The Second First Presidential Debate and Beyond
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast with me, Jon Stewart. We are back. We are back with Brittany Mimedovic, Lauren Walker, our Airstrile producers. We have been away for months, for years.

When we left, I don't even know who was in the race. It was Donald Trump versus Michael Dukakis, and then things switched around. Now it's Donald Trump, Kamala Harris. We've only been gone for two weeks, and now we come back to the earth-shaking debate, which, as ABC told us, will change everything. Mm-hmm.

Nothing is the same. No. It's raining dogs. Night is day. Nothing is the same. Our lives are changed forever. I assume that you both watched with, with bated breath. I found myself really nervous based on just how consequential the last one was where two minutes into it, I was like, he's going to have to leave. He's, he's not going to be able to,

to run for president. So I was happy to see it not necessarily be revelatory or answer a lot of questions, but at least bring us back to a slightly more normal cycle, even if that meant Donald Trump yelling about people eating pets. Yeah, it's weird that that's normal. Like, that's where the bar is. I think we've gotten to this point where

Because there's so much coverage of everything, there is an expectation that everything is the Super Bowl. And I guess the debates are probably the closest thing that you can have to that. But I do think it might be nice to get back to the idea that these political campaigns are grinding it out, convincing people that you've got policies that are going to positively impact their lives rather than a series of

gala events that will change everything and do that because I think that drama feels very manufactured. Where did you watch the debate, Lauren? Oh, just my house. Watch Party of One. Nice. I ate a sandwich and I kind of like white knuckled it for two minutes because it seemed like the energy was nervous. Right. The handshake thing, I was like. I liked the handshake, John. What did you think? I would have done bro hug.

I'm always, I'm a big bro hug. Like if I were her, I walk it. First of all, I love, I love the way she did it because it was very clear that, that she had decided on a game plan. And it's sort of, to me, it set, it set the tone for this idea that she had a very clear idea of what she wanted to execute. And he really was like, what time's the debate?

Yeah. Let me show up at eight and whatever happens, happens. So I like that it sort of set this idea that she was going to be intentional and purposeful throughout it. He wouldn't look at her for the entire debate. It was so weird. I thought that was...

Was super odd, but I can't remember. He did look at Biden a few times, but I think that was more like, is this dude all right? I never felt like he had that relationship with like Hillary Clinton. So you could say like, well, she's a strong, smart woman. So maybe he's intimidated by that. But with Hillary Clinton, like he followed her around like a looming shadow. I don't think he would have done that to Kamala Harris. I do think he's oddly smart.

Kind of not sure what to do. He's intimidated. He can't be normal. Yeah. I feel like that. Well, that could be the title of his biography. I can't be normal. Donald Trump, I really can't be normal. I have a very difficult time being normal. Well, we've got two reporters here.

that are actually covering these campaigns that are going to give the insight because we can all talk. I talk all the shit I want. I very rarely know what's actually going on with any of those. So our two guests today are reporters and we're going to get their thoughts on what the hell happened. So let me jump, let me jump in on that and I'll see you guys on the other side. All right, everybody, we are, we are in post debate.

We are going to be joined by Ashley Parker, senior national political correspondent for the Washington Postman's covering elections. Won Pulitzer Prizes as a team covering elections. We've got David Graham, staff writer of the Atlantic. We've got David Graham,

written about Harris and Trump and following these things very closely. Guys, thank you very much for joining us, David and Ashley. Of course. Yeah, thanks for having us. Let's talk about the debate. And I feel sorry for the national political reporters, the people that are following us, because this may be the last event that we have. It may now be just 10 weeks of following people around on a bus.

Have you interviewed both candidates extemporaneously? Have you spent time with Trump, with Kamala Harris?

I have spent a tremendous amount of time with Donald Trump. I started- Ashley, I'm going to stop you right there. I hear the exhaustion and the pain in your voice. I see it in your demeanor changed. When I said, have you spent time, you said it in the way of someone that perhaps has been at the DMV for 30 to 35 years. And there was a pain in your voice. I could feel it. I'm not going to weigh in, but-

But I mean, I will just say I started covering, this was when I worked for the New York Times, but I started covering Donald Trump two days after poor, sad, curmudgeonly, but ultimately sweet Jeb Bush dropped out. And I have basically covered him in some capacity ever since.

Imagine you start your presidential campaign with the high hopes of adding an exclamation point to your name. That's how well you thought this. What punctuation should we use here? Question mark period. Jeb Bush put an exclamation point next to his name on the posters. And two days after running into Trump, he had to leave. Yeah.

Why was Donald Trump so successful in sort of steamrolling all of the Republicans back in those days? I think...

think, I mean, a couple of reasons. One, and this is why he's still fairly successful. A certain thing is I think shamelessness is his superpower. And he, covering previous candidates, right? We might do, if I covered Mitt Romney, you might do a fact check on Mitt Romney, something he's saying. And you say, well, actually, Massachusetts wasn't always number one in job creation. That

That year it was tied with Texas or that other year it actually came in third. And Mitt Romney would then change what he was saying on the stump, not because he cared that the Washington Post had given him four Pinocchios, though we think those noses matter. Solid, solid rating system. But.

But because he believed he would pay a penalty with voters for seeming dishonest. And Trump sort of realized that there would be no penalty with his base and his voters. That if he just repeated something enough and confidently enough and forcefully enough and shamelessly enough, that it could become a certain type of truth.

