September 11, 2024 • 51 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 25: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: From the time she reached out to shake his hand and he didn’t seem to know how to do that, to his closing remarks where he basically threatened America with Russian nukes, the debate couldn’t have gone worse for Donald Trump.
Oh – yeah – it could. Afterwards, Taylor Swift formally endorsed Kamala Harris.
The Vice President’s control of the debate and the manipulation and baiting of Trump was so complete that very few fascists even feigned that he’d done well. The best they could do was insist that the moderators were “rigged” against him because David Muir and Linsey Davis did the best job of fact-checking against Trump yet. I mean ever. When Trump repeated his nonsense that babies could be murdered after birth, Ms. Davis simply stated there was no state in the country in which this was legal and then without a breath cut Trump off by evenly saying, “Vice President Harris, you have said…”
Every checklist box Harris had to mark, she aced. She introduced herself, she gave specific policy plans for subsidizing child care and small business, explained how Trump would lie and why – and that was just in the first answer. It was so thorough that I was genuinely surprised that when they came back from the first commercial, Trump was still there.
B-Block (30:30) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 2: The Swift endorsement was one big accomplishment for the Vice President. The appearance of a bead of sweat above Trump’s upper lip at an hour in – and its dogged determination to stay there – was the other. By then Trump was insisting that Harris would spend your taxpayer dollars to give free transgender care to undocumented immigrants who were eating your pet duck.
C-Block (50:00) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 3: I answered your questions in the immediate aftermath of the debate. I mean, what kind of questions could there be after a debate about which the New York Times, the Associated Press and other paragons of bothsidesist nonsense had to acknowledge was a Harris romp? What do you ask? “Did she win by 100 points or 200?”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So who do.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
They get to replace him?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Republicans? I believe Joe Biden is available.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
There was sweat on Donald Trump's lip for the last
thirty minutes or so, on and off, and I think that,
if anything summarized this extraordinary evening, what might have been
certainly the liveliest presidential debate of all time, at least
at one end of it, because in addition to being
a presidential debate, this was also that Kamala Harris press
conference everybody has been asking about. She did most of
(00:50):
the substantial talking, despite being periodically interrupted by what sounded
like a drunken heckler who kept getting.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Owned and owned and owned.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Every time he stood up and said something ridiculous. I
will point out that, in addition to this being as
disastrous a debate for Donald Trump as the last time
we gathered was for Joe Biden, that Donald Trump's closing
argument boiled down to, in essence, his threat to destroy
America with Russian nuclear weapons. This did not go well
(01:22):
for Trump. Remember when I said on the podcast shortly
after the decision by Joe Biden to drop out to
accede to the wishes of democratic leadership and let Kamala
Harris be the nominee. That there might someday soon come
a day when we actually sit around and say, can
you believe we almost didn't swap out candidates in twenty
(01:42):
twenty four, we almost didn't run Kamala for president. Well,
we're certainly at that point right now. That was an
extraordinary moment from in fact, the seconds that they came
out onto the stage and the Vice president extended her
hand to Donald Trump for a handshake, and you could
tell he didn't even know what that meant the last time,
(02:04):
but he shook his hand in those circumstances. Was twenty sixteen.
Hillary Clinton did it once and would never do it again.
From the beginning, she was on offense, he was on defense.
In fact, after they took that first commercial break about
an agonizing one hour and three or four minutes into
the debate tonight, I was genuinely surprised that when they
(02:25):
came back from the commercial break, Donald Trump was still there.
When your go to character references are Victor Orbon and
Vladimir Putin, you're having a bad night. Because when she
was not making a fool of Trump. Trump was making
a fool of himself. The final rankings that I give
(02:47):
at the end of something like this are now complete.
Our number one was Kamala Harris finishing second. David Muir
of ABC News, Number three, Lindsay Davis of ABC News
for the Carfax Fox on the CNN commercials during those breaks.
Number five, Dogs and cats every Where. Number six the
ABC voiceover guy who said welcome back to the ABC debate.
(03:10):
Position seven through four, nine hundred and ninety nine, no
candidates rose to the standard described by the committee in
the applications, and the five thousandth ranked performer tonight was
Donald Trump. And if you think it's just me, and
perhaps I'm exaggerating somewhat because of my own personal beliefs
and my occasional reputation as a liberal or a Democrat
(03:32):
or a progressive. Rick Wilson, who was a conservative maestro
behind the scenes during the presidency and candidacies of George W.
Bush and particularly John McCain, with whom I have had
loud and public arguments, Rick Wilson tweeted forty three minutes
into that debacle. I've been in this business a long, long,
(03:52):
long time. Trump is being wrecked, destroyed. He's a bellowing
old man yelling at clouds. Mike Murphy, who was often
with Rick Wilson in these arguments that I had with
him during my network days, was a little blunder. He's
literally having his own Biden debate. The Republican strategist wrote, disaster,
(04:18):
he's giving tonight to her on the other side of
the ball. Alexandria Acasio Cortes, This I think will be
the imagery.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I've already used it. She did too.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
He sounds like a guy yelling at random people on
thirty fourth Street with a karaoke speaker. I didn't think
he was quite that clear. And then again, if you're
wondering if the reaction to this is going to be uniform,
if at the end of a political debate, the result
of which does not depend on any kind of objective
(04:51):
scorekeeping or ballgame being played, or anything else that is
even remotely numerical numerically countable. If you wondering if there
could be a consensus that one candidate one and the
other one lost. Benny Johnson, who just this past week
was identified as one of the people who unknowingly was
(05:11):
receiving payments washed from Russia and the Kremlin through a
company associated with Glenn Beck's Blaze, and being paid hundreds
of thousands of dollars a month for online videos that
got ones of thousands of views a month. Bennie Johnson writes,
why do Republican agree to debates in this format? The
(05:32):
moderators are rigged. I don't think it could rig a moderator,
but we'll let it pass. The questions are rigged. The
TV executives are all friends with the Democrat on stage,
questions get leaked to them. It's all a trap desired
to destroy one side. GOP does not need corporate media.
I swear to God it wasn't my fault, and.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I added that last part. It's from the Blues Brothers.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
The Associated Press, which has spent the entirety of the
Trump era trying not to say anything at all about
Trump in a negative fashion or a positive faction, although
they've been more successful at the front than at the back.
Of that combination, Harris maintains tone Trump's body language morphs
by Chris Majerian. With the debate more than half over,
(06:17):
Harris is maintaining the same even tone with which she started.
But Trump's body language has morphed. He's hunched over the lectern,
slashing his hand through the air to punctuate his statements.
Sometimes he raises his voice, Yes, I would say. Sometimes
he raised his voice and then he began to to
(06:38):
sweat from the lip, also from the ap. During the
last debate, the camera often caught Biden looking aimless while
Trump was speaking. Harris appears more prepared for the television format.
When Trump answers questions, she watches him intently. Sometimes she smiles,
shakes her head, or stares in puzzlement. Visually, she's increasing
the amount of time that she's conveying a message to viewers.
(07:00):
You're goddamn right there, associated press Chris Majerian.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
That was the whole point.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
We'll go through a checklist of things that were suggested
here by Tim O'Brien, a Trump baiter of some renowned
for Bloomberg, including this idea that she had to remember
that the split screen would be on her at all times.
I mentioned it. I believe in today's podcast. One of
the rules of being in television or in front of
camera in any live venue is that you should assume
(07:26):
it's always on. And even if you don't know that
you're on, somebody somewhere is watching your reaction. You must,
for whatever it takes, spend that hour and a half
looking at that camera and not putting this finger up
any orifice north of the chin. CNN Harris campaign sees
spike in donations from women. Excuse me during the first
(07:48):
hour of debate. Shouldn't have made the fates make my
nose hitch there, Aaron Pelish of CNN rights. In the
first hour of Tuesday's presidential debate, seventy one percent of
grassroots donors the vice president Kamala Harris's campaign where women.
A campaign official told CNN the first hour of the
debate featured heated extra changes, et cetera from Maggie Haberman
(08:08):
of The New York Times. I think we all need
to give Maggie a little space right now, Harris official says.
Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park five, will be
in the spin.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Room after debate.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Oh, you may recall that when Kamala Harris brought that up.
And the key difference here is in the Joe Biden
performance in the first debate and Kamala Harris's performance in
this debate was that phrase when Kamala Harris brought it up.
Kamala Harris owned this debate stage. There are a lot
of good questions, and I want to devote some of
(08:42):
this conversation here to what Lindsay Davis and David Muir
did for ABC, which I wish could be xeroxed and
sent to every network. But she owned it. She brought
up the Central Park five. Everything that was not brought
up by the moderators, virtually everything she could have brought up,
she did, and provoked things like Donald Trump explaining that
(09:05):
this happened so long ago, along with his own fines
from the government that he had to negotiate because he
wouldn't rent to black people when he started in business
with his father when I was like a junior in
high school. I think the handshake was the thing that
unsettled him from the beginning. He was expecting to come
(09:25):
out and have something, something that resembled the debate against
Joe Biden this one or the ones in twenty twenty,
or even something that resembled the debates with Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton is and would have been, I believe, an
excellent president. But she herself said she's a terrible job applicant.
She's a much better employee. She does not make that consuming,
(09:48):
controlling kind of presentation. She doesn't sell herself well in
that environment. So the debates that he's had up until
this point were not against the a one possible opponent.
What she did was what you would do if you
were a prosecutor in a courtroom. She came roaring out
of the gate. She brought up the opportunity economy. She
(10:10):
started by basically giving everybody six thousand dollars to help
raise their children, and every small business fifty thousand dollars.
