A Brutally Honest Debate Recap

Transcript

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Speaker 3 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Lovett. Tom TV Tour.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. What a debate, fellas.
Woo!

Speaker 3 Love it. Wow.
Love it. My first question is for you.

Speaker 3 You came back from Fiji way too soon.

Speaker 3 If you would have only stayed a couple more weeks.

Speaker 4 Put me back in. Put me back in.
Take away my phone. Leave me out of this.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 we all just, like many of you, endured the 90-minute debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I think you're hearing this in the morning.
So you probably remember it.

Speaker 3 Maybe you're fortunate and you don't. But just in case, we're going to refresh your memory.
Here's a clip of what happened.

Speaker 5 And he went to the funeral.

Speaker 5 The idea that she was murdered

Speaker 5 by an immigrant coming into, they talk about that.

Speaker 6 If he wins this election, our country doesn't have a chance, not even a chance, of coming out of this rut. We probably won't have a country left anymore.
That's how bad it is.

Speaker 6 He is the worst in history by far.

Speaker 3 President Trump, the question was about what you would do to make child care more affordable.

Speaker 7 But he can't hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match.
He can't hit a ball 50 yards.

Speaker 5 I'd be happy to have a driving contest with him.

Speaker 5 I got my handicap, which when I was vice president, down to a six. I told you before, I'm happy to play golf golf with you if you carry your own bag.

Speaker 5 Think you can do it?

Speaker 7 That's the biggest lie that he's a six-handicap of all.

Speaker 5 I was an eight-handicap.

Speaker 7 I really don't know what he said at the end of this sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either.
Look.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 That was the debate. Look,

Speaker 3 we always want to be honest with you guys. I don't think we need to.

Speaker 3 You don't listen to us for us to sugarcoat anything. I think it was a fucking disaster.
I think it was like maybe the worst debate I've ever seen in in my entire life.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Donald Trump is just a despicable human being.
He should not be president.

Speaker 3 We have to do literally everything we possibly can to make sure he is not president again.

Speaker 3 And that is why last night was so fucking awful because Joe Biden just in every single way failed at that debate.

Speaker 3 And like, I don't know what else to say there, except that that, and then, you know, I won't make any other predictions now, but it was, it was a disaster.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, look, debates are a performance, and what you say and how you say it both matter. And so the optics, to start there, were very bad tonight.
Biden had to answer concerns about his age.

Speaker 8 I think he exacerbated them. His voice sounded frail.
There was an answer where he kind of stalled out halfway through. The cut shots when Trump was speaking were not kind to Biden.

Speaker 8 In the first debate in 2020, he did a very good job of kind of smiling or like taking notes.

Speaker 3 I encountered, I think he smiled twice or three times in 90 minutes.

Speaker 8 I mean, this time he looked confused at times. He was looking away.
And those clips are already flying around TikTok. Like, that's the online spin war that's happening as we speak.

Speaker 3 No deceptive editing necessary. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Not much of a war.

Speaker 8 I mean, in the substance, I just, I don't think Biden landed the hits he needed to land. We just heard him, he needed to prosecute the case against Trump on abortion.

Speaker 8 There, we heard a clip where he sort of took an abortion answer and wound up at a point about immigration. I don't think he made a strong economic argument.

Speaker 8 The attacks on Trump's felony convictions weren't strong. That's not to say that Trump was great.
I don't think he was. He duck questions.
The mean, angry Trump came out of times.

Speaker 8 But like, I came into this debate anxious about Biden's performance and focused on Biden's performance. And I felt like the first 15 to 20 minutes were the worst part of the debate for Biden.

Speaker 8 And that's probably all that some people watched. And so like, I think we're all angry and frustrated to be in this position.
Joe Biden has done a great job as president. He has better policies.

Speaker 8 He has a better team. But his job is to communicate those ideas and then make a contrast with Trump and what he would do.
And he failed at that.

Speaker 8 And his other job was to put to rest concerns about his age. And I think they were made worse.
So this debate was a really important moment in this campaign and it didn't go well.

Speaker 8 And I'm also worried that there might not be another debate because if you're Trump, you might be thinking, why not just leave it at that?

Speaker 3 I mean, this, Biden was not forced to do this debate. He wanted this debate on this timeline.

Speaker 3 This is something his campaign swerved out of the lane, broke with all precedent in modern political history to seek out a debate outside of the debate commission

Speaker 3 in June. Because, and I think, and I agreed with that strategy at the time, because it was an acknowledgement that this race was profiling in a way that would likely lead to Joe Biden losing.

Speaker 3 He was behind in the polls. It was functioning really as a referendum on Joe Biden.
Voters were not focused enough on Donald Trump. They were concerned about his age.

Speaker 3 And they believed the best way to address that was to get on a stage in front of a nationally televised audience and assuage those concerns. And he did not do that.

