the debate on things that don't matter. And where Walls was at his best was on the exact things that matter to voters, like reproductive freedom.

Speaker 19 Tommy, what did you think of Vance's?

Speaker 19 He kept bringing up, we have to earn voters' trust on this issue.

Speaker 19 It seemed like he was trying to soften the edges of the typical Trump Republican answer and Vance answer on abortion because he has said some really wacky things.

Speaker 24 Yeah, I mean, I guess it folded into his broader strategy of like, hey, I'm just a good guy. I feel your pain.
Let's agree to disagree and find common ground.

Speaker 24 But like, I don't know, earn your trust on this issue? Like, what does that mean to someone who lives in a state where women are dying because they can't get

Speaker 24 abortion care? You know, it's just, it did not, I don't, I don't think it's going to work for them.

Speaker 19 He also lied about saying he never supported a national abortion ban. J.D.
Vance absolutely supported a national abortion.

Speaker 24 The CBS polling on the issues showed that Governor Wallace did way better than J.D. Vance in terms of voters, the response when talking about abortion and healthcare.

Speaker 23 Yeah, that was also another moment where it was much more about himself. Like he was talking about what he'd said in the past and his own views on abortion.
I also do think like it was

Speaker 23 like one of Tim Wallace's best moments in the debate, but to the point John was making, it was also a moment to say like, you know, earn people's trust. You're for a national abortion ban.

Speaker 23 You've had this, you said Donald Donald Trump

Speaker 23 would veto it. He now says he wouldn't back you on that.
Like there was, there were places where you could, like, I think.

Speaker 19 Your running mate says that women should be punished. Right.
He said that women should be punished for abortion.

Speaker 23 The whole point of your position is that you don't trust women. Yeah.
Why should they trust you?

Speaker 19 So clearly, unsurprisingly, Vance went into the debate wanting to make every single answer about immigration. Here are some of the key exchanges.

Speaker 25 And that's the thing that I think we should be able to find some common ground in, but we can't blame

Speaker 25 immigrants for the only reason. That's not the case.
It's happening in many cities.

Speaker 25 Tim just said something that I agree with.

Speaker 25 We don't want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country.

Speaker 25 Which does drive up costs, Tim.

Speaker 25 25 million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It's why we have massive increases in home prices.

Speaker 26 Thank you, Governor. And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.

Speaker 25 Well, Margarita, so much to get to. Margaret, I think it's important.
We're going to turn out of the economy. Thank you.
Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check.

Speaker 25 I think it's important to say what's actually going on.

Speaker 19 The rules were... No fact-checking.
No fair. I'm supposed to be able to lie the whole time.
I wouldn't have agreed to this debate if I knew there was me fact-checking.

Speaker 24 Does anyone believe that immigration is why housing costs are high?

Speaker 19 Is that credible to anybody? No, it's, I mean, the, there is a case that in Springfield,

Speaker 19 because

Speaker 19 many of the Haitian immigrants were living together, are living together in houses, like five or six of them in a house who have come here, that it was making housing too expensive for like a family of two who lived in Springfield, and they were driving houses because they could live in a house.

Speaker 19 More people could live in one house. Sure.

Speaker 24 I know this is like a whole long thing.

Speaker 19 Once again, the legal migrants. Legal migrants, right? Yeah.
But again,

Speaker 19 you know, and Walzen and

Speaker 19 Vance had this exchange, too, about housing. Like

Speaker 19 J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have no housing plan.
They have no plan to reduce the cost of housing.

Speaker 19 If all the Haitian migrants that are there legally left Springfield tomorrow, housing prices in Springfield and all across the country would still be way too high.

Speaker 19 And they have no plan except to buy some federal land and build a house on a park somewhere.

Speaker 24 And deport people. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yes. How do you guys think he did on immigration? Do you think Vance scored some points there?

Speaker 23 I get. I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 23 Obviously, it's like a better issue for him. I think Walls, I think, did a good job when he talked about Donald Trump standing in the way of the bill.
I thought that was a good moment for him.

Speaker 23 And he had been heating up by the time we got to that part of the debate. So I think it probably is yet another place where it kind of battles to a draw.

