Trump Is Too Afraid to Debate Harris Again
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump says no more debates as even Republicans are saying that he lost on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is doing everything they can to keep the momentum going with new ads, big rallies, and more interviews. And later, as if they didn't already have enough to whine about, MagaWorld melts down over Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris. But first...

More than 67 million people watched Tuesday night's debate, about 15 million more than watched the Biden-Trump debate in June. And the more data we get, the more clear it is that Kamala Harris won the debate decisively. In addition to the first post-debate poll from CNN that showed Harris winning 63 to 37 percent,

A YouGov poll found her winning 54% to 31%. And both Reuters and Morning Consult now show Harris with a five-point lead over Trump, which

which is her gaining a few points since before the debate. So we won't get a full picture of post-debate polling until probably the end of next week or the week after. But until then, we also have some great feedback from swing state voters who haven't made up their minds yet. Our pal Sarah Longwell at the Bulwark offered a glowing report from her nine-person panel where the most common word to describe Kamala's performance was...

That kind of take seems to be shared by a lot of the undecided voters who spoke to reporters at CNN, MSNBC, and elsewhere after the debate. Let's listen. So that's Trump, the bully. And I think Kamala Harris came out showing some decorum, some presidential nature about her. So I think we're...

the door's a little bit open. But it also sounds like this debate cemented for you that you will never vote for former President Trump, at least again. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I think that people want to separate policy from character, and I just don't see how you can do that. Robert, I know we started off the evening where you said you're not sure who you may support. Did this debate change your mind in any way? Kind of did make me sway a little bit toward Kamala Harris. What did you think?

As to who I would vote for in this election, I strongly felt Camilla was more optimistic, more respectful. I thought she had plans that she tried to describe in the minutes worth of time that she had. All right. So we're still working on the pronunciation with some folks, but that is a super cut I could listen to over and over again.

Just great stuff. What a fun guy. My friends in the focus groups. You know, I just I love focus group. I love an undecided voter with all the caveats. First impression still early. Lots of voters who haven't watched or maybe even seen a clip of the debate. What are your thoughts on how this debate is landing with people?

It's landing great. She clearly won. She moved the ball forward on a whole host of measures. She looked strong. She looked presidential. She got a chance to introduce herself to the country. Huge viewership, which is a huge win, right? I think there were some initial numbers that made it seem like only a slight increase over Biden. The fact that it's this big, I think, is very good for her. And because of Trump's behavior, it became sort of a cultural moment. So you're seeing a lot. There are a lot of the clips. It may not be the clips that, and we'll get into some other polling later, but they may not be the clips that

are exactly perfect for Kamala Harris in terms of like the exact focus group message, but it shows her looking good and him looking bad. And that is great. But the biggest takeaway here is there's a lot more work to do, right? In the CNN poll, 82% of people said that their vote was not changed, which no one should be surprised by that. You know,

Basically, 80% to 85% of voters have been pretty locked in their position for a long time. In that poll, 14% said the debate made them reconsider who they were supporting. I imagine most of those are Trump supporters. And then 4% said they'd actually changed their mind.

And I think it's important that we think about this debate differently than any other presidential debate we've ever had, because usually the debate is the closing pitch. It's where you try to close the deal because the candidates have been campaigning for well over a year. They've been running ads. They are well known to the voters in that moment.

Kamala Harris, for most people, just popped up two months ago. They still didn't know her. So this is not her closing pitch. This is her in front of a giant audience making the initial sale to try to get people to be open to her. And the fact that 14% of people have moved, and most of those probably at least are now openly considering her, that's a win, but there's a lot more work to do. Yeah, I think we have to look at people's decision-making

about who to vote for, not as like an on and off switch where they see the debate and suddenly they change their minds overnight. Like this is sort of a journey for a lot of voters, undecided voters. And I think it's clear that for most undecided voters, at least what we're seeing in the data, what we're hearing in the focus groups, they came away with a more favorable impression of Kamala Harris and they learned more about Kamala Harris that they liked than

If they haven't changed their mind yet, it sounds like it's because they haven't heard enough from her yet. They want to know more. They want more details. They want to see more of her. They probably want to see her, you know, doing interviews, talking to people in other settings, right? And so...