Speaker 3 As Tommy said, he exacerbated. In fact, he did the opposite.
He did the exact opposite of that. And like, as you said, it is painful to say this because we adore Joe Biden as a person.

Speaker 3 He's a fundamentally decent, wonderful human being, and he has accomplished a fuck of a lot as president that he should be proud of and we should be proud of. And he has done a good job as president.

Speaker 3 And I believe that tonight's performance is not a reflection of the kind of president that he is, but it is a very...

Speaker 3 concerning piece of evidence about the kind of candidate he will be in this race, right? Because you need to ultimately be able to defend your record record and make the case against Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 And there has never in the history of politics been an easier candidate to make a case against than Donald Trump. Donald Trump gave him ample opportunities to do so.

Speaker 3 If Joe Biden had given a B-min performance tonight, we'd be talking about Donald Trump. He lied.
He made very little sense. He didn't answer any question.

Speaker 3 He became much more incoherent as the debate went on. Donald Trump did, for sure.
And this was,

Speaker 3 maybe we'll have another debate, maybe we won't, but this was Joe Biden's best and biggest opportunity to address the single biggest concern about his candidacy.

Speaker 3 And he did not deliver on that tonight. And that is deeply disappointing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, here's, at first it was shocking, then it was scary, then it was sad, and by the end it was absurd.

Speaker 4 I'm also, by the way, I'm not really buying this spin that the first 20 minutes were terrible and then he got somehow much better. That was not my experience in watching this debate.

Speaker 4 Like, I think part of what makes this so sad is, A, we understand the stakes. B, we view Donald Trump as an eminently beatable figure.
And C, we believe Joe Biden to be an excellent president.

Speaker 4 I believe that. I believe Joe Biden ran because he loves this country and he believed his case against Trump was the best.
He was right about that.

Speaker 4 I believe he was an extraordinary president and played the hands better than anybody else could have played it.

Speaker 4 But the most important job Joe Biden has as president of the United States is to beat Donald Trump. And unfortunately, he went into this debate in a positive, he was behind.

Speaker 4 His job was to overcome that dynamic and changed it. He emphasized it.

Speaker 4 And for the same sense of decency and empathy and patriotism that led Joe Biden to run, I believe this is a moment to at least have a big open conversation about whether the best thing he can do for America to end his presidency as the success it deserves to be is whether or not he should step aside.

Speaker 4 And already I know, like, because the stakes are so high, you see people afraid to have that conversation and fine.

Speaker 4 But what I don't appreciate is people immediately saying, well, we know Joe Biden won't step aside. We know Joe Biden won't do this.
We know Joe Biden won't do that.

Speaker 4 I don't know what Joe Biden's going to do. Nobody knows what Joe Biden's going to do.
Joe Biden was still on stage while some people were saying that they know Joe Biden is not going to step aside.

Speaker 4 I believe Joe Biden loves this country and wants what's best for it. And so there's a lot of

Speaker 4 messy, complicated, confusing unknowns ahead of us. But the first, I think the first step is let's have the debate about which path is riskiest.

Speaker 4 Is the riskiest path sticking with Joe Biden or is the riskiest path saying we want someone else? And anybody who says that that is not a tough call right now is full of fucking shit.

Speaker 3 We're going to get to that in a bit. We're obviously not the only ones who are thinking this.
And that's not just because there's like Democrats privately freaking out, though that's happening.

Speaker 3 Most everyone I know in my life is also freaking out. So that's also happening.
But just to give you an example, as soon as the debate was over, this is what we heard from CNN's John King.

Speaker 3 Let's listen.

Speaker 9 Anderson, this was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 9 It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists.
It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers.

Speaker 9 And they're having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket.

Speaker 9 And they're having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include, should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside?

Speaker 9 Other of the conversations are about should prominent Democrats go public with that call.

Speaker 3 So that was John King. So then we heard from all sorts of Democrats.
Kate Bettingfeld, former White House Communications Director, said that it was a bad performance.

Speaker 3 We heard from multiple other Democrats who said that. There's members of Congress.
I mean, we're recording this at midnight.

Speaker 3 So by the time you hear this, there's probably other Democrats that will have said this too. But members of Congress are giving blind quotes so far.
So the panic is real. It's happening.

Speaker 3 I almost feel like it is underselling it or minimizing it to call it panicking or like bedwetting.

Speaker 3 Look, if this was September or October, we would be honest that this was a horrible debate, but say like, look, it's too late. The election is in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 Obviously, we should vote for Joe Biden and we should do everything we can to make sure that Donald Trump doesn't win and

Speaker 3 make Joe Biden another president. But what Joe Biden did was agree to this debate, propose this debate and agree to this debate with seven weeks left to the convention.

Speaker 3 And as you said, Lovet, like we now,

Speaker 3 it would be silly not to have this conversation. And that's not to say that a contested convention would be easy or necessarily nominate someone who can beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 That is the reality of the situation we're in right now. But I think like, and look, It's up to Joe Biden, right? Joe Biden's going to make this decision.