Speaker 23 I don't know that people buy all this anti-immigrant stuff from Vance, that moment where he said, I'm not blaming migrants for the cost of housing.

Speaker 23 i'm blaming kamala harris like i feel like that has to read people as absurd like this housing problem is a very old and long-growing problem it's not something that began under joe biden and kamala harris is a generational failure uh people were coming in under donald trump and barack obama and george w bush like i don't i just the idea that you're going to lay this they even keep referring to it as the kamala harris administration like just just i just don't think people buy it yeah yeah i agree with that i just this is true on all things but especially on immigration they keep saying kamala harris let them in the country let these people bring fentanyl on the country people People don't think the vice president can do that.

Speaker 19 It's just simply not,

Speaker 19 it's absurd. President, you know, is the commander-in-chief, makes some laws, and then the vice president lets in fentanyl.

Speaker 19 Has the full authority to just let in drugs at the border. Yeah,

Speaker 23 actually, you know, the vice president has one vote in the Senate, same as J.D. Vance, right? Like, where's J.D.
Vance's record? J.D. Vance had the audacity up there.

Speaker 23 Like, I think Republicans in the Congress let Donald Trump down. You've been in the Congress, right? You haven't passed a bill.
You have nothing to your name. Yeah.

Speaker 24 Yeah, I appreciated Governor Walls' decency in saying you're blaming migrants for everything and that's unfair and it's wrong and it's egregious.

Speaker 24 I think he maybe spent a little too much time doing that. I wanted him to pivot harder and go on attack.

Speaker 24 I thought the strongest messaging was when he talked about the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans and Democrats came together to do in Congress and that Donald Trump tanked.

Speaker 24 I do think JD whining about the fact checks will be another thing that spins out on social media. It'll be very useful for the Harris campaign in the future because J.D.

Speaker 24 famously says he likes to make up stories about immigration to advance his lies and agenda.

Speaker 24 So, yeah, the CBS poll showed it was basically a draw on immigration, though they favored Vance by a little bit.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I was, I, and, and Walls was trying to get there when he was talking about Springfield because he was like, what happened to this community and the bomb threats at school and stuff like that.

Speaker 19 And, and Vance jumped in and be like, oh, you care about the immigrants. You care about the migrants, but not the people in Springfield.

Speaker 19 And I do think that Walls could have been, you know, there's an opportunity there, I think, for Harris and Walls to be like, this is like people in Springfield are not better off because J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance and Donald Trump have been running around saying that Haitian migrants are eating dogs and cats. Like they've had bomb threats.

Speaker 19 Like the people who live in Springfield, who lived there for a long time, like they're not better off because of this. It's bullshit.
And like

Speaker 19 they're just trying to divide people against each other. Like I do think there's an immigration message that you're right, Tommy, like talks about what people are dealing with on both sides of this.

Speaker 19 It can go to all things, right? It's January 6th and the big lie too.

Speaker 19 Donald Trump and J.D. Vance will say or do anything that will get them power no matter who it hurts.
Exactly. Including the people who support them.
Yep. Including those people.

Speaker 19 Especially those people.

Speaker 2 What's popping, listeners?

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Speaker 19 One area where Vance didn't have a great answer was on whether we should have more gun safety safety laws. Let's listen.

Speaker 25 And I say this not loving the answer because I don't want my kids to go to school in a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of security.

Speaker 25 But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better.
We have to make the doors stronger. We've got to make the windows stronger.

Speaker 25 Well, I think all the parents watching tonight, this is your biggest nightmare. Look,

Speaker 25 I got a 17-year-old and

Speaker 25 he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don't leave you.
The NRA, I was the NRA guy for a long time. They used to teach gun safety.

Speaker 25 I'm of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice. That's not where we live today.

Speaker 25 This idea of stigmatizing mental health, just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat.

Speaker 25 Sometimes it just is the guns.

Speaker 19 Hearing it again, I think that might have been one of his best answers.

Speaker 23 Yeah, because it also was something he came back to.

Speaker 23 There was a lot of kind of, I don't know, it was a little bit of like a kind of gauzy section of the debate when they were going back and forth on guns because J.D.

Speaker 23 Vance is like, oh, God, if only there was something, someone to stop my policies from causing all of these problems.