You know, we've talked for over a year now about sort of originally Biden and now Kamala Harris wanting to force a choice, right, to say, here's Donald Trump, here's me, and let's make people decide who maybe haven't been paying attention. And I do think, you know, unlike either of the conventions, Democratic or Republican, the debate was the first time voters got to see the two candidates vote.

who were running against each other for president, one of whom will be president, on stage together next to each other for 90 minutes. And they came away thinking that Kamala Harris did much better. Our friends at the center-left blueprint polling group

Also asked voters which lines and messages made them more likely to vote for Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump. I thought this was probably more useful than any top line number about who might have changed their minds. Anything stand out to you from that poll or others we've seen so far, like other data points that actually would help with the campaign's message and all of us as volunteers as we're going out trying to convince people? So two things. One, the

Essentially, the best testing message in the entire poll from that debate was Kamala Harris's line that she's not Joe Biden. She's certainly not Donald Trump, but she offers a new generation of leadership. And that fits with what I think has been probably both of our theory of this race, which is her ability to represent something different, to turn the page on the Trump era is really the key to victory here. Because in that Times poll, voters wanted change and

And most voters thought that she represented more of the same. And so if she can change that and reframe this race and the fact where she is turning the page on Trump, and sort of what we've been going through for the last many years here, that's a huge positive for her. The other thing, and I think this is really interesting, and it's interesting for people in the conversations they're going to have with the voters in their lives, and also for how we think about the campaign strategy going forward, is...

All the best messages were the positive ones, the ones that were about Kamala Harris and her values. And it really wasn't about Trump. And I think when you look at that CNN poll to try to merge these two polls together, people's opinions of Donald Trump did not change. They did not think worse of him after that debate. Like his unfavorability rating did not really go up. It didn't really move. And so when people are trying to make their decision on that journey that you're talking about, they already know what they need to know about Trump.

And so they're going to cross the line, cross the Rubicon to vote for Kamala Harris based on what they learn about her over these next 50 some days. And I think that's just really important as we think about how we're going to what we are posting on social, what we're sharing with in our friends and families, group chats, et cetera, is that what they really want is they want to know about Kamala Harris, who she is, her plans, et cetera, more than they need one more clip of Trump acting like a nutcase.

Well, and we heard one of the women we heard from in that clip said, you know, people think that you can separate character from policy. And I don't know how you can do that. The voters who still haven't made up their minds yet about who to vote for or whether they're going to vote at all. Most of them don't like Donald Trump.

And they don't think he has a great character. They have already decided that. They are still considering him because they haven't separated character from policy yet. And they're still thinking, yeah, maybe she has a better character and she's more honest and in a fresh face and stuff like that. But I'm still, I don't know if her policies are better, if she's going to be a better president than him, even though he's kind of an asshole. That's the voter that we're talking about here. And that can frustrate all of you as it does us. But that's, it's something to keep in mind. And to your point,

First of all, I am not Joe Biden and I'm certainly not Donald Trump. What I do is offer a new generation of leadership for the country. We hadn't even seen the blueprint polling yet. But when she said that line in the debate, there were cheers from our office because we just knew we knew that from all the data that we had seen that that would work well. And sure enough, it did. The other best testing lines.

The true measure of a leader is who actually understands that strength is not beating people down, it's lifting people up, right? Which again, I'm sure a lot of us political, hardened, cynical political junkies would think that that's maybe too gauzy and positive and, you know, that's voters like that.

We don't want this kind of approach that's just constantly trying to divide us, especially by race. We don't want a leader who is constantly trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other. That was another top testing line. And then on issues, no surprise here, right around those lines that I just mentioned, restoring Roe v. Wade, strengthening the Affordable Care Act and bringing down drug costs.

Kamala saying Trump has no plan for you. And then the only negative message about Trump that tested in that top range was her talking about the Trump sales tax, the 20 percent tax on everyday goods. That's four thousand dollars more a year for families. This is how she described the tariffs, which.

was great because she didn't even have to describe what a tariff is or define it. She didn't use the word, which I appreciate. No, she just called it a Trump sales tax. And it turns out it was maybe the strongest negative message against Trump.

The only other thing I'll point out is I saw the New York Times has been talking to undecided voters, not the random story about how that they ran about how that some of you may have seen about how for some undecided voters, she didn't close the deal. But there's like a panel of undecided voters that they've been following around. It's actually the right sample scientifically and not just like random people that they talk to in a diner. And Patrick Healy of the New York Times said he was talking to some of these younger undecided voters after the debate. And he's

He has a comment from a 24-year-old undecided voter that he said reflected the sentiments of a lot of people in the group after the debate about Trump. And he said, he doesn't necessarily scare me. I think he's incompetent. What scares me is the people he surrounded himself with and how they can use him. Laura Loomer was on the plane with him.

The Heritage Foundation and all the plans they have. It just seems like he's a vessel for other people who are way more competent and have way more plans to do stuff that I personally don't agree with. I feel like they're going to use him and get policies enacted that I personally don't agree with.

