S.E. Cupp: A Sucker and a Loser

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Speaker 15 Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO, and what we have done to preserve the ability of Zelensky and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence.

Speaker 15 Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.

Speaker 15 And why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?

Speaker 12 Hello and welcome to the Board Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
And speaking of getting eaten for lunch, how about that last night?

Speaker 12 Donald Trump, boy, he was on the menu, so to speak, for Kamala Harris. And I'm delighted to be here today with my old pal, SE Cup, CNN contributor, Battleground America series.

Speaker 12 She's doing for Fox stations across the country. And the last time we were together, boy, the vibes are very different.
How you doing, SE?

Speaker 16 Very different vibes. I'm good.
How are you?

Speaker 12 I couldn't be better. I was living the dream last night.
I was living the dream last last night in the spin room.

Speaker 12 Just going up to all my old friends, asking them how they're doing, asking them if they're in their fees, trying to make them spin, pretending like I was a journalist next to all the other journalists to ask them to give me their best spin.

Speaker 12 Right. Oh boy, it was enjoyable.
It's not about me, though. It's about the country.
It's about Kamala Harris. So

Speaker 12 let's just kind of do this conversation style. Like we're a couple pals having coffee, just enjoying ourselves.
So what aren't we? That's what we're doing.

Speaker 16 Aren't we just a couple pals last night? Exactly.

Speaker 12 Like Like, we're just hanging out at the coffee shop chatting about what happened last night.

Speaker 16 So, we're both in Philly, right?

Speaker 12 We are both in Philly. We should have done this together.
Hanging out, yeah. Unfortunately, this is Gen Z counts this as being together, actually.

Speaker 12 What, uh, so what did you think? What was your top line? Give it to me.

Speaker 16 I feel like Kamala Harris must be feeling what Putin

Speaker 16 and Kim Jong-un

Speaker 16 feel, which is like, I can't believe this guy fell for it. Like, I can't believe how easily manipulated this guy was.
She laid out trap after trap after trap. These weren't like

Speaker 16 well-concealed traps. These were pretty obvious traps.
And he walked into every single one, like giddily, giddily. I mean, she's a prosecutor, but she's not Houdini.

Speaker 16 She didn't like, there was no magic. She laid a trap.
He walked right into it, like laughing and screaming. And like happily, I think even for me, having covered him so long,

Speaker 16 somewhat surprising to see just how easily manipulated he was by her.

Speaker 16 And I think if you're a swing state voter who is undecided and you don't really, you don't really love either of these people, you just watch that thinking, man, he's a sucker. What a sucker.

Speaker 12 And a loser, you might say. What a sucker and a loser.
The bait element of this. Because I gotta say, I was skeptical because they said this before the Biden debate, right?

Speaker 12 That he was, they were gonna try to bait him, and they were saying that those leaks were coming out of prep. And I was like, is that really true? Is that just a head game?

Speaker 12 I could kind of see her focusing on her own massage or the story. Yeah, is she really gonna do it? And then it's this immigration section.
This, the whole debate, you know, was lost.

Speaker 12 I mean, he didn't win a single point in any part of the whole debate, but like the key segment of the debate was where you go from immigration into abortion, right?

Speaker 12 In the immigration section, this topic that should be very friendly for him comes up. And the question goes to her first.

Speaker 12 And she gives her answer, which is a fair, substantive answer about how Donald Trump killed that bill. It aligns a little bit about what happened before that.

Speaker 12 But, you know, it was a fair point and what she wants to do going forward. And then she ends it with like a total non-sex

Speaker 12 about

Speaker 12 his crowd size.

Speaker 12 Like, yeah, she's still kind of nervous.

Speaker 16 That's what I mean. These are not carefully planted drafts.

Speaker 12 She doesn't even know he executed that well. Like, as the debate goes on, she gets better and better at this, but it's kind of like a rambling mess a little bit about how his crowd is.

Speaker 16 Oh, you know what it reminded me of? You know, in Zoolander,

Speaker 16 right? They've got a subliminal, like a song that they just play to trick Derek Zoolander into going after the prime minister of Malaysia. It's not careful.
It's not clever. It's literally Pavlovian.

Speaker 16 It's like she does a policy thing and then she'd be like, crowd size.

Speaker 12 And he sins.

