Full team analysis of the first 2024 presidential debate
01:58:01 Share

MSNBC Live Democracy 2024, Saturday, September 7th in Brooklyn, New York. Join your favorite MSNBC hosts at our premier live audience event. Visit msnbc.com slash democracy 2024 to buy your tickets today. And that is the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle at a very unusual time with very unusual format. And I think with probably strange results, uh,

I mean, we'll see the response from both sides. But if you're the Biden campaign, I think you wish that this right this night will be remembered in reverse as the president became sort of stronger, including his literally his voice, the strength of his voice over the course of the night, probably peaking towards the very, very end of the debate for the Trump campaign. I think it's fair to say it was the inverse. President Trump, just in terms of his coherence and integrity.

finishing a sentence and seeming to be in control of his own emotions, started off as strong as he was. The strongest point for him was at the very beginning of the debate. And then over the course of the night, he became less coherent and more visibly flustered.

I don't think either of these campaigns, either of these candidates is going to feel like this was a shining moment for them. But I think that first initial impression, Nicole, of President Biden walking out and his voice being very hard to hear. It's hard to tell what he was saying because his voice was so weak and his halting delivery in his first couple of answers has got to have put a shock, put a shock into the campaign, at least at the start before he started to get stronger. Yeah, I mean, I...

I was on the phones for some of it after that became clear. And there is a conversation happening inside Biden's circle and certainly a much more frank conversation happening inside the Democratic coalition. And I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight. And I think.

When you say conversations happening, what do you mean? I think people are talking. I think the conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him. I mean, he has a cold that came out. Our own Kelly O'Donnell reported that a few minutes in. But exactly what you articulated. Negative COVID test, but a cold. Right. So those things were, I mean, the reason reporters were reporting on the cold was because of what you articulated. I mean, the voice was very, very soft.

It wasn't the Joe Biden performance in the State of the Union. It wasn't seizing a moment to get on the offensive on immigration. It wasn't Joe Biden on the offensive on January 6th. It wasn't Joe Biden on the offensive on abortion. His two, you know, shining issues. It was exactly what Chris Hayes predicted. It was Trump moderating not just tonally, but intimately.

sounding less crazy as he lied as often as he breathed. The debate moderators did not fact check one thing, but they did give Joe Biden time to fact check. And he didn't do much of that either. It is not our job to tell people what to see in here. But I think what I heard from a Biden aide is we can't necessarily spin too much what people did see in here. Joy.

Joy. Yeah, I can relate to having a hold. I have a negative COVID test and a slight cold as well. So I understand not feeling well. And, you know, obviously, Joe Biden comes in with certain deficits. He has a stutter. You know, he is it is more difficult for him to communicate for that reason. So there's a lot to mitigate the way that he speaks and you can understand it. And we've observed him for a long time.

That said, I, too, was on the phone throughout much of the debate with Obama world people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, with campaign operatives. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic. The people who were texting with me were worried.

very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak. And, you know, I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. President Biden had one job tonight.

And it was one primary job. And yes, it was to litigate Donald Trump's, you know, criminality and all of those things. But he had to settle his own party. He needed to settle Democrats. Democrats, you know, they always talk about Democrats are bedwetters and Democrats are always panicking. Yes, Democrats are always panicking. They're always scared. Right. They're always thinking they're going to lose. Like Democrats are very pessimistic. This is just who they are. They're neurotic. Joe Biden's job was to reassure them tonight.

His job was to calm his party, to make them feel that, yes, I can do this. I have four more years in me. I have the ability and the stamina and the strength to do four more years. He did not do that. He did the opposite of that.

He made them more panicked. The people who were texting me were even more panicked. They actually expected it to be better than it was. And now they're in a, I won't say a full-fledged panic, but it's getting there. And are the people that you're talking to who are expressing these concerns, are these people who are involved in Democratic politics?

politics or are these liberals watching TV? These are not liberals watching TV. These are campaign people. These are people who are either Democratic operatives. These are people who were former, you know, sort of Obama World administration people. These are people who are in the business. So the civilians are also panicking. They're also texting me, but I was trying to kind of ignore the civilians and really talk to the campaign folks.

People are, they're worried and there is, you know, it's not a full drumbeat yet, but there is talk of, look, here's the thing. We know, I know a lot of politicians. I just happen to know a lot of them at a lot of levels. They all believe that they have a unique ability to run the race that they passionately want to run. And I know for a fact that Joe Biden passionately believes that he is the only person who can beat Donald Trump. And he has evidence of it because he did it before. He knows that he has certain demographic issues.

strengths that Donald Trump cannot counter. He is the real working class white guy that's actually Donald Trump's base. So he knows how to talk to them. He believes that he is the only person that can do it. The problem is after tonight, his party doesn't believe that. I want to hear from Lawrence and Chris as well. I first want to go to our colleague, Alex Wagner, who is on site in Atlanta. She has been watching the debate in the spin room. Alex, what's the reaction that you've been hearing there? No.

I'm not going to put a fine sheen on it or a spin on it, even though I'm in the spin room, Rachel. There has been a uniformly negative reaction to Biden's performance tonight. Surely, as you know, Joyce said, this was about...

revealing who Donald Trump was, but it was also Joe Biden battling a caricature of himself as an enfeebled person, an impression that Trump has been eager to convey to the country. And he did nothing to disabuse, I think, the country of the notion that he is very old and was lost frequently in that debate. I mean, on answers that should have been, to put it bluntly, a layup for him, whether it was abortion,

or the attack on abortion medication, his answers were rambling and incoherent. He turned a response on abortion into a mention of migrant killing. I mean, this is a person that clearly was overprepared and had a lot of different points that were sort of swimming around in his head. And as a result, it felt like the answers that were legible, if you will, were...

Not nearly delivered with the force and the clarity that they should have been. And I will say Donald Trump was in some ways the most Trumpy he has been lately, full of lies and misinformation. But it was almost an afterthought. I think that the press that I've spoken with and the sort of the focus in this room is just, you know, the Biden campaign wanted this debate. This was their idea. And this is what happened today.

as part of their strategy. It is confounding. We were told earlier this evening that the Biden spin team would be only making brief remarks in the room. I don't know whether that is indicative of a group of people who understood the weaknesses that their candidate had in advance of this debate, but you can surely understand the logic of that after the fact.

Alex, we've just had confirmation just while we have been speaking with you just this moment that in just a moment, we're going to have Vice President Kamala Harris joining us live. So that's going to happen here just within a matter of moments. Lawrence, I also want to get your response. I think one of the interesting things that Alex said there was that some of the poor workers,

coherence and poor answers from Donald Trump are being viewed as standard Trump and therefore not newsworthy, while the performance from President Biden is being viewed as newsworthy because it came in below expectations. Yeah. And in any sort of normal universe, you would think the candidate who during the presidential debate said, I didn't have sex with a porn star. Yeah.

was the loser of that debate. That would be the normal scorecard. So let's just remember that so far, the only thing we've been concentrating on here is optics, that thing we call optics, and in this case, also audio because of the aging voice of Joe Biden. But the question is that we don't know the answer to is,

Voters out there who went into this debate thinking they're for Biden or they're for Trump or thinking whatever they were thinking. What in this debate of substance that was true, if anything, is true?

moved their vote. So if you really wanted to look at it in terms of what is it supposed to be, it's supposed to be an illuminating forum in which you learn something about a candidate that you didn't know before that is true. Not that you learn a lie from the candidate. That's not what the objective is. But given that the optics is the way the game is played, what we don't yet know and we'll know in polling a week from now or so

is what was the effect of all of this? What was the effect of the guy who said, you know, I did not have sex with the porn star? What was the effect of the...

convicted criminal candidate pointing to the other candidate and calling him a criminal. What is the effect of all of that back and forth? And I think we're guessing about what the effect is of the realization that Joe Biden is actually as old as his birth certificate says he is. His voice is that old, too. But he's 10 years younger than Warren Buffett.

And both of them have a job that is essentially making decisions. And what was not shown to me in a way that was true in that debate is that Joe Biden has made bad decisions in the presidency. I don't see the set of bad decisions. And what was done in the Biden presidency was shushed.

certainly underdeveloped in a debate where you never heard the word infrastructure, for example. Like it was pretty underdeveloped as this went on. And that has a lot to do with the nature of the rules of these debates.

I think what you just put your finger on to me is sort of the whole issue around where we find ourselves. The job of the president is making decisions. The job of a presidential candidate is to communicate. It just is. That's the job. It's a communications job. It is talking to people and communicating them, persuading them, trying to get people who don't agree with you. And I think Joe Biden is a very good record on making decisions. And I think he's a very poor communicator right now. And that...

inability to communicate. I mean, I see this all the time. We will cover things on our show all the time. This big OPEC oil trade they did, you know, where they bought high, they bought oil very cheap and then they sold very high. They made all this money and kind of broke the back of OPEC. People say, I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. That's cool. Joe Biden should be the person communicating that.

Joe Biden is not good at communicating his own record. And in the context of a campaign right now, his job, number one, is communicating. So that, you know, and I don't disagree with you. I mean, I think you're right about the decision making. But I think the reason that there is all this, you know, anxiety and all this stuff is because ultimately, and particularly in the television age, a lot of the presidency is communicating, but particularly in the television age,

particularly when you're running for reelection, when it is the thing that is the most important thing. But there's another job of the press. And this is even pre the television era. There is a reason that FDR was never shown in his wheelchair. There's a reason that John F. Kennedy pretended to be a vigorous man when he was certainly not.