I loved that comment because I think it gets at a truth of how people see Trump. And we've talked a lot about how some voters don't see him as that extreme on abortion, even though they know that it was his Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe and they don't trust him, stuff like that. But people are starting to understand that Project 2025, you

You know, fucking Laura Loomer on the plane. For those who don't know, she said she's a proud Islamophobe. She's already tweeting horribly racist things about Kamala Harris. All you have to know about her is she's in a fight with Marjorie Taylor Greene right now where Marjorie Taylor Greene says she's too extreme and racist for the MAGA movement. She's the one person Marjorie Taylor Greene would fight with where you'd think about rooting for Marjorie Taylor Greene.

That's right. Yeah. That's how bad. That's all you have to know about Laura Loomer. And she's been on the plane with Trump. She was his debate guest. She's his buddy now. She's a 9-11 truther and she went to the 9-11 memorial with him. Sorry. Yes, I forgot. That was a big one. Because if I didn't say that, Tommy was going to bust through into the studio like a Kool-Aid man. He's so mad about it. I know. But that 24-year-old from California who is undecided, I think that is the more effective argument about Trump for people who think

Maybe he's a little different or maybe he's not that bad or he's like bullshit. But like, you know, he's he's actually not that extreme or conservative. It's that he has, as Kamala Harris said in the debate, he is easily duped.

He is easily manipulated and he's going to have a bunch of extreme, extreme far right people around him, more so than he ever has before, that if he gets back to the White House are going to do whatever the fuck they want because Donald Trump doesn't really care because he's easily manipulated. And I think that is a very effective argument for undecided swing voters.

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Conclave is a gripping thriller from Academy Award-winning director Edward Berger, starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, only in theaters October 25th. The Pope is dead. The throne is vacant.

Conclave is an unprecedented and illuminating glimpse into the inner workings of the Catholic Church as it follows one of the world's most secretive and ancient events, selecting the new Pope. Conclave is only in theaters October 25th. Visit conclavethefilm.com to get tickets now. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Therapy is great. It is, John. It is helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself.

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One person who begs to differ on the outcome of the debate, Donald Trump, whose kink is saying that he won things he actually lost.

Not all of his usual pals are buying the spin this time, though. Here's Brit Hume and Neil Cavuto of Fox News, MAGA, MAHA surrogate RFK Jr., and Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Make no mistake about it. Trump had a bad night. He decisively lost. Vice President Harris clearly won the debate. I've spoken to people on his team and...

members of his family, they feel like the same way that I do. I think that, you know, there were some lost opportunities. Donald Trump lost. This is not the worst debate performance I've seen in my career, but it's very close to it. It was a pretty negative performance, pretty pessimistic, cynical, and I think that this will cost him. Yes, I'm trying to decide if I want to go on record, and the answer is yes.

I think that he loses because of this debate performance. Wow. Wow. That was fun to listen to also. That's what I would listen to over and over again. More than the undecided voters? I mean, I like them too, but this is more enjoyable. Hearing Frank Luntz just bring himself to say on Piers Morgan, oh, he lost. I think the debate lost it for him. We almost, by the way, Reid didn't want to put this clip in because he didn't want to jinx it, which was a good thought, honestly.

on Reid's behalf. And I thought about that too. But so we're not saying, again, we're not saying, there's so much more work to do. He could easily win. And, you know, Frank Luntz, maybe you don't take his prediction seriously. You know, we're just having fun. We take our superstitions politically very seriously here. And I went through an entire calculus on this when Reid brought it up. And us saying it would be possibly a karma violation. Frank Luntz saying it does not have anything to do with karma for us. So it's okay.

Yeah, we're not telling you to believe anything Franklin says. RFK Jr., great surrogate, by the way. How helpful is he? I'm shocked he's not better at this. Just truly shocked. I mean, have you known him before the brain worm? He was great then, but now I don't know. This is his big week. The guy who's been, he's had a lot of roadkill animal stuff. Was the whale thing this week? No.

No, I'm saying it's a big week for him because of the Springfield, Ohio stuff. Oh, I see. Yes, yes. You know, but he's been, I guess he's been, you'd think he'd want to sit back because he's had some pet issues himself. Yeah, maybe that's why. So all this is, of course, driving Trump nuts. He posted on Truth Social that Neil Cavuto is one of the worst on television. He said he'd rather go with the losers at MSDNC. And then, yeah, that's tough.

And then in much bigger news, Trump made it clear on Thursday that he is too afraid to face Kamala Harris again. Because we've done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate. That's it. No third debate. I guess that's that, huh? Are you surprised he already threw in the towel the day after or two days after? I don't know. I don't know that he... We have just been talking about this debate nonstop for 72 hours now. I...