Speaker 16 He goes nuts. He becomes you know zoolander it was so

Speaker 16 it would be funny if the consequences weren't so high but like like i said this was these were obvious traps and anyone with any self-control or foresight about what was trying to happen here could easily easily have avoided them but he has no self-control correct so yeah during the woods should be the best part for him yeah the best part right you know he goes off on defending his crowdside people don't even show up to her rallies what are you what are you talking about

Speaker 12 and then he's spiraling so much that takes him into the dog section and so it's in the question where she is triggering him over his you know how the people leave they get bored by him that then he's like and then it's in springfield and people are eating dogs they're eating cats they're eating pets of all kinds.

Speaker 12 All the pets are getting eaten by these immigrants in Ohio.

Speaker 12 It's like, if you are not somebody that is so online, like, you know, if you are not just super attuned to MAGA media or to Twitter or 4 channels, regular viewers are like, you know, I'm like, think about my father.

Speaker 12 Like, what the fuck is he talking about? Who's eating dogs? Yeah. And then, and then David Muir has to correct him and be like, well,

Speaker 12 well,

Speaker 12 actually, it's not true. The city manager says it's not true.
There was one alleged cat incident 170 miles away, and it wasn't even an immigrant who allegedly had skinned a cat.

Speaker 12 And then Trump's like, but I heard about it on TV over the years. Like, that's not right.
I mean, this is, we have facts here. And I mean, and it just, the thing spirals from there.

Speaker 16 But my question to you is, do you think his campaign said, don't bring up the dogs and cats? Don't do it. And he couldn't help himself?

Speaker 16 Or do you think they planned like, you can bring up the dogs and cats?

Speaker 16 Bring up the dogs and cats, but wait for like the right time to bring up the dogs and cats because, you know, the dogs and cats things will scare people. What do you think happened? Did he go off

Speaker 16 there or did he do it, but just sort of hand-fistedly?

Speaker 12 I think he did it hand-fistedly, but here's what I really think about the prep. And you've been in some prep sessions, so we can, we both can talk about this.

Speaker 12 He didn't prep.

Speaker 12 Like they weren't joking, right? Like they kind of prepped. You know, Mark Caputo, my colleague, has reported on this.
I was talking to him this morning, and it's like, they kind of prepped.

Speaker 12 You know, they're like, Gates is in prep. And that it's like, but was he really? Like, there were times where Gates wasn't really there, and then he was.

Speaker 16 He has Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaker 12 And Trump doesn't like to get told things. Yeah.
He doesn't like it. And the cat thing is new.
It's fresh in his mind. And it's like, he's this person.

Speaker 12 It's like the last thing that someone said to him. He'll learn.

Speaker 12 So that was going around the day before because JD Vance actually laid this trap for him. Like this shouldn't have even come up.

Speaker 12 The JD just like tweeting the day before about how this is his home state of Ohio and there's this epidemic of Haitian migrant cat eating.

Speaker 12 And so but I just think if you look at that answer and then you get to the abortion answer. The contrast on the abortion answer.
It's like Trump's whining this morning on Fox.

Speaker 12 He's like, Kamala knew the questions. It's like, no, Kamala knew the topics.
Kamala prepped.

Speaker 12 And like, so you get to the abortion section and you have Trump's answer, which we can't even play the audio off because it's just gobbledygook.

Speaker 12 It's like, I love the Supreme Court and it was great, but it also isn't that good. And I care about the exceptions and also the states.

Speaker 12 And it's like he didn't even prep the answer in his hardest question. And then you get to Kamala's answer.
I want to play one bit from that.

Speaker 15 And one does not have to abandon their faith. or deeply held beliefs to agree.
The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

Speaker 15 I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about this is what people wanted?

Speaker 15 Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot.

Speaker 15 She didn't want that. Her husband didn't want that.
A 12 or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term?

Speaker 15 They don't want that.

Speaker 15 And I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.

Speaker 12 That answer was prepped. That was a heat-seeking missile aimed at pro-life swing voters that don't like Donald Trump or people that were for some types of restriction.

Speaker 16 Weapons grade. It It was a weapons grade answer.
And she had clearly planned it. But what was so great about it was, A,

Speaker 16 she delivered those lines very emotionally and passionately. So it, I think, connected with real people.
And she said everything short of,

Speaker 16 and you did this.

Speaker 16 What she was saying was, we don't want this. Women don't want this.
You know, girls who've been raped, they don't want this. And you did this.

Speaker 16 She looked at him as she sort of laid out the consequences of that Supreme Court decision and she tied it directly to him.

Speaker 16 And we know this puts him in a pretzel because he loves to take credit for it, but he's also trying to distance himself. So he had nothing.
He had nothing for

Speaker 16 that, I think, very surgical and creatively crafted answer that did all the things, checked all the boxes, emotional, personal, passionate, political, policy. And she made it about him.
It was great.