And if you notice at the beginning of this, and
we will review the first few minutes and we can
start queuing that first set of clips up because I
want to go through this. The first three minutes of
this debate really told you what was going to happen thereafter. Again,
(10:33):
she's in charge of the whole thing. She defines him,
and he came out looking unconscious. So let's go back,
and I want to go through a bunch of clips
from this from the ABC debate. Let me do this
first one first. It's about three minutes long. And if
you do not listen to it. At least look at
Trump and look at the fact that it can barely
get his eyes open.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
This was a bad start.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an
incorrect statement. She knows that we're doing tariffs so in
other countries. Other countries are going to find after seventy
five years, pay us back for all that we've done
for the world, and the tariff will be substantial. In
some cases. I took in billions and billions of dollars,
as you know, from China. In fact, they never took
(11:17):
the tariff off because there was so much money. They can't.
It would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
They're taken in.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Billions of dollars from China and other places. They've left
the tariffs on. When I had it, I had tariffs,
and yet I had no inflation. Look, we've had a
terrible economy because inflation has which is really known as
a country buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation
like very few people have ever seen before, probably the
worst in our nation's history. We were at twenty one percent.
(11:47):
But that's being generous because many things are fifty sixty,
seventy and eighty percent higher than they were just a
few years ago. This has been a disaster for people,
for the middle class, but for every class. On top
of that, we have millions of people pouring into our
country from prisons and jails, from mental instant usians and
insane asylums, and they're coming in and they're taking jobs
(12:09):
that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics,
and also unions. Unions are going to be affected very soon.
And you see what's happening. You see what's happening with
towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio,
you look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over
the towns, they're taking over buildings, they're going in violently.
(12:30):
These are the people that she and Biden led into
our country, and they're destroying our country. They're dangerous, They're
at the highest level of criminality, and we have to
get them out. We have to get them out fast.
I created one of the greatest economies in the history
of our country. I'll do it again and even better.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
We are going to get to immigration and border security
during this debate. But I would like to let Vice
President Harris respond on the economy here.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Well, I would love to let's talk about what Donald
Trump left us. Donald Trump left us the world unemployment
since the Great Depression. Donald Trump left us the worst
public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us
the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
(13:21):
And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess.
What we have done and what I intend to do
is build on what we know are the aspirations and
the hopes of the American people. But I'm going to
tell you all on this debate tonight, you're going to
hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances,
and name calling. What you're going to hear tonight is
(13:44):
a detailed and dangerous plan called Project twenty twenty five
that the former president intends on implementing if he were
elected to gain I believe very strongly that the American
people want a president who understands the importance of bringing
us together, knowing we have so much more in common
than what separates us, and to be a president for
(14:06):
all Americans.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
To quote Mia Farrow from Rosemary's Baby, What's Wrong with
his Eyes? Did you see that and believe it or not?
What you saw there if you did not watch the
entirety of this debate, that was the Trump highlight. It
went downhill from there because he began in that sort
of and forgive me President Biden, that kind of biden
(14:28):
esque trance. Let's use a positive term, like trance. That
sounds exciting, doesn't it. He's in a trance. That's what
it started as this. Did you know that we're already
on Did you notice that the debate had begun?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Mister Trump?
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Then as she successfully angered him, baited him, decked him
a couple of times, metaphorically put him on defense on
every one of the topics that she brought up in
those opening remarks. Then he became angry Trump as the
one who lost the debate to Biden in the first
debate in twenty twenty. Then he became Trump trying to
look like Churchill. If you notice all the big photos
(15:08):
that he likes, those, all of his many mugshots. He's
doing this thing where he thinks, and he has said
he thinks he's accomplishing a look equivalent to that of
Winston Churchill, the British World War two Prime minister who
incidentally has been sullied recently by JD Vance's buddy Tucker
Carlson and a guest on Carlson Show who is now
(15:28):
saying that Winston Churchill was the cause of World War
Two rather than you know, dolf A Hitler, Hay And
that's going to cause another rift on top of everything else.
But we're getting away from the question of whether or
not Donald Trump is still the Republican nominee. In the morning,
the thing that happened after this was something that I
(15:49):
cheered for. The moderators fact checked Donald Trump. I made
some comments this morning on the podcast about if David
Muir wanted to be Edward R.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Murrow or Edward R.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Muro I said, sure, he's the lesser halt of Dana Bash's.
I apologize without reservation. And to Lindsay Davis, whose work
I did not really know. I had seen her before,
as I said earlier, make xeroxes of them and send
them to CNN and NBC and Fox News.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Like they'd know what to do with actual journalists.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
But to every journalistic organization in the country, how to
do a debate when one of the candidates is actively
lying and depending on lies is to do what Lindsey
Davis did on the subject of the nine month abortions
to simply say, no, there are no such things in
any state. It is not legal in any state. Vice
(16:45):
President Harris, don't even give him a chance to come
back and challenge your fact check. A fact is that
it is immutable, and if you have it in front
of you, treat it that way. It is decisive. It
is a knockout. It is a stick against the guy's forehead.
And Trump got that stick across his forehead repeatedly, so
a standing ovation for Muir and Lindsay Davis. At one point,
(17:07):
David Muir in fact, not only asked Trump a tough
question about January sixth, but when he veered off into
the destruction of Seattle in Minneapolis, which at last I
heard were both still extant. When he veered off into that,
he let him finish, and then he said, but to
get back to January sixth.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It was marvelous.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
It was what Jake Tapper and Dana Bash should have
done and did not do. That amplified the problems that
Joe Biden had in his last debate.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
There was so many things that you could.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Analyze line by line this debate and what Trump did
to himself and what Kamala Harris did for herself. You
could probably take seven or eight hours and just do
a simple factual recitation, just as a simple factual recitation
of the problems for Joe Biden in the last debate
could have been made. But I wanted to skip ahead
before we go through the checklists and then some other comments,
(18:00):
other clips from the debate itself to the end. When
Press and again the moderators made sure they gave him
multiple chances to answer, not simply to filibuster. He would
not say he wants Ukraine to win. He would not
say that he needs to see Russia defeated. He could
(18:20):
not talk about anything in the dispute between the free
world and the dictatorial world of Vladimir Putin, and what
Putin's goals are for Europe and for the world, and
in its entirety, he could not process them either. He
wanted to avoid them. But I think much more likely
it simply doesn't compute with him. He immediately reverted to
(18:43):
how much money the United States has spent in defense
of Ukraine compared to how much Europe has spent. And
by the way, factually he's incorrect Europe has spent far
more defending Ukraine and sending aid to Ukraine and sending
materiel to Ukraine than the United States has.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
We are not, in.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Fact being outspent by Europe on Ukraine. It's not just
about the money. And if it were, he was wrong
about that too. And then of course there was the
extraordinary gymnastics that he claimed Kamala Harris was capable of,
which was of simultaneously hating Israel and the Palestinians.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
A series of.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Events before this debate led me to compose a bit
of a checklist, some of which I gave out on
the podcast yesterday morning. And it was really an examination
both of what Kamala Harris had to do and what
the moderators had to do, and less about what Trump
had to do, because as we know, Trump has the
benefit that none of the rest of us do in
those situations where you can just make it up as
(19:42):
he goes along. It's really good to have that asset
right there in your hand. When you don't have to
worry about being factually accurate, consistent, or anywhere in any way,
shape or form tethered to reality, you can tell wonderful stories.
Some of the greatest compositions of mankind are based on
(20:03):
the ability to make stuff up as you go along.
William Shakespeare was great at it. William Shakespeare was not
president of anything. Trump was seeks to be again, and
I think tonight he may have made it impossible for
him to be, at least I hope so. But this
checklist of the things that they needed to do, did
the moderators or Kamala Harris do the following? Did they
(20:23):
bring up January sixth, Yes, the moderators did. It was
turned into by Trump an immigration answer. Did they bring
up the threat to arrest political opponents? God bless him?
David Muir read the entirety of Trump's post on social
media in which he threatened to arrest political oppositions. Trump
hemmed and hawed and gave an answer that will not
(20:47):
gain him anything because he neither denied the violence of
what was behind his words in that post, nor did
he reaffirm it. So those who were in favor of
what he's proposing to do, the Mike Davises and the
Project twenty twenty five people like that, they were not
reinforced whatsoever. He basically sold them down the river and
(21:09):
tried to pivot to Harris being a danger to democracy
because because Joe Biden isn't the nominee, which of course
was the goal of the entirety of Trump's first impeachment
was to make sure Joe Biden wouldn't be the nominee.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
He got his way, and now he's blaming everybody else
for it.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Did they bring up Tucker Carlson and jd Vance and
Nazis in Churchill? They did, Okay, you missed one. Did
they bring up the Arlington Cemetery scandal?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
They did not.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
I don't think it was any great loss. It's important
to us. I don't know that it was important to
the viewers who were not seeing or were seeing Kamala
Harris maybe for the first time, and certainly seeing the
two of them together for the first time. The television
audience and the streaming audience in this country for the
first debate in the middle of summer was fifty one
million approximately. I suspect this one will be far better
than that, because, on top of everything else, it was
(21:57):
goddamn better television than the first one was, and it
was not. I suspect the Trump people hung in there
as long as they could assuming that at some point
he would get up off the mat and throw a haymaker,
which he never did. But for those in the political equation,
people who would be voting for Kamala Harris, at the
end of that, I'm sure you had the same feeling
(22:18):
I had, which.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Was what it's over already? Is there going to be
another one next week? Come on, let's do this every week. Kids.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Did she call him not a liar or a criminal,
but lawless. Yes, she implied that he had no law.
He was a law unto himself. Did she call him.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Old go for the gold, old is gold? She never
used the word.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I guess she's a better person than I am, but
she did imply it and successfully. Did she call him
low energy? She described the audiences leaving early from his debates.
You could see his eyes flare with rage at the
thought of this, because that's all that really matters to him.
It is human beings as numbers, that's all he understands.
(23:03):
It ties into the answer about Ukraine. Human beings as numbers.