I'm not sure he threw in the towel. You think he might reconsider if the polls go badly? He backed out of the debate we just had like three different times. So I think it's possible. Oftentimes with Trump, this sort of thing is beginning of a negotiating ploy. Maybe this is how he pushes for Fox. Who knows? I don't know that there's a lot real. There's a real plan here. But I can definitely see him being goaded into possibly being goaded into doing another one. He's not someone super well acquainted with his own best interests. So maybe he will do another debate.

Well, it's interesting that you said it could be the opening of a negotiating ploy.

If you're the Harris campaign, do you fight for another debate at this point? 100%. Yes. Because I mean, I know we said that it was in her interest to do it, which is why they said, we'll see you at the next debate. Now that he said no, I'm wondering how hard they push it. But I still think you want another big audience. She needs another debate. She absolutely does. If you one of the things that CNN pull out to keep going back to it is Trump exits that debate with a 12 point advantage on the economy.

And that's the big, the, this is through no fault of hers. It's just that the way that debate went is the first two questions from the economy. Trump answered one of those questions about immigration and we were off to the races on to mythically, uh,

missing cats. And that is the biggest thing she needs to do. That was her biggest audience to do it. She did not get an opportunity. She came back through a middle-class background at seven points, but the debate did not allow for a huge, big conversation on the economy. And that's what she has to fix. And so having another opportunity in front of another incredibly large audience to do that is, I think, incredibly important if she can get it. She can win without it, obviously, but there is so much more work to do here. And a debate would be very helpful to be back on that stage for that reason.

Yeah. And again, for all the hundreds of millions of dollars that she has raised and the ad she'll run and the campaigning she and the rest of the ticket and spouses and everyone else is doing all over the swing states, you're still not going to get an audience as big as a debate audience to deliver your message, which is why that's really valuable. And even a debate audience, like even that audience of 67 million people is less than half of the 2020 electorate.

Yeah. And we know that the vote... 160 million? Right. 160 million. I think, yeah, 158 maybe. I don't know. But what we do know is that the voters who are most persuadable, most undecided, most swingy are the ones least likely to watch the debate. Least likely to watch, to consume...

At least traditional media coverage of the debate. And so so that you then you may ask the question, why do a second debate? It's because you need another moment where obviously people will hear about this through osmosis or maybe closer to the end. They will tune in if it's in October, as it would likely be. So so what do you make of the outbreak of honesty among some of these Republican media types?

I would just say that Donald Trump's debate performance was so bad that the people who deny climate change couldn't deny this. It's just... Suddenly they found shame crept back into their mind. They couldn't bring themselves to do it. I mean, obviously the most obsequious megatypes are shilling for Trump here, but...

It's impossible to defend. It's absolutely possible. He knew he was losing from the look on his face from about 35 minutes into that debate. You couldn't really say otherwise. And so they will say he did poorly, but then we won't talk about this pivot and blame other factors for why he did so poorly. But there was no – if you were a person who at least pretends half the time to be somewhat to the journalistic center of Sean Hannity like Brit Hume does, then you kind of had to say this.

Yeah. I mean, I think those people probably realize that most people who watch the debate had working eyes and ears and they could see it with their own. You can't really bullshit people on that. So the Trump campaign has been telling reporters on background that Trump supposedly had detailed plans and talking points for the debate that would have helped him.

Avoid taking the bait from Kamala Harris and pivot back to his core message. Do you think any of these people have ever met Donald Trump prior to the debate? It's so funny because if you read, there's a great bulwark story from Marco Pudo about this. And in it, they talk about how he had these very detailed strategic plans. And the one they cite is how he was going to pivot off the cat story that he himself brings up.

So it's like they had decided that this very serious policy, happy warrior Trump could not be convinced to not bring up the fake cat story. But they prepared him for how to get to the cat story and then pivot to the larger Biden administration, immigration record, whatever else. I mean, they did debate prep with Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard. And he just couldn't execute. He just couldn't execute the play. What a surprise. Let Trump be Trump.

I mean, obviously, put aside the idea that he ever had detailed plans or a concept of a plan for how to do this debate or whatever you want to say. He obviously, and they've been clear in the report on this, he had a strategic objective. They announced it in a conference call with this collection of morons who did debate prep that what they were going to do is they were going to tie her to the Biden administration record on inflation and immigration. And he could not do that. He could not execute because he's an addled old man who's obsessed with himself. Like, he just could not execute it.

And by the way, her pointing that out is not just fan service for all of us who already known that it is showing people. And I think it has shown people. And I just have always like this man, uh,

Imagine him in the Oval Office. He can't follow a plan. He has no discipline. He can't control himself. And that can be funny or politically fruitful if you're Kamala Harris in the context of a debate. But when you're leading the free world, it might be problematic. It might be a riskier choice to send him back to the White House. Which, the reason why that's important is in that New York Times-Siena poll, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were tied in terms of who is a riskier choice. Yeah.