And Kennedy accelerated it. And I think Reagan super accelerated it because he was an actor and he was a Hollywood figure. And it's only gotten more intense until we got to President Obama, who like became popular partly because like rap artists were like taking his speeches and turning them into like hit music video. Like it's accelerated. But it was even true during the Roosevelt era. The president is an avatar for the American people. Right.

And the American people have a very high opinion of themselves. The American people think of themselves, this country invented the concept of the superhero for a reason. Because the American people think we're Captain America. They think we're strong, they think we're robust, and they want their president to look that way. If William Howard Taft had lived in an era where they saw pictures of the president, he wouldn't have been the president. Americans want the president to represent them in the world in a certain way that has vigor, that has strength,

Al Gore was a brilliant man, an excellent decision maker, made excellent decisions as vice president. Americans didn't care. They wanted the guy they thought was cooler. That's just real talk about Americans and about American voters. And so to your point, Joe Biden, yes, he's a you can look at his record and it is factually one of the best records of any modern president. It is a top 10 president's record.

But you can't become president again when America looks at you and that avatar to them looks broken. Well, let's not pretend this is a good thing. Right. Let's just remember that what's happened here is imagery.

has taken control of the way we see presidential campaigns. FDR could not possibly have survived a debate like this at any time. And he was arguably our best president, could not possibly have done it. He was in much worse physical shape in his last presidential campaign and was in effect much older because he turns out he was in the last year of his life in his last presidential campaign, which he won. But

We don't have a better government because we've turned to the most superficial components of politics to decide our candidates. If we did that in the 1940s, FDR would not have been president. And, you know, good luck with World War. Can I say one more very quick thing, which is just the John Fetterman debate in Pennsylvania, which I think is quite relevant after he had the stroke, he had the debate. It was.

He had a really hard time communicating. The man was recuperating from a stroke. There was a sense, people watching it being like, this is a disaster for the Fetterman campaign. That was universally the judgment of people and not wrongly. I mean, the man was dealing with speeches after a stroke.

polling turned out that people thought he did all right and he won that race. So again, just to like everyone to check themselves a little bit to your point, Lawrence, about like what people will say out there. Like, I don't know. I can just tell you what I read. The only thing I would add, though, is that the record of the decisions and I love what you said at the beginning, that a debate is such a false contest, right? Because the president is about being in a room surrounded by the smartest people. They'll come work for you making decisions.

The smartest people around Biden made the decision to do this. So I think there is a fair question about the performance and about the smartest people around Biden who thought this was a good idea. And who thought that putting him on the right, rather than just small things like that, why would you put him on the right? Because that meant for the camera, because Biden likes to look over at the moderators and to look away. Had he been on the left, he would have been facing Donald Trump. You meant he looked like he was looking off camera. He looked like he was looking off camera. Every decision they made.

exacerbated the problem. But now that there is this problem, what does the campaign do? Well, look, I... Let's ask Kamala Harris. When you work... Yeah. Let's ask Kamala Harris. We will in just a moment. She's not here yet. Thanks, though, Chris. When you... I'll tell you, I mean... You already said it. Tease ahead. I worked on it.

And it is the job of a campaign to take the hit, right? I mean, it is the job of the campaign to take the blame. And that is a better scenario than it being the candidate. Because, you know, I mean, you can't change the candidate, but you can. I mean, there were people talking tonight about how that process works. And that conversation is live and actionable.

at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Well, let's bring in somebody who has operated at the highest levels of the Democratic Party and still has many, many contacts there and has been talking to people for us so we can find out what's happening in those circles. MSNBC political analyst, President Obama's campaign manager in 2008, David Plouffe is with us. David, I know you have been talking

to some muckety-mucks in Democratic politics, including what we gingerly call the donor class. What was your personal David Plouffe take on what you saw tonight? And what are you hearing from the people you've been speaking with?

Well, I think consistent with your reaction, Rachel, and others on the panel, it's kind of a DEFCON one moment. I do think Lawrence and Chris give a very important caveat. Listen, I've been deeply involved in presidential campaign debates. Some went well, some didn't go well. The only thing that matters, and you won't really know for three or four days, is how the voters that will decide this election will react.

I would also add, I have deep suspicion that Donald Trump with swing voters bombed as well. And that's the tragedy, because I think Joe Biden, the biggest thing in this election is voters' concerns, and it's both swing voters and base voters with his age, and those are compounded tonight.

So what the campaign is going to do is try and run ads. Biden will go out tomorrow and the next day be aggressive. I mean, it wasn't just his craziness and his lies, although that was apparent in every question. Like Donald Trump wouldn't even answer questions about child care or the opioid crisis. You know, talk about someone who's consumed with himself, which is what the message the Biden campaign wanted to land. But the concern level is quite high. This is a race that it reminds me a little bit of 2012, but in reverse.

We had a small but significantly important lead in battleground states. We had a really bad first debate. Race tightened, but we're okay. Biden is behind narrowly right now. He's the one that has to change the equation here. And the biggest barrier...

that's keeping his ceiling too low is concerns about age. And I think that's the tragedy because I think Trump had so many openings that you could have just scissored him up on tonight. And Biden did have a couple of good moments, but I think at the end of the day, the overwhelming reaction, again, it doesn't matter quite frankly what people like us say.

It's what voters say. And if they were already concerned about Izzy Ufford and the way I think about it is sadly, this really pains me to say this. They're three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight. And I think that's going to be the thing that voters really wrestle with coming out of this. And David, in terms of people in Democratic politics and people who are have the kind of influence that donors have in Democratic politics, which is there's a there's a Ph.D. thesis to be done right there, even in the premise of this question.

What kind of reactions are you hearing in terms of what they what changes they want to see? What sort of what sort of reaction they want to see from from Team Biden in response to what happened tonight? Well, Rachel, I mean, there's really only two scenarios. One, which is not going to happen, would be Joe Biden decides to step down. And we have a fascinating seven week campaign to get the support of delegates in Chicago. The only other option is somehow.

to right the ship here. Now, I think, I'm not sure whether Trump will debate again. It's fascinating. He may think this won't wallow for him. He wants another one. You could certainly see him saying, I'm done. I'm not going to do this again. So, that is a huge question mark because Biden needs that next debate now. But,

All you can do if you're a Democrat is ask yourself what I can do, which is, yeah, we missed an opportunity here tonight, a significant opportunity, but it's still a close race and you're running against Donald Trump. And again, I think this will come out. But, you know, I've talked to people who are doing dial groups and focus groups with folk with swing voters and as much as they were concerned about Biden's performance and they were.

You know, they weren't no one was saying, I really excited about Donald Trump coming back to the presidency. He reconfirmed all the reasons they voted against him in 2020. And again, I look at that as a huge missed opportunity because he really provided a lot of openings, I think, for Biden or any candidate to really exacerbate that. So I think Democrats will spend 24, 48, 72 hours voting.

you know, in some state of crisis. But then we have to find a way forward. But, you know, this was obviously a significant moment. It's the most important 90 minutes of the campaign and therefore is a missed opportunity.

David Plouffe, thank you. I know you're going to be continuing to talk to people in Democratic politics over the course of the night. We'll bring you back as you learn more. We appreciate it. It is 11 p.m. on the East Coast right now. It's 8 p.m. on the West Coast. If you are watching continuing live and you are watching continuing live coverage here on MSNBC of tonight's presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. We said it would be a debate unlike any other. It certainly was that.

In this first ever TV debate between a sitting president and a former president, the sitting president, Joe Biden, came out of the gate with an unexpectedly weak voice, a voice that at times made what he was saying hard to discern.

The campaign said it was the result of a cold, but he did seem to sort of falter several times early on in terms of trying to speak in a way that could be heard and in terms of trying to speak to time as those red lights, flashing red lights and solid red lights came on to stop him. As the rules of the debate indicated, two minute and one minute time.

Two minute and one minute segments. This is actually a live shot that we've got right here. President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.

Walking out on stage. This is at a watch party in Atlanta. You might have noticed at the very, very end of the debate, as soon as the moderators said goodnight, boom, we lost the shot. And so we didn't get to see President Biden's wife, the first lady or anybody else walking out on stage. We didn't get to see what the candidates did after. They have now left the venue and have gone to this watch party event. President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden speaking to the room.

I can't thank you all enough for staying and for being here and for all your support. Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts. Ask the crowd, what did Trump do? Yes.

So, Joe, I'm going to hand it over to you because we have such a great group of supporters here. So thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You've been here the whole time. I see it. I see that.

Look, folks, you know, I shouldn't say this, but my brother always uses lines from movies. There was a famous movie by John Wayne, and he's working for the northern military, trying to get the Apaches back in the reservation. They were lying like hell to him, and they're all sitting on a bluff. And John Wayne was sitting with two Indian Apaches.

And one of them looked at John Wayne and said, these guys are nothing but lying dog-faced pony soldiers. Except he's just a liar. Look, folks, what's going to happen over the next couple of days is they're going to be out there fact-checking all the things he said. I can't think of one thing he said that was true. I'm not being facetious. But look, we're going to beat this guy. We need to beat this guy.

And I need you in order to beat him. You're the people I'm running for. He says he's going to be the retribution for his supporters. You are the reason why America is as good as we are. We're the finest nation in the whole damn world. Nobody's close. Let's keep going. See you at the next one. God love you all. Heading to North Carolina.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to go home with you. Thank you. President Biden. This is a live shot in Atlanta tonight. This is at a watch party in Atlanta. I'm getting the microphone back to pretty Tammy, the DJ. Yes, it does. And Beyonce kicks in.