The enjoyment in life that he gets, perhaps one of
the few enjoyments in life that doesn't come in a
bag that says.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
McDonald's on it. Well, then a few things he actually
enjoys is those rallies.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
There was a point in twenty sixteen when he said
he thought maybe he would lose, but he'd continue to
hold the rallies because he so enjoyed them, because people
were cheering, and he could count, and he could say
there were one hundred and eleven billion people at my rally.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And she attacked the number of people.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
At his rallies. Oh did he not like that? Did
she call him low energy?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes? Did she call him failure yes? Did she use
the word weird?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
No? Damn fact checking. I mentioned this again. Hats off
to Lindsay Davis and David Buher. Did she accomplish her
two main goals? Did she introduce herself to the twenty
eight percent who don't have enough info? According to the
CIBA the IPSOS New York Times poll from over the weekend,
don't think they know enough about her to decide up
(24:04):
or down. I think she did that spectacularly, And I
think she did that for the people who went to
bed at nine oh five pm and went, oh, I
get it now. She's sort of a very pleasant and
well spoken, sort of standard issue slightly more liberal maybe
than I am Democrat, but she's not going to get.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Us all killed.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Did she win over people who did not know her
as opposed to Trump's goal?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Trump's goal in this had to be.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
For him to get any higher than his ceiling of
forty seven percent of popular support.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Did he sell himself?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Did he convince people who hate him to vote for
him anyway? I can't imagine that the answer to the
total number of people he convinced who hate him to
vote for him anyway was more than thirty or thirty five,
Not thousand, not million, but thirty or thirty five. She
in the first five minutes of that debate smiled, laughed
at him, looked quizzically at him, mocked him, didn't say
(25:03):
a word, Pa paid attention, was vibrant, welcoming, has a
great face for television, and utilized it in all of
the ways you can utilize a face on television. Tax
deductions in the first answer, and as I said, not
only brought up what she was and what she was
going to say during the course of that debate, but
(25:24):
defined him and said what he would do and how
he would fall apart, and how he would eventually get
around to racism and sexism and to this extraordinary xenophobia
that animates him in every respect, And he promptly did
everything she said he was going to do. Tim O'Brien,
who I mentioned earlier from Bloomberg, who issued a checklist
of seven key points for Kamala Harris respect the split screen.
(25:46):
Where as I put it, can you maintain resting president
face A plus, emphasize your the borders are he sabotaged
the border deal. I'm summarizing exactly what she said, and
early in the process did she and again he did
not use the word pander. I did pander to swing
state voters with data on the economy?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
She sure did.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
She successfully did that, and she did it in each
quarter hour of the clock. So if you were just
joining it after watching a ball game, no matter when
you joined it, you heard a number that indicated that
his economy was less good than it looked, and hers
or hers and Biden's was better than it had looked,
and the one that is upcoming.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Would be better.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yet did she manage to dodge some questions but not
most or all of them while he continued to dodge.
It's exactly what happened he looked like he was just
going to say what he damn well pleased. She managed
to answer virtually every question, although her answers about Hamas
and the Middle East and the war and Israel were
(26:47):
basically boilt plate. And I'll ask you to actually see
if you can remember what her conclusion was to this,
other than getting the hostages out and getting a ceasefire.
Not that that's a bad conclusion, but in the environment there,
she did not come down on one side or another
and did not explain how those things would be achieved.
Did she remind them? O'Brien's last point was that Trump
(27:08):
is in it for himself to stay out of jail.
She said, Trump is in it for himself. An extraordinary
performance from Kamala Harris. I don't know how it could
have been much better. The closing statement was formal and
presidential and a little austere, and it suffered only in
comparison to the first You know, ninety minutes of her
(27:31):
performance an A plus all the way through. I'm sorry
you only get an A for your closing remarks. They
sounded a little rehearsed by that point. I don't think
it mattered. Let's review five or six things further that
(27:53):
happened with videotape clips, the first of them being it's
not necessary really to listen to what Trump is saying here,
but just to watch her hand on her chin and
the quiet laughter. The microphones were shut off. Sure, guess what,
you can pantomime things, and Kamala Harris did that successfully
(28:16):
tonight too.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's
a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well.
But when you look at what she's done to our country,
and when you look at these millions and millions of
people that are pouring into our country monthly, where it's
I believe twenty one million people, not the fifteen that
people say, and I think it's a lot higher than
(28:38):
the twenty one. That's bigger than New York State pouring in.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Thank you, this just in this just handed to me.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
I wanted to read you the lead from the New
York Times, the holy goddamn New York Times, which, as
you know, has set out the entirety of this presidential election,
because nothing that happens to this country would affect the
New York Times. There will always be in New York Times?
Right right? Did I do the meme correctly? Live updates?
(29:06):
Vice President Kamala Harris shook the hand to former President
Donald J. Trump as she walked on stage, then spent
the next ninety minutes making every effort to burrow under
his skin. Wow, Associated Press again. Christy blasts Trump debate prep.
This is when everybody who said I told you so,
particularly on the conservative side, about Donald Trump, gets to
(29:29):
say it again, only they'll find an audience to put
them on TV again. To the Associated Press, whoever did
debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Chris Christy says ABC News.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
He helped prep Trump for debates in previous election cycles
and is now at Trump critic And here it is
no surprise. Trump thinks he did well during the debate.
People are saying big win tonight, he posted on truth Social,
his social media site. He also complained about the moderators.
I thought that was my best debate ever, especially since
it was three on one. Well it was, it was
(30:02):
in fact two on one because clearly the goal of
Kamala Harris was to destroy Donald Trump, and the goal
of Donald Trump was also to destroy Donald Trump. Another clip.
What was that again about the mikes being off? There
are Mike's and there are mikes, and there is off
(30:22):
and there is off.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I have been a leader on fertilization IVF and the
other thing. They you should ask will she allow abortion
in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month? Come on, okay,
would you do that? Why don't you ask me that question?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
That's the question because under v question.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month,
the ninth month, and probably after birth. Just look at
the governor, former governor of Virginia. The governor of Virginia said,
we put the baby aside and then we determine what
we want to do with a baby.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Trump.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Another dish just In Off Instagram Taylor Swift. This is
not the best of her many good compositions, but it
will do. Particularly the finish. The last part of the
lyrics here is a rather exciting. Like many of you,
she writes, I watch the debate tonight if you haven't already,
now is a great time to do your research on
the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take
(31:21):
on the topics that matter to you the most. As
a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything
I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country. Recently,
I was made aware that AI of me falsely endorsing
Donald Trump's presidential run was posted to his site. It
really conjured up my fears around AI and the dangers
of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that
(31:42):
I need to be very transparent about my actual plans
for this election. As a voter, the simplest way to
combat misinformation is with the truth. Do I hear screaming
Swifties out there on sixth Avenue? Why yes, I do.
I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and
Tim Walls in the twenty twenty four presidential election. I'm
(32:04):
voting for Kamala Harris by the way, at Kamala Harris
to direct you to her Instagram account because she fights
for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior
to champion them. I think she is a steady handed,
gifted leader, and I believe we can accomplish so much
more in this country if we were led by calm
and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by
her selection of running mate Tim Walls, who has been
(32:26):
standing up for LGBTQ plus rights, IVF and a women's
right to her own body for decades. I've done my research,
she's not done yet, and I've made my choice. Your
research is all yours to do, and the choice is
yours to make. I also want to say, especially to
first time voters, remember that in order to vote, you
have to be registered. I also find it's much easier
to vote early. I'll link where to register and find
(32:49):
early vote dates and info in my story with Love
and Hope Taylor Swift Childless cat Lady. So the JD
vance approach to things really worked well, as did whoever
put out the artificial intelligence version of Taylor Swift. We
can now officially declare the state of Swift. Deanna has
(33:12):
gone for Kamala Harris. There was a moment in here
where as I mentioned before, Trump.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Really lost it.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
As Tim O'Brien so aptly pointed out in the checklist
I read before, how do you get under Donald Trump's skin?
There are some easy buttons to push. As The Times
put it, she was burrowing under his skin throughout. There
was a moment where she accused him of being the
worst thing you could accuse Trump of being.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
And I'm going to actually do something really unusual, and
I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald
Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch.
You will see during the course of his rallies he
talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk
about wind mills cause cancer. And what you will also
notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out
(34:08):
of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the
one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.
You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams,
and your need and your desires. And I'll tell you,
I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first,
and I pledge to you that I will.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I didn't like that particularly. It was also the matter
of criminality. There was an attempt of Trump, as there
has been throughout the entirety of the process of correctly
assessing the damage and responsibility for what he did to
this country on January sixth, where he tried to enact
a political version of nine to eleven. Since we are
(34:49):
about an hour away from the anniversary of that solemn occasion.
It's a proper analysis and a proper correlation between that
and what happened in January twenty twenty one. And it
was a rather extraordinary moment when they got talking and
debating the subject of criminality, and it did not go
well for Trump, and I suppose that shouldn't have been
(35:12):
a surprise to anybody.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Really quick response to her Vice President Harris on this
notion of weaponization of the Justice Department, Well.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Let's talk about extreme and understand the context in which
this election in twenty twenty four is taking place. The
United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president
would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were
to enter the White House. Again, Understand, this is someone
who has openly said he would terminate I'm quoting, terminate
(35:40):
the Constitution of the United States, that he would weaponize
the Department of Justice against his political enemies, someone who
has openly expressed disdain for members of our military. Understand
what it would mean if Donald Trump were back in
the White House with no guardrails, because certainly we know
(36:01):
now the Court won't stop and we know JD. Vance
is not going to stop him. It's up to the
American people to stop him.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Thank you, Vice President Harris in your last run for president.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
This is the one that weaponized, not me.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
She weaponized. I probably took a bullet to the head
because of the things that they say about me. They
talk about democracy. I'm a threat to democracy. They're the
threat to democracy. Was a fake Russia Russia Russia investigation
that went nowhere.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
We will allow to get to Lindsay.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
If you'll notice that whenever mister Trump is particularly bothered
by anything anybody else says, he refers to them as
this is the one. It's an old Mitt Romney line.