Yep. So not all of Trump's sycophants have given up on making excuses for his bad debate. Most of them are blaming ABC News and the moderators. Ben Shapiro said the network, quote, put a stake through the heart of presidential debates. And Charlie Kirk likened it to a show trial where ABC News was the executioner.

MAGA kooks are also calling moderator Lindsay Davis and Kamala Harris sorority sisters because they were part of the same historically black sorority, even though they graduated from different colleges several years apart.

And the sorority has 360,000 members. So that's, yeah, they're buddies. Trump himself is calling the moderators all kinds of names, saying that ABC News should lose its broadcast license. Sean Davis over at The Federalist, the guy who runs The Federalist, he said that they should be arrested, the moderators. Should be arrested.

And charged with campaign interference? Is that a law? I'm not sure that's a law. It's not a law, Dan. Trump also had more to say about his performance at a rally in Tucson on Thursday.

As everyone saw two nights ago, we had a monumental victory over comrade Kamala Harris in the presidential debate. Two low-life anchors, they're low-lives. I'm not gonna watch him because he's not legit, what he did. I'm not gonna watch him. And his hair's not as good as it used to be, you know? And she was nasty. She looked at me with hatred in her eyes. People said that I was angry at the debate. Angry. I was angry.

And yes, I am angry because he allowed 21 million illegal aliens invading our communities. Many of them are criminals. Many are criminals. I'm angry.

Wow. So that was a little bit about David Muir's hair, a little bit about Lindsay Davis' hate in her eyes. He's angry. We don't have this part of the clip, but at one point he talked about the situation in Springfield and said, all these Haitian immigrants are coming into Springfield. Who knows where they're from? Who could venture a guess?

I'm sure all of the complaining about the moderators and ABC, I'm sure that's landing with Trump supporters. Do you think that kind of whining is going to land with anyone else? I don't think most people are hearing it, right? It's fan service, right? It's just to make your MAGA base feel better about the disaster they watched.

And there's just a truism in politics that the side complaining about the moderators is the side that lost the debate. That is always true. It was true when Democrats were complaining about the CNN moderators after the Biden-Trump debate. That is always the case. To the extent anyone hears it, it just sounds like more fucking whining about something involving himself. And you can see the seeds of the campaign in trying to manage Trump here, which is, I'm angry, but I'm not angry. What he was trying to execute there quite poorly, I would say, was...

Allow him to blather on about the debate. And then he's going to say he's angry, but he's angry on behalf of you for immigration or whatever else. But he can't do it. And the part where he's talking about himself, he has passion and vigor. And the part where he's talking about everyone else, he's reading a script. And that is like how that is Donald Trump to a T. Which is what Kamala Harris said. Yeah. She said, go to one of his rallies. And the one thing you won't hear is anything about you because he has no plans for you because he doesn't care about anyone but himself. Which, by the way, also...

He announced in a video today that in a couple days, he's coming out with his own crypto. I mean, what? Like that does not get enough attention. 50-something days before the election? Crypto? He's doing it at Twitter Spaces on September 16th. I hope. That's right, at Twitter Spaces. That's a Monday, I think.

don't know but he's gonna do he's just it's about some money-making fucking scheme that's it just the idea that he is doing this 58th before the election and it's not one of the biggest stories is just sort of why like there's a lot of big stories so I don't want to play that game but it's just it is a truly insane thing to do it's crazier than selling the Bibles with Lee Greenwood it's crazier than that

Well, before we move on to Kamala Harris, we should note that the other message MAGA World is driving post-debate has to do with the issue that most voters are focused on, which is whether or not immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people's pets. An update, they're still not.

But thanks to Trump and J.D. Vance repeating this deranged conspiracy to millions of people, the Springfield News Sun reports that multiple city, county, and school buildings were closed on Thursday due to a bomb threat

while Haitian immigrants are saying that they're scared for their families' lives. Meanwhile, a Trump advisor told the Bulwark, quote, if anyone thinks we're scared to talk about Haitians eating pets, they're wrong. Yeah, no shit. You don't seem scared to do that. Here I'm reminded of Kamala Harris's convention speech line that Trump is an unserious man whose second term as president would come with extremely serious consequences. What do you think? Is this a storyline to be mocked, feared, both? Both.

Trump should be mocked for this because it's absurd. It's embarrassing. It's unpresidential. It just shows, as Kamala Harris would say, an unserious person. But this is yet another in a long line of incidents over the last nine years of American politics where Donald Trump and the far right media and the Republican Party as a whole have said things, spread conspiracy theories, and those conspiracy theories have led to real world consequences, including violence.