Speaker 3 The people around him are going to counsel him on this decision but like i think that everyone else who saw what we all saw last night needs to be honest that like he it's not just that look we've talked about debates before debates are performances debates are silly they get scored barack obama had a terrible first debate against mitt romney right and then he went out there and he fixed it right The terrible debate that Barack Obama had against Mitt Romney was nothing like this.

Speaker 3 This is just another level, right? I've never, like I said, I've never seen any political.

Speaker 3 Can you guys think of a political debate that was as bad as

Speaker 4 bad as this? The previous worst debate that any of us have ever seen was the first presidential debate last time.

Speaker 4 And the difference between that debate and this debate, and I think part of the reason this debate feels worse, is that was a despicable display.

Speaker 4 But we didn't come away thinking that the race had suddenly tilted against Joe Biden. This was a horrible debate.

Speaker 3 Well, Joe Biden won that debate. Right.
But

Speaker 4 everybody walked away saying that was the worst debate they'd ever seen.

Speaker 3 Now Washington thought I hate politics. Right, That was the reaction of that.

Speaker 4 I think people had the exact same reaction to this. Nobody came away from this loving politics.

Speaker 3 Or loving Donald Trump. Or loving Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 I don't think Donald Trump picked up. And no one was like, oh, you know what? Donald Trump has assuaged my concerns about him not being a fucking lunatic.
I don't think that happened.

Speaker 3 But I think people were fucking...

Speaker 3 I mean, it's not just that Joe Biden needed to

Speaker 3 make the case against Donald Trump in a debate. Donald Trump is a threat to democracy right now.

Speaker 3 And we need leaders and we need a president to actually make the case for why Donald Trump is as unfit for office as we all know. He did not bring up, like, he didn't make a case against January 6th.

Speaker 3 He didn't talk about the fact that he tried to overturn the last election. He didn't talk about the fact that he is facing 88 felony counts.
He said the words convicted felon once.

Speaker 3 Then he started talking about having sex with the porn star. What's that? Alley cats.
Alley cats, right? He didn't bring up like almost any of Donald Trump's vulnerabilities in a coherent way.

Speaker 8 Let's talk about Trump's performance for a minute. I mean, Trump lied constantly.
He lied about his position on abortion.

Speaker 4 He lied about COVID.

Speaker 8 He lied about January 6th. He blamed Pelosi for the insurrection.
The problem was the moderators had told everyone, we're not here to fact check.

Speaker 8 And it was Joe Biden's job to effectively call him out for what he was getting wrong and then make the case against him. And he just failed to do it.

Speaker 8 And look, I don't think Trump was good, but to his credit, he was relentlessly on message. Everything came back to to illegal immigration.

Speaker 8 He made almost every question about the border because he knew that was his strength and that was Joe Biden's weakness.

Speaker 8 And there was no equivalent effort to get on a message that had Trump on his back heels from the Biden side.

Speaker 3 It was frankly just kind of hard to follow answer after hard to follow answer.

Speaker 4 I am open to the idea that like we are freaks who watch this in a way that is different from the way maybe undecided voters would watch it, right?

Speaker 4 There was dials that came out throughout saying people dislike them both. Like I'm open to, I can see that.

Speaker 3 Completely can see that.

Speaker 4 And by the way, I'm also open to the possibility that this debate doesn't have a severe impact, that the actual impact of it won't be as long-lasting.

Speaker 4 And I'm extremely open to the possibility that Joe Biden can come back with us.

Speaker 4 But I think, John, what you're getting at here is I think the reason this felt so dispiriting and so important is because the way in which he lost this debate at a time when he needed to change the dynamic makes us very, very concerned that he cannot change the dynamic in any other setting, that he is not the person to make this argument for himself or against Donald Trump.

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Speaker 3 and again, so we, you know, we, we watched the debate end and then Joe Biden appeared at a watch party, and he was much more energetic at the watch party.

Speaker 3 He was much more coherent, though, even there, because everyone was like, whoa, where was that Joe Biden? Yeah, energy-wise,

Speaker 3 coherence-wise, for sure. But his message was like, he started talking about the dogface lying pony soldier.
It was not good. Everyone's grading on such a curve.

Speaker 8 It was just a weird one-minute speech.

Speaker 3 It was a weird, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 And so I don't, like, I just feel like we're now all, yeah, we're now all like grading on a curve. Everything's relative, but it's like, hello, we all, we all saw this, right?

Speaker 4 Well, that's the only thing you can't, I'm not going to be convinced that I did, don't tell me my eyes are lying. Like, I saw what I saw.

Speaker 3 Like, a handful of things can be true at the same time, right? That Joe Biden's performance was very bad at a very bad time.

Speaker 3 That if you were, it's also true that if you were to show swing voters who did not watch the debate only footage of Donald Trump speaking, they would be very unhappy with Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 And I would be shocked if they weren't. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 3 he did nothing to improve his standing in the race. All he did was just be better than Joe Biden.
Right.