That I got to tell you, that's the confidence. But what was most surprising was Donald Trump immediately in the spin room confidently saying, I don't think there's going to be another debate because I won this. So I believe the phrase was tremendously. I believe he said he won it tremendously. And it was such a knockout.

That he didn't think, you know, he said the only people that asked for rematches are the losers. I've so clearly won it. Is that the process that he was going through? Sort of what Ashley was saying, which is I'm shameless. I know I got my ass kicked. I'm just going to run out there and go, wow.

I'm awesome. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. You know, even his closest allies were saying, well, you know, he had a hard time. He was going against, it was three on one because of the moderators. And you see Trump just being like, no, I won. I had that. I think that is very much the kind of bravado and the willingness to say whatever he feels like he's got to say. What about the Harris campaign? What was your feeling of how their team was reacting to it?

I mean, I think they were already kind of floating. And then to receive the Taylor Swift endorsement on top of that, I don't think their spirits could have been a whole lot higher. Is that actually me? Is the Taylor Swift endorsement? Like, I knew it was a nice piece of pop culture. And I know that she obviously has very dedicated fans. But is there any thought that there were Taylor Swift fans sort of in the Venn diagram that were not fans?

you know, that she was going to say, you really should look at this Kamala Harris character. And her fans would be like, I don't know. I've been really leaning Trump on this one. Like, is that a meaningful thing? I think maybe. And I think the reason is it turns people out. It's not about persuasion. It's about whether people will do it. And so, you know, she puts in a link to voting registration website and the government said, I think they'd gotten,

three or 400,000 hits on that site just from her Instagram post. So, you know, enough of those votes in swing states could make a difference. Not 'cause she's gonna persuade anyone, but just because maybe if they were kind of on the fence about whether to vote or feeling blase, that'll get 'em fired up. - I was struck during the debate by,

which subject areas the candidates were most confident in. It was very clear during the abortion part of the debate that Kamala Harris was feeling it on a visceral level, was able to deliver, I thought, maybe her best moment, maybe that in Ukraine, where she was confident, she was purposeful, she was

visceral in her response. And I thought it put Trump back on his heels. I thought Trump was most confident in the warning for people's pets. Ashley, in your mind, what were the areas that you thought were most confident and least confident?

Yeah, so I think you're absolutely right on abortion. It was interesting because the vice president, her first kind of broad answer, you could tell her voice was like a little shaky, a little nervous. And then abortion came up right afterwards. She 100% hit her stride. And I feel like that sort of gave her the confidence and sort of just the sense of grounding to proceed with that vibe throughout the debate. I mean, the other thing where I thought she was very confident and in talking to her team, this is something they

They practiced, they rehearsed from that opening handshake, right? Which they described to me as a power move. Wait, so the handshake is everything is choreographed, like that you're going to walk out there and no matter what, you're going to him and you're hitting him with a handshake.

Yes. I mean, their goal was to make sure, and this started before the debate, their goal, and it was borne out as successful, was to make sure that, as they put it, that Trump was triggered by the time he walked on stage. So that started with they released an ad featuring former President Obama talking about crowd size on the morning of the debate. They...

With Obama doing that hand motion. They blanketed Philadelphia where the debate was held with billboards and ads designed to troll Trump. One was a crowd-sized one that featured a full Philadelphia pretzel for Harris and then a piece, just a mere piece of a Philadelphia pretzel that looked like a limp pretzel.

for Trump, right? And so- So the idea being as he's being driven in a van towards the venue, he's going to look at that and go, limp pretzel? Wait, what? No. I'm a full pretzel. Right. Like limp pretzel, I have to abandon all self-discipline and control when I step

on that debate stage. So then, and you could watch it from that, again, that opening handshake, walking over, getting in his space, introducing herself, pronouncing her name correctly. Then there was some- Oh, shoot. She literally was going up to him and trolling him with the pronunciation. This is unbelievable.

Unbelievable. I have to say, coming off of the NFL's first weekend, this is sounding so much like when you listen to football analysts talking about schematics and a game plan for their... I mean, it is... We have a scripted first 15 plays. You're going to go in there. They have a weakness in the backfield. I mean, this is... It really feels like a...

football game plan. And they had, I mean, I won't take you through all of them, but you could watch that debate step by step. They had these little Easter eggs, things she would say and do that they had practiced and believed that Trump, and they were almost always correct, would be unable to resist what

wasting time digressing into that. So a very subtle one that people might not have noticed was when she used, you know, there's a million analyses you can pull on, but when she wanted to rebut his economic plan, she did so by mentioning Wharton, which is of course where Trump famously went and takes a lot of pride. And you saw him, he kind of rears back and says, well, I went to the Wharton school and- That's when she said the 19 Nobel Prize economists

including ones from Wharton, and he couldn't help himself. - He couldn't help himself. That was the first one that's very subtle for those of us who have been covering Trump since 2015. A more obvious one was when she invited people to watch his rallies. - Sure, that. - Right, the crowd size says people are leaving out of boredom. First, he responded to that.

It was the first time you saw his eyes went wide. Yes, you saw the eyebrows went up, the eyes went wide. He adopted that like 10,000 foot gaze scowl. Right, right, right. And it was that thing that then led him into the now most viral digression about our nation's cats and dogs. Which by the way, as a pet owner, as somebody myself, uh,

I was watching with my dog and there was a lot of, I could see a lot of fear. That's actually been my favorite thing. If you go on like a TikTok or an Instagram, they're putting out these reels of Donald Trump saying that. And it's just reaction shots of pets who are looking unbelievably frightened. David, you were kind of writing more about Trump during all this. Did they have a similar reaction?