Do we remember when, in 2016, a gunman showed up at Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C. because of all the Pizzagate conspiracies? That person showed up there to try to rescue children from a pizza place because of what was spreading around the internet, being pushed by Trump allies.

We've seen these mass shootings that have been where the shooters have talked about great replacement theory, something that is being pushed by Tucker Carlson and a bunch of other people in the fire. There is a history here and it is deeply dangerous. And so, yes, we should make fun of Trump, but we should understand, as Kamala Harris would say, that there are very serious consequences for his unserious behavior.

And, you know, I think the bulwark was also interviewing some folks in Springfield. And what they're finding is a lot of the residents in Springfield are now saying they've heard about the rumors from Trump and J.D. Vance or something that they saw on the Internet, not something that they've seen in their community. Of course.

They got asylum from Haiti, which is horribly violent right now. And so they escaped. They came to the United States all legally. And there were all these job opportunities in Springfield. So they came now because there's so many new people in Springfield. It has put like some strain on social services and there've been some issues, but, uh,

When you talk to people in Springfield and when they ask people, so many of them are saying, well, these Haitian immigrants are some of the best workers we have in our factories. And it's actually not that big of a deal. And it's getting blown up by the national press. And so you see how this happens, where maybe there's some tension with newcomers in a town in Ohio. And then the right wing crazies get involved.

And the larger the platform, by the time it gets to J.D. Vance and then it gets to Donald Trump on a debate stage in front of 67 million people, suddenly conspiracies are floating around that are really going to put people in danger who live in the town. Both the Haitian immigrants and the residents of Springfield. Because now there's just crazies all over the place.

It's insane. It is so insane. It is so insane. But it also should be mocked. And right now on TikTok, by the way, people are remixing the Donald Trump saying they're eating cats and dogs. And it's just, it's fire. Some of those remixes are fire. Did you just say it's fire? It's fire. Yeah. And it's hard to say this because again, horrible. Are you speaking in emoji now? Like what is happening? I don't even know you. You

You go on TikTok for six minutes and you start saying, it's fire. My brain has been pickled. God, that's fast. It's great. I mean, come on. But it's insane. And I can't tell now if they're going to stop it because they're just going to get bored with it or they're going to keep riding this one now. They're just going to keep talking about Springfield, Ohio.

I would imagine. I can't imagine that they find that you think you think the latter. They're just going to keep doing this. I mean, for a while until they found and find a new absurd thing. Like we had an entire episode explainer on gas stove confiscation a couple of years ago. They take these things for a long, pretty far away. Let me ask you something before we move on to this. Like, it seems like the two best issues for Trump are the economy, inflation and immigration. It seems very much like he does not want to talk about

His best issue, which according to the polls is inflation in the economy, and only wants to talk about immigration. Do you think that that could ultimately be a mistake for him? Yeah, for sure. For sure. It seems like he just can't, he has no interest in driving an economic contrast or an economic message. The same reason that Donald Trump doesn't like to talk about the economy is the same reason why the press rarely writes about the economy.

It doesn't drive engagement, right? When you go to a rally and he starts talking about the cost of living, people don't go nuts. You spew some conspiracy theory about,

immigrants eating cats, crowd goes crazy. And so, and he is just very Pavlovian when it comes to applause. And so he, this is like that New York, that North Carolina rally from a few weeks ago where he got there, started reading the economic parts of the speech. No one applauded. So he just went down all the rabbit holes. So yeah, I think it's, it's hard for him to do. Now the campaign is advertising on the economy, right? They have a new ad up, which has, uh, quotes of Kamala Harris saying Bidenomics is working. Like they are, they are hammering that.

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All right, let's talk about Kamala Harris. Her team has their foot in the gas after their big win Tuesday night. Apparently, they brought in $47 million from 600,000 donors within the first 24 hours after the debate. On Thursday, they released two new ads that incorporate debate footage.

You can always tell which campaign thinks they won the debate because they put out ads that didn't have the debate footage in them. Trump did not do that. Kamala Harris did. One ad does the future versus past optimism versus pessimism contrast. It includes the great Harris line where she said she offers the new generation of leadership. The other ad is a cut down of the debate exchange over abortion.

Politico also has a story saying the Harris campaign is going to be stepping up the pace of their events and interviews, including interviews with less traditional outlets, something Trump has been doing a lot of. And the campaign launched their post-debate battleground tour on Thursday, starting with two Kamala Harris events in North Carolina. Here she is in Charlotte talking about the debate. Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate. I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate because we

This election and what is at stake could not be more important. Now, she sounded like she was having a good time at that event. How long do you think she keeps needling him about the debate? And anything else she can do to just keep this in the news a couple more days? I think needle him about the debate for a few more days. Keep aggressively pushing publicly for another debate. Call him out for being afraid to debate again. That's the next turn of the wheel, I think, is there. Yeah, calling him a chicken. Plouffe was on Twitter calling him a chicken.