Speaker 23 Like there was a lot of like, I hate that we have to harden our schools like they're fucking military barracks, but there's just nothing we can do.

Speaker 23 And like, I wanted Tim Walls to hit him back, but then he made that answer, I thought, was very good because he finally kind of came back to like, it's not about how Finland has as many guns as we have or whatever the fuck we were talking about.

Speaker 23 Sometimes it's just about the guns.

Speaker 24 Wait, I mean, J.D. Vance caveated his answer for how to prevent children from getting shot by saying this answer sucks.

Speaker 24 We need to lock the doors.

Speaker 19 No, stronger doors. Stronger doors.
Stronger doors. Stronger windows.
Stronger windows.

Speaker 19 Fortify first-grade classrooms.

Speaker 24 That is not a credible or serious answer. And I thought Walls was emotional.
He told the story about his son.

Speaker 24 And then he credentialed himself as a gun owner who supports the Second Amendment. But he's not willing to do nothing in the face of children getting shot over and over and over again.

Speaker 24 I thought it was compelling and real and came from like a sincere place and J.D. Vance just sounded like a smarmy prick.

Speaker 19 It's wild that both members of the Democratic ticket are gun owners and the Republican nominee can't buy a gun in some states. That's a difficult point.

Speaker 19 That's true.

Speaker 19 That is a fair point. All right.

Speaker 19 So toward the end of the debate, moderators asked about health care and Donald Trump's now infamous comment that the Harris Walls campaign turned into a big ad that they're running all over the country was out today.

Speaker 19 It's about health care. It's about Trump saying he has concepts of a plan for what to replace the ACA with after he kills it.
Let's listen.

Speaker 25 I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.

Speaker 25 He ran on the first thing he was going to do on day one was to repeal Obamacare. On day one, he tried to sign an executive order to repeal the ACA.

Speaker 25 He signed on to a lawsuit to repeal the ACA, but lost at the Supreme Court. And he would have repealed the ACA had it not been for the courage of John McCain to save that bill.

Speaker 25 Something that these guys do is they make a lot of claims about if Donald Trump becomes president, all of these terrible consequences are going to ensue. But in reality, Donald Trump was president.

Speaker 25 Inflation was low. Take-home pay was higher.
And he saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership.

Speaker 23 I mean, one of the most, one of the most galling answers I've ever heard in a debate.

Speaker 19 I mean, really true. Stunning.
Did Trump save the ACA?

Speaker 19 It was Paul Ryan who was trying to revive the ACA. Trump saved it from Paul Ryan.

Speaker 23 Well, that whole answer to, like, I do think the part where he says, like, oh, I do worry about that, that framing, right? Like, oh, they say Trump is so dangerous, but things were actually better.

Speaker 23 Then you're like, on Obamacare itself, J.D. Van says this sort of intellectual nonsense around it.
Well, actually, concepts of plan is actually how you make laws. You have an idea.

Speaker 23 But you can go look.

Speaker 19 Guy's been running for president and president for the last nine years, still has no plan.

Speaker 19 He's just waiting.

Speaker 23 Donald Trump was so horny for repealing the Obamacare that after the House passed the repeal, he didn't wait for it to pass the Senate to do what looked like a signing ceremony in the Rose Garden.

Speaker 23 He took a picture with all the Republican House members behind him to celebrate repealing Obamacare. They did not have a plan to replace it.

Speaker 23 The reason John McCain did a thumbs down on repealing Obamacare was not because he he was in favor of Obamacare. It's because there was no plan to replace it.
That was the reason.

Speaker 19 You say Donald Trump's president. All these bad things are going to happen.
He was president and people didn't, 20 million people didn't lose their health care because John McCain stopped him.

Speaker 23 Yeah, because they didn't do the bad things. Yeah.
And by the way, like...

Speaker 19 Because Democrats and everyone else and the whole country hated it. It was the least popular Donald Trump had ever been in his whole presidency.
And he tried and tried to tried it.

Speaker 19 And he failed because he's bad at governing.

Speaker 19 I think that answer was an example as to why J.D. Vance is a good debater and a shitty politician.
Yeah. Because you see the intellectual exercise in his head.