Speaker 12 You're looking at him.

Speaker 12 And if you're at him, if you're a Trump hater and she says that line of like, the government shouldn't be telling these women what, and certainly Donald Trump shouldn't be telling them.

Speaker 12 And you're just like, just the subtext. She doesn't have to be like the grab him by the plussy guy and the E.
Jing Carol. Like, that's all right there.

Speaker 12 Not this mouth is not going to tell you what to do.

Speaker 16 Only a woman could deliver it like that. Only a woman could deliver it like that.
Anyone could say it about him, of course.

Speaker 16 But coming from a woman, I thought it was probably the moment of the night. And that's obviously a winning issue for her.

Speaker 16 So I don't think she had to work that hard at landing the plane, but it was a really good landing. And he didn't take the moments that would have been good for him.

Speaker 16 He got so distracted that he didn't make the most of the issues that inure to his benefit. And that was his big mistake.

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Speaker 12 So this all ties the prep with the body language.

Speaker 12 So let's talk about all because I had Simone on yesterday and she was talking about how for a woman candidate, particularly a woman of color, going against Trump, and what we saw in the first debate where the body language was so bad for Biden.

Speaker 12 You know, it was just like for a variety of reasons. He's a TV guy.
The prep is twofold. Like, I didn't really prep, maybe I should have prepped Jeb's facial reactions.

Speaker 12 You know, like, we didn't like work on that, really. You know, it was substance.
It was style. Yeah.
You could tell that she was both prepped on the substance and on the baiting.

Speaker 12 Just also on the way that she carried herself. It begins from the moment of walking up to shake his hand all the way through how she, how she looked and how he didn't look at her.
So talk about that.

Speaker 16 And her faces while he was speaking

Speaker 16 were careful. Look, I am a woman of many faces.
Lots of times cannot control what happens right here. And there's plenty of evidence of that on TV.

Speaker 12 I know about that.

Speaker 16 Yeah, you do. You do.
But we also know how to make an effective face. that says everything.

Speaker 16 And I think she did intentionally think about how to look when he said things that were meant to bait her.

Speaker 16 She wasn't going to fall for the bait, but her response to the bait was going to be these faces.

Speaker 16 And her faces were both puzzled, amused sometimes, amused, almost like a grandma or an auntie looking sort of askew at someone saying something stupid. Just this is stupid, but like, oh, poor thing.

Speaker 16 They were careful.

Speaker 16 They weren't distracting, importantly because we remember some debate moments like al gore whose reactions were like distracting throughout a debate whether he was like humping or you know huffing and puffing they weren't distracting they were meant to i think signal to like everyone do you hear what i'm hearing this is fucking crazy shit this is crazy and if you're a normal person like me you are looking at this thinking what i think that's what she was channeling like don't take this like seriously it is not serious It is absurd.

Speaker 16 And my face will reflect how absurd it is.

Speaker 12 And it was also show of dominance over him. Right? Like, I'm not scared of you.
I walked straight up. I shaked his hand.

Speaker 12 I looked him in the eye. I went back to my podium.
When you talk, I'm going to look at you. And sometimes make some amused faces.
When she was talking, he couldn't look at her.

Speaker 16 Straight ahead.

Speaker 12 See them.

Speaker 12 See his body language, his hunched shoulders,

Speaker 12 his face paint was multicolored for some reason last night.

Speaker 12 It was dripping a little bit, and it was just coming in different, you know, splotchy. His mouth.
The thing that I just could not get over is

Speaker 12 he would not look at her. And, well, in the post-game, you might have heard me ask her about that.
Let's listen.

Speaker 18 Now, she wants to do another one because she got beaten tonight, but I don't know.

Speaker 12 Why wouldn't you look at her?

Speaker 18 The polls are indicating that we got 90%,

Speaker 12 60%,

Speaker 18 72%, 71%, and 89%.

Speaker 12 Where are you getting these numbers from?

Speaker 12 Where are you getting these numbers from? I love that. Seth Clone sent it to me.
I was live on Fox going, why wouldn't you look at her? Why wouldn't you look at her?

Speaker 12 But, I mean, the fact that he's in a spin room at the end is a sign of just total failure and delusion.

Speaker 12 I mean, they had nothing. Like, this is the other thing.
You've been supporting Canada bad debate nights.