And the president is dancing. This is just been an, I mean, you heard his voice and his energy there and his cadence there a world away from what you just heard on the debate stage. Yeah.

That that Joe Biden would have would have killed in that debate. But the Joe Biden that we saw on the debate stage was about 90 percent more soft spoken than that. And in a monotone when he went when you could discern him.

I will say President Biden, my opinion, very much seemed to warm up through the 90 minutes of the debate and clearly beyond where we saw him right there. He was vintage Joe Biden. His opponent, former President Donald Trump, you saw President Biden there criticizing him as having lied in every answer. I think I would describe President Biden's president, former President Trump's

Excuse me, as having been very confident and sort of coherent, meaning that he was speaking in sentences and saying things that could be understood, whether or not you agreed with them at the beginning of the debate. And over the course of the debate, he became overconfident.

Much more aggressive, much less coherent, and repeatedly failed to answer questions posed by the moderators, which people debating always do. But it became embarrassing when they would reiterate the question and reiterate the question and reiterate the question. And he would go back to.

in many cases, points from earlier in the debate where he had come off very badly or on points that where he had lost, for example, calling members of the military who'd given their lives in service to the country suckers and losers. It was Donald Trump who brought that up over and over again over the course of the debate, which probably not only was not smart, but confusing. Of course, as we've been saying, the only question that matters is how did it affect, if at all, voters who tuned in and are not?

Still trying to make a decision. I'm glad... Chris Hayes, yes? I didn't want to cut you off, but I just wanted to jump off on what you said about the Trump line of this. Because I do think, like... David Plouffe makes a good point. Trump is sort of priced in. We all know what he sounds like, and he sounded like Trump. And he got Trumpier as the evening went on. He was relatively sort of modulated and concise and succinct in the beginning, and then he got way, way Trumpier. And to Plouffe's point also, like...

It is a really important thing to remember because there's this sort of aura around Donald Trump's mystical political appeal that he is unlikable and repellent to voters. And that shtick, which is the kind of sledgehammer, petulant, self-aggrandizing, self-obsessed. Self-obsessed. You asked me about fentanyl. Let me tell you something about something about me. You asked me about child care. Let me tell you something about me.

That voters don't like that. There is a reason that he lost the popular vote the first time that he ran for president. It's Hillary Clinton that he lost the second time he ran by a much larger margin and lost the Electoral College. And it was very much a reminder of that. And I think that that reminder grew to your point.

more and more acute over the course of the evening, the more kind of he kept kind of crawling up into his own previous references as the night went on. And it is self-referential people incessantly do. And yeah, and it is so easy to sort of be mired in the Biden of it. And I think a lot because, you know, my phone is mired in the Biden of it. But it's right. It's you cannot leave out of this. Number one, I thought the it

egregious lack of fact checking. And I know it isn't the moderator's job to debate Donald Trump, but he was allowed to say a series of lies that I know on our programs, we're going to be playing a lot of it with a slew of fact checks. I mean, he literally denied the words he literally said on camera in Charlottesville. Like we heard him say, it's not like we didn't hallucinate that he did that. And he said, well, that's a lie. He said, Nancy Pelosi took full responsibility for everything that happened.

on January 6th and that there's a documentary video. He pointed us to where we can get the fact check by saying that, oh yeah, her daughter made a documentary. I think she makes a documentary. That's where she said it was her fault. Oh no, we're just going to pull the documentary, man. Like he,

We've seen the footage. It's Nancy Pelosi desperately trying to get somebody to come to defend the Capitol because Trump won't. Because Trump sicked his mob of supporters on the Capitol. They came to the Capitol with weapons and zip ties. And Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and other members of Congress were trying to get forces to come to the Capitol to defend it, despite the fact that Trump wasn't bringing them in. And I'm going to give

Biden one line he did get when he said he had the morals of an alley cat. Now, that was an old guy move that I actually could respect. Like, that was like a thing that only an old guy would say. You have the morals of an alley cat. He did get one good line, and so I'm going to give Biden that credit for that. The other thing

I mean, I think the conversation will quickly move to what happens now, because not a single one of us knows how the voters experience this. It was like covering the trial. Nobody had any idea how the jurors were experiencing anything. And so, you know, we could we could live or die by Pecker's description of the collision. Right. But we had no idea what a single juror thought of it.

until the verdict. We have no idea what the voters think. We'll start to see some polls. But an unpopular incumbent based on Kornacki's chart has a single mission when they're running for re-election, and it's to make the election a choice and or a referendum on the other guy. If the Biden

campaign can launch a brutal and true and deserving attack on Donald Trump by the time the sun comes up, this washes out more quickly. It doesn't erase the fact that there are conversations going on at the highest levels of Democratic supporters and people close to this president who don't just like him but love him.

who think that they should seriously explore him getting out of the race and putting someone up at the convention. That is also happening. But the campaign can do itself a lot of good by making a salient and powerful, by having a powerful endorsement, someone that saw Donald Trump up close in the morning. And that will go a long way towards washing this out of the cycle.

So this is the way the voters are going into the Fourth of July weekend with with whatever they've divined with that. And remember, most voters were completely unaffected by this because their minds are made up and unchangeable by this debate in any way.

But when we come back from the 4th of July weekend, the next thing, the next thing on the campaign calendar is one of those candidates who was out there tonight is going to be sentenced by a judge on July 11th, sentenced for 34 felonies.

And we don't know how big a day that's going to be in the campaign in terms of what are the polls look like a week after that. So there are events coming up here that are uncontrollable, like the sentencing of Donald Trump. It's not going to be a good day. He might get a fundraising bump out of it in that perverse way that they do. But that's not going to help him with any of the voters who he needs to get to win, who he doesn't yet have, who he needs to get to win.

The issue that you're talking about, Nicole, in terms of whether or not President Biden's position on the ticket is safe. David Plouffe saying, of course, that's not going to happen. Like that's a that's a fantasy saying that's you know, you either need to right the ship or do the thing that's not going to happen, which is to replace him on the ticket. I mean, I I don't think that's an option.

The fact that people are talking about it, if it's not an option, only seeks to further weaken the perception, weaken the standing of President Biden. The question is whether you're hearing that it is an option, that there is some viable means of doing it. I mean, I spoke to an election lawyer. It is legal. And the way it happens is Joe Biden releases his delegates ahead of the convention. And you can't do it on the first vote. But I think on the second vote, they can go somewhere else. So it is legal.

It is possible. And I think when people say it won't happen, it's because they think Joe Biden would never do it for the reasons Joy already articulated. He's the only person who beat Trump. And he believes and he has some reason to believe this, that he's the only one who can. And to give to to amplify that, someone actually sent me the rules. And so the rules are certain.

And so people are and so and this is again, this is not a saying that this is going to happen. No one is saying it's going to happen. It's very unlikely. But just to note that the Republican convention has one hundred and ten unbound delegates. The Democratic Party has seven hundred and seventy one unbound delegates.

Now, that does not mean that those unbound delegates will do anything. It takes there are 3000 delegates that happened on the first ballot. It takes nineteen hundred and fifty one delegates to win. I'm sorry. Nineteen hundred and seventy six delegates to win. It's all in numbers. I mean, yeah, but doing the doing the math of it only matters if it's going to happen. If it's going to happen. So the question is whether it's going to happen. And I think that David Plouffe's take on that is probably correct. And I think that Joe Biden's take on that is correct. Yeah.

My colleague Alex Wagner is standing by right now with California Governor Biden surrogate Gavin Newsom. Alex, I cannot wait for this conversation. Well, neither can I. You guys can't see it, but there's there like all of Trump's shortlist VP nominees are walking around on the ground. Nobody wants to talk to them. It was like human piranhas descending on the governor after the end of this conversation.

debate. Governor, let me just, I mean, what was your reaction to what we saw on screen? Well, I thought on the substance, he won the debate. I'm old school. I'm old fashioned. That's what matters to me. I thought the lies, I was taking notes about all the lies. I ran out of paper. Donald Trump, no accountability on those lies, talking down the American economy, talking down our democracy.

That was alarming. This is a world we're living in now, Donald Trump created, where 13-year-olds have to deliver the child of the person that impregnated them. This is a world that Donald Trump has created. And so for me,

It was daylight and darkness. And I'm very proud of the president's record, and I'm very proud for his vision of the future. I mean, let's talk about the substance, though, because I feel like on the signature issue that Democrats have, which is abortion, the president's response was garbled and undirected at best. Do you feel like he did what he needed to do on an issue that could motivate voters in the polls? I think it's—

significantly insignificant because it's de minimis because the American people have made up their mind. They don't support the policies of Donald Trump. They certainly don't support his policies or his assertion. Somehow, the American people always wanted this to be states' rights, which was laughable and absurd. So from that perspective, I don't think that will matter. You saw it in all the elections since Dobbs where Democrats are overperforming, overperforming. We keep winning and we have to keep our mind. So I think for all of us,

worry less and do more. We have the opportunity to turn the page. We have the opportunity to put our heads down. We have the opportunity to universally have the back of this president who's had our back. You don't turn your back. You go home with the one that brought you to the dance. 100% all in. And I was very, very proud that he was able to articulate the work that he has done.

and lay a foundation of understanding of the lies and the deceit that continue to come out of Donald Trump's mouth. You were out there getting a chorus of questions about whether Biden should step down. There is panic that has set in. Well, there is panic that has set in among people who have watched this debate, who are Democrats, people who are strategists, and some even inside Democratic campaigns. Do you think it's unfounded? Well, I think it's unhelpful.