He's excited. Good to have Pluff back in the mix. What did you think of the two new ads?

They're good. I mean, they like so much of this campaign. They are very data-driven, and the things they put out are the things that the polls say work. The abortion ad is very powerful, and it's sort of the exact contrast. I think it's the – when we were talking about like what ads should you send to the people and the voters in your life who are curious, and particularly the ones who are deciding between voting and not voting, not necessarily voting between Harris and Trump, and I think the abortion ad is a very powerful one. That is a great one to send around to people.

Well, and I think you brought this up on our last pod that Plouffe tweeted during the debate that how undecided voters reacted to both of their answers on abortion was like the biggest split he's ever seen. It was a 40-point swing. Dial testing. 40-point swing. Yeah. So that's probably why they went with that one. On the Politico story about Harris doing more interviews with non-traditional outlets, do you have any advice for the campaign on that aside from go on Pod Save America? I've been pitching them directly to some polar coaster. Yeah.

Just a dig in the data. You and Elijah got him behind the paywall. It's a good way to reach undecided political poll junkies. I mean, I think this is to be very interesting what happens next year. I think they've had a very good set of reasons for why they have been pretty reticent in the sort of

media appearances she's been doing, right? They had, they, you know, as we said before, she woke up in the morning, the vice president by brunch, she was the democratic nominee. She had to pick a vice president, get ready for a convention, prepare for a debate, hire a staff, do all these things. And so, but now here we are, we're in the final stretch, we got 50 days. And I think her media strategy has to be

what I sometimes call is like everything, everywhere, all at once. She's got to do everything. She's got to, she's been doing, and to her credit, she has been doing local radio almost every morning. And when she was in debate camp, getting ready for the debate, keep doing that. She's going to have to sit down and do local TV interviews. But I think the bulk of where the energy has to be is in non-traditional stuff, because the voters that you need to reach are just impossible to reach through all the traditional tools of a campaign, including advertising on linear television.

It is just so hard to reach particularly young people because they have cut the cord. They are on TikTok where there's no paid advertising. They are on Netflix where there's no political advertising. They are on other platforms where there's no political advertising. Other than major events like really football games, it is very hard to reach them with ads. And so you're going to have to just be everywhere. And so-

You know, have Kamala Harris go on Hot Ones, do Call Her Daddy, have Tim Walls do every sports podcast you possibly can around football season, have him do local sports radio before high school games as a former high school coach. Just be everywhere, do lots of things, take big swings, take big risks. You have to do it. And by the way, we should say, like, this...

That strategy probably will not satisfy a lot of reporters from traditional outlets who will say she's avoiding tough questions instead of she's avoiding the press because they'll think, you know, the argument is they're more softball questions and non-traditional outlets.

but it's less about the type of question for the Harris campaign than it is about the audience. Because like you said, it's just a lot of voters that they need to reach are just not tuning into traditional media outlets and not getting their news from them. There was...

It would be great. She should take questions from the press. When she gets off the plane or gets on the plane after an event, take questions, do that. Just be out there. But there was this bargain that existed since the invention of media where candidates would take questions from the press. And oftentimes those questions were,

tough, but they're really often process-oriented. They weren't the campaign's message. But you took those questions. You suffered through that because you needed the reach of the media to reach the public.

You still need some of that for sure, but just that relationship between journalism and reaching voters has been severed somewhat. And so you have – like do some of that stuff. The CNN interview got 6.6 million viewers, which is good, but that's because it was sort of an event. The next one is not going to get that. Maybe – one way to sort of – I think you can sort of square the circle on this is to do like a network town hall.

Where, because that serves two purposes. One, you are taking questions from reporter and voters. Voters. It's traditional media, but it's also usually covered by the rest of the press as an event.

And so it's not, you know, cause you just do a scene interview. Generally, it's just going to be on CNN and no one else is going to really care, but right. But lean into the non-traditional stuff, take risks and be incredibly aggressive because she's really good. And she's really, really good when she is just being a human talking about her life. And there's this great one. This is a great clip. That's been going around on Tik TOK. Maybe it's fire. I don't know. Yeah.

Sorry you've never heard that before. Never heard it from me. I've heard it, just not from you. My Gen X co-host. That's right.

You may be a millennial, but you have the soul of a silent generation member. Look, I haven't gone as far as Tommy talking about Riz this and that. We're not there yet. But there's this great... I wish I remember what it was called, but it's a show where they play a little music and you have to guess the artist and then talk about your relationship with it, which talks about Stevie Wonder and Miles Davis. And it is awesome. And we've talked before about the Mindy Kaling cooking video from...