Speaker 12 I've worked for Canada at bad debate nights yeah there's something you grab on to you're like oh we had a good moment

Speaker 12 we went on points

Speaker 12 they had nothing he was out there just rambling and they're just complaining about the moderators

Speaker 12 like am i am i too coconut pilled right now am i too a bullion what

Speaker 16 no i mean they're gonna blame the moderators they're gonna blame the media like you said they're gonna they're gonna suggest she got the questions or something it was rigged they'll do that and that might work with his base it absolutely will not work with the undecided swing state voters who are going to decide this election.

Speaker 16 They've told us over and over again. Here at Battleground, we pull them all the time in the swing states.
They say they are not here for the distractions. They are not here for the personal attacks.

Speaker 16 They actually have substantive problems and questions. They want answers.

Speaker 16 So I don't think any of that. works with the people that he needs.
That was his job last night to speak to undecided swing state voters. And on the economy and immigration,

Speaker 16 he has the issues that benefit him, but he couldn't, he couldn't do it. And she had the same job too, to speak to those voters.

Speaker 16 And I thought, interestingly, if you take Trump out of it, her policy answers, I think we're speaking to moderates and undecided and swing state voters. She wasn't playing to the base.

Speaker 16 She knows what the game last night was about. She's got the base.
She's brought most of the base back after Biden lost a lot of the base. She needs those swing state voters.

Speaker 16 That's why she was saying, I'm not banning fracking. I'm not going to do this.
I'm going to look like the normal, sane candidate here. Well, I'll allow him to look crazy.
And it worked.

Speaker 16 It worked perfectly.

Speaker 12 She repeats, we're going to have the most lethal military. Yeah.
The one time where she was the most adamant about getting in another response was when she was like, no, that's not true.

Speaker 12 About, I'm not going to ban fracking. I'm not going to defund the police.

Speaker 12 I forget the third thing that he said was like she was adamant, like trying to get time to the moderators to just be crystal clear about the pivot to the center right and you know on the policies the like what are the policies she was talking about opportunity economy building houses you know it's this broad base and there's some popular stuff in there too like some some free money it's parts in there but it was mostly middle-of-the-road stuff he was so bad on the key points that it's actually kind of secondary how bad he was on the typical Trumpy things.

Speaker 12 For example, they finally get to January 6th, like an hour into the debate.

Speaker 12 And let's play one clip from it that really stood out to me when he was asked about January 6th.

Speaker 19 Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?

Speaker 20 You just said a thing that isn't covered. Peacefully and patriotically, I said during my speech, not later on.
Peacefully and patriotically. And nobody on the other side was killed.

Speaker 20 Ashley Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her. It's a disgrace.
But we didn't do this group of people that have been treated so badly.

Speaker 12 Press 15 seconds back if you guys missed that. Nobody on the other side was killed.

Speaker 16 We didn't. Like police.

Speaker 12 Yeah, we didn't. And then he catches himself saying we.
We didn't. So it's like the rioters are we.
The other side is the police getting attacked.

Speaker 12 That's an astonishingly horrific answer.

Speaker 16 It is. And if there were a debate just about that,

Speaker 16 what you would have gone in and said in response was,

Speaker 16 how can you say,

Speaker 16 I told them to go in peacefully and patriotically?

Speaker 16 And then when they didn't, you want to pardon them. That's contradictory.
Either you didn't tell them to go in violently. And so you're mad that they did, because they clearly did, or.

Speaker 16 You wanted them to go in violently. And so that now you want to pardon them.
You can't have both ways, but this debate didn't get that granular.

Speaker 16 But he can't answer coherently and consistently on that. It's very similar, very similar to his abortion answers.

Speaker 16 He's constantly trying to take credit for carving out this part that he thinks works for his base while carving away the part he knows that turns everyone else off.

Speaker 16 But he gets it mixed up in his head all the time. And he can't help himself for taking credit for the whole thing.
And then he has to distance himself and back out like a chunk of it.

Speaker 16 It's the same game over and over and over again. It was a terrible answer.
I will just say the undecided swing state voters were talking to about who they're going to vote for.

Speaker 16 They don't care about January 6th.

Speaker 12 The bullwork listeners do.

Speaker 16 Just saying. I'm just saying.

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Speaker 12 One thing that you guys might be talking to that I think they might care about is the divisive thing. Yeah.
There was only one moment where I was...

Speaker 12 I was a little bit like, uh-oh, where's she going with this? And it was, it was on the race question. He gets asked about how she turned black or whatever.
And he says it like that. Black.

Speaker 12 He can't say black. Bleck.
Black. And he gives this horrific answer where he looks so weak and small.
And he's just kind of like, well, I don't really care. Do you care?