Belichick like game plan as they walked in down to, I mean, everybody talks about his game planning as, you know, he's ready for anything. Did they do any of that? Right. They say, you know, he's been preparing for this his whole life.

And while the Harris campaign was letting it be known that she had spent all this time and talking about who was doing the prep and how there's an aide dressed up like Trump in a boxy suit with a whole nine yards. They went method. They had to go method. Yeah, they totally went method. And they wanted people to know they were going method. Yeah, sure. Trump is blustering about, oh, I don't need to prep. And it was interesting to see, you could hear his allies, some of them saying, oh, he's going to be fine. And then other people a little bit nervous about that.

And the moment that he started to get off track, you know, the moment we started hearing about the cats and dogs, then you see the recriminations. And you see people saying, you know, is it really too much to ask him to prepare? And what we've seen from a decade of this is it is too much to ask him to prepare. And if Joe Biden collapses on stage, that works for him. But if Joe Biden doesn't collapse on stage, then he tends to kind of struggle. Right. I thought he did have a good first, I thought,

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We're back.

I want to talk about the people around them and how that manifests for the candidates' psyche. And I want to start with Trump. My sense of him is, look...

A monarchy makes a lot of sense to him. He runs the Trump organization. He doesn't even run, it's not a public company. He doesn't have a board of directors. It's Donald Trump. When he hosted The Apprentice, my favorite part of The Apprentice is after he mediated a dispute between Meatloaf and Gary Busey, you know, in the end, and Busey had to leave and Meatloaf was going to stay, there was always two people next to him at the table. There was always that last coda that

of the end of The Apprentice. And it was either, you know, Ivanka or that dude, George, or somebody else. And he would go, oh, that was tough. And they would go, you made the right, you made the good call, boss. Well done. That was, you couldn't have done anything else. Is that the vibe around him? Are there people there who tell him the truth? Or is he bathed in the kind of

You are our little prince world that seems like has been following him his entire life. Yeah, he gets a lot of that. I mean, there are people who try to tell him the truth. And what happens is they tend to fall out of favor.

They don't hang around long, or as is the case with a lot of Trump people, they sort of cycle through. So they come back again, but they don't stay long. And I think what you're describing of his experience at the Trump Organization has been borne out in how he runs campaigns, and it was how he was president too. I mean, you'd see him frustrated that he couldn't just do things unilaterally. He had not watched the schoolhouse rock, and he couldn't believe that he couldn't just do things with the power of the presidency.

And that's just his attitude is, you know, he knows best and he wants to do it his way. Is that in some ways comforting in that maybe his authoritarianism isn't malevolent? It's born of spoiledness. It's born of a more adolescent view based on being the golden child. No.

I think you're right. Do you want to take some time? David, take your time with this. You don't have to answer right away. I think the result is the same, unfortunately. Right. So there is, the anger is real. The malevolence is real. Yeah. Oh boy. For those of you who are on the podcast, David is just nodding enthusiastically about that. Ashley, what about the Harris campaign? Can she be told the truth?

Is she surrounded, you know, how much of this, I'm always struck by how insulated and isolated these politicians are. So a couple of things. It's different from the Trump campaign, first of all, because she, on the one hand, she has cycled and churned through a tremendous amount of staff going back to her days in California, to the Senate, to the campaign, to the vice presidency, which is

normally an indictment of someone's management style. But all of that staff, and this is something she has done very deliberately, is she is elevated and surrounded herself by women, by people of color, by women of color. So her staff just look like they look different than Trump's staff.

And they bring different perspectives and life experiences. So that's one thing. The second is recently after she moved to the top of the ticket, a small handful, but a significant handful of sort of top people from Obama world and one from Clinton world came in, right? So David Plouffe. Obama world and Clinton world. They sound like closed down amusement parks where they-

Oh, they came in. There was Obama World. It was open up in Nashville for a while, but then it closed down. So she brings on people who have run or have been involved in other campaigns for Democratic leaders. Yeah, and not just that. I mean, the thing that's striking to me, especially about the Obama people, and she brought in Jennifer Palmieri, who was—

key in Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful campaign is these are people who have done two things successfully that she will likely need to do successfully to win. And it's sort of the question of can they recreate that magic? One is they were able to harness Obama's sort of authentic excitement and enthusiasm into actually like...

getting information from voters and mobilizing that to the polls. That's something she'll need to do. And the other thing is Obama and Clinton took a very different approach and got a very different electoral outcome. But Obama sort of did not make race the center, the historic nature of his candidacy, the centerpiece of his- Let that speak for itself. Yeah, his view

was people would look at him and understand he was a Black guy, right? And so he didn't need to constantly talk about it. And he talked about race in a way that, to many Americans, felt inclusive and inspiring. And that's also something you're seeing Kamala Harris doing with her historic candidacy. David, is it in your mind-- we talk about, boy, that was a terrible night for Trump. He's going to have to do something. Does he have to do something? In some measure--

The day he came down the golden escalator and said, I think most Mexicans are rapists, but sometimes they send some good people. From that moment on, it became somewhat clear this was an antibiotic-resistant candidate. The normal things that would take out a candidate have no idea. Oh, the Access Hollywood tape and all those different things. Well, that was 2016. He's been through more of this than anybody before.