I'm sure Trump will enjoy being compared to Mitt Romney
when he said of Obama, this one, we know what
that is, cleaned up terminology for. We know what that is.
(36:59):
Trump didn't like what happened tonight. I don't care what
he wrote on social media. He didn't like what happened tonight.
And he may even have a glimmer, vague idea of
what happened tonight. He did not present what he needed
to do. As crazy as the things he said in
the first debate against Joe Biden were he had remained
calm throughout. He didn't make a big deal about what
(37:21):
was happening on the stage. To the president, he retained
a sense of calm. And as I said here and
not so much, not so much tonight, there was then
an extraordinary moment in which you know, what were we
expecting in an hour and a half long debate, fifty
sixty outright fabrications and lies, all of them familiar. Well,
(37:44):
we have a new one. We have Kamala Harris wants
to take your tax money to perform transgender operations on
illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
We're eating ducks now.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
She wants to do transgender operations or a llegue aliens
that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal
that would do this. She wants to confiscate you guns,
and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Of all the things Katala Hier said or did tonight,
and anything that results from this in the polls, anything
that results from this in the Taylor Swift endorsement, anything
that results in this in terms of fundraising, The fact
that she was able to manage for ninety minutes almost
without interruption, a look of I'm about to burst into laughter,
but I'll manage to control myself because I love the flag.
(38:38):
Is something I've never seen before in politics. Well, I
shouldn't say that. It's a glimmer of what Barack Obama
could do. And I saw it firsthand when I moderated
a unofficially called debate.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
It was a candidate's forum. It was a cattle call.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
There were still nine Democrats running for president, and we
had all but one of them out on a stage
in Chicago. And every time, even when it wasn't on camera,
that somebody said something about Barack Obama, he would give
a little, a little look that was just just dismissive
enough that you went, this is a sharp guy, without
going I like this guy. He's being too dismissive. She
(39:14):
managed to walk a tight rope through that entire ninety
minutes in which she looked like she was about to
burst out laughing, and he meanwhile looked like he was
about to burst out from behind the podium and take
a swing at her. A clean victory for Kamala Harris.
In fact, I would suggest a shutout victory for Kamala Harris.
I don't think anything Trump said about her would have
(39:36):
stuck because it was as crazy as and I know
I added the part about the ducks. He really didn't
invoke ducks. He just said they want to perform transgender
surgery on illegal immigrants. He really does sound like somebody
who heard a newscast and then was asked to repeat
it from memory while drunk and seventy eight years old
(39:57):
and not quite right in the head.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
For most of those seventy eight years.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Lastly, I want to shay one more thing here and
again this is whatever's be being said doesn't matter. I
started to notice this very early on because I have
a sweaty thing here on my lip. Whatever this is
called between the two halves of your lip. I know
there's a technical term for it. I looked it up once.
I have a mental block against it because every once
in a while, when you don't see me on camera,
(40:22):
I have to do something like this. I've had to
do it since I started in television in nineteen eighty one.
So when I see it in others, I go that
guy's got a sweaty lip. The last thirty minutes of
this debate, even with two commercial breaks where somebody could
have come out and gone out of President Trump, you
have you have some stuff on your lips.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
It didn't do it. Let's see what the tape looks
like on this.
Speaker 5 (40:46):
But let's understand how we got to where we are.
Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the
weakest deals you can imagine. He calls himself a deal maker.
Even his national security advisor said it was a weak,
terrible deal.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
See it, you see it? Do you see it right there?
Oh my god, I have nightmares where I look like that.
And his went on for half an hour in front
of who knows, we'll find out fifty sixty seventy million people.
Who knows how many people saw. And the oldest praise
of show business is the one that applied at the
(41:24):
very end for Donald Trump. Never let them see you sweat,
And everybody saw him sweat. Of all the things we've
seen happened to Trump during this nightmare decade of Trump
in ascendency and then to the presidency and then as
this president in exile and then this kind of late
Napoleonic figure, of all the things we've seen, we've never
(41:45):
really seen him.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Get his come upance. Yet.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I think perhaps he's going to get his come upance now.
And lastly, it is perhaps an indicator that we got
to the stage where this fight, this debate was over
six seven minutes in and it was just a question
how bad it was going to be. Unlike the one
with Biden and Trump, but this was different because there
(42:08):
was no sense of anyone potentially having sympathy for Donald Trump.
This was just watching the guy get the crap beaten
out of him again and again and again. And one
way I knew it was coming was how quickly, how
quickly he actually went to and in fact, whether he
would go to at all. This weakest, dumbest, most quickly dismissed,
(42:33):
most self defeating of complete nightmare, bullshit, fantasy scenarios, the
ones about the guys in Ohio eating the cats and dogs, ducks, geese,
the tree is going to scurry when I take you
(42:53):
out in the surrey. I'm sorry I broke into Oklahoma
there for a moment. In Springfield. He said, they're eating
the dogs the people that came in. They're eating the cats,
They're eating the pets of the people that live there,
to which David Muhir, the moderator, the principal moderator, simply said, no,
(43:14):
they're not. We checked with the officials there, and then
Trump insisted that those officials had to be lying were
wrong because he saw people on TV. There is However,
still we will never be rid of this. It's true
in any population, there's always ten percent of people who
are functionally insane, ten percent of people who are going
(43:35):
to be racist, ten percent of people who are going
to be interested in only themselves. When they bind together
in a grand coalition with the other people who have
various grievances, we get a President Trump, we get an
Adolph Hitler, we get a Napoleon to bring him up
into this again. We get any one of a dozen
different Russian leaders in any one of a dozen different
forms of government. But here we have this percentage of
(43:58):
people who think that the stories of the ducks and
the cats and the dogs not only are true, but
somehow redound to Trump's advantage. Trump History forty five is
an account on Twitter x and that was they posted
a meme today that might be the greatest bad meme
(44:21):
I have ever seen. I would like to show it
to you now and then offer you a few comments
on this meme. I didn't want to interrupt your laughter
there it was. Put it back up for a second.
Because I want to point something out here. First of all,
(44:43):
you're goddamn right, I'm eating that duck that could serve
a family of three hundred. Look at the size of
that duck that he's on, or goose or whatever it is.
I don't want to make fun of this. I'm a
pet lover. I'm very upset that I'm out this late
at night. My dogs are home. They're worried about me,
and they're also not watching the show. But that's another
story between me and the dogs. He's not the man
(45:04):
America it deserves, it says, he is the man American needs.
That's right, riding on a giant duck or goose while
holding six cats, and show it one more time and
then we'll be done with the duck. Just show it
one more time because this is the best part. Well,
that's good too. That's not the duck.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
I recognize me anywhere. That's a reminder that we're on
every day with the podcast. But if we yes the duck, please.
It's bad enough that this went out. And it turns
out that the duck story originated from a Nazi group
last month at a town hall meeting in Springfield, Ohio
(45:43):
that came out late this afternoon.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
But take a good look at the back of the duck.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Please don't tell Donald Trump where Donald duck that his
ass is on fire.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
That's the kind of political commentary.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
I and I alone can provide you a couple of
questions before we wrap this up in an hour, and
I thank you for your attention and staying with us
(46:17):
once again. I mean, what sort of questions could you
have after this? Do you think she won by two
hundred points or do you think she won by three
hundred points? You, Franklin, writes Keith, what do you make
of Harris's non answer on the climate? Yes it is
a threat, and yes she's boostering fracking with her whole
chest and ensuring we contribute to our ongoing nightmare in progress.
(46:38):
I am of the opinion that we have one more
period of time, one brief span less probably than a
presidential administration, to make some movement to mitigate the coming
climate disaster, the one that is already underway. I have
no delusions about this. It is one of the few times,
as I hit retirement age and my sixty fifth birthday
(47:01):
this year, that I thought, well, hell, I'll be soon
it's your problem.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I don't mean to be cynical.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
About it, but that really is an option that looks
almost charming in a way, that this is coming and
we have one last chance to control it. Not to stop,
but that's gone, all right. We have one last chance
to control it, and that is to make sure that
a guy who doesn't believe it's true and is only
worried about the money that all of the means that
(47:30):
the planet is being destroyed with only can conceive of
the money and nothing else, and does not believe that
any damage is being caused, we have to make sure
he's not president of the United States. If Kamala Harris
wants to pledge to go out and personally run fracking
equipment in the middle of downtown Philadelphia, I'll applaud her,
(47:53):
particularly if it gets her Pennsylvania. I think you need
to be a little practical about this one and run
with it, and we see where we go from there.
Because the key climate decisions are going to be much
larger than just fracking, not that cracking is a part
of it. The whole issue of getting away from fossil
fuels is much larger, and it is to be decided
I think principally for the history of the human race
(48:15):
between Donald Trump being president and Kamala Harris being president.
So I'll take the fracking not on a permanent basis.
And by the way, she didn't say how much. There's
one fracking operation in Pennsylvania and we're operating it as
a kind of old timer's day for those remaining frackers.
Awakening Death has written on Twitter X you have a
(48:37):
fun handle question for KO. Is the Kamala honeymoon phase over?
And does the reality check internal conflict phase finally begin
for the GOP. I'm guessing that you're asking whether or
not the GOP will stop suggesting that this is just
a honeymoon phase. I don't know what they do at
this point. I really don't know what they do at
(48:58):
this point. All the polls are the exception of the
New York Times over the weekend, which had Trump ahead slightly.
Every poll since Amala Harris became the nominee, and in fact,
since the day that Joe Biden dropped out of the race,
every poll has tended towards her. The growth in the
Swing States has always been towards her, with occasional circle
backs where she moves four points ahead and then gives
(49:20):
a point back. I suspect that the last set of
polls where she did that one percent back after the
immediate glow of the Democratic Convention ended and that newness
began to wear off and we got towards the colder
winds of September. On October, I think those reversals will
be the last ones we will see, because in the
(49:42):
democratic sense, the honeymoon is over for Kamala Harris and
the post she kicked the crap out of Trump in
a debate phase has just begun.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Also, Taylor Swift in dorst her tonight.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
As Dan Patrick used to say in the old days
of ESPN one, thanks for being with us. A reminder
once again, I'm on the podcast now five days a week.