Speaker 3 And so, and I would say Trump did, what Trump did do for all of his bad unpopular policy positions, refusal to

Speaker 3 answer questions, his repeated lies is, he was more restrained than he was in 2020. And so you could watch that and not come away with the idea that he is like, that's what Biden wanted.

Speaker 3 What strategically he should have done is try to, when Trump got mad was when Biden went after him on January 6th early.

Speaker 3 And if he had done that earlier and sort of gotten Trump off his game, Biden couldn't do that. The bigger thing here is Biden is behind in this race, right?

Speaker 3 We can debate by how much, but Trump has an advantage in the swing states and

Speaker 3 maybe all six of them right now. And so how do you change a dynamic in a race?

Speaker 3 You either change a dynamic in a race by taking advantage of huge, high-leverage moments with lots of eyeballs on you and delivering in a big way. Biden did not do that.

Speaker 3 And there may not be another moment like that because the convention speech is not a moment like that. No, because Trump gets a convention speech.
Biden gets a convention speech. They're planned

Speaker 3 by partisan.

Speaker 3 And the other way you do it is by waking up every single day, dominating the media conversation and making a compelling, relentless argument for yourself and against the other person.

Speaker 3 Joe Biden has not done that in this presidency at any point. And look, if suddenly he wakes up tomorrow and can do that for the next several months, right? Then

Speaker 3 so happy. You are doing multiple, you're doing multiple rallies a day.
You are doing every single possible media hit you can do. You're going into unfriendly territory to do things that go viral.

Speaker 3 Right. You know, it's like Trump was on, I don't know, which Paul, Logan Paul, Jake Paul's podcast.
And then either Jake or Logan, whoever like challenged Biden to do it.

Speaker 3 Like, get go like a different candidate could go do that and just like take him on and get in his face and have a viral moment and show your strength.

Speaker 8 Whether Biden's staff are treating him with kid gloves or they because maybe because of tonight they think he can't do those things he is not doing that so it's the question is how is he going to change the dynamic in the race going forward if tonight happened and we may not get another debate there was one question and answer that i thought was kind of damaging for trump and i wondered if you guys agreed he was asked what do you say to voters who think you violated your oath on january 6th and trump said on january 6th we had a great border on january 6th we were energy independent on january 6th we had the lowest taxes the lowest regulations we were respected around the world then he went into a pivot i wonder, I don't know, like rhetorically, it was clever, but I wonder if you were like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 That was my reaction. I thought it was bizarre.
And I'm like, because it seemed like something that they had planned. And I was like, that is not, that is, that cannot be affected.

Speaker 3 Clever was the wrong. Like, it was like, it was a rhetorical only answer that never touched the substance.
It's like giving

Speaker 3 like a, like a, what do you call those things, a fidget? Fidget spinner?

Speaker 3 A fidget spinner to a kid where it's just like, here's something he will say that will not, likely not damage him more than what he would say on his own.

Speaker 4 But this is the problem, right? Because there's Joe Biden standing there and he's not lithe or or or fast or or direct enough to be able to counter punch in any of these moments. He tried there.

Speaker 8 He said, he tried to get him to say, will you denounce the Proud Boys? You told them to stand by. Will you denounce the insurrectionist? But he just couldn't get it out.

Speaker 3 He couldn't get out. Everyone ignored it.

Speaker 4 And by the way, I just, I also want to say, I'm really not up for a debate about CNN and their role in this.

Speaker 4 If you watched that debate and you came away thinking the problem was CNN, go for a walk outside. That is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 So speaking of CNN,

Speaker 3 so the first debate in 2020, the CNN post-debate poll, Joe Biden, 60% of voters thought Joe Biden won. 28% thought Donald Trump won.
Tonight, the poll just came out.

Speaker 3 67% of voters think Donald Trump won. Only 33% think that Joe Biden won.
It's a big swing.

Speaker 3 It's a 66-point swing towards Trump. There was also a Frank Luntz's focus group of all undecided voters who, again,

Speaker 3 Luntz was tweeting this through the debate. At times were saying, oh, they're mad at both of them.
They don't like that Trump's being so personal.

Speaker 4 A tiny bit of purchase on which to have hope.

Speaker 3 And then at the end, they're all undecided voters and all of them think that Joe Biden should step aside.

Speaker 3 There was a focus group on MSNBC just before we started. One of the voters said, we should have, I love Joe Biden's policies.
I think Donald Trump's despicable, but Joe Biden can't execute.

Speaker 3 Like, we should have an open convention.

Speaker 4 I love that moment with that.