2019, like that sort of stuff, more and more of that.

And by the way, there's a lot of these nontraditional outlets where you can talk substantively about your plans and policies for voters who want to know more about what you're going to do. Like it doesn't have to all be sort of like human interest, cultural lighter stuff, right? Like it can be a mix of that and like letting people know what you're going to do as president, which is what a lot of like some of the low info, less engaged, more cynical voters are going to want to know.

So before we go, the other big news from Tuesday night, of course, was Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris. CNN has reported that in the 24-hour period after Swift posted, more than 405,000 people had clicked the link she shared to Vote.gov. Most days, traffic is about 30,000 people. She also encouraged people to register at the VMAs on Wednesday night when she spoke and won a VMA.

And even though Mago World has plenty to be angry about between Trump's debate performance and the spate of pet napping and

cat-eating in Springfield, they've still saved some outrage for the world's biggest pop star. Let's listen. We admire Taylor Swift's music, but I don't think most Americans, whether they like her music or fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans. I was not a Taylor Swift fan, and she'll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace. But the other thing about all this is what makes you think

that the way you think should influence other people. You sing for a living. Just deal with that. - I'm allowed to criticize Taylor Swift and I don't give a shit who gets upset. This is disgusting. F you, Taylor Swift. - Megyn Kelly. Megyn Kelly is going through something.

She is, yeah. Ever since she's gotten, even the last couple of months, it's just gotten steadily weirder and more extreme. She's so angry. She thinks it's disgusting because Taylor in her post said she's particularly happy that Kamala chose Tim Walz. And she said that Tim Walz in Minnesota has stood up for LGBT people. And he was the head of the Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school, right? All those stories. But she takes it as like,

I don't know. She went down this whole conspiracy with Tim Walls and it's like, who knows? What do you think about all this? I continue to think that going hard negative on the most popular recording artist in the world is not a good strategy.

No, it is not a good strategy. It makes you look fucking ridiculous, which first point to J.D. Vance is I know he went to Yale Law, but he is adult. If only we say who's going to listen to a billionaire disconnect. The Harris campaign should put that in an ad and then put a picture of Donald Trump after he says the line there. There's a billionaire celebrity made J.D. Vance abandoned everything he stood for. Yeah.

But the reason like Judge Jeanine Pirro and Megyn Kelly are doing this is because they're not trying to win an election. They are trying to get engagement and talking about Taylor Swift, being angry about Taylor Swift, loving Taylor Swift.

will get people on the internet to pay attention to you. And that's what that was. There's that real anger. Like she is a naturally angry human being. I believe that. But Megyn Kelly did that little performance so that we would talk about her. She'd go viral, more people would pay attention to her. Remember that she was once on a network television show and now she does whatever she does. It's just the whole people. They're ridiculous. They're ridiculous group of people. It's a crazy thing to be bad about.

Also Donald Trump saying she's, I think she's going to pay a price in the marketplace. We'll see pal. We'll see. And then like Elon Musk's weird, creepy tweet about it. Oh, I didn't even see this. Oh my God. Hold on. Hold on. Pull it up right here. Let's see this live. Pull it up. I'm going to pull it up. We can cut out some of the space here. Here we go. Okay. So Elon Musk tweeted fine. Taylor, you win. I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.

yeah yeah i mean they are just so the weird thing the weird thing is really it's you know what if you like even if you were for some reason haven't followed elon musk's trip down the rabbit hole over the last several years like you see him talking about like i will give you a child taylor swift what the fuck is wrong with this person weird you're right weird weird megan kelly saying fuck you taylor what is going on with these people like how dare down how dare someone

How dare a celebrity get involved in politics? Well, I don't know. Why would that be so offensive? I can imagine why these Republicans are so offended by it.

Unbelievable. Anyway, what a great week. Great. Great. It's going to be tough weeks ahead. It's a close race. Who knows what's going to happen right now? We're having a good time. That debate was great. Watching Donald Trump meltdown is great. Watching the Megyn Kelly meltdown about Taylor Swift is great. It's all great. I mean, it's fantastic. All right. You know what would be even better? If you went to votesaveamerica.com and signed up, be

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you know, take it a step further, grab some friends, have them register, share Pod Save America with some of these friends who might not be listening, get them to start listening, and then maybe they'll also sign up for VSA and help with the election. We need everyone to work hard, not just be happy about what a great week we had. Go to VSA now, votesaveamerica.com slash 2024. This message has been paid for by Votes Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com, and this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

That is our show for today. Everyone have a great weekend. We will be back in your feeds on Tuesday morning with a brand new episode. Bye, everyone.

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Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

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