It doesn't seem as though these moments that would be disqualifying. I mean, honestly, in any other political campaign, in any other environment, if you stood on the stage, true or not, and just shouted, immigrants are eating dogs and people's pets. I mean, Howard Dean was a little loud with a scream. Michael Dukakis somewhat answered a question intemperately, like they'd be done.

It doesn't seem to have any impact in any way, shape, or form on his political fortune. Yeah. I mean, the amazing thing about him is just how consistent his support is. He's always there in the mid 40%. When he's winning, when he's losing, it just doesn't move no matter what he does. And I don't think we've ever seen anyone like that in American politics who has such stable approval. He can't get above 50% and he can't fall below 40%.

So it doesn't matter what he does against him. But even within that stable approval, now they talk about he's picking up more support in the black community or the Hispanic community, but he's losing more support in women. There are groups that move in and out, but he is consistently reckless.

Right. And it seems to matter not. I think one thing we're seeing this campaign from Democrats is a realization, and it took a long time for them to get to this, that there's not going to be like the moment or the gaffe that doesn't Trump. I think there was always this hope like, well, you know, he's going to do it this time. And they seem to have realized that just it's not a thing.

My favorite thing about Democrats. My favorite thing about Democrats was that he got indicted. Now we've got him. There's all these things that, oh, there was always that moment where like, as soon as that Mueller report comes out, goodbye, Donald Trump. Like at each turn, it always seems like this is the conclusive moment. Look, he's on tape saying, I want Putin to win because I love him.

And just everybody's like, oh, that'll do it. None of it does it. Right. Exactly. And so he what pressure does he feel? What does he think he has to do? I think he thinks he has to turn out the base. He consistently does not do things that would look like outreach. And he you know, people make fun of his kind of silent majority rhetoric.

as being out of touch and being like Nixonian. But that doesn't mean he doesn't believe it. For all the things he will say that he doesn't believe, I think he really thinks that if everyone goes to win. Why shouldn't he believe it? He should believe it because they always underestimate him in polls. And when the elections come out, he always has, you know, that silent base. I wouldn't call them the majority, but they're certainly...

Yeah. I mean, I think the reason he shouldn't believe it is in 2016, he won less of the vote than Hillary Clinton. In 2018, when he made himself the center of their campaign, Republicans did poorly. In 2020, he lost. In 2022, when he made himself the center of the campaign, again, Republicans did poorly. So there's evidence for it, but he still is really, he believes it. Right. What's fascinating, I never understood. In addition to the belief that Donald Trump would win and become presidential, there was also this belief that he could win

and move to the center, which seemed a little more legitimate because he had- Oh, dear God. How many times has Van Jones given you that? Dewey-eyed CNN. I believe Donald Trump today has become the unifier for it. Like there's always that moment where somebody's like, he's really different now.

Never. But what is fascinating is that his base is immovable. He is almost certainly never going to lose them. And so there is this world where he could maybe bring them along a little bit. But since covering him, there's all these moments. And so the second thing is Donald Trump, the way to understand him, or one way, is he's always trying to win the minute, the hour, the day, the person directly in front of him. This is not like four-dimensional chess, right?

So people would never understand. Well, why when he was talking to the Dreamers, did he say, you guys are wonderful valedictorians. Of course you should stay in the country. And then 10 minutes later, when they brought in a group of sheriffs, was he like, the Dreamers are just out in the outer awful. Let's round them up and send them back. Right? Like it makes no sense, but he's always trying to win the people in front of him. But when he is faced with those two things, as we've seen on say abortion, where he's been all over the map, he will always, always ultimately win.

retreat back to what his far right base wants. He'll move to the middle. The right wing echo chamber will freak out at him and he will ultimately come down on their side. Does he though, you know, so let's, let's talk about that. Is that a purposeful move? You know, is it the idea that he so understands how loyal, uh,

his basis that he can stand up on a debate stage and say, I actually created IVF. I will personally inseminate any woman with sperm that wants it. That's how much I believe in IVF. I love it. Does he do that because he thinks I've delivered so well for my, my base, they'll never leave me. I can say whatever I want. No, because then he freaks out.

So this, even that's not strategic. Because then he freaks out, right? Like he said something on the Florida abortion rule. He thought it should be longer than six weeks. Six weeks is too short. Right, six weeks is too short. Then his base flipped out and then he came out and said, well, actually I am gonna vote. That seems very reasonable. Right. I think it's interesting that, you know, look, what has been the Trump or far right kryptonite, it would seem to me is the court system.

So anybody can say anything about anything on the radio or on Fox News other than, you know, the false claims about Dominion and getting sued. But it's very clear that when they talk about, oh, the fraudulent voting and there were so many illegal immigrants, and then when they go to court, they get thrown out because they have no proof and they get laughed out. I do think her style as a prosecutor, Kamala Harris, in some ways embodies a little bit of that kryptonite

And I thought in the debate, she could even do more of it in the way I was. I was struck that especially when talking about the economy, when she talked about abortion, she took that prosecutorial style. When she talked about the economy, she didn't. Ashley, is that because they don't they lack the confidence in that narrative or they hadn't thought through that litigation yet?