And I think it's unnecessary. We've got to go in and got to keep our heads high. And as I say, we've got to have the back of this president. You don't turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?

It's been a master class, 15.6 million jobs. That's eight times more than the last three Republican presidents combined. The only thing the last three Republican presidents have in common is recessions. Democrats deliver. This president has delivered. We need to deliver for him at this moment. With all due respect, the more time we start having these conversations go down these rabbit holes, it's unhelpful to our democracy, our fate and future of this country, the

the world. They need us right now to step up. And that's exactly what I intend to do. Not to belabor the point, but I mean, this was a Biden campaign strategy. This was their idea to do this, this debate now. And I wonder what you think they got out of it. What was Biden's strongest moment from this debate in your mind? Well, again, back to the substance, he got stronger. He had more stamina over the debate. Was there one moment that you think sticks? It's difficult to assess. I need a little bit more

and time away from this in the context of trying to pick those moments. But look, the bottom line is this was an opportunity to sort of instill the essence of what this campaign's about. You're hearing the messaging from the campaign distilled down what that key message is. Turn the page. Go to North Carolina tomorrow. We'll get out there on the road. Surrogates need to step up. We need to step in to support this grassroots effort all across the United States. We need to raise money, and we need to understand what's at stake if we don't.

We need to understand what's at stake if we turn our back at this critical time. There's too much. If Biden and Trump are remembered for any particular line, to me, it seemed like it would be the line, I didn't have sex with a porn star, which is not something we've heard on a debate stage before. No. When you use the words, I didn't have sex with a porn star, you're not winning, you're losing.

at that point. Yes, I know. I know our friends in New York have questions for you. So if we could go back to New York City, Rachel. Hey, Governor Newsom, it's Rachel Maddow here. Thank you so much for taking time here. When you said worry less and do more.

Do what? What do you think that people who support President Biden, people in Democratic politics, people who are planning on voting for him, who are worried that he seemed older than they expected tonight, that he didn't seem to reassure people on stamina issues, as Joy was saying before, what should people do? Well, talk about what he has done and what he's done recently, what he's delivered in bipartisan, unprecedented legislation.

An infrastructure bill, the Chips and Science Act, the work that he's done across a spectrum of issues to deliver for the American people. And the vision he's laid out for the future and contrast that, not just lifting up those issues, but contrast that and drive that contrast of the dystopian vision that Donald Trump has to the future. It's a binary choice at the end of the day. And so we've got to drive that contrast even harder.

harder. And Trump didn't make that better tonight because he continued the lies and the grievances and the retribution and the language that no one has want to see moving forward. He's all about the past American reverse. He wants to bring us back to a pre 1960s world voting rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women's rights, access to abortion, access to contraception. That's what we need to talk about. That's what's on the ballot.

democracy, the fate and future of this country, for that matter, alliances around the world. We need to buck up and focus on what's at stake and not navel gaze and not look back. You look forward. It's always about tomorrow. Everything's about tomorrow. In terms of bucking up and not navel gazing and moving forward.

If you were to advise the campaign how to turbocharge, how to kick up into another level, I do think they're going to have to make up ground they didn't previously have to make up because of this debate performance. What can they do that they're not doing? Should they do the second debate in September? Should they change course in some of the ways that they are trying to communicate? I hear you making a very strong case for President Biden's record, but I don't know what they should do to make that case more strongly than they have been.

Well, I think you just double down on what we're doing. We're all we're all about to add to six states across this country. I'm just doing my small part. There's hundreds and hundreds of us that will be going out. We have a clear message, a clear contrast with Donald Trump and his performance tonight and is doubling down on lies and deceit.

We have the opportunity to build a grassroots, to get people to recognize what's at stake if we don't unify as a Democratic Party. And again, it's a choice. This is a choice election. And so, look, all I know what to do is wake up tomorrow and do more and do better and worry less. It's about action. It's about passion. It's about purpose. And it's about having the back of a president that's had our back.

Governor Newsom, it's Jen Psaki. I wanted to ask you, you've talked a lot about President Biden and his performance and his accomplishments. If you if voters out there could see one answer from Donald Trump tonight or one moment that stuck out to you where you thought people cannot elect this man, what would that be? I mean, what should people out there who have social media platforms who like President Biden be pushing out there? That was damaging and terrible from Donald Trump tonight. The way he talks about immigrants offends me.

I live in the most diverse state in the world's most diverse democracy. 27% of my state is foreign born. It's not a question of tolerating that. We celebrate it. It's a point of pride. We practice pluralism. The way he talks about immigrants, the way he talks down immigrants,

to the American people in terms of what makes this nation so great. And that's our capacity to live together and advance together across our differences. These are fundamental. It's not about one quick clip. It's about all of the things stacked together that represent not only what he said tonight, but what he said over his entire career. He doesn't have your back, period, full stop.

We must have the back of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, at this critical moment and focus on tomorrow, focus on the future, focus on the vision, a compelling vision that will ignite this country moving forward and talk about the stakes of falling short. Liberalism, illiberalism, daylight, darkness.

Governor, I am sensing a frustration with the format of this debate, the reduction, the reductivist nature of the debate, the sort of carnival like atmosphere of the debate and a desire to get back to the essence of the issues and the choice ahead for the American public. Having said that, there is another debate scheduled. Do you think that Joe Biden should participate? Absolutely. I mean, we've all had those nights.

All of us, not one person watching hasn't had those nights. Well, we've not all been in. But it's not about debates. You have good moments. You have bad moments. You wake up the next day, you dust it off and you move forward. It's all about resiliency. That's what the American people are about. That's what the American economy is about. That's what Joe Biden's been about his entire life. I've seen this over and over this movie before. Oh, Joe Biden should pack it up in the primaries. He's got no chance after Iowa. He never gives up. He's never giving up.

fighting for us, fighting for democracy, our future, kids, our grandkids. So we've got to have his back in this respect. And yeah, I hope he does come back. And I hope he is back on the stage in another debate. Absolutely. Well, if he is, I'm sure we're going to want to talk to you after that one too. Governor, I know you have a busy day job.

Thank you for your time tonight. We really very, very deeply appreciate it. Great to be with you. Thanks. Back to you, Rachel. Alex Wagner with California Governor Gavin Newsom. Many thanks to you both. Jen Psaki has joined us here at the table. Jen, what was your reaction to the debate and what are you hearing from people you've been talking to over the course of the night? Well, I've been listening to what you all have been saying, and I don't think we should sugarcoat this. This was not the debate performance that the Biden campaign team wanted or needed from this debate. In part,

because they wanted to do this debate as early as they did to change this up, right? To bring the Joe Biden who is at the State of the Union to the debate stage. That's not the Joe Biden who showed up at the debate stage. You could see inklings of that or wrinkles of that or whatever you want to say at the

at the post-debate event, right? In the very last answer of the debate, when all of a sudden it was like, oh, he's warmed up. Yes. And as you said, Rachel, he did improve as the night went on. His voice improved. His answers improved. He had a couple of moments I thought his answer on calling out Trump's criminality was pretty good. He was a little garbly on abortion. If you're the campaign, you're going to push out the best moments, there were a couple, on social media. But it's not

the debate they wanted. I think the biggest challenge for them, and Nicole's been talking about this a little bit, and we've sat in similar chairs, is how distracting all of the chatter is going to be, which I'm getting, we're all getting on texts, on email, about whether he should be replaced. That chatter is happening. People are asking questions. I don't mean it's from the American public writ large, and we don't know how they feel, and we won't know for some time. And if you look at history, this may not impact them at all.

But the chatter is very distracting and it's going to be very consuming for the campaign. Should he be replaced? They're going to be answering that question instead of breaking through on attacking Trump. May I ask? I asked Joy a version of this, too. Is the chatter from the peanut gallery or is the chatter from deciders?

It is largely it depends on who deciders are. Right. Because the deciders are really the public. I have not heard that from campaign operatives, but I have heard it from members of Congress. I have heard it from people who have worked many Democratic campaigns who are working in interest groups, people along those lines.

What do we do now? Can he still be replaced? Right now, is that chatter the same chatter? I think Lawrence made this point earlier today, earlier this evening in two weeks when Trump is sentenced. And if Joe Biden goes out and has a strong couple of weeks, it may not be. But it is incumbent upon the campaign to now dig out of this hole. And that's not where you want to be coming out of a debate. I will also say I worked for President Obama.

in 2012 as his traveling press secretary when he absolutely bombed the first debate. He face-planted it completely in the first debate. And if he's watching, I'm sorry to say that, but it is a fact. And that prompted him. Anybody who's running for president is competitive. Joe Biden's a competitive person. Barack Obama's a competitive person. When their back is against the wall, maybe he will bring his best self forward. And we saw that in the post-event.

That's what they need to do. But the distraction and the chatter is is a headache for them. And what would you I mean, if you were like, you know, on the campaign now. Yeah. And you have all this chatter. You're hearing what we're all hearing in our text. What do you think in the next 24 to 48 hours would you do?

Well, I should you've seen aides do this and you saw Governor Newsom do this a tiny bit at the end. I mean, he said at the beginning he won the debate. I don't that's I don't think he's an excellent surrogate. But he's very one. But but he sort of at the end, people have bad nights. It was not a good night for Joe Biden. Right. I mean, he was great after he was good at the State of the Union. It wasn't a good debate performance. You acknowledge that you let people take a little air out of the balloon. You're not living in La La Land. It wasn't a great debate.

