Hot Takes on a Low Key Debate
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor. Okay, let's get right to it. We just watched the vice presidential debate together here in LA. To quote the moderators, Margaret Brennan and Nora O'Donnell, gentlemen, we have a lot to get through. We're going to start with the only thing that truly matters. What did the InstaReaction poll say? Very scientific. Take them as gospel. And basically, they're all tied.

It's a tied debate. I'm not going to go through all the numbers, but that's what they all said. And even the focus groups, the undecided voters, they were mostly tied. There was one undecided voter who I was about to say in this debate, like...

The one thing I can say about this debate is that no one made up their mind based on this debate. Not true. There was an undecided voter in Michigan who said they're voting for he's voting for Kamala Harris now based on this debate because of J.D. Vance's answer on January 6th, which we're going to talk about in a bit. So that one person plucked from them all is making us all feel like everything's going to be OK. It's fine. Right. It looks like, you know, CBS also did favorability ratings. It looks like both Walls and Vance, their favorability improved based on this debate. All

All of that said, we got our own panel of undecided voters right here. What did you all think? Who wants to start?

I think the meta narrative coming out of tonight will be this respectful tone and the fact that it kind of reminded people of normal political discourse. You saw that in some of the focus groups. They were like, oh, these people seem nice. They were nice to each other. They talked. They didn't work disrespectful. I thought it was interesting that J.D. Vance went into tonight doing the media head fake being like, I'm going to savage him about lying about his military service. Then he did none of that. He was conspicuously nice to Tim Walls.

He praised him constantly. He agreed with him. And so, you know, it's like hard watching these debates not to let your gut reaction be entirely grading it on style points. And Wallace seemed a little nervous at the top, which is totally understandable. It's his first debate on a national stage. And the first question was like, would you bomb Iran? Yeah.

You know, he's a fucking Minnesota governor. That's not his comfort zone. But he smoothed it out as he went. He sometimes speaks in sentence fragments. He had some answers that were a little hard to follow. There was the China question that we'll talk about. That was probably his worst answer tonight. There were a few times I think all of us were yelling at the TV being like, say this. But, you know, he was he went a different path.

He also had some really strong moments, though, on health care, abortion access, gun violence. And his best moment was the close with that January 6th question that, again, we'll get into. So I think J.D. Vance was like smooth and polished and clearly like the guy who was in debate club. But it's not clear to me that that necessarily plays well with the voters or that he did much for Trump tonight, because ultimately what people will remember out of this debate will be like one moment. And it'll probably be this January 6th clip.

that we will talk about later in the show. I agree with Tommy. I too was moved by the tone of the debate. Dan was crying. I tried to set up a drink with Mitch McConnell afterwards. Paul Ryan. We're all heading to the Red Ham after this. That's right.

It was the... Put aside the tone. What was interesting about it really was sort of a pre-Trump debate. It was a debate that... It could have been Romney-Obama in 2012. It could have been Obama-McCain. It just...

It was pretty Trump in two ways. One, no one was screaming at the other person or stalking around or doing incredibly weird shit, which happens in Trump debates. But also, no one really tried to have a whole bunch of lines. No one was trying to give each other COVID. Spitting. We don't know yet. Sweating. Let's wait until the test results come back. And there weren't a lot of lines and zingers set up for social media.

Like there weren't all the debates, even going back to 2012, were sort of like reverse engineered from these moments you would try to get. They could then go viral on whatever the social platform was of that election cycle. And neither of the candidates really either tried to execute that or did execute it. And so it really was just sort of two guys talking to each other. I do think that there is this huge gap between how the pundits assessed candidates.

Vance's performance and how the voters did. And I think it speaks to the ways, the incorrect ways in which pundits judge debates. They are, I mean, media folks are all probably members of the same debate club that J.D. Vance was. They judge it on that, on points and style and poise and language precision. And voters are just kind of looking at it to get some information, make a big decision. And on that front, I think Wall scored more points than the initial pundit reaction suggested that he did.

Yeah. It's funny that you say it feels like a pre-Trump debate because what I was thinking while watching it is that it actually feels like a post-Trump debate. I was just going to say that. Because... I don't believe there's a post-Trump. Well, just like... Dark. There was... I think like...