Speaker 12 And then they're like, well, you brought it up. And he's like, you know, he has nothing.
Like, you'd think he at least would have been prepared to be like, my whole point is she's a phony.

Speaker 12 That's all I had to say. My whole point is that she's a phony.
Like, she's panderer and a phony. That's all I was trying to say.
It wasn't about race.

Speaker 12 And then she goes into like a lengthy, again, prepared prepared response that goes back to the apartment discrimination against blacks, the Central Park Five, birtherism.

Speaker 12 She's going in there, and that's separate from her, what she's been doing. She hasn't been talking about race that much.

Speaker 12 But then she kind of ties it together by just being like, that's not what the American people want, right? They don't want, you know, it wasn't like a woe is me. He's so racist thing.

Speaker 12 It was like a stop fucking doing this. Stop dividing us.
And so I do wonder, like, how do you think that landed with the types of voters that you're talking to?

Speaker 16 Well, we know going back 40 and 50 years, we've talked to black voters in swing states who are undecided. They don't care.
Yeah. They don't care about Central Park V.

Speaker 16 They don't, it's not relevant to their life today.

Speaker 16 I'm not saying they don't care ecumenically.

Speaker 12 Yeah, sure, sure, sure, of course.

Speaker 16 But in terms of who they're voting for, it's just not relevant.

Speaker 16 So it was good that she got through that and then tied it back to now and this bigger picture of his divisiveness because they do care about that.

Speaker 16 They don't, they're not here for the anger, the grievance, the complaining, the rigged election, the backwards. They're not here for that.
They don't want it anymore.

Speaker 16 But I wouldn't spend too much time walking back to

Speaker 16 the birtherism. You know, it's just not, it's not what's bothering.
these voters right now.

Speaker 12 But she does pivot into like the turning the page thing, which she, which she hit pretty well.

Speaker 12 Again, this is another just total failure, just like basic debate prep for him is you go in and immediately and try to tie her to Biden.

Speaker 16 Easy to do. They are, she is still the vice president.

Speaker 12 Exactly. And he doesn't do it.
And then finally, towards the very end, she's like, sorry. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not Joe Biden.

Speaker 12 And because it's so late in the debate, it ends up being kind of like a winning line, right? Like that, like that's a losing line in the first seven minutes where it's like a good line.

Speaker 12 But then if you keep repeating it, it's like, you might think you're not Joe Biden, but you guys did this and you guys did that. But he couldn't do that.

Speaker 12 And I think that sort of this, the racist stuff kind of gets wrapped up into this like,

Speaker 12 people are sick of these old fucking guys and they're sick of the one, you know, like, is that, is there a potential strand there for her in kind of this, the, the culture war topic, that she's just trying to move people past it?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, God, there were so many things he could have done.

Speaker 12 Yeah, right.

Speaker 16 Tying her to Biden,

Speaker 16 catching her on her flip-flops. That's tough to do because he's also flip-flop, but, but he could still go after it.
And he could go where, where media frankly hasn't gone.

Speaker 16 Like, why has no one asked her?

Speaker 16 She and Walls have not been forced to answer a question.

Speaker 16 For example, in Minnesota, Tim Walls, there are no weak restrictions on abortion.

Speaker 16 That is wildly unpopular.

Speaker 16 Wherever you stand on that issue, it is outside the mainstream of where a majority of Americans are. Is that your policy, Kamala Harris? Do you want America to look more like Minnesota, Kamala Harris?

Speaker 16 I mean, these are things. He could have not only tied her to Biden, but tied her to walls and made her answer for some of this.
Why'd you pick him? He's super extreme.

Speaker 16 I mean, he could have done all kinds of things

Speaker 16 that made this not just about this one woman and his issues with her, but he didn't because he didn't practice.

Speaker 12 California, broadly, the failures of California, the crime, and the cost of living. I'm not here to give coaching advice to Donald Trump, but like there are a million things you could do.

Speaker 16 Anyone could have looked at the dynamic here, the issues at play, the issues that matter to Americans, and crafted out a clear course of action for him that really would have presented a challenge for Kamala Harris.

Speaker 16 They didn't do any of that. He didn't prep it or he forgot about it or he couldn't control where he took it.

Speaker 16 So for her, I think she allows him to do the culture war stuff because it makes him look crazy.

Speaker 16 I don't think she really even has to dabble in it that much because he's going to do it for her and he's going to, he's going to lose it and win it for her.

Speaker 12 I mean, he's in like this hermetically sealed world of crazy. This isn't just the dog thing.
He's like Victor Orban.