You have to have him out there and active and doing a lot of events and being very visible. Right. And I think Cole said this earlier. The best thing you can do as a communicator, if you're advising him, is change the subject. Right. Is there an announcement you can make? Is there a big surrogate? Is there a Republican who's a surprise? I mean, if Chris Christie is waiting in the wings to endorse tomorrow, tomorrow's the day.

So, you know, I don't know what they have up their sleeves, but that's what they need. I will also say, and I don't know the answer to this, so I'm posing it to you all. I don't know when the vice president agreed to come on MSNBC. I don't know if it was long before the debate, perhaps. If it wasn't, you don't send the vice president of the United States out if you won the debate, typically. So they are, I

I think starting to think about. We knew we were going to get the. OK, well, we thought at least we were going to get the vice president. I pose that. But I do think that you'll see her out there more. I think you should see him out there more. And they need people like Governor Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer and Wes Moore and all these people out on the airwaves. That's what they need on the vice president question, though.

Obviously, the most important role of the vice president is to be the understudy in the case of the worst for the president. And so speaking with we haven't spoken with Vice President Harris yet. She is due to be joining us soon. I mean, putting her out on debate night also makes people think about her replacing Joe Biden.

Well, that's interesting because I do think when people chatter about replacing him, they don't always mention Vice President Harris and they should. I mean, she's the vice president. She is first in line. But people think about a brokered convention, what that might look like. Right. And so I also think it's important for the campaign and for the Biden team to show that she is absolutely with him and has his back and believes he has what it takes to be president. So that outweighs that.

the notion of she could replace him, I think, in there and how you weigh in on a campaign. Jen, inside the campaign, who says what to the candidate about this debate? That's such a good question, Lawrence. And I know because you've done these meetings. It's like you never want to be the person. I will say I remember in 2012 when President Obama bombed that debate that he wasn't aware he bombed the debate. Right. And they never are.

They never are. They're in the moment. Wait, he did not know that he bombed out against Romney? He did not know he bombed out against Romney. Wow. He David Plouffe, who was just on the air earlier, and David Axelrod, two of the closest advisers, were the ones who went and told him he bombed the debate. He didn't watch it for a couple of days. And then he knew I did not do well in the debate.

He gave one of the best and I was traveling with him all the time. He gave one of the best performances at a rally the next day in Colorado that he gave the entire year because, again, they're competitive people. I would say in this moment, it is probably a combination of Mike Donilon and.

Steve Ruschetti, perhaps Ron Klain, of course, who are conveying directly to him how that debate performance went and where it goes from here. The doing the debate this early was a campaign idea or was it his idea?

likely a campaign idea that he would have to have signed off on. I got to say, I am not convinced, and I know you're going to disagree with me on this, but I am not convinced that it was a bad idea to do the debate this early because part of the calculus there is let's not look like we're afraid to debate. Sure. And let's debate really early so if it goes really badly, a lot more water will be under the bridge by the time anybody has to make any sort of decision based on this. I mean, having this debate

in June is way better than having this debate in October. Oh, no. And I agree with you. I actually I thought it was a good idea from the standpoint of the biggest question that Biden faced from his own supporters, people who were with him but want to feel confident is the stamina question. So I think doing it, especially doing it in the summer, it's got like a pre, you know, July 4th kind of timing vibe. It made logical sense. The problem is they didn't deliver. I mean,

I think had he delivered and actually delivered a vigorous, even just a decent deliver, you know, sort of performance, I think this would have been a very smart idea. But I think some of the decisions around it, I think putting him on the right, I still will maintain. I know it seems like a small thing I think was the wrong decision. If you had the first coin flip, you should have put him on the left. So he would look like he was looking at Trump instead of looking out, you know, into the distance.

Or told him to just look the other direction. I mean, they knew where the cameras were. And they knew where the cameras were supposed to be. And again, Donald Trump is a television performer. He is not a president. He didn't age when he was president because he wasn't president. He was on the golf course the whole time. But he knows TV. He knows where the red light is. He knows where the camera is. He knows how to perform. So going against him, you needed to, you know, better optics for your better staffing. Well, let's bring in some very important figures.

New voices to this conversation, people who are the people we've been talking about in the abstract all night, voters. Joining us now from Phoenix, where he watched the debate with four voters, is NBC News correspondent Gaddy Schwartz. Gaddy.

Fascinating stuff at the top of your hour, because this is my panel right here. We are in the backyard in Maricopa County here in Arizona. And after we were done watching the debate, you're over here. The TVs are over here. They don't have IFBs in. And so as you all were talking about the possibility of somebody else other than Biden running on the Democratic ticket or possibly an open convention,

We'll be right back.

I want to get your all your your perspective and whether or not it changed. But when we came, when we set this up, we were talking about double haters, the people that don't like either candidate. How would you describe both candidates after tonight, starting with you? Oh, so Trump, he didn't really answer anything.

He just kept rebuttaling what Biden said or bringing up something that has nothing to do with the question. Biden, he was trying to answer the questions, but he also was trying to rebuttal Trump as well when he was, you know, coming at him about things that have nothing to do with the question, like, you know, golfing or things like that. I saw you get pretty heated when they started. Why are you talking about golfing? This is a political debate about presidency and how.

are you going to be in the office? How is it going to be? And are you talking about golfing right now? And who has the better swing? Yeah, that's when I wanted to tune out when I saw that. I was just like, wow. These guys. And Jeff, you're not a Democrat and yet you're talking about who else can the Democrats run right now. Tell me a little bit about your thinking there. So, I think what we just witnessed was the feeling I had inside was Trump, hell no. He lied through the whole thing.

And Biden is like, oh, no, he is really in a bad shape. And can he can he even run in the rest of the election or take the White House again? I just don't see how that would work. So, yeah, maybe an open convention is an open convention. The Democrats in Europe. I mean, you're a McCain Republican here in Arizona. Could you vote for Biden?

somebody else that runs on the Democratic ticket? If they're not liars and cheats, yeah, it's a tough choice, and I think you said it best. But yeah, I mean, Trump is an absolute no. He's a liar and a thief and a rapist and all those other things. It's just not acceptable. That's the way I was brought up. You don't lie, and you take accountability for yourself. At least Biden's that way. He seems like an honorable and honest guy, but I don't think he's got the...

And I mean, Denise, you just made an observation when Biden popped up. Can you share with us your observation there? Well, it was interesting because before we started, we had talked about who's going to show up today, you know, which Biden is going to show up, which Trump is going to show up. Is it going to be a circus? Is it going to be, you know, that kind of a show? And I feel like when Trump was speaking yesterday,

You know, he's got that orange skin and he had that silly smile and he moves his hands like this. And I want to put a set of tambourines in between like the wind up monkey because he pats himself on the back so much. And here's Biden, unfortunately, poor thing, who he would talk. And it was like the puppet master was like, oh, here I am. And I'm like, and I'm going to go do this. And then I'm over. And he would his head was down. He his eyes were glazed. It was like he was on and he was off.

And I think both parties should really think about an open convention. Nicole, did you, I mean, how do you categorize this choice? I mean, it's like selfish choice, but reverse. I don't want to make either choice because they're...

I was not surprised by their performance at all. Trump acted like Trump. Biden acted like Biden. And that's why I'm frustrated with where we are today. You're all talking about open conventions. I don't think any of you are Democrats, a card carrying Democrats. There are third party candidates. How do you all feel about RFK, RFK Jr.?

Anybody? I don't think he's got the mental acuity needed for that either. No comment. I have no comment on him because I haven't really looked over his plan or what he plans to do or heard too much about him. I saw the petition around trying to get him on ballot, but that's about it. And Denise? I don't think he's fit for this for this job of president. I think he did a fine job.

On the state level, I think he's good at doing other things, but he's just not good enough for president. How about you, Nicole? I mean, I look at who we have right now, and there's just lacking in leadership, both of them poor leadership. So for me to consider somebody else, that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at leadership characteristics. Now, there is something that we've been talking about, and I've been kind of reluctant on bringing it up because I don't want you to get all kinds of hate from people. But it's the idea of like...

I don't like any of these candidates, so I may not vote, but I'm scared of people saying, no, you have to vote. And that seems to be a real concern. Are you guys comfortable chatting about that? I mean, like, starting with you, Nicole, is there a possibility that you just don't vote? Right now, absolutely. I mean, I was...

back in 2016, it was all that chatter of, you know, it's your, it's your American right and your, it's your due diligence. And if you don't vote, then you're voting for the other person. And all of this, that really had my husband and I prayerfully considering like, who do we vote for?

And with the two choices we have now, we don't. We don't vote for them. And I can feel more confident not voting for either of them than I can trying to do. I did the lesser of two evils last time and January 6th happened. I cannot and will not do it again. Actually, when we were watching the debate, every time January 6th came up, I saw you all lean forward. When they started talking about January 6th tonight, what went through your minds, starting with you?

Stop saying that it's Nancy Pelosi's fault. Start taking former President Trump needs to take accountability for his part in this as well. He I just can't even I don't even want to go there because it's just just riles me so much that our country and our public buildings were just so defiled in that because he.

Keep saying that he his the election was stolen from him. It wasn't stolen. He was ousted from office. His four year job as contractor for the American people. He was fired and he needed to go and he did not go quietly. There was another moment where I was watching you very intently as you were all watching the debate. And I saw a lot of you lean forward when you start when he the question was about child care.

Right. You in particular. Yeah. And you kept leaning forward and then you just kept sitting back when you heard the questions. Well, the main thing that was bothering me the most was when Biden was speaking about it, he was just saying, oh, it's only affecting blacks and Hispanics, but it's affecting everybody because child care is just expensive in general. And then when.