JD Vance is obviously hyper ambitious. He's doing all of this for his own benefit, completely adapted to Donald Trump. But you kind of saw that play out, I think, in an unexpected way, which is that a lot of what this debate felt like to me was JD Vance repairing JD Vance's image. Right. He didn't want to be the attack version of JD Vance. He articulated more his philosophies. He has thoughts on Finland.

Oh, you brought up Finland? I have thoughts about gun safety in Finland. I have actually very sophisticated views on family policy. He took Walz's Finland bait. And we'll get to, I think, some of the ways that it affects the race, which is how he tried to defend a version of Trump that doesn't exist. But it really was, I think, you see what

What J.D. Vance felt like he was doing up there was this is how I wish Donald Trump existed. This is the kind of politics I wish I was free to be able to practice without having to defend Donald Trump's words and deeds. And I think that will do a lot to repair J.D. Vance's image as a weird dipshit. But I don't know that ultimately like, oh, some on style points, J.D. Vance landed some punches. How does that help Trump? It doesn't matter how people come away seeing these two figures. It was who articulated a better case for Kamala versus Trump. And I think

Tim Walz had that as his plan. And J.D. Vance, I don't think as much did. I was not surprised by J.D. Vance's performance. Like, the guy loves to argue, has no problem lying, clearly has no shame since he's Donald Trump's running mate after calling him America's Hitler. I also think...

love it you always talk about trump's uh intellectual zambonis yeah this is like in the intellectual zamboni as trump says something crazy and then some pundit at the national national review like hugh hewitt usually hugh hewitt usually comes in and there's like actually a theory and an intellectual case behind that it's all that's like the job jd vance has been running for ever since he went from being a never trumper to a trumper and i also think that

Like for most of J.D. Vance's career, he went from trying to impress the center right, center left establishment as a never Trumper to then arguing with them and fighting with them as a Trumper. And so he knows how to impress them.

the establishment, which is what he tried to do tonight. Like he tried to, he tried to perform a normal version of JD Vance. And I think he was, he was relatively good at that again, because he was able to lie a lot. Yeah. It's sort of why, like as the debate was wrapping up, I think, yeah, I think walls got better as the debate went on and his best moment was in the very end of the debate. But I walked away with this feeling like, Oh, did I just watch something where I like, I was like, what is this feeling I'm having? And do I trust it? And I like, I,

we are the kind of people that are like kind of naturally inclined to like watch a debate based on points to like be to like be impressed by style, to be impressed by clean articulation. And like this is sort of, I think, been a fault of ours when we went back to the 2020 debates and not seeing when like kind of being worried about Joe Biden, but actually Joe Biden appealing to people that are coming to it in a different way. And I feel like that was my hope coming out of the debate that actually if you look at like maybe J.D. Vance is, I think,

a little bit tighter of a debater, but Walls is more genuine, a little bit more heartfelt, a little bit more real. Even if he stumbles now and again, he kind of delivers something in a way that's more persuasive. And I think that that ultimately is why it looks like a draw.

I also think J.D. Vance just highlighted that his running mate is deranged and has deteriorated and should never be president. Like, I don't know. I'm sure that's not what he intended. But I think the effect of this debate on some people who watched who may be undecided and I don't again, I don't think it probably moved a lot of people. But they're like, oh, well, Donald Trump wasn't like that. He's got all the positions that Donald Trump has, but he sounds he doesn't sound like a maniac. Yeah.

So I don't know if that really helps Donald Trump. And I don't know if Donald Trump, even though he's seemingly happy with the performance, is going to be really happy with the performance. I'm curious about the next 48 hours about like J.D. Vance taking the spotlight, J.D. Vance saying that Tulsi and RFK Jr. endorse me, vote for me. Like, I think there's going to be a little bit of Donald Trump, like not like in this tall grass. Yeah, yeah.

So we've been talking about the big moment in the debate, which came at the end. It was the last exchange of the night. The topic was democracy and Trump's responsibility for January 6th. Let's listen. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. And if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I'm on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had

I don't buy that. Governor. January 6th was not Facebook ads. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say. He is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?

Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation? That is a damning non-answer. So America, I think you've got a really clear choice on this election of who's going to honor that democracy and who's going to honor Donald Trump. So all the the dial groups, the Harris campaign dial groups, other undecided voters,

All agreed that that was the worst moment for J.D. Vance. I think not only because it was an obvious lie, but because he sounded like a fucking politician. I'm focused on the future. I don't think there's anything worse you could have said that I'm focused on the future. Yeah. Slippery, smarmy, ridiculous line. Yeah. It would have honestly been better if he was like, he did win that election. Yeah. I stand by it. Yeah. How much do you guys think that matters, Dan? I mean, to the extent that anything matters in this debate, I think it matters more than anything else.

And you have the big lie is a signifier of extremism for most voters in polling generally.

Six in ten voters believe Joe Biden legitimately won the election that number is higher among independents, right? The exact undecided voters were talking about they do not think that the election was stolen and they think it's really fucking weird the Donald Trump is still talking about that four years later and JD Vance being unable to answer the question the most Blatant way possible just might as well hold up a sign that says I'm a smarmy politician when you answer the question the way he did is certainly not helpful to the cause and

It's not the size of the lie. It's the motion in the ocean. I think this will get shared on the aforementioned Facebook, Twitter. I was going to go to talk. I'm like, Tommy's got the face. He's about to say something funny. It's so hot in here. It's like really late. No, I do. It did come at the end, but I was like, you know what? Speaking of. The second time I've done that in two pods. I'm still not over the Pete Buttigieg thing. I know. I've heard about that.

Tim Miller grades all of our podcast episodes and tells us when we did good, and he really liked that one. Just flagging it. Yeah, so it was at the very end of the debate. It was the last exchange. But it seems like in this media environment, it could be the clip that defines the debate. I think so. I mean, certainly that's what the Harris-Walls campaign is going to want to do. But I think that so far in the media coverage we've seen before recording, it seems like that's going to be the big moment. Yeah, and I also would say probably like if you were just sort of trying to

be straight shooters here. Tim Walz is like, that is J.D. Vance's worst moment by far. And it was the worst moment of the debate. Tim Walz's worst moment was probably his answer that we'll get to on kind of when he was in China. And like, it was a bad and fumphering answer, but it was an answer about him in a kind of strange and sort of personal way. Like that answer goes to the heart of the case against Donald Trump. Well, let's talk about that. Let's play that answer from Tim Walz.

Governor, just to follow up on that, the question was, can you explain the discrepancy? All I said on this was, is I got there that summer and misspoke on this. So I will just, that's what I've said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.

Tommy, before we get into like whether that was good or bad or how bad that was or whatever, what was that all about? I couldn't even follow. So I asked Governor Walz about this when I interviewed him back in February. Yeah, this is partially. Yes. I read that he had been in China around the Tiananmen Square massacre.

which occurred on June 4th. So I basically said like, were you there during the protests and the Tiananmen Square massacre? He said, I was in Hong Kong. I was in Hong Kong when it happened. I was in Hong Kong on June 4th when Tiananmen happened.

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it turns out that there's some reports from local Nebraska news outlets that say he was in Nebraska on May 16th and he didn't travel to Hong Kong until August of 1989, so a couple months after the protests. He did go from Hong Kong into China. He did teach at a school. He did set up this exchange program after and tried to build ties between US students and Chinese students.

I think what happened is he just kind of misremembered the story over the years, mistold it a few times, and it just stuck in his brain wrong. Like that happens to people all the time. Our memories suck. We get things wrong all the time. And I'm sure it was pretty uncomfortable for him. He didn't seem like totally well prepared. He didn't just like explain it clearly, kind of.