We will post every night because I'm an idiot. I
should be retired in at home and now I'm going
to work on Sundays as well. The Monday morning ones
(50:19):
will be short, but you can watch it on YouTube
by five or six am each day and you can
get it wherever you podcast each night at twelve fifteen
am EDT except probably for this one because it's almost
twelve fifteen am.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
EDT.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
I thank you for being with us. I think Trump
is probably still standing somewhere, glowering and making the fool
out of himself, and I know I will sleep well tonight.
I hope you do too. For all of us who
helped produce this and get it on the air, for
you and the other ones we have done, I thank you,
and I wish.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
You good night and good luck.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So who do.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
They get to replace him?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Republicans? I believe Joe Biden is available.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
There was sweat on Donald Trump's lip for the last
thirty minutes or so, on and off, and I think that,
if anything summarized this extraordinary evening, what might have been
certainly the liveliest presidential debate of all time, at least
at one end of it, because in addition to being
a presidential debate, this was also that Kamala Harris press
conference everybody has been asking about. She did most of
(00:50):
the substantial talking, despite being periodically interrupted by what sounded
like a drunken heckler who kept getting.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Owned and owned and owned.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Every time he stood up and said something ridiculous. I
will point out that, in addition to this being as
disastrous a debate for Donald Trump as the last time
we gathered was for Joe Biden, that Donald Trump's closing
argument boiled down to, in essence, his threat to destroy
America with Russian nuclear weapons. This did not go well
(01:22):
for Trump. Remember when I said on the podcast shortly
after the decision by Joe Biden to drop out to
accede to the wishes of democratic leadership and let Kamala
Harris be the nominee. That there might someday soon come
a day when we actually sit around and say, can
you believe we almost didn't swap out candidates in twenty
(01:42):
twenty four, we almost didn't run Kamala for president. Well,
we're certainly at that point right now. That was an
extraordinary moment from in fact, the seconds that they came
out onto the stage and the Vice president extended her
hand to Donald Trump for a handshake, and you could
tell he didn't even know what that meant the last time,
(02:04):
but he shook his hand in those circumstances. Was twenty sixteen.
Hillary Clinton did it once and would never do it again.
From the beginning, she was on offense, he was on defense.
In fact, after they took that first commercial break about
an agonizing one hour and three or four minutes into
the debate tonight, I was genuinely surprised that when they
(02:25):
came back from the commercial break, Donald Trump was still there.
When your go to character references are Victor Orbon and
Vladimir Putin, you're having a bad night. Because when she
was not making a fool of Trump. Trump was making
a fool of himself. The final rankings that I give
(02:47):
at the end of something like this are now complete.
Our number one was Kamala Harris finishing second. David Muir
of ABC News, Number three, Lindsay Davis of ABC News
for the Carfax Fox on the CNN commercials during those breaks.
Number five, Dogs and cats every Where. Number six the
ABC voiceover guy who said welcome back to the ABC debate.
(03:10):
Position seven through four, nine hundred and ninety nine, no
candidates rose to the standard described by the committee in
the applications, and the five thousandth ranked performer tonight was
Donald Trump. And if you think it's just me, and
perhaps I'm exaggerating somewhat because of my own personal beliefs
and my occasional reputation as a liberal or a Democrat
(03:32):
or a progressive. Rick Wilson, who was a conservative maestro
behind the scenes during the presidency and candidacies of George W.
Bush and particularly John McCain, with whom I have had
loud and public arguments, Rick Wilson tweeted forty three minutes
into that debacle. I've been in this business a long, long,
(03:52):
long time. Trump is being wrecked, destroyed. He's a bellowing
old man yelling at clouds. Mike Murphy, who was often
with Rick Wilson in these arguments that I had with
him during my network days, was a little blunder. He's
literally having his own Biden debate. The Republican strategist wrote, disaster,
(04:18):
he's giving tonight to her on the other side of
the ball. Alexandria Acasio Cortes, This I think will be
the imagery.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I've already used it. She did too.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
He sounds like a guy yelling at random people on
thirty fourth Street with a karaoke speaker. I didn't think
he was quite that clear. And then again, if you're
wondering if the reaction to this is going to be uniform,
if at the end of a political debate, the result
of which does not depend on any kind of objective
(04:51):
scorekeeping or ballgame being played, or anything else that is
even remotely numerical numerically countable. If you wondering if there
could be a consensus that one candidate one and the
other one lost. Benny Johnson, who just this past week
was identified as one of the people who unknowingly was
(05:11):
receiving payments washed from Russia and the Kremlin through a
company associated with Glenn Beck's Blaze, and being paid hundreds
of thousands of dollars a month for online videos that
got ones of thousands of views a month. Bennie Johnson writes,
why do Republican agree to debates in this format? The
(05:32):
moderators are rigged. I don't think it could rig a moderator,
but we'll let it pass. The questions are rigged. The
TV executives are all friends with the Democrat on stage,
questions get leaked to them. It's all a trap desired
to destroy one side. GOP does not need corporate media.
I swear to God it wasn't my fault, and.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I added that last part. It's from the Blues Brothers.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
The Associated Press, which has spent the entirety of the
Trump era trying not to say anything at all about
Trump in a negative fashion or a positive faction, although
they've been more successful at the front than at the back.
Of that combination, Harris maintains tone Trump's body language morphs
by Chris Majerian. With the debate more than half over,
(06:17):
Harris is maintaining the same even tone with which she started.
But Trump's body language has morphed. He's hunched over the lectern,
slashing his hand through the air to punctuate his statements.
Sometimes he raises his voice, Yes, I would say. Sometimes
he raised his voice and then he began to to
(06:38):
sweat from the lip, also from the ap. During the
last debate, the camera often caught Biden looking aimless while
Trump was speaking. Harris appears more prepared for the television format.
When Trump answers questions, she watches him intently. Sometimes she smiles,
shakes her head, or stares in puzzlement. Visually, she's increasing
the amount of time that she's conveying a message to viewers.
(07:00):
You're goddamn right there, associated press Chris Majerian.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
That was the whole point.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
We'll go through a checklist of things that were suggested
here by Tim O'Brien, a Trump baiter of some renowned
for Bloomberg, including this idea that she had to remember
that the split screen would be on her at all times.
I mentioned it. I believe in today's podcast. One of
the rules of being in television or in front of
camera in any live venue is that you should assume
(07:26):
it's always on. And even if you don't know that
you're on, somebody somewhere is watching your reaction. You must,
for whatever it takes, spend that hour and a half
looking at that camera and not putting this finger up
any orifice north of the chin. CNN Harris campaign sees
spike in donations from women. Excuse me during the first
(07:48):
hour of debate. Shouldn't have made the fates make my
nose hitch there, Aaron Pelish of CNN rights. In the
first hour of Tuesday's presidential debate, seventy one percent of
grassroots donors the vice president Kamala Harris's campaign where women.
A campaign official told CNN the first hour of the
debate featured heated extra changes, et cetera from Maggie Haberman
(08:08):
of The New York Times. I think we all need
to give Maggie a little space right now, Harris official says.
Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park five, will be
in the spin.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Room after debate.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Oh, you may recall that when Kamala Harris brought that up.
And the key difference here is in the Joe Biden
performance in the first debate and Kamala Harris's performance in
this debate was that phrase when Kamala Harris brought it up.
Kamala Harris owned this debate stage. There are a lot
of good questions, and I want to devote some of
(08:42):
this conversation here to what Lindsay Davis and David Muir
did for ABC, which I wish could be xeroxed and
sent to every network. But she owned it. She brought
up the Central Park five. Everything that was not brought
up by the moderators, virtually everything she could have brought up,
she did, and provoked things like Donald Trump explaining that
(09:05):
this happened so long ago, along with his own fines
from the government that he had to negotiate because he
wouldn't rent to black people when he started in business
with his father when I was like a junior in
high school. I think the handshake was the thing that
unsettled him from the beginning. He was expecting to come
(09:25):
out and have something, something that resembled the debate against
Joe Biden this one or the ones in twenty twenty,
or even something that resembled the debates with Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton is and would have been, I believe, an
excellent president. But she herself said she's a terrible job applicant.
She's a much better employee. She does not make that consuming,
(09:48):
controlling kind of presentation. She doesn't sell herself well in
that environment. So the debates that he's had up until
this point were not against the a one possible opponent.
What she did was what you would do if you
were a prosecutor in a courtroom. She came roaring out
of the gate. She brought up the opportunity economy. She
(10:10):
started by basically giving everybody six thousand dollars to help
raise their children, and every small business fifty thousand dollars.
And if you notice at the beginning of this, and
we will review the first few minutes and we can
start queuing that first set of clips up because I
want to go through this. The first three minutes of
this debate really told you what was going to happen thereafter. Again,
(10:33):
she's in charge of the whole thing. She defines him,
and he came out looking unconscious. So let's go back,
and I want to go through a bunch of clips
from this from the ABC debate. Let me do this
first one first. It's about three minutes long. And if
you do not listen to it. At least look at
Trump and look at the fact that it can barely
get his eyes open.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
This was a bad start.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an
incorrect statement. She knows that we're doing tariffs so in
other countries. Other countries are going to find after seventy
five years, pay us back for all that we've done
for the world, and the tariff will be substantial. In
some cases. I took in billions and billions of dollars,
as you know, from China. In fact, they never took
(11:17):
the tariff off because there was so much money. They can't.
It would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
They're taken in.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Billions of dollars from China and other places. They've left
the tariffs on. When I had it, I had tariffs,
and yet I had no inflation. Look, we've had a
terrible economy because inflation has which is really known as
a country buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation
like very few people have ever seen before, probably the
worst in our nation's history. We were at twenty one percent.