It's time for Trump to answer the question. He didn't even answer it. He didn't answer the question at all. He just started talking about something else that had nothing to do with the question. And even the moderator had to bring him back like, hey, this is the question. So it's just like I don't like how they're not giving us any solutions. I thought the debate was for solutions like this is what I'm going to do when I get into office. It wasn't too much of that. Jeff, did you see or hear any solutions?

Well, I don't know that Trump has any policy policies in mind. And I know Biden does. But I don't think how is he going to execute those policies if he returns to office? It's just it's just.

Open convention. Open convention. And again, this is coming from non-Democrats talking about open convention. One of the other things that I thought was really important, you know, a lot of times when people are watching politics, they think everybody in the world is watching politics. Three of you said something I thought was fascinating. The truth is, how many here would have made it past three questions in this debate before turning the TV off?

One. Just Jeff. You three said that no. And what would... At what point, if you weren't watching and hanging out with us and we weren't, you know, supplying you with all that guacamole, like, at what point would you have turned it off? What part just turned you off completely? The whole finger pointing. Well, you did this and you did that and just...

I came to watch, to try to watch two relatively sane people talk about what they're going to do for the country. And we got two second graders having a slugfest on the playground. And with that, I will ask you, Denise, who did you vote for at the last election?

I will say in the last election, I voted for everyone who ran for an office except for president because I did not choose either candidate. I wrote myself. You wrote Denise in. I wrote Denise in. Denise in the right of the candidate. Denise for president. All right. With that, Rachel, I'll send it back to you. Well, that would make for a very interesting brokered convention at your breakfast bar there in Maricopa County. Denise, the only declared candidate. There you go. That would really give, I mean, she's the only one who's run a campaign. That would give her a leg up.

Thanks, you guys. That was fascinating. They're saying you've got to wake up. With voters in Phoenix tonight. Yeah, she's the one who's already started her campaign. That was I'm really, really glad that we did that because that absolutely distills what you in particular were saying, Lawrence. But a lot of this discussion, I mean,

The first voter who Gotti spoke with there said that it was insane that they were talking about golfing. Trump was not answering any questions. Biden at least tried to answer. The second voter said his answer was Trump. Hell no. Absolutely no way. This is a guy's a Republican. The guy's a Republican. Absolutely no way. He's a thief and a rapist. Hell no. But then his answer on Biden was, oh, no, he seems like he's in bad shape. He's an honorable person, but he seems like he's in bad shape.

Third person said Trump just lied constantly. She wanted to put symbols between his hands so they would look like a monkey doing the wind up monkey thing. Trump lying all the time. But about Biden, she said, poor thing.

describing him as being essentially inanimate. Hell no versus oh no might be the theme. Yeah. I mean, under the circumstances, that was as positive a Joe Biden focus group as you could have with those voters. There's probably because the ballot is going to be Trump versus Biden. Yeah. So there's probably three

Biden voters if they go to the polls and make that choice in what we just saw. And none of them registered. And there's one who might not vote, which is which is fine. That happens. And so there you see it. You know, that that Republican guy, you know, who is old enough to have at many times in his life voted unenthusiastically.

voted for what we used to call the lesser of two evils before we knew how evil it could be. And so if you give him, if that's his choice, he's going to go with Joe Biden no matter what Joe Biden's stamina level is in November, and he's just going to hope. And in the meantime, one of the educational programs of the campaign, one of the might be for him in particular,

Look at how much Joe Biden has achieved with a weak voice in his 80s. He can still do that. Maybe there's a campaign here to stress the importance of staff to actually admit that the president doesn't do it alone for a voter like that, you know, to to understand that this this this is a possible vote he can cast. But.

man, that was there was no one there saying that, OK, that's the absolute end of Biden for me. But I think the other thing is it does highlight the importance of Kamala Harris. I mean, there's a reason they put her on the ticket. She gives you the youth and the vitality and the vigor that people want. And I think that this is a reason to use her more and her out there more. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I've been talking to a couple of friends who have been seeing focus groups again. It's all anecdotal. That's why it's so interesting to hear. And

what I'm hearing is that the lot Trump is a liar is breaking through a bit. It's not that people are saying Joe Biden had an amazing debate, but people are saying Trump is a liar and that there's kind of it's split a little bit in these focus groups. And this is, again, just a couple of them. There are many focus groups happening across the country, but it is interesting. It's just a reminder, too, that we don't actually know how these things, how the debate will settle in with people. And that Trump did not help himself no matter.

what Biden did or didn't do, Trump did not help. You know, and we've had this concern about no fact checking in the debate.

But they're sitting there telling us that Donald Trump was lying. So they have enough experience to not need the fact checking. They know when he's lying. I don't think anybody in America needs to have it explained to them that Nancy Pelosi didn't cause January 6th. I think the other thing that we're going to learn in the coming days is just how smart voters are. I mean, and it's anecdotal, but it is the threat. Voters know a lot.

about both of these men already. If debates were the only thing that determined outcomes, neither of our bosses would have won. George Bush, I mean, I think he might quibble with losing all three. He definitely lost the first two to John Kerry. And he too had no idea that he'd lost. There is a thing with incumbent presidents sort of

And I don't think Joe Biden is actually like this, but there's just some chip in them where like, I have to debate this guy. And I think especially with Trump, like he incited an insurrection against the government he ostensibly led. I think the questions for the Biden campaign are how quickly can you get yourself back on offense tomorrow morning? How quickly can you change the topic and how

quickly can you sort of reassure the Democratic base and the Democratic donors? And how quickly can you grow your coalition, which has a lot of heat this week? You had Adam Kinzinger and Jeff Duncan delivering a message straight to the Republicans who are like their voter, their Maricopa, no way, no how with Donald Trump. How quickly can you get yourself back to the structural imperatives of your own reelection? Yeah, I mean, I would add two things to their to-do list.

One of them is if they rewatch that debate and if the president watches that debate, it's very clear that his strength was when he was not listing data and numbers and trying to remember numbers and then correcting himself and losing the thread. It was when he was passionately responding on veterans. It was when he was talking about January 6th. It was when he was responding as a human and not as a statistician, statistician, a record keeper, a record keeper, as he was in the first half.

The other thing that I think is going to be a challenge for them, and this is sort of the inside-outside game, right? It's voters, and we're talking about them, but it's also the Democratic operatives in the circle, is down-ballot candidates. Because down-ballot candidates, I'm here, you know, watch that debate, and they worry about him being at the top of the ticket. Yes.

And their political operation is going to have to do a lot of conference calls and calls and hand-holding tonight and tomorrow to reassure them as well. We've got much more to come tonight. In just a few minutes, we are going to be speaking live with Vice President Kamala Harris. We've got lots of questions for her. Stay with us. ♪♪♪

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. I have an obligation to find a way of telling this story that is fresh, that has angles that haven't been used in the course of the day, to bring my experience working in the Senate, working in journalism, to try to make sense of what has happened and help you make sense of what it means to you. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.

Today's news requires more facts, more context, and more analysis. The world's never been harder to understand. That's why it's never been more important to try. MSNBC. Understand more.

The crimes that you are still charged with, and think of all the civil penalties you have. How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, of having sex with a porn star on the night while your wife was pregnant? I mean, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat. Give me a minute, sir. I didn't have sex with a porn star.

indelible line from tonight's debate. Also, nodding along with all of the other things that he did. And then the only one that he's rebutting is I didn't have sex with a porn star. That is the one in which we have an extensive factual record spoken under oath in criminal court very recently, and the transcripts are available. And so that denial is

is not a very credible denial. And he's not denying any of the other things for which he has criminal and civil liability. And what we just saw there that's so important is you saw how long it takes to show that.

That's what local TV news needs from a presidential debate. They need little clips like that. That will probably be the clip that is played in more local TV coverage than anything else. Absolutely. Joining us now, I'm honored to say, is the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris. Madam Vice President, we're really honored to have some time with you tonight. Thank you so much for being with us. Of course. Good to be with you, Rachel, and everyone. Thank you.

So you have been hearing some of the response to the debate, the same response that we have been both issuing and also hearing ourselves. I think a lot of people who are fans and supporters of President Biden or who are who are Democrats or who are just worried about the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the presidency feel like this was not a strong performance tonight from President Biden. I want to hear your assessment and how you respond to those critics.

Well, it was a slow start. There's no question about that. But I thought it was a strong finish. And in particular because...

What we know is that when you look at the two sides of the ledger, what we had in Joe Biden is someone who wanted to have a debate based on facts, based on truth. And in Donald Trump, we had what we have come to expect, which is someone who is going to push lies and distract from the reality of the damage he has created and continues to create in our country. When I think about the significance of the substance of what is before us in November and 130 days—

We are looking at a president and Joe Biden who has done historic work, whether it be on addressing the infrastructure issue in America. Donald Trump, remember, kept talking every week was going to be an infrastructure week. It never happened. It was Joe Biden that made it happen so that over a trillion dollars is hitting the streets of America to upgrade roads and bridges.

You look at what Joe Biden has been able to accomplish in terms of delivering for the American people, whether it be the creation of 15 million new jobs, over 800000 manufacturing jobs, bringing manufacturing back to the United States. What we have done to cap the cost of insulin at thirty five dollars a month, finally taking on big pharma and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

These are the substantive issues that the American people care about. And what we saw tonight is more of the same. Joe Biden fighting for the American people, Donald Trump fighting for himself, not to mention on the issue of choice.