Dole a bunch of bio and it was mostly confusing. I'm guessing most people watching just couldn't really follow what was happening there. I think maybe that maybe people will care. I seriously doubt it. If the Trump campaign decides to really drive this, I guess they could make it a thing. But like, what a waste of time. I mean, I read the CNN story about it.

before the debate and then watch the exchange and I still couldn't follow exactly what happened but I do I don't fault him for misremembering because my memory is and I can't remember things that happened like two years ago and the stories and where I was I do think that they he knew this was coming and I would have just

been a little clearer on like, you know what? I got that one wrong. I messed up. And then just... It was 35 years ago. I've been to China. There were democracy programs. But I messed up. I messed up. As advice to all politicians, that's always the best answer. Yeah. Just, if you made a mistake, just own it and move on and be done with it. And you're going to have to answer it. You can't just...

like dance around it for a long time and hope the clock runs out. Yeah, I also like the opening question ended up being about foreign policy. He answered that question. Vance says, before I get to your foreign policy question, I'm going to do my bio.

Walls was looking for a place to kind of do his bio. He realized about him talking about being a teacher, so he does his bio. So it doesn't totally work. So fine. Like it's not the way to articulate that answer. That first question just really threw him off. But imagine, this is your biggest moment of your professional life. You're debating, you're the vice presidential nominee, and Iran launches 200 ballistic missiles at Israel the day before. And suddenly you haven't prepped for this, you haven't prepared, you haven't thought about what you'd say about this. I'm sure it was like a massive uproar.

wrench in their preparation. But the point I want to make about it is just like,

It's very much now kind of like bubbling on the hyper online, right? That like Tim Waltz is like, doesn't tell the truth. He's a serial liar, serial exaggerator because he like, like, cause they try to mischaracterize how he responded when he talked about his, his family using fertility treatments and a few, and how they kind of have like exaggerated about how he's described his service and tried to lie and malign him for how he's talked about his service. And I, I do think that like, if that's what they want to focus on, like trying to paint Tim Waltz in this way, like, I just don't think it works. I don't think it's,

viable. Like he just comes across as an honest and straightforward guy and they should be focusing on Kamala Harris and they're defending the world's greatest liar. So I just think the whole thing is ultimately small and stupid. Also, J.D. Vance's entire life is a lie. Wow. Where is that? I never got to the end of that book though, but whatever happened to him, they found him in that manger. Positive America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

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My critique of Tim Walls was less about that and more, I just think he had some missed opportunities, right? And I think that he, you could tell when he, I hadn't noticed this before, but whether it was anxiety or he was nervous, but he like, he jumps to the next thought and there were sentence fragments and he didn't quite complete the thought. So sometimes it was hard to follow exactly what he was saying. And like, even on the January 6th, which was his best answer, right?

during that exchange, I was like, why isn't he talking about Donald Trump wanting to pardon the insurrectionists? That's the most unpopular policy that he has, and it's about moving forward. You want to focus on the future, J.D. Vance. Your running mate wants to pardon the people who beat up cops? So, Tim Walz, you take these lessons, and when you're debating Marjorie Taylor Greene in four years, hopefully, you can be a little bit more on top of this. But he was... Walz was much better than that on a lot of the other answers. He...

reproductive rights. He was really strong, just like the campaign's been doing in ads and at the convention. He talked about the individual stories of women who've been injured or lost their lives because of their state's abortion bans. Let's listen. If you don't know Amanda or Hadley, you soon will. Their project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies.

It's going to make it more difficult if not impossible to get contraception and limit access if not eliminate access to infertility treatments. For so many of you out there listening me included infertility treatments are why I have a child. This is basic human right. We have seen

maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about health care. Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it's diverse. And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona. And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is,

is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy. How can we as a nation say that your life

And your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography. I thought the geography thing was a great response to Vance because clearly it was Walls had his prepared first answer there. But then going back and hitting him on geography because he did California and Georgia was, I thought, really strong. What do you guys think of that?

It was incredibly strong answer. It's right. It fits with exactly how all the polling says you should talk about this. All the message testing says the ads and the speeches and the messages that lead with people's personal stories are by far the most powerful. It gets at freedom. The geography line undermines Trump's state's argument, which is really important. And

The Harris campaign has been hammering Trump and Vance on abortion for months now, and it is working. We are seeing in polls increases in the number of voters who think Trump would pass a federal abortion ban, who think he's personally anti-choice, who thinks that abortion rights are actually at stake if he's on the ballot. And that matters because in those blue wall states in the New York Times-Siena poll that came out over the weekend, abortion is the second issue by far. And