Speaker 12 Victor Orban, they call him a strongman. It's like Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity debunked the Charlotte Phillips.

Speaker 12 And like, he's like name-dropping these random, like, he's very deep in his own navel and all this kind of cultural stuff and all like the art, the story of Trump and the Game of Thrones of it all that like most people just don't care about.

Speaker 16 Well, I'm wondering, and listen, let's say it again: this race is tight. I expect it will remain tight.
I don't think he lost the election because of this debate.

Speaker 16 But I read yesterday or Monday, too, that Republicans are worried he is not investing, the campaign is not investing enough in swing state voter turnout.

Speaker 12 Because of the fraud, they're focused on the lawyers and the fraud.

Speaker 12 Right, because literally, that's why.

Speaker 16 Yeah. 100%.
They pulled out of this at the RNC and directed their efforts, money, resources to voter fraud. But

Speaker 16 turning the vote out

Speaker 16 has never been his strong suit. It's never been interesting to him.
Remember in midterms when he was president, he would go out and say, these midterms aren't as important as my elections.

Speaker 16 Well, they are to every down ballot Republican, right? He doesn't get it. He doesn't care.
He doesn't care about.

Speaker 16 widening the tent and bringing in new voters, which he will need. I don't know if Chris Las Vita and and Susie Wiles care.
They're smart. I'm sure they do.

Speaker 16 But I'm just wondering if everyone around him said he doesn't care and we're never going to get him to care enough to control himself to speak to these undecided swing state voters the way they want to be spoken to.

Speaker 16 So just forget it. Let's just forget it and work on turning out everyone we already have and their persuadable friends.
Because that's what it's sounding more and more like he's doing.

Speaker 12 So just like thinking about that in the biggest picture element of this you're spending time with these with the with the voters that matter this was a tight race going in you know i just did a sports talk thing right before this you know and like the first question for like non-politicos is like does is are there any undecideds out there like does this even matter is this just a show for you political guys and that's like a legit question right like i am of the view that yeah no that matters like there's a significant it's small but a significant number of people that are gettable but you're out there talking to these people like what did you think like what extent does it matter well just by the numbers, undecideds represent about 18% of American registered voters.

Speaker 16 That's not a small number, even if you don't like believe all of them. Sure.

Speaker 12 Honestly, even if you only believe half of them.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 12 Even if 9% is very significant.

Speaker 16 Electorally significant. In Pennsylvania, it's about 3%.
That's a lot of voters.

Speaker 16 And as we know, Pennsylvania is a big, big prize, 19 electoral votes.

Speaker 12 The undecided is 3%.

Speaker 16 Yeah, the undecideds in Pennsylvania represent 3% of registered voters. Okay.
So that's

Speaker 16 a lot of voters. We go out in the streets in Wisconsin and North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan.
We go out into the streets. We meet these voters.

Speaker 16 We've done focus groups with these voters. They're saying we're undecided because we don't like either of these people.
And we know Kamala Harris a little less. We're waiting to see more.

Speaker 16 And a lot of them pegged. their sort of decision deadline to the debate last night.
They thought the debate last night was going to make their decision.

Speaker 16 If we believe that and we extrapolate that that's how a lot of undecided voters were going into this night last night, that this was going to help them decide, I think that's very bad news for Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 It's very good news for Kamala Harris. Now, there's like two months left.
Lots could happen.

Speaker 16 But if we're just taking them at their word and what they're telling us, and we're going to go out and talk to more of them post-debate, certainly, so we'll know more, then this is significant.

Speaker 16 And the sports guys, you know, should handicap this, knowing that that is significant.

Speaker 12 Just looking just at the combo of it, then, if that, if that was really a decision point, as much as talking about Trump's crazy.

Speaker 12 To me, like expectations beating, like by a wide margin. Like, I thought she was going to be nervous.

Speaker 12 Like, let's just be honest, like, she does the word salad stuff sometimes herself, like these circular sentences where you can tell she doesn't know what she's going to say, kind of, and she's like,

Speaker 12 She didn't do a lot of that. There wasn't visible nerves.
A little bit, maybe the first eight minutes, maybe, but like once she got going, there was not visible nerves.

Speaker 12 And then to me, also on the foreign policy stuff, people don't vote on foreign policy, but they wanted her to pass this bar of believability.

Speaker 12 And she was like, fucking Ukraine, Munich Security Conference, Abrams tanks. I mean, she's like dropping names of missiles and tanks.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 12 Like she's, and I'm like, oh, like she was, so I think that she felt like that she passed that bar for those folks. But

Speaker 12 what do you think?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I think the bar, I wouldn't say the bar was low for her, but she definitely beat it. Wherever it was, she beat it.
because she does do word salad.

