Dan Mitchinson: US correspondent on Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris on social media

Taylor Swift has come out and endorsed current Vice-President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for President.

Shortly after the first debate between Harris and Donald Trump wrapped up, Swift released an Instagram post confirming she would vote for Harris and Tim Walz.

US correspondent Dan Mitchinson says this is good marketing for the Harris-Walz campaign. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International correspondence with Ends and Eye Insurance, Peace of Mind
for New Zealand Business. Dan Linton's a US correspondence with
US Now Dan, Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey, can we just say what a brilliant marketer Taylor
Swift is releasing that just moments after the debate came out?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Well, yes she is, you're right, But what I wanted
immediately was does she take the headlines away from the
fact that Donald Trump said some stupid stuff and therefore
not really helped, like you know what I mean? Like,
would it have been better she did for twenty four
hours so he could really wallow in his pet's comment.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, you're right. I guess she's probably gonna steal a
little bit to you know, because she's hopped on the
bandwagon like that. But you know that the Harris campaign said,
we had no idea that she was going to do
this at all. At this point in time. There was
a lot of speculation that she was going to do it.
It was just when, not if.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, let's be honest about it. Taylor's doing it for
Taylor's sake. This is not about helping KRMLO. It's about
making Taytay look good. Now, what do you think who
won the debate.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I think, hands down it was Harris. Really was interesting though.
I had an instapol on my ex account right now
and seventy eight percent thought that Trump won the debate.
And there were a few, including some writers with Newsweek,
who said that he won the debate because they thought
that that Kamala Harris was not authentic and that the
moderators David Mure and Lindsay Davis were very biased and

(01:20):
kind of short up Harris's performance. And I have to agree,
I was not impressed with the moderators at all this
this time.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Why not? What did they do?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
They got you goat? I thought they were well. First
of all, I thought they were very leaning towards Kamala Harris.
I thought they pushed more on the follow up questions
when they did do them, and it wasn't as often
as they should towards Donald Trump. And I thought that
their questions just weren't as solid as they could be.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, that's probably fair. I suppose they corrected him a
couple of times factually and not at all with him,
but then he was the one who is known to
be the liar. The thing that I think is that
she the thing that counted against her the most was
that her performance was only really about a four out
of five, because there were times where I felt she
sort of faulted and looked like she was trying to
remember what she's supposed to say. Did you pick up

(02:06):
on that?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah? I agree that. And I'm going to be listening
when Barry talks about this because I'll be anxious to
hear what he has to say about this. I think
she did do that. I think she seemed a little
nervous at first, but she was a lot more confident
overall than I expected. And I would have to say
she came in as an underdog, and she remained calm
a lot of the time, and I think a lot
of her previous district attorney experience came into play here.

(02:28):
And she reminded me at times that she was almost
like she was talking to a jury, whereas I think
Trump for the first ten minutes or so, it was okay,
but then he was very angry. It was very off topic,
and he seemed to be grabbing at anything and everything.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, and do you know what, just the optics like
just when you looked at the camera, just looked at
what was happening on your television screen. Here you had
this bright and sunny woman smiling, and you had this
old guy brooding and looking delicious.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yes. And the comment about eating pets, when he was
referring to the Haitian immigrants eating the dogs and the
pets in Springfield, Ohio, I mean that's been confirmed. I
don't know how many times that that was not true,
but he said it, and it immediately started trending, and
somebody is going to make a fortune off mugs and
t shirts with that with that comment.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
But then, I don't think this changes anybody's opinion. I
think if you think that, if you want to vote
for Trump, you already know that he says lunatic stuff,
So it's not going to change your mind. And if
you want to vote for Kamala because of what she
stands for, her crappy performance, like her four out of
five performance was met crappy is also not going to
put you off as it.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
No, I think you're right. I think if you're if
you're a Trump in the Trump camp right now, you're
going to remain in the Trump camp. If you believe
in fracking, You're going to believe in fracking. If you
are are for abortion or against abortion, you're gonna your
mind's already set on this. It was just a chance
to see how both of these two would go head
to head in what might just be their only presidential
debate between now and November.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Milania turn up.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
She did not, which was interesting because they made an
announcement about two or three hours ahead of the debate
that she wasn't going to show up tonight. And of
course there was no audience there, which I think, honestly,
and in the spin room afterwards, they were just even
Republicans and this was a disaster for Trump, but I
think he would have played much better with an audience there.
And then of course you've got Malania, who's also making

(04:06):
her headlines because she wants more to come out assassination
attempt against her husband and these videos that are being
released on social media. She's got a book that's coming out.
I got to tell you, though, these commercials, this is
just a very clever marketing campaign. It reminds me of
the old Elizabeth Taylor commercial that she used to do
for her perfume. I think it was called White Diamonds.

(04:27):
I mean, it's a very stylized kind of campaign that
she's doing, but it's all for this book right now,
and I think that got kind of pushed to the
back burner after the debate tonight.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, hey, Dan, thank you. Has always really appreciate your time,
and good luck withering the remaining weeks of this campaign.
That's Dan Mitchinson, the US correspondent who's watching it for us.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
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