And so raising the science of that issue and driving home and pushing on that advantage is incredibly important. So this also goes to the point that J.D. Vance scored points in the debate on things that don't matter, and where Walls was at his best was on the exact things that matter to voters, like reproductive freedom. Tommy, what did you think of Vance's

He kept bringing up, we have to earn voters' trust on this issue. It seemed like he was trying to soften the edges of the typical Trump Republican answer and Vance answer on abortion because he has said some really wacky things. Yeah, I mean, I guess it folded into his broader strategy of like, hey, I'm just a good guy. I feel your pain. Let's agree to disagree and find common ground. But like, I don't know, earn your trust on this issue. Like, what?

What does that mean to someone who lives in a state where women are dying because they can't get abortion care? You know, it's just it did not. I don't I don't think it's going to work for them. He also lied about saying he never supported a national abortion ban. J.D. Vance absolutely supported a national abortion ban. The CBS polling on the issues showed that Governor Walz did way better than J.D. Vance in terms of voters voting.

the response when talking about abortion and healthcare. - Yeah, that was also another moment where it was much more about himself. Like he was talking about what he'd said in the past and his own views on abortion. I also do think like it was,

Like one of Tim Walz's best moments in the debate, but to the point John was making was also moments say like, you know, earn people's trust. You're for a national abortion ban. You've had this, you said Donald Trump would veto it. He now say he wouldn't back you on that. Like there was, there were places where you could like, I think. Your running mate says that women should be punished. Right. So the women should be punished for abortion. Like the whole point of your position is that you don't trust women. Yeah. Why should they trust you? So.

Clearly, unsurprisingly, Vance went into the debate wanting to make every single answer about immigration. Here are some of the key exchanges. And that's the thing that I think we should be able to find some common ground in, but we can't blame immigrants for the only reason. That's not the case that's happening in many cities. Tim just said something that I agree with. We don't want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country, which does drive up cost.

up cost him. 25 million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It's why we have massive increases in home prices. Thank you, Governor. And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status.

temporary protected status. Nora, so much to get to. I think it's important because the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check. I think it's important to say what's actually going on. The rules were no fact checking, no fair. I'm supposed to be able to lie the whole time. I wouldn't have agreed to this debate if I know there's me fact checking.

Does anyone believe that immigration is why housing costs are high? Is that credible to anybody? No, it's, I mean, there is a case that in Springfield,

because many of the Haitian immigrants were living together, are living together in houses, like five or six of them in a house who have come here, that it was making housing too expensive for like a family of two who lived in Springfield and they were driving houses because they could live in a house. More people could live in one house. Sure. I know this is like a long thing. Once you get the legal migrants. Legal migrants. Right. Yeah. But again, again,

you know, and Walls and Vance had this exchange too about housing. Like, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have no housing plan. They have no plan to reduce the cost of housing. If all the Haitian migrants that are there legally left Springfield tomorrow, housing prices in Springfield and all across the country would still be way too high. And they have no plan except to buy some federal land and build a house on a park somewhere. And deport people. Right. Yeah. How do you guys think he did on immigration? Do you think Vance scored some points there? I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like it was obviously it's like a better issue for him. I think Walls, I think, did a good job when he talked about Donald Trump standing in the way of the bill. So that was a good moment for him. And he'd been heating up by the time we got to that part of the debate. So I think it probably is yet another place where it kind of battles to a draw. I don't know that people buy all this.

anti-immigrant stuff from Vance, that moment where he said, I'm not blaming migrants for the cost of housing. I'm blaming Kamala Harris. Like, I feel like that has to read people as absurd. Like, this housing problem is a very old and long-growing problem. It's not something that began under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It's a generational failure. People were coming in under Donald Trump and Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Like, I don't... Just the idea that you're going to lay this... They even keep referring to it as the Kamala Harris administration. Like, just... I just don't think people buy it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. I just...

and this is true in all things, but especially immigration, they keep saying Kamala Harris let them in the country. Let these people bring fentanyl in the country. People don't think the vice president can do that. It's just simply not, it's absurd. President, you know, is the commander in chief, makes some laws, and then the vice president lets in fentanyl.