Speaker 16 She can also get, I'll remind you of the Lester Holt interview, testy and defensive

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 16 almost like, I'm too good to answer this question, or why are you even asking this question about the border?

Speaker 12 Oh, please.

Speaker 16 Dismissive, condescending. I didn't see any of that.
I think whoever's around her, and we probably know the folks, gave her very specific good advice.

Speaker 16 And maybe this even came inherently from her, just knowing what she needed to do, which was don't word salad.

Speaker 16 Don't be dismissive of issues that matter to voters. Like, don't go out and say there's no crime.
Don't go out and say the economy is great. Don't do that.

Speaker 16 And try not to get emotionally rattled by Trump. She did none of those things.
And

Speaker 16 like we said earlier, she did policy. She did substance.
I would have liked a little more, but that's always me. She did the foreign policy check.
She did.

Speaker 16 And then, like we said, and then she just dropped this little like bait, like crowd size, and just let him go off on it. Like, right? She'd end the policy thing with like

Speaker 12 your inheritance. Like, are we telling, we're talking about the size of his inheritance.

Speaker 16 And we didn't all inherit billions of dollars. Boom.
And I got like out of kind of out of nowhere.

Speaker 12 But he's so dumb and so impulsive.

Speaker 16 That man, he was just like a dog with a boom. I got the boom.
Let's go with it. I couldn't believe how easy it was.
Truly, truly, how easy it was to manipulate him.

Speaker 12 Great prep. Dave Plough was in there.
The Obama guys they brought in. Karen Dunn, we should mention.

Speaker 12 Obviously, all the credit goes to Kamala, but this was a professionally executed debate.

Speaker 12 And impressive. And it's a lot.
And it looks hard, but I promise y'all, it's harder than it looks. I've been in those rooms.
All right, last thing. Yes.
Okay. Tay Tay.

Speaker 16 Say it again.

Speaker 12 Taytay. Taylor Swift.

Speaker 12 Yeah. Last night she posts on Instagram endorsing Kamala.
Yeah. I noticed one quick notice I should also mention.
Caitlin Clark gave that a like. Saw a Caitlin Clark like.

Speaker 12 There's a lot of wish casting out there in Coke and MAGA world that Caitlin's one of them. I don't really see it.
Okay. Does it matter? Is it just fun? No.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 16 Not even that. Celebrity endorsements don't matter.
Like, never. And she has endorsed before.
She's done it before. It didn't matter.
No. And listen, all the caveats.
Everything matters.

Speaker 16 This election's crazy. This election's atypical.
This election's different. It's unprecedented.
Anything could happen. Every vote counts.

Speaker 16 All the things but no no celebrity endorsements just generally don't move people okay last last is god good enough for us to get another one of these will trump do it he's saying this morning he doesn't think he wants he wants to again it's really hard for him to take that bait too and

Speaker 16 after this he will need another event he will need another inflection point to try and

Speaker 16 I think regain some momentum.

Speaker 16 A debate is kind of conceivably the only manufactured thing you could do to create that opportunity, but he'd have to be a completely different person to help himself in the next debate.

Speaker 16 And I don't know that he can be that.

Speaker 12 So does he not even show? Does he show? Does he do it? I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know either.

Speaker 12 I would have said, yes, he does do it, but he looked like a beaten puppy this morning on Fox News. Fox and Friends Auditors.

Speaker 16 He might just take the, take the L and be like, it was rigged.

Speaker 12 I was like, the people wanted you back. And I was like, after the last time we were together was after the RNC convention.
And it was, you know, the different energy in the world there.

Speaker 12 Joe behind was still the race.

Speaker 12 So, yes, things have changed.

Speaker 12 And, you know, we are now in the Coconut Grove. I'm happy to have you back.
Thank you for doing this. That's Essie Cup.
Stick around. I got a few more things for y'all on the other side.

Speaker 12 Man, isn't SE great? You just know she's giving you real talk too.

Speaker 12 If you don't believe she's giving real talk, go back and listen to our last time together when things were looking a little different, guys. So, we have like wall-to-wall content for you.

Speaker 12 Just wanted to make sure you weren't missing anything. Over on YouTube, there was a live stream last night.
We've pushed it up.

Speaker 12 There's a post-game analysis that I popped on to before I went over to the spin room. I want to talk to you about the spin room real quick.