There was a very clear contrast. Joe Biden is very clear. When the bill comes before him to put back in law the protections of Roe v. Wade, he'll sign it. What we know about Donald Trump, no matter how much he's trying to distract us from this, is when he was president, he hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention they would undo the protections of Roe. That's exactly what they did.

And now we see in case after case, state after state, laws designed to punish health care providers in Texas, provide prison for life for doctors.

Women who are having miscarriages because and bleeding out. Excuse my language, but I'm just going to have to be explicit about the facts because of laws that are denying them emergency care because hospitals are afraid they're going to be criminalized for doing that. And all of these bans are Trump abortion bans. He's talking about how he wants to send this decision back to the states. What? And we know what those arguments are about.

Joe Biden has been very clear about where he stands and he is clear with the American people. He is clear in purpose. And I think that came across tonight in this debate.

You know, the issue of former President Trump lying came to the fore on this issue of choice and on this issue of abortion rights in a very pointed way. He kept asserting over and over again that if you are pro-abortion rights or if you want to codify Roe or if you are a critic of the decision to overturn Roe and have these abortion bans, then you are a murderer and that you want to kill infants and that what people who are pro-choice are are people who want to kill babies after they are born. And it's...

It's it's I sometimes say this is Earth 2. This is not a factually based thing at all. But he repeatedly reiterates that it's not the moderator's job, though, to fact check that it's essentially the other candidates job to fact check that. I wonder what your thought just strategically is in terms of countering a counter narrative and a lie about abortion rights. That's so obscene and yet so insistently repeated by their side and by their candidate.

Well, the facts are exactly what are on our side, to your point, Rachel. First of all, this—what they are talking about is they are attempting to, as they are wont to do, especially Donald Trump, create fear based on fiction.

for the sake of getting and hitting political points. What we know and what he is acutely aware of is what he has done and intended to do is not politically popular with a lot of people in both so-called red states and blue states. And so now you see him wavering. Let's not forget when he was president of the United States,

He said that if a national abortion ban was sent to his desk, he would sign it. He said that. As Maya Angelou told us a long time ago, when people tell you who they are, take them at their word. Believe them. We know that when Donald Trump comes in, if he has a Congress that passes a national abortion ban, he will sign it into law. One of the most fundamental issues of our time.

Fundamental. The idea that the government would take the ability of an individual to make decisions about their own body and replace their good judgment with that of the government. That's what's happened in our country. Three days ago, we just commemorated the two year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. And we're woman after woman who I have met, who I have traveled with, have faced extraordinary challenges.

experiences of miscarriage, of losing their ability to have children in the future because they did not receive the care they needed, because hospitals and healthcare providers were afraid they'd be put in jail for doing the job of caring for these women. So I think that what Donald Trump is doing is grasping for straws. And look, of the two people on that debate stage,

Only one of them has the endorsement of his vice president. And let's not forget that. Let's not forget that. Very awkward and very, very true. Vice President Kamala Harris, it's a privilege to have this time with you tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time, madam. Good to be with you guys. Take care, everybody. Thank you.

I have a lot more questions to ask her. I want to do a much longer interview with her. We only had a couple of minutes. She just became so much more important to this campaign than she was yesterday. What we just heard in her first response to you was more powerful, clearer, stronger than anything we heard from her running mate tonight. Yeah. She and her second response.

And so that was the kind of thing people were hoping for from President Biden on the stage tonight. She just delivered it. And the question becomes for the campaign starting tomorrow.

Obviously, Joe Biden needs this kind of support. He needs others to be out there more than any other presidential candidate maybe ever has. He needs others to be out there doing this campaign work. She's the one who can get the most attention as a campaign. How do you weave the vice president's

including her communication skills, which we just saw on blast right there. How do you weave those with the president in a way that doesn't upstage him and that doesn't make people want to replace him? You cannot anymore worry about that old idea of upstaging the president. You think that's over tonight? Historically, the most...

active use of vice presidential candidates has been as attackers, attackers of the other side. There are some examples. Harry Truman in 1944 was brought in literally for energy, literally to go out there. He was kind of an attacker,

but he was also this energy source that FDR just could not ever deliver as a campaigner. This is a situation where you're just going to have to give her the ball, let her do more of that. But let me just add one more thing. If we had said to her,

And I ask you a question. You have two minutes to respond. We're going to cut your mic. We're going to cut your mic at the end of the two minutes. That would be a lot stiffer. It would not be as fluid. It would not be as confident to be a lot more pressure. It changes that debate stage, changes everything about human communication. By the way, the, you know, quietly the Biden campaign has been using her that way. It's just, we, it's not covered as much, but, uh,

Vice President Harris has been all over this country. She is the primary voice they use on college campuses. She's been the voice they've been using really heavily in the black community. She's the one who they've been sending out because she is a voice that is younger, that is more approachable for younger audiences. So they're using her that way anyway. One of the big...

criticisms of the Biden White House is that they kind of hid her for two years and really didn't use her that much and really didn't allow her because of this whole issue of is she going to upstage President Biden. But I think the reality is her role, as Lawrence just said, it just went up so much higher. It's really important that they allow her to be herself because she is personable. She is a great communicator. And at this point, she is the vigor on the campaign. She's the vigor on the ticket. And she's the person who can reassure folks that, look,

President Biden is a great decision maker. He may not be the most energetic dude in the world, but he's got this lady who's also making decisions. They're making decisions together. She is the partner in the administration as he was to Barack Obama. Yeah, I mean, they also use her on abortion rights, but they use her. It's also about her choice on what she goes out there and does. And I think it took her some time in the first year or two to figure out.

what her space and role was, right? What it was going to be. And the best presidential and vice presidential partnerships publicly, I mean, in terms of what they do publicly, is where they have different strengths. Joe Biden is clearly not super comfortable talking about abortion rights beyond his strong defensive row. That is not where he, Chris is nodding here. I mean, I've just got the understatement of the century, but yes, continue. It's clearly, she is very

comfortable. He's very Catholic. And he's very Catholic. She is very comfortable. She's passionate. I mean, she almost got a tear to her eye, which, by the way, is how millions of women are feeling across the country. They should have her out on every morning show. I know it's midnight, so I'm sorry. But

But they should have her out on every morning show tomorrow. Yes. And I think early on, not because it was warranted, she was not confident in her own ability to do an interview like the one she just did or to go do a round of morning shows. She clearly can do it. She's a very strong communicator. And what her message on abortion rights, to Joy's point, is exactly what she's been doing around the country. It just hasn't been covered nationally. Can I just say that her office should have let us go 20 minutes with her? Yes, I agree with that. I mean, you only get what you get from the wife. But no.

Come on. It's emblematic, though. I have to say it is emblematic of the staffing is that she they'll give you 10 minutes with her when they should give you 30. They need to start really trusting Vice President Harris to cut her own path. Absolutely. She does very, very well. And the more you get over, the better it is. That's right. I do think that one of the things we've seen around the row second anniversary is her as the front person on abortion and doing more more events as well.

The other thing that happened early on, and I think this is key, is we've actually seen her favorability rate come up. And part of that has to do with, you know, there's this sort of cliche about like the vice president gets like the worst assignments. And I remember thinking about this with COVID where Trump was like, don't worry, Mike Pence is on it. Clearly.

You can see the wheels turning in his head. They're like, if he screws it up, it's on Pence. In the beginning, she was the person who was the border person. Basically, genuinely unsolvable problem. It is so complicated, so difficult. One person can't solve it.

Having her on abortion means that you're associating her with the issue that is the most 65-35 issue that the Democrats have. You have her talking about a thing that had people nodding their head because Americans agree on it. And I think we have seen it in her polling on her favorability readings, which have increased. So there's a sort of virtuous cycle happening here. She's talking about issues...

that are popular. She's getting out there more. It is having a positive effect. It's both of these. It's also what Lawrence was saying about the traditional role of the vice president is to take it to the opposition and to take apart the opposing candidate. Well, Democrats, two best issues right now are what's wrong with Donald Trump and abortion rights. And she's an expert at both of those things and very well placed as vice president to do them. But

may I just say to those of you who may be watching us from the White House right now, we would like to have more opportunity to speak with Vice President Harris and not have it be two question interviews. Even if my questions have a little multi-part thing going on, I'm very sorry. All right. Joining us now from the debate spin room in Atlanta is our beloved pal, former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, also an MSNBC political analyst. Claire, I'm dying to know what you thought about how things went tonight and what you've been hearing since.

Well, first, the easy part. Donald Trump is a liar, a flawed character, mean, a jerk, very unlikable. And that was obvious tonight. Now, the hard and heartbreaking part. I have been a surrogate for some presidential candidates in my time. I know what the job is after a debate of a surrogate. I've never wanted to be a surrogate more than I do right now, because when you're a surrogate,

You have to focus on the positives. But I have said very clearly and very plainly on this network and my job now is to be really honest. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight and he didn't do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight. Now, does that mean that my phone blowing up

with senators and campaign operatives and donors, big donors from all over the country? Does that mean that Joe Biden is not going to be the candidate? I don't know that. I think we'll know a lot more in a few weeks how this plays out, how the polling plays out. But I think a couple of things are going on right now. I think

I'm not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There's a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. And, you know, you have to ask, how did we get here? How did we get to the point that we're spending a whole lot of time talking about the vice president tonight instead of talking about the president? And I don't know how the rest of this story is written. I don't know if things can be done to fix this. They might.