Speaker 4 There was a despondency with that person because what you got was how much they dislike donald trump and understand already that donald trump doesn't fight for them doesn't care about them isn't out for them but they see joe biden even though they want to be for joe biden what they saw made them really really concerned and this is what voters have been saying this is what lots of people have been saying for for years now it has gotten worse and worse and what joe biden said when there was a big news cycle All right, when everybody said it was too late, and there was a big news cycle about this, Joe Biden, i remember he was he he did a press conference it was very combative and then someone shouted the question at him and he said watch me

Speaker 4 after the robert hurt special counsel report after the robert her special counsel report uh joe biden turned to the door turned back creakily and said watch me and but and by the way like i this entire time have been just very uncertain right about what was the more dangerous or risky path given the threat trump poses right do you do you do you trust that joe biden can overcome these concerns about his age enough to make this case case?

Speaker 4 Or do you believe you should go down the messy and unknown path of seeking out a different nominee? And I think what we saw tonight means we need to have that debate. There's a lot to come.

Speaker 4 It's complicated. It's uncertain.
It's risky, but we have to have that conversation. Yeah,

Speaker 8 I think it's totally acceptable to wonder aloud and openly talk about. the path of the convention.
I think it's totally legitimate for folks to say, you know what?

Speaker 8 Actually, I think sticking with Joe Biden is the best chance we have at winning, so we all should do that.

Speaker 8 What is not acceptable is telling people to stop bedwetting or that they didn't see what they saw or that, oh, you guys just need this is Twitter nonsense.

Speaker 8 It's time to grow a spine. Enough with that rhetorical bullshit.

Speaker 8 It's insulting to people who are on your team who want to fight for you, but have eyeballs and care deeply about this country and are anxious because we all have a stake in this election.

Speaker 8 It's not about one man. on the ticket or about the staff around him.
It's about the fucking future of the country.

Speaker 3 And by the way,

Speaker 3 the staff around him,

Speaker 3 he has a great campaign team. The staff is fantastic.

Speaker 3 They are doing everything right.

Speaker 3 The person who is to blame right now is Joe Biden because he has told all of us, I am the guy. Like he's thought it through.
I am the guy. Bet on me.
I'm going to do it. And then he did this.

Speaker 3 And then, and Joe Biden and anyone around him, whether it's the first lady, whoever else has like keeps encouraging him to do this, right? Like, I feel bad.

Speaker 3 I feel terrible for the staff on the campaign and a lot of the other people.

Speaker 3 Look, not just because they're, a lot of them are our friends, but because they are doing like really good work, but he is the candidate, right? And he has to like lead the candidate.

Speaker 3 The candidate debate for him. Right.
He has to debate. And they are doing these jobs because they know.
They love Joe Biden. They absolutely love Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 They also know that you have to defeat Donald Trump. And this is as we sit here right now, that

Speaker 3 is the way to do it. is you elect the choice is right now as of today there will be a conversation in the coming days is elect joe biden or we get Donald Trump.
Those are the two choices, right?

Speaker 3 It's not the choice a lot of people wanted. It's not a perfect choice, but that is the option before us, right? And so that's why, that's why they're doing it.

Speaker 3 It's why we have done what we have done to try to help Joe Biden, right? And that's why people are so frustrated and upset about this debate because he did this. He wanted this debate right now.
Yep.

Speaker 3 Right. And that

Speaker 3 he had a week of practice. And probably should have had.
He probably should have had two. Right.
And so it's just, it is like they, this was a big moment, and he did not deliver in a big moment.

Speaker 3 Right. And it's very frustrating.
And look, like you said, Dan, it's a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Like, if we get through the convention and everyone, and Joe Biden says, I'm not stepping down, and there's no other Democrats step up.

Speaker 3 And all the, you know, I've seen a lot of the elected Democrats tonight on TV, which understandable. It's like right after the debate, say, like, no, we're sticking with Joe Biden.
It's great.

Speaker 3 If everyone decides, everyone who could run for president decides that they're not.

Speaker 3 They're not going to run, they don't want to run, Joe Biden's the guy, Joe Biden decides, then like after that convention, of course, we will do everything in our power

Speaker 3 to elect Joe Biden. 100%.

Speaker 3 But, like,

Speaker 3 the best thing Joe Biden did is to propose this debate before the convention and give us a chance now to like rethink this.

Speaker 4 It is because the threat Donald Trump poses that we have to have this debate right now about whether or not it should be Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 Do not tell us that because Donald Trump is a threat, we cannot have this conversation. That is ridiculous.

Speaker 8 And I think, just to be crystal clear about one thing, I did not come away from this debate wondering whether Joe Biden can do the job of president. He can.
He has been doing it.

Speaker 8 He's done a great job of doing it. I came away deeply concerned about his ability to wage the campaign he needs to wage to defeat Donald Trump.
It's an important distinction.

Speaker 3 Yes. You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 I am not for one second in the camp of people regurgitating the like horrible attacks from the Trump people. This is about what it takes to run a campaign, which is really, really hard.

Speaker 3 President is a much harder job. It's a much more important job, but candidate is a different job.
Right. And it's primarily a communications job.
It's an ability to go out every day and make a case.