Has the full authority to just let in drugs at the border. Yeah, but actually, you know, the vice president has one vote in the Senate, same as J.D. Vance, right? Like, where's J.D. Vance's record? J.D. Vance had the, like, audacity up there. Like, I think Republicans in the Congress let Donald Trump down. You've been in the Congress, right? You haven't passed a bill. You have nothing to your name. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciated Governor Walz's, like, decency in saying you're blaming migrants for everything and that's unfair and it's wrong and it's egregious. I think he maybe spent a little too much time doing that. I wanted him to pivot hard

harder and go on attack. I think the strongest messaging was when he talked about the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans and Democrats came together to do in Congress and that Donald Trump tanked. I do think J.D. whining about the fact checks will be another thing that spins out on social media. It'll be very useful for the Harris campaign in the future because J.D. famously says he likes to make up stories about immigration to advance his lies and agenda. So

Yeah, the CBS poll showed it was basically a draw on immigration, though they favored Vance by a little bit.

Yeah, I was, and Walls was trying to get there when he was talking about Springfield because he was like, what happened to this community and the bomb threats at school and stuff like that. And Vance jumped in and be like, oh, you care about the immigrants. You care about the migrants, but not the people in Springfield. And I do think that Walls could have been, you know, there's an opportunity there, I think, for Harris and Walls to be like, this is like, people in Springfield are not better off because J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have been running around saying that Haitian migrants are eating dogs and cats.

Like they've had bomb threats. Like the people who live in Springfield who lived there for a long time, like they're not better off because of this. It's bullshit. And like they're just trying to divide people against each other. Like I do think there's an immigration message that you're right, Tommy, like talks about what people are dealing with on both sides of this. It can go to all things, right? It's January 6th and the big lie too. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance will say or do anything that will get them power no matter who it hurts. Exactly. Including the people who support them. Especially those people.

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One area where Vance didn't have a great answer was on whether we should have more gun safety laws. Let's listen.

And I say this not loving the answer because I don't want my kids to go to school and in a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of security. But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We've got to make the windows stronger. Well, I think all the parents watching tonight, this is just your biggest nightmare. Look, I got a I got a 17 year old and I

and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don't leave you. The NRA, I was an NRA guy for a long time. They used to teach gun safety. I'm of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice. That's not where we live today. This idea of stigmatizing mental health, just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it just is the guns.

Hearing it again, I think that might have been one of his best answers. Yeah, because also it was something he came back to. There was a lot of kind of, I don't know, it was a little bit of like kind of gauzy section of the debate when they were going back and forth on guns because J.D. Vance is like, oh, God, if only there was something, someone to stop my policies from causing all of these problems.

Like, there was a lot of like, I hate that we have to harden our schools like they're fucking military barracks, but there's just nothing we can do. And I wanted Tim Walz to hit him back. But then he made that answer I thought was very good because he finally kind of came back to like, it's not about how Finland has as many guns as we have or the fuck we were talking about. Sometimes it's just about the guns. I mean, J.D. Vance caveated his answer for how to prevent children from getting shot by saying this answer sucks. Yeah.

We need to lock the doors. No, stronger doors. Stronger doors. Stronger windows. Fortify first grade classrooms. That is not a credible or serious answer. And I thought Walls was emotional. He told the story about his son,

And then he credentialed himself as a gun owner who supports the Second Amendment. But, you know, he's not willing to do nothing in the face of children getting shot over and over and over again. I thought it was compelling and real and came from like a sincere place. And J.D. Vance just sounded like a smarmy prick. It's wild that both members of the Democratic ticket are gun owners and the Republican nominee can't buy a gun in some states. Yeah.

That's true. That is a fair point. All right. So toward the end of the debate, moderators asked about health care and Donald Trump's now infamous comment that the Harris-Walls campaign turned into a big ad that they're running all over the country. It was out today. It's about health care. It's about Trump saying he has concepts of a plan for what to replace the ACA with after he kills it. Let's listen.

I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along. He ran on the first thing he was going to do on day one was to repeal Obamacare. On day one, he tried to sign an executive order to repeal the ACA. He signed on to a lawsuit to repeal the ACA, but lost at the Supreme Court.