Speaker 19 It's like, I'm not just going to say it didn't get repeated. I'm going to say he saved it because I'm going to take this arcane out of context statistics.

Speaker 19 And he knows he has to mirror Trump's line. I'm on this.
And it's obviously not believable.

Speaker 19 And I agree with Lovett that the argument that Democrats say these bad things are going to happen when Trump is already president is one of their better, even if it's a very fallacious argument

Speaker 19 on a lot of issues like when we call him a dictator and he's like, well, he was president for four years, democracy didn't end, all of that.

Speaker 19 But the one issue where it is the worst argument is this one because he tried in every way possible to repeal the ACA in the most visible way possible throughout his entire presidency.

Speaker 23 And by the way, he succeeded in

Speaker 23 getting rid of a really important part of healthcare, which is reproductive health care for millions upon millions of women.

Speaker 19 Also, you know, they can go interview a bunch of Republicans in Congress and they can all say, look, if Donald Trump wins again, we don't have the appetite to go through ACA repeal again, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 19 Even if they don't do that, even if they don't have the votes

Speaker 19 to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which of course we know they're going to try to do, but even if they don't,

Speaker 19 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris passed in the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for the ACA that mean that millions of people around this country are paying lower premiums than they were before because of those subsidies.

Speaker 19 They are going to expire at the end of 2025. And Donald Trump and Republicans have already said they do not want to extend them.

Speaker 19 And so even if nothing happens, three and a half million people will lose their health insurance just if Donald Trump doesn't do anything, just if he wins.

Speaker 19 And, you know, so like the idea that, oh, Donald Trump's gonna, nothing's gonna happen, like, no, everyone's gonna, people are gonna pay more for health care if Donald Trump wins, guaranteed.

Speaker 19 Anyway, I think, I, I do think that's one that the Harris campaign, I thought that was gonna be the moment that they were gonna push tomorrow, were it not for the January 6th answer that came afterwards.

Speaker 19 But I, I, you know, they've been doing the concepts of a plan ad today. I kind of think that health, there'll be a healthcare push in the next week, or there should be some.
There should be, you know.

Speaker 19 All right. Final thoughts on this debate.

Speaker 19 what do the campaigns do with this debate anything the the harris campaign talks about january 6th moment the vance campaign i don't know what the vance campaign

Speaker 23 yeah the vance campaign i i feel like yeah i think it's i think it's pushing out that that democracy clip i do think that that it's worth going through like

Speaker 23 there was a few times out of the debate where where jd vance basically kind of invents a version of donald trump that doesn't doesn't exist it's obviously not as important as the comment on democracy we're all talking about but there was this moment where uh Vance basically says, oh, Trump peacefully transferred power.

Speaker 23 And all Donald Trump has ever said is he wanted the rules to be enforced fairly. And it reminded me of like the biggest creeps on the fucking internet during Gamergate, like

Speaker 23 attacking women online and being like, this is about ethics and video game journalism. Like being like, oh, yeah, that's what it was.
It was about the fair administration of

Speaker 23 the electorals. And there was that moment.
There was a moment on healthcare where I do think you can go and just take Donald Trump's absolute worst comments and take J.D.

Speaker 23 Vance's lies about them and put them side by side. And I think it'd be pretty powerful.

Speaker 19 Yeah. Do you think

Speaker 19 we get another debate?

Speaker 19 Donald Trump came out tonight and said,

Speaker 19 again, no more debates.

Speaker 24 I don't know why you guys think that there might be another debate.

Speaker 19 I mean, I think if I don't.

Speaker 24 I don't think Trump wants to do it really, or else he'd do it. His staff obviously doesn't want to do it because he was so terrible the last time.

Speaker 19 Well, the Harris campaign wants it.

Speaker 24 They're desperate for it. The media is desperate for it.
Everyone wants to do it except for the Trump campaign.

Speaker 19 I mean, we saw CNN, Caitlin Collins, just hammering Donald Trump Jr. over in the world.
Yes. Donald Trump Jr.

Speaker 24 was such a fucking whiny little baby that he said even Fox couldn't fairly moderate the debate because they would try to appease the left.

Speaker 19 As they always are, you know, fantastic weakling.