The economy is an incredibly tricky issue for the Biden-Harris administration because there's an actual, there's a lot of economic indicators, right? If you're like pointing to these tangible things, you can argue that the economy has improved under their administration versus former President Trump. But the things that people actually feel, right, which they vote on, which is like,

What are interest rates? And can you afford to buy a new house? Or do your three kids still have to share a bedroom? And what is the cost? I mean, this sounds cliche, but what is the cost of eggs and milk? And when you're driving, you know, I had someone in the Biden administration to say every single gas station with the cost of gas is a billboard that hurts us when you're driving. Those things have not changed yet, right? Because they're lagging. Well, the gas certainly hasn't.

I mean, the billboards for that has. But sort of, again, like the vibes, the feel and the sense. People feel that things felt better under Trump. And so there's something incredibly insulting to voters who are stressed about money or stretched to get to the end of the month to hear Harris saying things are fantastic now. So it's hard to prosecute that case. All right. We'll be right back. I don't want to get promoted. I want to stay charmingly insubordinate. What?

I'm okay. On October 24th. Let's do this. Am I kicking? Prepare for an adventure. I know these guys. They're super nice. Hey, what's up, my man? Five seasons in the making. God damn it. This is terrible. This keeps getting cooler by the second. Ah!

Star Trek Lower Decks. Final season streaming October 24th. It was a night just like tonight. SpongeBob? Seriously? A scary story? If anything came at me... Creep Awake Camp. A new SpongeBob special. There's so much more SpongeBob. Streaming exclusively on Paramount+. So let me... I think this is a great place for us to talk about a little bit because I think this talks to...

How you just described it, Ashley, sounds perfectly reasonable to me. And I don't understand why a candidate feels that at least that beginning framing is something that they are not allowed to do. You know, that they're not allowed to say,

Look, the economy is incredibly complex. I think we've made some strides in the right direction through the pandemic. Let me walk you through what some of those decisions were. I know that if you're at home and it doesn't feel that way to you, you know, the economy is very personal to people. Why can't that be the discussion instead of are you better off than you were four years ago? And the first thing is I'm going to give everyone $6,000 for childcare. And you're like, wait, what just happened?

David, why can't candidates, and I thought this was a real issue during the pandemic with our healthcare officials, why can't they trust us enough to talk to us like human beings in those areas where they feel like it's not completely black and white?

The people who they're talking to, they think are not the most sophisticated voters. And I think they are probably right. Like undecided voters are not the people who are paying close attention. They don't necessarily, some of them may have really nuanced views, but a lot of them don't. And so there's a certain amount of, they're pandering to the lowest common denominator and they feel like they can't, they can't get nuanced.

It's not that they're dumb or that the Harris campaign thinks they're dumb, but they do understand that this is a group of voters who is not particularly tuned into politics, right? They're not paying a ton of attention. They don't really, they have other things on their mind, including the cost of groceries, right? Like they're going to tune in at the very end of the election. They're also, and this is kind of fascinating, one of the most skeptical groups of voters. I was talking to a Democratic strategist who said, when we do focus groups with swing voters and I say, you know,

you know, well, what if I told you that Donald Trump appointed the three most conservative justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade? Would that change your view of him? And the first thing out of these voters' mouths is like, well, if that's true, I'm going to have to go home and Google it.

Right? So there are also- Dear God. So it's a group of voters who are very distrustful of institutions, of political parties, of the media. So that is all part of the discussion of how do we message to them? How do we win them over? When do we win them over? When do we hit them with this message? When do we just get them to trust us that we're someone they should consider? That's absolutely all part of the discussion. See, this is the most fascinating thing. I'm so struck by...

Every debate and all the things, you know, we all have kind of now a boilerplate format that we go through. There's the debate. Then we go to the pundits. And then immediately you go to and now we've got our own pollster and he's with a group of undecided voters and they do that. And that always struck me as one of the most ridiculous exercises in nothingness that I have ever seen in my life. Well, I listened to it. How many of you now are for Kamala Harris? Oh, wow.

I, whatever we just watched. Sure. That's fine. Aren't we infusing that undecided group of voters as an idea that they've been vetted for their indecision? Whereas like half the time it's political operatives just standing there or the same person on the panel every four years. You know, there's a certain, when, when you put somebody on a news channel, there's a sense that

That has been vetted. And when you really drill down into it, it doesn't seem that way at all. Ashley, is there any value in those kinds of theatrical moments with the panels?

So I think there's tremendous value in focus groups. Is there value in those TV focus groups immediately after debates with undecided voters? And like, also let's just pause, like, like what does it actually mean to be undecided in the year of our Lord 2024 when your choices, regardless of what you think, like are so diametrically opposite that like, like you're just truly like, it's sort of like a,

like an existential question of like, how does this even happen? But focus groups in general are incredibly valuable and insightful. And whenever anyone lets me sit in on one, I always do so. What is the difference between one that you've seen on TV and one that you've sat in on?

So often ones, you know, campaigns and these groups are running them for different things. Like they're not trying to find out who after this debate, who are you going to vote for? You know, they're trying to find out, like, how do you feel about these issues, for instance, and what what might be a compelling message. Right. So one thing I think of a Democratic strategist, I was not in this group, but he told me he said.

they were talking to some voters and they said, you know, let's say Kamala Harris comes to your town and you get to do an activity. You get to bring her and show her something in your town. What would you show her? And a voter said- Oh, it's like a bachelorette hometown. Yes. Oh, that's lovely. So I'm going to take them to meet my family and then we're going to go to the custard shop. Right.