Speaker 3 And it's always important, but when you're running against an authoritarian who could threaten democracy, then it's not just about being a good candidate.

Speaker 3 That is part of the job of being president in this moment right now: making the case for why democracy is the better system. And he has not made that case.

Speaker 11 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 13 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

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Speaker 3 So Axios already has some comments from these are House Democrats and they are not they've given their names to Axios officials. Of course not yeah they're on this is not on the record.

Speaker 3 One said I am in a state of shock the other the other said Jamal Bowman is the hero we need right now. We need him to pull the fire alarm.
A couple that make it too

Speaker 4 rounds.

Speaker 3 One female House Democrat said it's time for a woman to save both these men from their misery. President Whitmer has a strong ring to it.
So that's just a sample of some of what we're getting from.

Speaker 4 And I'll just say, like, I imagine this is true for you guys.

Speaker 8 I probably got like two dozen tweets tonight from friends in and out of politics. Every single one of them was as anxious as we sound.

Speaker 8 This is not like a political insider, like ajita group thing thing.

Speaker 3 It's like all my friends from all parts of my life just being like, what's happening? People who don't tune into politics, people who don't pay attention.

Speaker 3 Like, there's not a single person who's like, eh, it's actually not that bad.

Speaker 4 I feel like I want to come back to something you said, which is that you said like that the word panic feels strange, both like, like too big and too small.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 4 I think the problem, right, is like...

Speaker 3 What's a little patronizing to you? It's like, oh, those Democrats, they're all panic. Which I get.
Well, because we are often.

Speaker 4 We are. Yes, for sure.
And I think what makes this different is that it's not a panic in that I think people. people are not overreacting.

Speaker 4 And this is a moment where people are reflecting not just on the debate, but what led to this moment, right?

Speaker 4 And the collective sense in which we couldn't make a change and all the conversations and debates we've been having for a long time. That's one part of it.

Speaker 4 The second part of it is, I am concerned that we spend 48 hours having

Speaker 4 this paroxysm of doubt and concern. And then the July 4th happens.
Joe Biden does a rally where he is more like how he was at the State of the Union. The dynamic in the race doesn't change.

Speaker 4 He's still behind in these swing state polls. We don't really see a clear path to how that changes, but we're reassured that, oh, the debate didn't have as long of an impact as we thought it would.

Speaker 4 Then all of a sudden, we're marching toward a convention where we never really reconciled the experience of watching that debate.

Speaker 4 And that's why I think just making sure that what this is is not a panic, but a concerted effort to give everybody who wants to protect democracy and defeat Donald Trump the open conversation about the best person to do that is so important.

Speaker 8 And some people will say, this conversation only helps Trump. Yeah, it does.
And no one wants to be having it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. But our hand was forced by what we all want.
We're going to watch Trump the 90 minutes that we just saw. Yeah, it does.
Anyway, let's go to

Speaker 3 fun. Anyway, let's go to favorite moments.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think one other point I think is worth making is

Speaker 3 we had some by the way, different

Speaker 3 houses. By the way, I want you guys to know something.

Speaker 4 We were deep gallows humored by the end of this thing.

Speaker 3 It was, we were, we were drinking and we were getting through it. We went through it from stunned silence to gallows humor in about 20 minutes.

Speaker 8 I liked when we were talking about how many historians said said Trump was the worst president.

Speaker 3 That was a good part.

Speaker 3 That's, you know.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 By the way, Kamala Harris was on TV afterwards. Anderson Cooper interviewed her.
I believe she went on MSNBC, though. I haven't seen that yet.

Speaker 3 And, you know, she did quite well in the interview, and Anderson really pushed her. And at one point, she did say it was a slow start.
At least, like, the vice president acknowledged that.

Speaker 3 And that's, you know. That's the vice president.
So the idea that you're going to be like, no, everything was fine. You even have the vice president.

Speaker 3 You have the president's former communications director. You have the vice president.
Like, it's just

Speaker 3 no one thinks it was fine. And you know what? And I think that just telling people to deny what they saw, telling people to deny objective reality, it's just not, it's just not effective.

Speaker 3 Forget about whether it's right or wrong. It's just not effective.
I'm going to be very interested to see what Biden does at the rally he has in North Carolina tomorrow.

Speaker 3 If this was Obama, right? And this was sort of true after that Robney debate is, he makes a self-deprecating joke about it, right? And then tries to to deliver a much better performance.

Speaker 3 Like, will Biden do that, right? Yeah, I do have there. There is one upside to this debate.
He will not be attacked tomorrow

Speaker 3 for performance-enhancing drugs. So he has, he has put that narrative that's too honest.

Speaker 8 Silver lining.

Speaker 3 Do you see people?

Speaker 4 There was people pausing and trying to feed Joe Biden out of all through the television.

Speaker 3 This is why you don't do time release. This is why you do that.
Yeah, you got it. Yeah,

Speaker 3 you're up all night.