And he would have repealed the ACA had it not been for the courage of John McCain to save that bill. Something that these guys do is they make a lot of claims about if Donald Trump becomes president, all of these terrible consequences are going to ensue. But in reality, Donald Trump was president. Inflation was low. Take-home pay was higher. And he saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership.

I mean, one of the most one of those galling answers I've ever heard in a debate. I really stunning. Did Trump save the ACA? It was Paul Ryan who was trying to repeal it. Trump saved it from Paul Ryan. Well, that whole answer to like, I do think the part where he says like, oh,

I do worry about that framing, right? Like, oh, they say Trump is so dangerous, but things were actually better. Then you're like, on Obamacare itself, J.D. Vance does this sort of intellectual nonsense around it. Well, actually, concepts of plan is actually how you make laws. You have an idea, but like,

You can go look. Guy's been running for president and president for the last nine years. Still has no plan. He's just waiting. Donald Trump was so horny for repealing the Obamacare that after the House passed the repeal, he didn't wait for it to pass the Senate to do what looked like a signing ceremony in the Rose Garden. He took a picture with all the Republican House members behind him to celebrate. For cannabis.

Repealing Obamacare. They did not have a plan to replace it. The reason John McCain did a thumbs down on repealing Obamacare was not because he was in favor of Obamacare. It's because there was no plan to replace it. That was the reason.

You say Donald Trump's president, all these bad things are going to happen. He was president and people didn't 20 million people didn't lose their health care because John McCain stopped him. Yeah, because they didn't do the bad thing. Yeah. And by the way, like because Democrats and everyone else in the whole country hated it. It was the least popular Donald Trump had ever been in his whole presidency. And he tried and tried to try it and he failed because he's bad at governing.

I think that answer was an example as to why J.D. Vance is a good debater and a shitty politician. Yeah. Because it like you see the intellectual exercise in his head. Like, I'm not just going to say it didn't get repeated. I'm going to say he saved it because I'm going to take this arcane out of context. And he knows he has to mirror Trump's line among this.

And it's obviously not believable. And I agree with Lovett that the argument that Democrats say these bad things are going to happen when Trump is already president is one of their better, even if it's a very fallacious argument argument.

On a lot of issues, like when we call him a dictator and he was president for four years, democracy didn't end, all of that. But the one issue where it is the worst argument is this one. Because he tried in every way possible to repeal the ACA in the most visible way possible throughout his entire presidency. And by the way, succeeded in...

getting rid of a really important part of health care, which is reproductive health care for millions upon millions of women. Also, you know, they can go interview a bunch of Republicans in Congress and they can all say, look, Donald Trump wins again. We don't have the appetite to go through ACA repeal again, blah, blah, blah. Even if they don't do that, even if they don't have the votes for to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which, of course, we know they're going to try to do. But even if they don't,

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris passed in the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for the ACA that mean that millions of people around this country are paying lower premiums than they were before because of those subsidies. They are going to expire at the end of 2025. And Donald Trump and Republicans have already said they do not want to extend them. And so even if nothing happens, three and a half million people will lose their health insurance.

just if Donald Trump doesn't do anything, just if he wins. And, you know, so like the idea that, oh, Donald Trump's going to, nothing's going to happen. Like, no, everyone's going to, people are going to pay more for healthcare if Donald Trump wins. Guaranteed. Anyway, I think, I do think that's one that the Harris campaign, I thought that was going to be the moment that they were going to push tomorrow. Were it not for the, the January 6th answer that came afterwards, but I, you know, they've been doing the concepts of a plan ad today. I kind of think that health, there'll be a healthcare push in the next week or there should be. You know? All right.