But this voter said, I would bring her to work with me. I would bring her to my first job, and then I would bring her to my second job, right? We would take the three buses it takes to get from my first job to my second job because I want her to understand how hard I am working and how I am still barely surviving. So that is kind of relevant and useful information of where voters are and what they need from the candidates in their lives. Right.

You know, for me, it's shocking that that's what it would take for a candidate to understand what people's working lives are like. The idea that that would be revelatory speaks almost more to how insulated politicians are from the day-to-day lives of their constituents. I mean, that's what I seem to have learned from my time in Washington is how unbelievably eccentric

the culture of Washington is and how easily it sets up barriers between the people you represent and the culture of the town that you live in. Washington runs on a completely different currency than the rest of the world. Let me ask you both then, having experienced these campaigns, to you, do you feel the disconnect that candidates have with the constituents or in the country? And

For your experiences, what has struck you as the biggest disconnect between Washington in general and the country at large? I'll start because I can double advocate it. Thank you. Before Trump was even like the word on people's tongues as a politician, I did a road trip in like 2014 driving like the old Route 60 or 66.

out to Indianapolis is where I flew home. And it was just talking to voters. It was talking to like hundreds upon hundreds of voters. And the thing I picked up, because again, it's always good to talk to voters, was this sense that like these people, Democrats, Republicans, whoever, were furious, right? Like you would go to these houses and they all had, I was with a photographer who noticed this, like visually it wasn't me. They all had like bits of Americana, right? Like flat

and things like that. And a lot of houses that maybe needed a new code were kind of crumbling, right? And what they were furious was and what they said was,

look, I did everything right. I got a job. I worked nine to five. I had a pension. I moved to this district to go to the right school. I bought a house that my bank told me I could buy, that it would be irresponsible for me not to buy. Now, look, every single house on my block is foreclosed. And those clowns in New York and Washington who ruined my 401k and now I can't retire, who did all of this, there's no consequences for them. And they were furious.

And they didn't have the language, but they wanted to like burn it all down and drain the swamp. And that was something, for instance, that this was not a disconnect at all. Donald Trump, and again, I don't think it was from doing a road trip and talking to hundreds of voters, but he viscerally, instinctually understood that anger, understood that frustration with the system. But that's my point. How is it that

I mean, after the 2008 financial crisis and everything that occurred, how is it that Washington did not understand that? And the problem with Trump is not necessarily what his diagnosis is. It's what his prescription is. Look, the idea that he figured out people were disconnected and angry and all those things and they wanted to drain the swamp is one thing, but...

He doesn't look like someone who wants to reform the system in a positive way to take the corruption out. He wants the deed to the swamp signed over to him because he wants full and total, you know, monarchical control over everything. So I think that's we're sort of talking about the same thing, which is how the fuck does Washington control?

And politicians who are from these districts not understand that in their bones and try and reform this system that's created this anger rather than just take it over. David?

I mean, I think one thing that struck me when I first moved to Washington was how actually most of the people in politics are totally normal. When you're reading about them from afar, they seem like they're special and then you get there and you're like, "Oh, these are just ordinary jerks. They're as poor or as lame as everyone else."

And I think part of the problem is as you elevate, you do get further removed from those things. You have fewer opportunities to be a normal person and to be around normal people. You're around the same people in politics and they start to rub off on each other. And like, I don't know how you saw that because...

If you're running the government, you have to run the government. Like I need my senators to be paying attention to the legislation they're dealing with and also to like actually be in touch with real people. I think it's a tough thing to do. And I think the structures of government push against that.

And I also think the pandemic was a problem for that. I think a lot of politicians just recently lost touch because they were not, especially Democrats, were not actually campaigning outside of Zoom. And I think that has created a disconnect and they're having to work hard to try to rebuild that and to remember how to talk to civilians. Right. Ultimately, I think that these are great points in getting out there. And in your mind's

You know, would more debates be more helpful, do you think, for voters? Would you like to see more? I don't know that I would want to watch another one because I don't feel that I would learn anything particularly astonishing. And it would be like watching in the way that people watch sometimes motor races, which is like, I just want to see somebody spin out and flip over, you know, and have something unbelievably amazing.

terrifying or exciting happening. Is there more to learn in your minds from that that we haven't seen already? Or would it be an exercise in spectacle? Why not both? I think they're important. You can have it all. Yeah, I do think they're valuable. And I think part of that is because the candidates, both of them spend so little time in situations where they don't get to choose the questioner. They don't get to pick a friendly person. It's not a controlled environment.

And so whether they're taking questions from David Muir and Lindsay Davis or taking questions from the other candidate, it forces them to do something they don't do all the time. And that provides us a better sense of like what their character is, how they think on their feet, what they actually believe. And so I think that's worthwhile. Ashley, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, are debates as helpful with getting more information than if, say, each candidate sat down with the subject matter experts at The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal? No, absolutely not. But are those two candidates going to do that? No, absolutely not. So to David's point, debates may be the best of the not particularly great options. To focus it, right. Ashley, as somebody who's had the pleasure of moderating one of those,

Is there a change that you would make in the formats? I mean, I think, you know, unfortunately, moderating a debate is like hosting the Oscars. There's really not much of an upside. And, you know, I thought they did a fine job as as most of the people that have done it have done a fine job. Is there a change that you would make in the format that you believe would make it more informational, more revelatory, more insightful?