(11:47):
But that's being generous because many things are fifty sixty,
seventy and eighty percent higher than they were just a
few years ago. This has been a disaster for people,
for the middle class, but for every class. On top
of that, we have millions of people pouring into our
country from prisons and jails, from mental instant usians and
insane asylums, and they're coming in and they're taking jobs
(12:09):
that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics,
and also unions. Unions are going to be affected very soon.
And you see what's happening. You see what's happening with
towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio,
you look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over
the towns, they're taking over buildings, they're going in violently.
(12:30):
These are the people that she and Biden led into
our country, and they're destroying our country. They're dangerous, They're
at the highest level of criminality, and we have to
get them out. We have to get them out fast.
I created one of the greatest economies in the history
of our country. I'll do it again and even better.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
We are going to get to immigration and border security
during this debate. But I would like to let Vice
President Harris respond on the economy here.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Well, I would love to let's talk about what Donald
Trump left us. Donald Trump left us the world unemployment
since the Great Depression. Donald Trump left us the worst
public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us
the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
(13:21):
And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess.
What we have done and what I intend to do
is build on what we know are the aspirations and
the hopes of the American people. But I'm going to
tell you all on this debate tonight, you're going to
hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances,
and name calling. What you're going to hear tonight is
(13:44):
a detailed and dangerous plan called Project twenty twenty five
that the former president intends on implementing if he were
elected to gain I believe very strongly that the American
people want a president who understands the importance of bringing
us together, knowing we have so much more in common
than what separates us, and to be a president for
(14:06):
all Americans.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
To quote Mia Farrow from Rosemary's Baby, What's Wrong with
his Eyes? Did you see that and believe it or not?
What you saw there if you did not watch the
entirety of this debate, that was the Trump highlight. It
went downhill from there because he began in that sort
of and forgive me President Biden, that kind of biden
(14:28):
esque trance. Let's use a positive term, like trance. That
sounds exciting, doesn't it. He's in a trance. That's what
it started as this. Did you know that we're already
on Did you notice that the debate had begun?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Mister Trump?
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Then as she successfully angered him, baited him, decked him
a couple of times, metaphorically put him on defense on
every one of the topics that she brought up in
those opening remarks. Then he became angry Trump as the
one who lost the debate to Biden in the first
debate in twenty twenty. Then he became Trump trying to
look like Churchill. If you notice all the big photos
(15:08):
that he likes, those, all of his many mugshots. He's
doing this thing where he thinks, and he has said
he thinks he's accomplishing a look equivalent to that of
Winston Churchill, the British World War two Prime minister who
incidentally has been sullied recently by JD Vance's buddy Tucker
Carlson and a guest on Carlson Show who is now
(15:28):
saying that Winston Churchill was the cause of World War
Two rather than you know, dolf A Hitler, Hay And
that's going to cause another rift on top of everything else.
But we're getting away from the question of whether or
not Donald Trump is still the Republican nominee. In the morning,
the thing that happened after this was something that I
(15:49):
cheered for. The moderators fact checked Donald Trump. I made
some comments this morning on the podcast about if David
Muir wanted to be Edward R.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Murrow or Edward R.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Muro I said, sure, he's the lesser halt of Dana Bash's.
I apologize without reservation. And to Lindsay Davis, whose work
I did not really know. I had seen her before,
as I said earlier, make xeroxes of them and send
them to CNN and NBC and Fox News.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Like they'd know what to do with actual journalists.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
But to every journalistic organization in the country, how to
do a debate when one of the candidates is actively
lying and depending on lies is to do what Lindsey
Davis did on the subject of the nine month abortions
to simply say, no, there are no such things in
any state. It is not legal in any state. Vice
(16:45):
President Harris, don't even give him a chance to come
back and challenge your fact check. A fact is that
it is immutable, and if you have it in front
of you, treat it that way. It is decisive. It
is a knockout. It is a stick against the guy's forehead.
And Trump got that stick across his forehead repeatedly, so
a standing ovation for Muir and Lindsay Davis. At one point,
(17:07):
David Muir in fact, not only asked Trump a tough
question about January sixth, but when he veered off into
the destruction of Seattle in Minneapolis, which at last I
heard were both still extant. When he veered off into that,
he let him finish, and then he said, but to
get back to January sixth.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It was marvelous.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
It was what Jake Tapper and Dana Bash should have
done and did not do. That amplified the problems that
Joe Biden had in his last debate.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
There was so many things that you could.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Analyze line by line this debate and what Trump did
to himself and what Kamala Harris did for herself. You
could probably take seven or eight hours and just do
a simple factual recitation, just as a simple factual recitation
of the problems for Joe Biden in the last debate
could have been made. But I wanted to skip ahead
before we go through the checklists and then some other comments,
(18:00):
other clips from the debate itself to the end. When
Press and again the moderators made sure they gave him
multiple chances to answer, not simply to filibuster. He would
not say he wants Ukraine to win. He would not
say that he needs to see Russia defeated. He could
(18:20):
not talk about anything in the dispute between the free
world and the dictatorial world of Vladimir Putin, and what
Putin's goals are for Europe and for the world, and
in its entirety, he could not process them either. He
wanted to avoid them. But I think much more likely
it simply doesn't compute with him. He immediately reverted to
(18:43):
how much money the United States has spent in defense
of Ukraine compared to how much Europe has spent. And
by the way, factually he's incorrect Europe has spent far
more defending Ukraine and sending aid to Ukraine and sending
materiel to Ukraine than the United States has.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
We are not, in.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Fact being outspent by Europe on Ukraine. It's not just
about the money. And if it were, he was wrong
about that too. And then of course there was the
extraordinary gymnastics that he claimed Kamala Harris was capable of,
which was of simultaneously hating Israel and the Palestinians.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
A series of.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Events before this debate led me to compose a bit
of a checklist, some of which I gave out on
the podcast yesterday morning. And it was really an examination
both of what Kamala Harris had to do and what
the moderators had to do, and less about what Trump
had to do, because as we know, Trump has the
benefit that none of the rest of us do in
those situations where you can just make it up as
(19:42):
he goes along. It's really good to have that asset
right there in your hand. When you don't have to
worry about being factually accurate, consistent, or anywhere in any way,
shape or form tethered to reality, you can tell wonderful stories.
Some of the greatest compositions of mankind are based on
(20:03):
the ability to make stuff up as you go along.
William Shakespeare was great at it. William Shakespeare was not
president of anything. Trump was seeks to be again, and
I think tonight he may have made it impossible for
him to be, at least I hope so. But this
checklist of the things that they needed to do, did
the moderators or Kamala Harris do the following? Did they
(20:23):
bring up January sixth, Yes, the moderators did. It was
turned into by Trump an immigration answer. Did they bring
up the threat to arrest political opponents? God bless him?
David Muir read the entirety of Trump's post on social
media in which he threatened to arrest political oppositions. Trump
hemmed and hawed and gave an answer that will not
(20:47):
gain him anything because he neither denied the violence of
what was behind his words in that post, nor did
he reaffirm it. So those who were in favor of
what he's proposing to do, the Mike Davises and the
Project twenty twenty five people like that, they were not
reinforced whatsoever. He basically sold them down the river and
(21:09):
tried to pivot to Harris being a danger to democracy
because because Joe Biden isn't the nominee, which of course
was the goal of the entirety of Trump's first impeachment
was to make sure Joe Biden wouldn't be the nominee.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
He got his way, and now he's blaming everybody else
for it.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Did they bring up Tucker Carlson and jd Vance and
Nazis in Churchill? They did, Okay, you missed one. Did
they bring up the Arlington Cemetery scandal?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
They did not.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
I don't think it was any great loss. It's important
to us. I don't know that it was important to
the viewers who were not seeing or were seeing Kamala
Harris maybe for the first time, and certainly seeing the
two of them together for the first time. The television
audience and the streaming audience in this country for the
first debate in the middle of summer was fifty one
million approximately. I suspect this one will be far better
than that, because, on top of everything else, it was
(21:57):
goddamn better television than the first one was, and it
was not. I suspect the Trump people hung in there
as long as they could assuming that at some point
he would get up off the mat and throw a haymaker,
which he never did. But for those in the political equation,
people who would be voting for Kamala Harris, at the
end of that, I'm sure you had the same feeling
(22:18):
I had, which.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Was what it's over already? Is there going to be
another one next week? Come on, let's do this every week. Kids.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Did she call him not a liar or a criminal,
but lawless. Yes, she implied that he had no law.
He was a law unto himself. Did she call him.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Old go for the gold, old is gold? She never
used the word.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I guess she's a better person than I am, but
she did imply it and successfully. Did she call him
low energy? She described the audiences leaving early from his debates.
You could see his eyes flare with rage at the
thought of this, because that's all that really matters to him.
It is human beings as numbers, that's all he understands.
(23:03):
It ties into the answer about Ukraine. Human beings as numbers.