Speaker 3 Just it kicked in right, it kicked in at the party. Yeah, right, right.
That was the the problem.

Speaker 4 And poor Joe Biden's going to be up all night.

Speaker 8 We did have a spirited debate about golf games, handicaps.

Speaker 3 That was wild.

Speaker 3 But all of this stuff is even more frustrating because it goes to show how vulnerable Trump is.

Speaker 3 The guy was an incoherent mess. He was talking about...
He was a little. I would say

Speaker 3 we were talking about the first 15, 20 minutes. I would say Trump was the best in the first 15 minutes.
And then Trump really declined throughout the debate.

Speaker 3 Biden got him upset, and then Trump became more of the Trump we know.

Speaker 8 One of the most obvious differences between watching the first debate four years ago and the first debate now is something has happened to Joe Biden's voice that has made it softer, more frail, and has led him to cough a lot.

Speaker 8 And again, I know I'm talking optics and optics doesn't matter when you're doing the job of president, but it matters a lot as a candidate.

Speaker 8 And it just makes it hard for him to get his point across and to get these lines out and to string together arguments over the course of two minutes in a way that is compelling or even at times like fully understandable.

Speaker 3 I mean, we should note. I mean, yeah, you're correct, Dr.
Ross Nero, that his voice has changed. He also, it came out that he had a cold.

Speaker 3 Has he had it since January? Well, I mean, like, he sounded worse than usual. And the first, like, it sounded like he had to cough and he could not cough in the first 15 minutes.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Now, why his campaign did not put out the fact that he had a cold in advance of that?

Speaker 3 Well, I'll just say, so you know what?

Speaker 3 Me and Tommy and Lovett, we went to the fundraiser in L.A. with President Obama and Jimmy Kimmel, and Biden was very much like he was tonight at that fundraiser.

Speaker 3 That was also after he had flown from the G7 in Italy

Speaker 3 15 hours to LA. I understand.
And that was his second trip to Europe in the same week.

Speaker 3 We chalked it up as like, yeah, that was a pretty bad performance. He is pretty tired.
They should let the guy sleep. Hopefully they'll have him sleep and prep for this debate.

Speaker 3 And by the way, everyone else in the crowd saw that too, which is why the whole like, oh, deceptively edited clip of Biden freezing, he wasn't actually freezing in that moment, but the rest of the thing was bad.

Speaker 3 I just also tired. And I thought he would be rested tonight.
I hoped he would be rested tonight. He wasn't.

Speaker 4 Look, and by the way, we have tried, like, we saw him at the State of the Union where he delivered. We did.

Speaker 4 It's also like, oh, okay, he had a cold and his voice is gravelly and not as strong as it used to be.

Speaker 4 That doesn't explain why halfway through an answer about abortion, he pivoted to a different answer about immigration.

Speaker 4 That doesn't explain why he wasn't able to push back on Donald Trump throughout the debate.

Speaker 3 That's a classic debate move. You pivot from your strongest issue to your weakest issue.

Speaker 4 Your weakest issue. Mid-sentence.

Speaker 3 Did Donald Trump bring up the attack? No. You got to bring up the attack yourself.

Speaker 3 Then he can't do it.

Speaker 4 Then you bring it up yourself.

Speaker 3 You see what I'm saying? It's a

Speaker 3 jiu-jitsu. He clearly got rattled.

Speaker 3 He clearly got rattled by his performance. Like he knew.
Oh, for you could say. He knew that he messed up that first question.
And I know, because

Speaker 3 we've prepped cancer debates before. You tell him the first 10 minutes matter more than anything else.
And

Speaker 3 he knew he messed that up and he got in his head. Because he clearly had an answer on abortion.
He had an answer on this attack that he knew Trump was going to make about this woman who was killed.

Speaker 3 And he just

Speaker 3 combined him. He combined him.

Speaker 4 You also practice, though, like in debate prep.

Speaker 8 I'm sure you say to him over and over again, sir, your face is going to be visible through the duration of the debate. Every time Donald Trump speaks, they're going to be looking at you too.

Speaker 8 So you have to be mindful of how you look, smiling, laughing, right?

Speaker 4 He did a great job of that in 2020.

Speaker 3 That's what's so funny about this.

Speaker 8 A disaster this time. Not hot.

Speaker 3 And you know it.

Speaker 3 I mean, look. Like, you know what?

Speaker 3 You're not Dick Barghese funny. You can either laugh or you can cry.

Speaker 3 Because we watched the, we all re-watched the first 2020 debate earlier this week, and Trump did a terrible job of that in the first debate. Sweaty, sweaty.
He's like angry. He's muttering himself.

Speaker 3 And Biden, that whole, he did, that's what he nailed in that debate is he stared at that camera the whole time. Every time Trump said something crazy, Biden gave it that classic Biden smile.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And he did the exact opposite of that in this debate. I think now we're getting to the point in the pod where we're all saying the same thing over and over again and want to kill ourselves.