It's a good question. I mean, I actually thought they – I mean, moderating in a debate, right, it's sort of like being a kicker in football, right? Like you're only remembered if you go wide. Right, wide right. Yeah. So the best thing for debate moderators to be – you remember the debate, you remember the moments, not the moderators. I mean, I thought David Muir and Lindsay Davis did a fantastic job, including – it is incredibly difficult –

as someone who has interviewed him, to fact check Donald Trump in real time. And in certain key moments, they were prepared. And David Muir, especially, in some of those moments, like with the cats and dogs, I mean, he had the information at his disposal from a verified, reliable source. And he was so sort of calm, which is not easy to do in those situations. Yeah. No, absolutely. Do you think, would it be possible to do

sort of two candidates sitting in front of each other just talking, is that something that we could even pull off in a modern political era? - Can you imagine Donald Trump doing that? - Personally, I cannot imagine him doing anything where he is not the sole arbiter of the rule book and the rules of engagement. I just think, I mean, it gets back to what we had said earlier.

I think his entire upbringing has been as the inheritor of the castle and that everything that's been done has been to his, look, his first mentor outside of his father was Roy Cohn. Like you don't do that when your methodology is collaboration and openness. Like you do that when you want to get away with shit as best you can and go scorched earth on everybody else. So I just think that's his, his,

but as a country, it seems like we might be better served, you know, if they could. Yeah, I mean, I think it's tricky because the reason that they, the reason that you see people, you know, candidates demagoguing and bending the truth and doing whatever in these things is because the cameras are rolling. And also they're valuable because the cameras are rolling and voters can see that. If you could somehow get them to forget what was going on, I think that would help. But it's, you know, in the same way that C-SPAN...

You just blew my mind. So it's almost like Schrodinger's candidate. If we weren't watching this and we weren't filming it, so how much has coverage, do you think, changed our politics? We all talk about sunlight is the best disinfectant and transparency, but has our transparency... Would these guys be much better?

if we weren't there? - I mean, I think you can make a pretty convincing argument that C-SPAN helped break Congress because suddenly you could watch them doing it. So yeah. - Fucking C-SPAN, I knew it. Those pricks. We've been all looking in the wrong direction to blame somebody. It's C-SPAN's fault for putting security cameras up. - Yeah, turn the camera around.

That sounds like a slate pitch to me, David. Done. C-span's fall. Well, guys, I know you've got another, what is this, 10 weeks of this? What do we got now? Somewhere around there? Who even knows? Yeah. You guys aren't doing it like you're prisoners where you're just checking off days as you go along. You're just in it right now. And that just is what it is. Well, also, I'll just say, I think people are skeptical that it necessarily ends on Election Day. Okay.

Oh, right. I keep forgetting that that's, yeah. Are you seeing the campaigns being as aggressive with the post-election strategizing and scheming and game planning as they are for the debates and such?

Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's not just until the electoral, right? It's like, will, if Donald Trump loses, will he accept the results? He's shown no indication. What will his supporters do? Right? Like, that's another open question. Oh, yeah. I mean, you've got the legal war rooms, but you also just have this sort of like contingency planning.

I like to take a vacation after the election because I'm usually exhausted. And I'm just like, when is that? Is that December 1st? You can't even plan a trip. Is it January 7th? Is it January 21st? I have no idea. It's like, when can I use my Marriott points? Thank you both very much for joining us and talking about that. Ashley Parker, Senior National Political Correspondent for The Washington Post. David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic. Guys, your insights into what? Thank you for giving...

a much clearer perspective having been involved in all this and really helping us understand sort of what's going on behind what C-SPAN is showing us. I really do appreciate it. - Thank you. - Thank you. - I don't, what they do, the day to day, I could not do that. I would lose my shit. - It already feels too much. - I lost my shit just being in the conversation with them for an hour.

It's so claustrophobic. Yeah. Props to them. I thought it was really interesting though. They were like, I don't know when to plan the vacate. Like your whole life is consumed by sort of these endless campaigns. And they're like, Oh yeah, we used to know November 8th. I could get a club med and Turks and Caicos and decompress for five days. And now they're like, could be January might have to then jump in and cover the civil war. Like we don't even know what's going to happen.

Topsy-turvy. Topsy-turvy. What else we got as we roll on? Now we're back, weekly show pod, banging out the episodes every week. What else we got? Well, while we were gone, we put out a call for our listeners to...

Either give us some suggestions for what we should cover, why they might be upset with you, etc. So I think just to get started, I'm going to start with someone had a really interesting new idea for how we should handle debates. Yeah.

which I think is cool. They said, if anything productive is going to get discussed, we need two desks, two pens, one prompt, five paragraphs, dueling five paragraph essays. If we ask that of our children to graduate high school, it's fair to ask that of our elected reps. Boy, what a nice idea. You give them a prompt, you give them 45 minutes, pencils down, and then they have to read their essay and discuss it. But can you imagine Trump doing that?