The enjoyment in life that he gets, perhaps one of
the few enjoyments in life that doesn't come in a
bag that says.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
McDonald's on it. Well, then a few things he actually
enjoys is those rallies.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
There was a point in twenty sixteen when he said
he thought maybe he would lose, but he'd continue to
hold the rallies because he so enjoyed them, because people
were cheering, and he could count, and he could say
there were one hundred and eleven billion people at my rally.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And she attacked the number of people.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
At his rallies. Oh did he not like that? Did
she call him low energy?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes? Did she call him failure yes? Did she use
the word weird?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
No? Damn fact checking. I mentioned this again. Hats off
to Lindsay Davis and David Buher. Did she accomplish her
two main goals? Did she introduce herself to the twenty
eight percent who don't have enough info? According to the
CIBA the IPSOS New York Times poll from over the weekend,
don't think they know enough about her to decide up
(24:04):
or down. I think she did that spectacularly, And I
think she did that for the people who went to
bed at nine oh five pm and went, oh, I
get it now. She's sort of a very pleasant and
well spoken, sort of standard issue slightly more liberal maybe
than I am Democrat, but she's not going to get.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Us all killed.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Did she win over people who did not know her
as opposed to Trump's goal?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Trump's goal in this had to be.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
For him to get any higher than his ceiling of
forty seven percent of popular support.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Did he sell himself?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Did he convince people who hate him to vote for
him anyway? I can't imagine that the answer to the
total number of people he convinced who hate him to
vote for him anyway was more than thirty or thirty five,
Not thousand, not million, but thirty or thirty five. She
in the first five minutes of that debate smiled, laughed
at him, looked quizzically at him, mocked him, didn't say
(25:03):
a word, Pa paid attention, was vibrant, welcoming, has a
great face for television, and utilized it in all of
the ways you can utilize a face on television. Tax
deductions in the first answer, and as I said, not
only brought up what she was and what she was
going to say during the course of that debate, but
(25:24):
defined him and said what he would do and how
he would fall apart, and how he would eventually get
around to racism and sexism and to this extraordinary xenophobia
that animates him in every respect, And he promptly did
everything she said he was going to do. Tim O'Brien,
who I mentioned earlier from Bloomberg, who issued a checklist
of seven key points for Kamala Harris respect the split screen.
(25:46):
Where as I put it, can you maintain resting president
face A plus, emphasize your the borders are he sabotaged
the border deal. I'm summarizing exactly what she said, and
early in the process did she and again he did
not use the word pander. I did pander to swing
state voters with data on the economy?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
She sure did.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
She successfully did that, and she did it in each
quarter hour of the clock. So if you were just
joining it after watching a ball game, no matter when
you joined it, you heard a number that indicated that
his economy was less good than it looked, and hers
or hers and Biden's was better than it had looked,
and the one that is upcoming.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Would be better.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yet did she manage to dodge some questions but not
most or all of them while he continued to dodge.
It's exactly what happened he looked like he was just
going to say what he damn well pleased. She managed
to answer virtually every question, although her answers about Hamas
and the Middle East and the war and Israel were
(26:47):
basically boilt plate. And I'll ask you to actually see
if you can remember what her conclusion was to this,
other than getting the hostages out and getting a ceasefire.
Not that that's a bad conclusion, but in the environment there,
she did not come down on one side or another
and did not explain how those things would be achieved.
Did she remind them? O'Brien's last point was that Trump
(27:08):
is in it for himself to stay out of jail.
She said, Trump is in it for himself. An extraordinary
performance from Kamala Harris. I don't know how it could
have been much better. The closing statement was formal and
presidential and a little austere, and it suffered only in
comparison to the first You know, ninety minutes of her
(27:31):
performance an A plus all the way through. I'm sorry
you only get an A for your closing remarks. They
sounded a little rehearsed by that point. I don't think
it mattered. Let's review five or six things further that
(27:53):
happened with videotape clips, the first of them being it's
not necessary really to listen to what Trump is saying here,
but just to watch her hand on her chin and
the quiet laughter. The microphones were shut off. Sure, guess what,
you can pantomime things, and Kamala Harris did that successfully
(28:16):
tonight too.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's
a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well.
But when you look at what she's done to our country,
and when you look at these millions and millions of
people that are pouring into our country monthly, where it's
I believe twenty one million people, not the fifteen that
people say, and I think it's a lot higher than
(28:38):
the twenty one. That's bigger than New York State pouring in.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Thank you, this just in this just handed to me.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
I wanted to read you the lead from the New
York Times, the holy goddamn New York Times, which, as
you know, has set out the entirety of this presidential election,
because nothing that happens to this country would affect the
New York Times. There will always be in New York Times?
Right right? Did I do the meme correctly? Live updates?
(29:06):
Vice President Kamala Harris shook the hand to former President
Donald J. Trump as she walked on stage, then spent
the next ninety minutes making every effort to burrow under
his skin. Wow, Associated Press again. Christy blasts Trump debate prep.
This is when everybody who said I told you so,
particularly on the conservative side, about Donald Trump, gets to
(29:29):
say it again, only they'll find an audience to put
them on TV again. To the Associated Press, whoever did
debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Chris Christy says ABC News.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
He helped prep Trump for debates in previous election cycles
and is now at Trump critic And here it is
no surprise. Trump thinks he did well during the debate.
People are saying big win tonight, he posted on truth Social,
his social media site. He also complained about the moderators.
I thought that was my best debate ever, especially since
it was three on one. Well it was, it was
(30:02):
in fact two on one because clearly the goal of
Kamala Harris was to destroy Donald Trump, and the goal
of Donald Trump was also to destroy Donald Trump. Another clip.
What was that again about the mikes being off? There
are Mike's and there are mikes, and there is off
(30:22):
and there is off.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I have been a leader on fertilization IVF and the
other thing. They you should ask will she allow abortion
in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month? Come on, okay,
would you do that? Why don't you ask me that question?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
That's the question because under v question.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month,
the ninth month, and probably after birth. Just look at
the governor, former governor of Virginia. The governor of Virginia said,
we put the baby aside and then we determine what
we want to do with a baby.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Trump.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Another dish just In Off Instagram Taylor Swift. This is
not the best of her many good compositions, but it
will do. Particularly the finish. The last part of the
lyrics here is a rather exciting. Like many of you,
she writes, I watch the debate tonight if you haven't already,
now is a great time to do your research on
the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take
(31:21):
on the topics that matter to you the most. As
a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything
I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country. Recently,
I was made aware that AI of me falsely endorsing
Donald Trump's presidential run was posted to his site. It
really conjured up my fears around AI and the dangers
of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that
(31:42):
I need to be very transparent about my actual plans
for this election. As a voter, the simplest way to
combat misinformation is with the truth. Do I hear screaming
Swifties out there on sixth Avenue? Why yes, I do.
I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and
Tim Walls in the twenty twenty four presidential election. I'm
(32:04):
voting for Kamala Harris by the way, at Kamala Harris
to direct you to her Instagram account because she fights
for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior
to champion them. I think she is a steady handed,
gifted leader, and I believe we can accomplish so much
more in this country if we were led by calm
and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by
her selection of running mate Tim Walls, who has been
(32:26):
standing up for LGBTQ plus rights, IVF and a women's
right to her own body for decades. I've done my research,
she's not done yet, and I've made my choice. Your
research is all yours to do, and the choice is
yours to make. I also want to say, especially to
first time voters, remember that in order to vote, you
have to be registered. I also find it's much easier
to vote early. I'll link where to register and find
(32:49):
early vote dates and info in my story with Love
and Hope Taylor Swift Childless cat Lady. So the JD
vance approach to things really worked well, as did whoever
put out the artificial intelligence version of Taylor Swift. We
can now officially declare the state of Swift. Deanna has
(33:12):
gone for Kamala Harris. There was a moment in here
where as I mentioned before, Trump.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Really lost it.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
As Tim O'Brien so aptly pointed out in the checklist
I read before, how do you get under Donald Trump's skin?
There are some easy buttons to push. As The Times
put it, she was burrowing under his skin throughout. There
was a moment where she accused him of being the
worst thing you could accuse Trump of being.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
And I'm going to actually do something really unusual, and
I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald
Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch.
You will see during the course of his rallies he
talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk
about wind mills cause cancer. And what you will also
notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out
(34:08):
of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the
one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.
You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams,
and your need and your desires. And I'll tell you,
I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first,
and I pledge to you that I will.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I didn't like that particularly. It was also the matter
of criminality. There was an attempt of Trump, as there
has been throughout the entirety of the process of correctly
assessing the damage and responsibility for what he did to
this country on January sixth, where he tried to enact
a political version of nine to eleven. Since we are
(34:49):
about an hour away from the anniversary of that solemn occasion.
It's a proper analysis and a proper correlation between that
and what happened in January twenty twenty one. And it
was a rather extraordinary moment when they got talking and
debating the subject of criminality, and it did not go
well for Trump, and I suppose that shouldn't have been
(35:12):
a surprise to anybody.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Really quick response to her Vice President Harris on this
notion of weaponization of the Justice Department, Well.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Let's talk about extreme and understand the context in which
this election in twenty twenty four is taking place. The
United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president
would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were
to enter the White House. Again, Understand, this is someone
who has openly said he would terminate I'm quoting, terminate
(35:40):
the Constitution of the United States, that he would weaponize
the Department of Justice against his political enemies, someone who
has openly expressed disdain for members of our military. Understand
what it would mean if Donald Trump were back in
the White House with no guardrails, because certainly we know
(36:01):
now the Court won't stop and we know JD. Vance
is not going to stop him. It's up to the
American people to stop him.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Thank you, Vice President Harris in your last run for president.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
This is the one that weaponized, not me.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
She weaponized. I probably took a bullet to the head
because of the things that they say about me. They
talk about democracy. I'm a threat to democracy. They're the
threat to democracy. Was a fake Russia Russia Russia investigation
that went nowhere.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
We will allow to get to Lindsay.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
If you'll notice that whenever mister Trump is particularly bothered
by anything anybody else says, he refers to them as
this is the one. It's an old Mitt Romney line.
I'm sure Trump will enjoy being compared to Mitt Romney
when he said of Obama, this one, we know what
that is, cleaned up terminology for. We know what that is.
(36:59):
Trump didn't like what happened tonight. I don't care what
he wrote on social media. He didn't like what happened tonight.
And he may even have a glimmer, vague idea of
what happened tonight. He did not present what he needed
to do. As crazy as the things he said in
the first debate against Joe Biden were he had remained
calm throughout. He didn't make a big deal about what
(37:21):
was happening on the stage. To the president, he retained
a sense of calm. And as I said here and
not so much, not so much tonight, there was then
an extraordinary moment in which you know, what were we
expecting in an hour and a half long debate, fifty
sixty outright fabrications and lies, all of them familiar. Well,
(37:44):
we have a new one. We have Kamala Harris wants
to take your tax money to perform transgender operations on
illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
We're eating ducks now.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
She wants to do transgender operations or a llegue aliens
that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal
that would do this. She wants to confiscate you guns,
and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Of all the things Katala Hier said or did tonight,
and anything that results from this in the polls, anything
that results from this in the Taylor Swift endorsement, anything
that results in this in terms of fundraising, The fact
that she was able to manage for ninety minutes almost
without interruption, a look of I'm about to burst into laughter,
but I'll manage to control myself because I love the flag.