All right. Final thoughts on this debate. What do the campaigns do with this debate? Anything? The Harris campaign talks about January 6th moment. The Vance campaign. I don't know. The Vance campaign. Yeah, the Vance campaign. I feel like, yeah, I think it's pushing out that democracy clip. I do think that it's worth going through, like,

There was a few times throughout the debate where J.D. Vance basically kind of invents a version of Donald Trump that doesn't exist. It's obviously not as important as the comment on democracy we're all talking about, but

There was this moment where Vance basically says, oh, Trump peacefully transferred power. And all Donald Trump has ever said is he wanted the rules to be enforced fairly. It reminded me of like the biggest creeps on the fucking Internet during Gamergate, like attacking attacking women online and being like, this is about ethics and video game journalism. Like, oh, yeah, that's what it was about. It was about the fair administration thing.

of the election rules. And there was that moment, there was a moment on healthcare where I do think you can go and just take Donald Trump's absolute worst comments and take J.D. Vance's lies about them and put them side by side. And I think it'd be pretty powerful. Yeah. Do you think we get another debate?

Donald Trump came out tonight and said, again, no more debates. I don't know why you guys think that there might be another debate. I mean, I think if... I don't. I don't think Trump wants to do it really or else he'd do it. His staff obviously doesn't want to do it because he was so terrible the last time. Yeah. Well, the Harris campaign wants it. They're desperate for it. The media is desperate for it. Everyone wants to do it except for the Trumps. I mean, we saw CNN, Caitlin Collins just hammering Donald Trump Jr. over it. Yes. Donald Trump Jr. was such a fucking whiny little baby that he said that even Fox couldn't fairly moderate the debate because they would try to appease the left.

As they always are. You know, Fox. The, I do like the,

like J.D. Vance basically kind of inventing a nicer version of Trump, Donald Trump pulling down the 60 Minutes interview. Like, I think all of that is the same reason they won't want to put him in front of another debate, which is the Donald Trump that doesn't exist and isn't real is like the best version they can have out there. But I do wonder if like 48 hours of coverage of how great J.D. Vance did and how J.D. Vance outshined Trump and how he didn't really defend Trump and was really more about Vance. Like, I'm curious how that affects Trump.

the narcissist. - Yeah, it's always hard to get inside Donald Trump's lizard brain. I was thinking that, maybe he's like, "I don't want JD Vance to have the last word here." But it's also, they don't have that much time. And it's clear that the Trump campaign thinks they are sitting on a lead,

that they are that they are doing well they're doing well in the polls like i think they're buying their their spin on this which is why they probably don't want to do another debate i think that's probably right now whether they're right or not who knows but like i think that's probably what they think one thing i do hope that comes out of this debate is according to the cnn snap poll uh tim wallace's favorability went from plus 14 before the debate to plus 37 after the debate

I think that speaks well to his character, his presentation, the tone of the debate, the fact that he talked about things that people cared about in a way that connected. That most voters don't know what Tiananmen Square is. That most voters don't give a shit what happened in 1989. And so I think it just speaks to the fact that he's an asset and we should get him out there and he should be doing a lot more interviews and be on the trail and doing things. I understand that.

that they were probably getting through debate prep because that was far more important. And it also prepares you for future interviews. But now I'd love to see just Harris and Walls hit the gas, be a little less risk averse, do some more stuff and just, you know. Well, we had Conor Harris on the All the Smoke podcast. Which is a great interview. Awesome. One of the best interviews I've ever seen. All the Smoke podcast, if folks don't know, is two former NBA players. Usually they focus on basketball, but it was an amazing interview.

But they were members of the We Believe Warriors team from 2006. And she was funny. She was thoughtful. She was very comfortable. It was just a fantastic interview. I agree. And especially if there's not going to be another debate, which I don't think there will be, they're going to need to find ways to break through. And not break through all the coverage because not everyone watches everything at the same time anymore, but just...

taking more, just having more opportunities to get out there. Especially on stuff like all the smoke pod where they're not, those, the people who watch that show or listen to that show are probably not consuming a ton of political news. It's a sports show. Get in front of those people who are not going to hear about you in other places. Tim Walls was on the We Rate Dogs YouTube channel the other day. That's great. I noticed that. It sounds ridiculous, but it's actually quite smart. Maybe they can host a third debate.

She's like, little boops. Okay, couple quick things before we go. Voter registration deadlines are next week in South Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and more. So make sure that you're registered, your family and friends are registered. VoteSaveAmerica.com slash vote. And for everyone who's willing to do more, we have a critical volunteer ask.

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Got me right at the end there. Bye, everyone. Bye.

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