Can you, is there anything more exciting than watching people write? Oh, actually this person went on and said, we should do ASMR of the pen and paper. You could cut that up on TikTok. You know, this is a person that clearly put in a lot of thought into this and in many ways should be called upon. Forget about the League of Women Voters or the debate commission. I think we should put whatever it is at banana 12, you know,

He should be there. She should be the the producer of the next yes, that's that's lovely. Okay. All right We we have a good question. And actually this is something that we've talked about but How this person wants to know how do you talk to someone who believes? conspiracy theories oh I don't think you can I

I think it depends on how far gone they're gone. But, you know, one of the things you realize about people who believe conspiracy theories is they're not because they always say, I'm just asking questions. But when you ask questions, if you're not willing to hear answers, then you're clearly not just asking questions. What you're trying to do is just sow doubt. The thing that always strikes me about conspiracy theories, because I'm generally skeptical, right? And that's always the basis of a conspiracy theory. The official story that you've been told is not the total story, which I...

is an ethos. I believe in that. I believe that oftentimes, generally, I don't believe it's through malevolence, although I think at times it's through malevolence. I think it's either through incompetence or that generally stories are not linear and there are facts that are inconvenient or don't quite fit in. But the problem I have with conspiracies is they don't apply the same skepticism to the counter-narrative. And it's very hard to permeate that.

And it's not to suggest that people shouldn't be skeptical or that they shouldn't challenge the official line and they shouldn't be where, but what they should understand is very rarely do official lines have their shit together to the point that there won't be inconsistencies, but those inconsistencies are different than a malevolent and.

sure-footed interpretation that it was actually fully this other thing. That's hard. I think a new trend is that the conspiracy theory-minded people don't necessarily have a counter-narrative. They just poke holes in the

in the narrative and say something else is true. - Yeah. - Right, right, right. - You don't need to have like a full narrative anymore. - Do you have friends that are conspiracy theorists in those areas and what would those be? - Yeah, I mean, that's why this question really stood out to me was like, you know,

holidays and I, it's people I love, people I'm very close with. And it also goes to like, coffee's going to kill you, right? Like the COVID vaccine is the reason that you're getting skin cancer, whatever. Like all of these things are un-

Instagram and and I'm seeing it on the internet. I mean we even saw in the debate like he was like I saw it on TV So it becomes like a real problem where you're like, I love these people, but I just can't you know How do we find that balance between? Questioning whether or not like a code vaccine can cause You know bad effects. Yeah, and

Every time a football player gets injured, it's because of that. Like there's, there's gotta be a space for, for skepticism. It's such an important part of discourse, but it can't fall into that. Maybe that's it. Maybe saying to them, you know, I appreciate your skepticism on that. I feel I have questions about what you're saying. I, there's certain, I have a certain, maybe that's a way to diffuse it. I have no fucking idea. Yep.

That's a tough one. I know. Yeah. Let me know when you figure it out. Thanksgiving is coming. I got to figure it out quickly. Yeah. You've got to get this done. Do you have room for one more, John? One more. Bring it. All right. Bring it. People want to know what is the toughest interview you've ever done and why? I got to tell you, Harry Reid was a tough one.

because Harry Reid was the Senate majority leader, a Senator from Nevada. Yeah. Passed away, but had a really interesting life and had written a book about it. Was raised in a literal dirt floor shack in, you know, the desert and, you know, really the kind of poverty that, you know, is, is dust bowl-y. And so he, he,

brings on he comes on to sit down and i'm sitting with him and i start to you know you were

raised on a dirt floor and to come from that to go. And he really did not seem familiar with the story. And it wasn't a tough interview in that it was combative. It was more bewildering. I think it was about three minutes in where I was like, have you read this book? Because it's fascinating. It's fiction. It's your story. You should really look at it because it's remarkable.

But it was just one of those like, look, man, these guys are, they're running around all day. They're busy. They're up on a book tour. And I think he just was in like a brain fart era. But for me, I had been invested in reading the whole thing and parsing it with him. And he really was like, where was that now? Nevada?

He was giving you nothing. We have to find his ghostwriter. Nothing. Yeah. But those are the tough ones. And then there's always the compatible ones. The ones I hate the most are there'll be people that write the books that are like, liberals, skull fuck.

children. And then you're like, why would you say that? And you go, well, I don't think we're that far apart, liberals and conservatives. I think we're, you know, it's, they take an incredibly strong position for their reactionary audience in the book. And then you bring them on and they're like, oh, people are just people. And if we all just, I'd like to get back to that feeling on September 12th.

When we were all one nation and you're like, well, then maybe you shouldn't write that liberals are an enemy column within the United States that are trying to destroy it from within. Yeah. So those are also, those are the ones that also can give you problems. Yeah.

Sounds fun. Yeah, it's fun. But it's all good. And we've had another lovely pod. We are back now. Our break is over. As always, I want to thank lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitolo, who I want to tell the audience survived an earthquake during the recording of this podcast.

Rob, are you still there? Are you alive? Hang it in there. We're hanging in there. Rob, you survived a 5.1 earthquake while we were talking and didn't lose internet.

Yeah, I don't want to give any utility too much credit there, but I do appreciate it. You're probably right. But you are safe and you continue to operate in the genius manner that you always do. And we appreciate it. Rob's always killing it. He's always killing it. Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear. And as always, executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. What are the socials, Brittany? We are Weekly Show Pod on Twitter, Weekly Show Podcast on Instagram, Threads,

TikTok and the weekly show with Jon Stewart on YouTube. And if any of you are listening to this or seeing this right now, that means that there was no follow-up giant earthquake and that Rob was able to get this thing together enough to send it out over the airwaves. Thank you guys very much. And we shall see you again next week. Bye-bye. The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. The NFL on CBS streams live on Paramount Plus all season long.

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