Speaker 12 And then, also, it's Wednesday, so we've got the next level, which we're going to be going real long on and

Speaker 12 focusing on the debate, of course, but also on where we're kind of going from here and forward-looking campaign stuff. The spin room, guys.

Speaker 12 I wrote for the bulwark this morning, which you should go check out at thebulark.com, about inside Trump's spin room for hell. And I got to tell you, I was having the time of my life, people.

Speaker 12 Nobody except Doug Mhoff was having more fun than me last night. Let me tell you that.

Speaker 12 You know, I left the Bulwark live stream and immediately upon returning, before I even get into the the spin room outside the magnetometers, there's only two people standing out there, Lindsey Graham and his flack.

Speaker 12 And for those who've read my book or been longtime podcast listeners, you know that me and Lindsey do each other pretty well. I mean, Lindsey was a big gem supporter.

Speaker 12 We were on the road together a lot. He used to call me at night.
We get drunk together a couple times. I know y'all are thinking,

Speaker 12 don't get the bad thoughts out of your head. All right, nothing like that.
You know, no signs of that. There's plenty of bad Lindsey Graham things to talk about without you going there.

Speaker 12 I know where your head was, listener. So he recognized me immediately, of course.
And I just went in on him. Like, and I'm just like, all right, this is your moment.

Speaker 12 After this night, we were on the same page back in 2016. We used to talk about how awful he was.
Let's go. You're welcome.
The water's warm. Come on back.
Come on the board podcast.

Speaker 12 We can talk about your conversion back.

Speaker 12 And he got hot,

Speaker 12 immediately hot, red-faced.

Speaker 12 Shame on you. You should be ashamed.
He said to me, I'm like,

Speaker 12 I should be ashamed.

Speaker 12 who should who should be ashamed here anyway it goes it goes on and on going around and around all the things you'd expect him talking about how great the trump years were minus 2020 me talking about how he was running for his life like a scared little baby from the donald trump supporters in january 6th and so maybe it didn't end as well as he remembers and then finally because he can't help himself he's a politician Even at the end of a pretty heated exchange,

Speaker 12 he wanted to win me over. Or he wanted to demonstrate we were still pals or he wanted to demonstrate, you know, we could still ride in the golf cart together if

Speaker 12 the winds of politics ever change. And so he gives me a fist bump and he leans in and he's like, man,

Speaker 12 he guessed I'll say this,

Speaker 12 he was unprepared, and that debate team should be fired. It was a disaster.
I was like, oh, thanks for that, Lindsay.

Speaker 12 Turned around, fired that bad boy off on Twitter, and the whole world knows that even Lindsey Graham acknowledged that it was a loser last night. That was joyful.

Speaker 12 There were more fun exchanges like that that I'll be talking about on the next level. So go and check out that feed if you haven't on, you know, whatever, whatever your podcast app is of choice.

Speaker 12 Today, life is good. More work left to do.
Gonna be a close election. But man,

Speaker 12 that was a beaten puppy last night. As my friend Michael Steele said on MSNBC After Dark,

Speaker 12 he got a spanking. He got a whooping last night.
And

Speaker 12 we got to take these little moments of joy when we can. So enjoy it.
We'll be back tomorrow. I'll be coming at you from DC tomorrow because there's a hurricane in New Orleans, so I can't go home.

Speaker 12 Everything should be good. We're prepared, sending good vibes to the hubs and kiddo.
I'll be FaceTiming with them, checking in, and we'll be with you on a podcast from DC tomorrow.

Speaker 12 We'll see y'all then. It's coconut time.
Peace.

Speaker 12 I am a loner

Speaker 14 up confused, waiting for the rainy day

Speaker 21 While I spend my time walking in the sunshine

Speaker 12 Swinging from a country

Speaker 12 Cause I love Poconus I'm drinking poker night kissing You don't get to know me

Speaker 12 You don't get to know me

Speaker 12 Swinging from my country

Speaker 12 Cause I love Poconos I'm drinking poconite kids. And you don't get to know me.

Speaker 12 No, you don't get to know me.

Speaker 12 Hey, you,

Speaker 12 waiting for the blow, for the big fat gold wind. Mama's down to get a wake-up call.

Speaker 12 I like to watch the world.

Speaker 12 The world is looking good today.

Speaker 12 I'd like to watch the world,

Speaker 12 the world is a looking good today.

Speaker 12 And it's almost like I'm sleeping.

Speaker 12 I put my head back to the sun.

Speaker 12 It's almost like I'm sleeping.

Speaker 12 I pull my head back to the sun.

Speaker 19 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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