Speaker 3 Right, exactly.

Speaker 3 Do we have any final thoughts?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't, I actually don't have.

Speaker 4 We just watched the debate, and I think we're all feeling a bit gobsmacked. And I think that's a feeling to trust for a bit.

Speaker 3 I'm going to go back to my hotel room and and watch it one more time before i go to bed oh you really yeah

Speaker 4 jesus christ no i'm gonna love yourself i'm gonna take the same xanax they gave joe biden before the debate and uh knock myself the fuck out but i i i think like a bunch of friends

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 4 yeah right uh no but but i i feel like the the two texts i'm getting from a lot of people that I'm sure is a shared experience was some combination of what do we do and are we doomed was like a I feel like a lot of people are saying that.

Speaker 4 And what do we we do? We take it one step at a time. We all just watched that.

Speaker 3 We all saw it.

Speaker 4 Nobody knows what Joe Biden's going to do. You saw

Speaker 4 Kamala Harris is doing fucking improv with Anderson Cooper. Gavin Newsom doesn't know what to do.
Everybody's figuring this out.

Speaker 4 So I think everybody, I think just being honest about what we saw is the first step. And everybody giving, being generous with each other in knowing that.

Speaker 4 Everyone inside of this big Democratic coalition wants to defeat Donald Trump. We just may not over the next couple of days or weeks agree on the best way to do it.
That's That's for a second.

Speaker 4 Are we doomed? We're not doomed. We're not doomed until the election is over and a lot can change between now and then.
Nobody knows what's going to happen. And let's just take it one step at a time.

Speaker 4 That's that's my one caution here.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I look, I'm not going to pretend tonight wasn't anything but terrible.

Speaker 8 The next few days will probably be worse because what tends to happen is the negative feelings about a debate performance like this turn into articles, which get shared around, it compounds, and the spin gets worse and worse, and it becomes

Speaker 3 a bit of a spiral.

Speaker 8 But the fact is, we have gotten like a couple months is a lifetime in politics. I'm not saying that to like spin for Joe Biden.
It's just an objective fact.

Speaker 8 There was a fucking insurrection against the Capitol that no one's talking about anymore somehow. So, you know,

Speaker 8 the lot can change between now and Election Day and a lot can change between now and the convention. And it is what it is, but this weekend's going to suck.

Speaker 4 We got to shut down the idea

Speaker 4 to article pipeline. That is the fucking problem.

Speaker 3 Per Dem source, live tracking of the debate showed that Trump's support tanked when he said he wouldn't accept the results of the election. Again,

Speaker 3 not surprising. There were some good responses for Biden from some Midwest swing voters.
I'll take that for what you will. And then Trump's January 6th and Roe responses were also unpopular.

Speaker 3 Yes, of course. Also, Biden just took a few questions from the pool.
They asked him how he did tonight. He said, I think we did well.

Speaker 3 On calls for him to drop out, whether he has any concerns about his performance. No.
It's hard to debate a liar.

Speaker 3 The New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times on whether he's sick, I have a sore throat. Poole was then quickly ushered out.

Speaker 3 This, Biden going to that watch event, Biden taking these questions is the first steps you do to address a bad debate performance like this. That's signal that they know.

Speaker 3 And that we'll see a rally tomorrow. There's the next 48 hours are going to be.
fascinating about how everyone else in the party responds and what Biden does.

Speaker 3 But it is just worth reminding that we're going to hear this from everyone. Why doesn't the DNC go to Biden and tell him

Speaker 3 this is going to be Joe Biden's decision? Yep. No one is going to make him do it.
No Democrat is going to announce that they're jumping in the race because you can't really do that.

Speaker 3 And this is going to be a decision for the president to make. Yep.
And people can counsel him on it. People can counsel him privately, publicly, whatever it may be.
It's his decision. So, all right.

Speaker 3 Wish we had a more hope. Hey, one last question.
What gives you hope?

Speaker 3 By the way, listen,

Speaker 4 as the debate was winding down and we're all kind of like our eyes are kind of bleeding from the side and we're kind of like kind of trying to find different kinds of alcohol to put together.

Speaker 4 I looked around, we're in this room, we're watching it together, we're doing our best to laugh through it. And I just like, we had a good time.

Speaker 8 We had gummy bears, we tried our best.

Speaker 3 We had gummy bears, wine and beer, and we made the best of it. You know what, guys? We're all great teams.
French fries. We're all going to get through it together.
You bet. Everyone.

Speaker 3 Hug a lib this weekend. Hug a lib this weekend.
Did you say we're stronger together? We're stronger.

Speaker 3 All right, everyone. We will talk to you tomorrow night in Boston.
Why? Bye, everyone.

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Speaker 3 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.
Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 3 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Reed Sherlin is our executive producer.
The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 3 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 3 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 11 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 13 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.