(38:38):
Is something I've never seen before in politics. Well, I
shouldn't say that. It's a glimmer of what Barack Obama
could do. And I saw it firsthand when I moderated
a unofficially called debate.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
It was a candidate's forum. It was a cattle call.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
There were still nine Democrats running for president, and we
had all but one of them out on a stage
in Chicago. And every time, even when it wasn't on camera,
that somebody said something about Barack Obama, he would give
a little, a little look that was just just dismissive
enough that you went, this is a sharp guy, without
going I like this guy. He's being too dismissive. She
(39:14):
managed to walk a tight rope through that entire ninety
minutes in which she looked like she was about to
burst out laughing, and he meanwhile looked like he was
about to burst out from behind the podium and take
a swing at her. A clean victory for Kamala Harris.
In fact, I would suggest a shutout victory for Kamala Harris.
I don't think anything Trump said about her would have
(39:36):
stuck because it was as crazy as and I know
I added the part about the ducks. He really didn't
invoke ducks. He just said they want to perform transgender
surgery on illegal immigrants. He really does sound like somebody
who heard a newscast and then was asked to repeat
it from memory while drunk and seventy eight years old
(39:57):
and not quite right in the head.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
For most of those seventy eight years.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Lastly, I want to shay one more thing here and
again this is whatever's be being said doesn't matter. I
started to notice this very early on because I have
a sweaty thing here on my lip. Whatever this is
called between the two halves of your lip. I know
there's a technical term for it. I looked it up once.
I have a mental block against it because every once
in a while, when you don't see me on camera,
(40:22):
I have to do something like this. I've had to
do it since I started in television in nineteen eighty one.
So when I see it in others, I go that
guy's got a sweaty lip. The last thirty minutes of
this debate, even with two commercial breaks where somebody could
have come out and gone out of President Trump, you
have you have some stuff on your lips.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
It didn't do it. Let's see what the tape looks
like on this.
Speaker 5 (40:46):
But let's understand how we got to where we are.
Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the
weakest deals you can imagine. He calls himself a deal maker.
Even his national security advisor said it was a weak,
terrible deal.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
See it, you see it? Do you see it right there?
Oh my god, I have nightmares where I look like that.
And his went on for half an hour in front
of who knows, we'll find out fifty sixty seventy million people.
Who knows how many people saw. And the oldest praise
of show business is the one that applied at the
(41:24):
very end for Donald Trump. Never let them see you sweat,
And everybody saw him sweat. Of all the things we've
seen happened to Trump during this nightmare decade of Trump
in ascendency and then to the presidency and then as
this president in exile and then this kind of late
Napoleonic figure, of all the things we've seen, we've never
(41:45):
really seen him.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Get his come upance. Yet.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I think perhaps he's going to get his come upance now.
And lastly, it is perhaps an indicator that we got
to the stage where this fight, this debate was over
six seven minutes in and it was just a question
how bad it was going to be. Unlike the one
with Biden and Trump, but this was different because there
(42:08):
was no sense of anyone potentially having sympathy for Donald Trump.
This was just watching the guy get the crap beaten
out of him again and again and again. And one
way I knew it was coming was how quickly, how
quickly he actually went to and in fact, whether he
would go to at all. This weakest, dumbest, most quickly dismissed,
(42:33):
most self defeating of complete nightmare, bullshit, fantasy scenarios, the
ones about the guys in Ohio eating the cats and dogs, ducks, geese,
the tree is going to scurry when I take you
(42:53):
out in the surrey. I'm sorry I broke into Oklahoma
there for a moment. In Springfield. He said, they're eating
the dogs the people that came in. They're eating the cats,
They're eating the pets of the people that live there,
to which David Muhir, the moderator, the principal moderator, simply said, no,
(43:14):
they're not. We checked with the officials there, and then
Trump insisted that those officials had to be lying were
wrong because he saw people on TV. There is However,
still we will never be rid of this. It's true
in any population, there's always ten percent of people who
are functionally insane, ten percent of people who are going
(43:35):
to be racist, ten percent of people who are going
to be interested in only themselves. When they bind together
in a grand coalition with the other people who have
various grievances, we get a President Trump, we get an
Adolph Hitler, we get a Napoleon to bring him up
into this again. We get any one of a dozen
different Russian leaders in any one of a dozen different
forms of government. But here we have this percentage of
(43:58):
people who think that the stories of the ducks and
the cats and the dogs not only are true, but
somehow redound to Trump's advantage. Trump History forty five is
an account on Twitter x and that was they posted
a meme today that might be the greatest bad meme
(44:21):
I have ever seen. I would like to show it
to you now and then offer you a few comments
on this meme. I didn't want to interrupt your laughter
there it was. Put it back up for a second.
Because I want to point something out here. First of all,
(44:43):
you're goddamn right, I'm eating that duck that could serve
a family of three hundred. Look at the size of
that duck that he's on, or goose or whatever it is.
I don't want to make fun of this. I'm a
pet lover. I'm very upset that I'm out this late
at night. My dogs are home. They're worried about me,
and they're also not watching the show. But that's another
story between me and the dogs. He's not the man
(45:04):
America it deserves, it says, he is the man American needs.
That's right, riding on a giant duck or goose while
holding six cats, and show it one more time and
then we'll be done with the duck. Just show it
one more time because this is the best part. Well,
that's good too. That's not the duck.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
I recognize me anywhere. That's a reminder that we're on
every day with the podcast. But if we yes the duck, please.
It's bad enough that this went out. And it turns
out that the duck story originated from a Nazi group
last month at a town hall meeting in Springfield, Ohio
(45:43):
that came out late this afternoon.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
But take a good look at the back of the duck.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Please don't tell Donald Trump where Donald duck that his
ass is on fire.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
That's the kind of political commentary.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
I and I alone can provide you a couple of
questions before we wrap this up in an hour, and
I thank you for your attention and staying with us
(46:17):
once again. I mean, what sort of questions could you
have after this? Do you think she won by two
hundred points or do you think she won by three
hundred points? You, Franklin, writes Keith, what do you make
of Harris's non answer on the climate? Yes it is
a threat, and yes she's boostering fracking with her whole
chest and ensuring we contribute to our ongoing nightmare in progress.
(46:38):
I am of the opinion that we have one more
period of time, one brief span less probably than a
presidential administration, to make some movement to mitigate the coming
climate disaster, the one that is already underway. I have
no delusions about this. It is one of the few times,
as I hit retirement age and my sixty fifth birthday
(47:01):
this year, that I thought, well, hell, I'll be soon
it's your problem.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I don't mean to be cynical.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
About it, but that really is an option that looks
almost charming in a way, that this is coming and
we have one last chance to control it. Not to stop,
but that's gone, all right. We have one last chance
to control it, and that is to make sure that
a guy who doesn't believe it's true and is only
worried about the money that all of the means that
(47:30):
the planet is being destroyed with only can conceive of
the money and nothing else, and does not believe that
any damage is being caused, we have to make sure
he's not president of the United States. If Kamala Harris
wants to pledge to go out and personally run fracking
equipment in the middle of downtown Philadelphia, I'll applaud her,
(47:53):
particularly if it gets her Pennsylvania. I think you need
to be a little practical about this one and run
with it, and we see where we go from there.
Because the key climate decisions are going to be much
larger than just fracking, not that cracking is a part
of it. The whole issue of getting away from fossil
fuels is much larger, and it is to be decided
I think principally for the history of the human race
(48:15):
between Donald Trump being president and Kamala Harris being president.
So I'll take the fracking not on a permanent basis.
And by the way, she didn't say how much. There's
one fracking operation in Pennsylvania and we're operating it as
a kind of old timer's day for those remaining frackers.
Awakening Death has written on Twitter X you have a
(48:37):
fun handle question for KO. Is the Kamala honeymoon phase over?
And does the reality check internal conflict phase finally begin
for the GOP. I'm guessing that you're asking whether or
not the GOP will stop suggesting that this is just
a honeymoon phase. I don't know what they do at
this point. I really don't know what they do at
(48:58):
this point. All the polls are the exception of the
New York Times over the weekend, which had Trump ahead slightly.
Every poll since Amala Harris became the nominee, and in fact,
since the day that Joe Biden dropped out of the race,
every poll has tended towards her. The growth in the
Swing States has always been towards her, with occasional circle
backs where she moves four points ahead and then gives
(49:20):
a point back. I suspect that the last set of
polls where she did that one percent back after the
immediate glow of the Democratic Convention ended and that newness
began to wear off and we got towards the colder
winds of September. On October, I think those reversals will
be the last ones we will see, because in the
(49:42):
democratic sense, the honeymoon is over for Kamala Harris and
the post she kicked the crap out of Trump in
a debate phase has just begun.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Also, Taylor Swift in dorst her tonight.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
As Dan Patrick used to say in the old days
of ESPN one, thanks for being with us. A reminder
once again, I'm on the podcast now five days a week.
We will post every night because I'm an idiot. I
should be retired in at home and now I'm going
to work on Sundays as well. The Monday morning ones
(50:19):
will be short, but you can watch it on YouTube
by five or six am each day and you can
get it wherever you podcast each night at twelve fifteen
am EDT except probably for this one because it's almost
twelve fifteen am.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
EDT.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
I thank you for being with us. I think Trump
is probably still standing somewhere, glowering and making the fool
out of himself, and I know I will sleep well tonight.
I hope you do too. For all of us who
helped produce this and get it on the air, for
you and the other ones we have done, I thank you,
and I wish.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
You good night and good luck.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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