Speaker 23 I do like the

Speaker 23 like J.D. Vance basically kind of inventing a nicer version of Trump, Donald Trump pulling down the 60-minutes interview.

Speaker 23 Like, I think all of that is the same reason they won't want to put him in front of another debate, which is the Donald Trump that doesn't exist and isn't real is like the best version that they can have out there.

Speaker 23 But I do wonder if like 48 hours of coverage of how great J.D. Vance did and how and how J.D.
Vance outshined Trump and and how he didn't really defend Trump and was really more about Vance.

Speaker 23 I'm curious

Speaker 23 how that affects the narcissist.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it's always hard to get inside Donald Trump's lizard brain. And like he, I was thinking that, you know, maybe he's like, I don't want J.D.
Vance to have the last word here.

Speaker 19 But it's also, they don't have that much time. And it's clear that the Trump campaign thinks they are sitting on a lead, that they are, that they are doing well.
They're doing well in the polls.

Speaker 19 I think they're buying their spin on this, which is why they they probably don't want to do another debate. I think that's probably right.

Speaker 19 Now, whether they're right or not, who knows, but like, I think that's probably what they think.

Speaker 24 One thing I do hope that comes out of this debate is, according to the CNN snap poll, Tim Walls's favorability went from plus 14 before the debate to plus 37 after the debate.

Speaker 24 I think that speaks well to his character, his presentation, the tone of the debate, the fact that he

Speaker 24 talked about things that people cared about in a way that connected.

Speaker 19 That most voters don't know what Tiananmen Square is.

Speaker 24 That most voters don't give a shit what happened in 1989. And so I think it just speaks to the fact that he's an asset and we should get him out there.

Speaker 24 And he should be doing a lot more interviews and be on the trail and doing things. I understand that they were probably getting through debate prep because that was far more important.

Speaker 24 And it also prepares you for future interviews. But now I'd love to see just Harris and Walls hit the gas,

Speaker 24 be a little less risk-averse, do some more stuff, and just, you know.

Speaker 19 Well, we had Tommy Harris on the Aldens, All the Smoke Podcasts, which is a great interview. Awesome.
One of the best interviews I've ever seen.

Speaker 24 All the Smoke Podcasts, if folks don't know, is two former NBA players. Usually they focus on basketball, but it was an amazing interview.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 19 they were members of the We Believe Warriors team from 2006.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 she was funny. She was thoughtful.
She was very comfortable. It was just a fantastic interview.
I agree.

Speaker 19 And especially if there's not going to be another debate, which I don't think there will be, they're going to need to find ways to break through.

Speaker 19 And not break through all the coverage because not everyone watches everything at the same time anymore, but like just

Speaker 19 taking more, just having more opportunities to get out there.

Speaker 24 Especially on stuff like the All the Smoke Pod, where they're not, those, the people who watch that show or listen to that show are probably not consuming a ton of political news. It's a sports show.

Speaker 24 Get in front of those people who are not going to hear about you in other places.

Speaker 19 Tim Wallace was on the We Rate Dogs YouTube channel the other day. That's great.
I noticed that.

Speaker 19 It sounds ridiculous, but it's actually quite smart. They're a good host of their debate.

Speaker 19 Just like little boops.

Speaker 19 Okay, a couple quick things before we go. Voter registration deadlines are next week in South Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and more.

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Speaker 19 Also, we're going to be on tour this Sunday, October 6th, our last show of the year in our biggest venue yet, the Met Philadelphia. Simone Sanderson.

Speaker 19 I just read what they write for me.

Speaker 19 We'll be joined by Simone Sanders Townsend is going to be our guest host. And then we have Senator Bob Casey is going to be our guest, who's in a tight race there.

Speaker 19 Get your tickets now at crooked.com slash events. And for a limited time, we're giving 15% off all non-VIP tickets with code PodSave15.
That's our show for tonight.

Speaker 19 Dan and I will be back in your feet on Friday morning with a new show featuring Crooked's own rising star, Stacey Acres.

Speaker 19 Got me right at the end there. Bye, everyone.
Bye.

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Speaker 19 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari.

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Speaker 19 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavive, and David Toles.

Speaker 2 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 6 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it.

Speaker 5 Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

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