And, you know, Trump is so terrible that this might heal itself. But based on what I'm hearing from a lot of people, and some of them are people that are in high elective offices in this country, and you might guess where they serve, there is a lot of more than hand-wringing tonight. I do think people feel like that we are confronting a crisis. Claire, I want to...

talk to you about this in very nuts and bolts terms. Given what you are describing, the kind of reaction that you're describing among people in the kinds of positions that you're describing, or at least alluding to, what can be done? What do you personally think should be done? Well, I think, listen, this could be a situation where everyone talks it out over the next few days. I do think that this is a time that

Ted Kaufman and Reschetti and Donlan and Ron Klain are going to have to have a heart-to-heart with the president about his ability to exude strength. And listen, nobody is a bigger fan of Kamala Harris than I am. And, you know, and Gavin Newsom did a remarkable job tonight as a surrogate.

And what he said, you know, it sounds like disagree with anything they're saying. But those two people are signaling to a whole lot of Americans that are paying attention. How come they're not running? How come the Democratic Party doesn't have them at the top of the ticket instead of using them to shore up?

what have become after tonight some pretty glaring weaknesses in our in our president. But I mean, specifically, though, I mean, given that we are one hundred and thirty days out and the Democratic convention is very, very, very late.

And President Biden has been confronted with these kinds of questions from the very beginning of this campaign, actually from before the beginning of this campaign. As soon as he was sworn in, people started talking to him about, say, you know, say now that you won't you won't you won't run again. And he's been firm that he's the guy. And if he's not going to jump, nobody's going to push him.

the type of crisis, in your words that you're describing, has to have a resolution. And if the resolution is not going to be that President Biden is going to leave the ticket, what else can be done? What else can be changed about the campaign? Are you saying the only solution is to take him off the ticket? No, I don't know, honestly, what the solution is tonight.

I know how this felt tonight. It felt like a gut punch to most people in this country who are paying close attention and know how dangerous Donald Trump is to all the values that we hold dear. And so I think it'll take a couple of days for people to recover from the gut punch. But there will be leaders that have the ability to talk to the president. I think the president's family would get involved if it actually got to that point. It may be that you can talk

repair this damage. Maybe he can come out and show more vigor and show the ability to really stay on track. But, you know, there were some moments tonight that all of us were holding our breath. And that's not the kind of thing you want to happen 130 days out from an election when you've got Donald Trump on the other side of the equation. Right. Right.

Senator Claire McCaskill, very good to have you with us tonight. Thank you, my friend. Keep talking to people. Keep letting us know what you're hearing from inside Democratic politics and those people in high elective office who will never ask you the name of. I much appreciate it. Our friend Steph Rule is back. Steph, I know you've been talking to people as well. I have been talking to current Democratic lawmakers, former lawmakers, but more than anything, donors. And they're really frustrated tonight. They're upset and not frustrated going, oh,

oh, Joe Biden didn't do a great job. Maybe I'm going with Donald Trump. Absolutely not. They're frustrated because they said Donald Trump gave us exactly what Donald Trump does. He showed up and he told fact check of a lie after lie. And we already knew

CNN wasn't going to fact check him. So they're especially angry with Joe Biden's team. They're very happy with all the policies Joe Biden has put forth and made happen over the last three and a half years, but that he and his team made a decision to put him in that position where Donald Trump got up there, told those lies, but it was about performance and he came across vibrant and strong. And President Biden at times was inaudible,

at times was inarticulate, didn't land a punch, didn't counterpunch, and sort of gave Donald Trump a free show. And so what we're hearing tonight out loud is what's been whispered in Democratic circles over the last year. Is he up for the job? Yesterday, I interviewed Wes Moore, who I will tell you at Aspen Ideas was asked over and over,

Is Joe Biden dropping out and would you step in? And he said he is not stepping out. I am not stepping in. But Wes Moore said what the president needs to do in the debate is show people the future. What he's going to inspire them for the next four years. He said he doesn't need to spar with Donald Trump. But the fact of the matter is he didn't win sparring with Donald Trump and he didn't inspire anyone for a vision for the future. And that's what's got the donors I spoke to tonight. Very frustrated. Can I make a very concrete point? Because

This has been I mean, he is the oldest president in American history and polling has shown age is a concern. Right. So we all know that there have been partly because of those objective facts and the neurotic hand wringing nature of the Democratic coalition. There has been all these conversations that have waxed and waned, depending on the moment, about Joe Biden and his status on the ticket. And here's what I keep telling people.

There are two ways for him not to be the nominee for the Democratic Party. Well, three ways. One, he could have not run to begin with. Two, someone could have challenged him and beat him and gotten more delegates and bested him in the primary. No one did that. Right. So you're down to one last way. And that is Joe Biden has to decide that he's not going to be the nominee unless you have a theory for how that comes to be.

We're just talking like fantasy football. Yeah, it's there is one way. And so it's a little like the old joke about economist on the desert island who needs to open the can of beans and says, assume a can opener. Everyone's assuming a can opener. Like there's one guy who makes the decision. If you can convince Joe Biden or whatever, I don't know. But absolutely.

Absent that, independent of that, there is no other mechanism. But that is the question, is whether or not he is persuadable on this. And it's OK for people who just wrote him, the guy who just asked all these donors for big fat checks for his campaign. It's OK for them tonight to say, Joe, you sure you up for this? Yes. No, I'm not saying anyone's wrong to do it. I'm just saying that when people talk about the

process by which it would happen. I just want people to be very clear that that is the one dispositive question that must be answered. There is no other mechanism in the real Earth One other than that, to be clear. Yes. And so therefore, that makes him the decider. But I do think that it's worth talking about the inputs that go into that decision and who are the people who are close to him who are going to be talking to him about this and what the cases that he makes, not just to the American people, but what the cases he makes in private to his closest advisers.

who are going to be making potentially the opposite argument to him after tonight. And not only that, but yes, there is one way that he would have to withdraw on his own. But the Democrats are already looking at a convention in Chicago that they would very much not like to be a 1968-style convention. They are potentially facing...

significant protest over Gaza. Let's just be honest. That is a likely thing because Donald Trump, I mean, Joe Biden's policies are likely not likely to change that much between now and then. And the death toll is likely to skyrocket between now and then. Then they're also facing these doubts about,

And there are already more than 700 uncommitted delegates going into that convention. They have not committed to Joe Biden. That is seven times more uncommitted delegates than Donald Trump has. And Donald Trump was not able to completely defeat Nikki Haley. And so they're going to go into that convention with, yes, Joe Biden is at this point, he's the nominee.

But there are all of these X factors that they do need to start thinking about to the point that Stephanie is making, because what if delegates one of the text that I got tonight was from a delegate. Right. Sure. Who said this is the substance of their text. We delegates may have to take matters into our own hands. There has to be an alternate candidate. It can't just be we want to not Joe Biden candidate. There has to be a person who embodies the other option. Yeah, you're right. And the obvious other person is.

the vice president. But there's a lot of question and doubt in people's minds whether this country would ever elect a black woman president or a woman, period, after the Hillary Clinton experience. So there isn't a logic thing happening right now. It's an emotional thing, but it's real. This is a live shot right now. Is this live right now? Can you tell me? This is a live shot right now. This is President Biden at a Waffle House in Atlanta. Smothered.

That's the right place to be after midnight. I was just going to say, A, always open. B, picture menus. And by the way, he doesn't have to do what Trump does, which is to clear the space, rent it out, and then bring in Ben Carson and other black Republicans from other states.

to come and hang out with him. He can actually just walk into a Waffle House like President Obama used to. That's the difference between being Joe Biden, who people understand is not super hostile to black people and to normal people and regular people and being Donald Trump. Can I just ask, do we have any audio here?

Thank you sweetheart, thank you. Mr. President, how do you think you performed tonight? I think we did well. Do you have any concerns that you should have talked out at your job, your voice, your performance tonight? Do you have any concerns about your performance? No, it's hard to debate a liar. New York Times pointed out he made a lie 26 times.

Big lies. You can't tell them. Have you suffered from a cold? Your campaign comes out, you're sick? I've had some people freeze me.

Great job! Great job! Great job! Louisiana. Like, probably Louisiana.

Oh, really? Oh, wow. Okay. She doing it? Okay. But she went to Tulane? She went to Tulane and I was joking. And my cousin, she went to Northeast and my cousin went to Southern. Oh, okay.

The Waffle House was crowded already when he got there, but this is obviously a tight fit for the president. You see the cameras now giving us a nice shot of the fluorescent lights there. That was live, which is why we're taking it to see if we could hear President Biden to see if he was answering any questions. He was asked if he had any questions.

about his performance at the debate tonight, and he said it's hard to debate a liar. I think hard to debate something hard to debate a liar. I will say inaudible and audible couldn't hear because the crowd then lied. It is hard to debate a liar, but he went into it knowing that's exactly what he was doing. I just wanted to note that Donald Trump also did an event in Atlanta, in Alpharetta. He phoned in to a barbershop.

So the yeah, the imported black surrogates came from Michigan and Florida. Byron Donald's and friends, you know, they're like a traveling roadshow of his black fans. They rented out a barbershop. There were like six of them sitting in barber chairs. And rather than just, you know, respect those voters enough to show up because they're like, you know, the six out of towners, he just phoned in. So he did.

So he did something also. Ari, I want to hear your take on how things went tonight. Well, it was nice to see the Waffle House. I think a lot of people could use some late night waffles. Look, Joe Biden lost the debate. And the larger question is whether he lost the room. And he may not have lost the room. People have lost debates before and come back.

And in the days and weeks ahead, if the party has its reaction and then moves forward, so be it. If, however, he lost the room and we were talking about this before and why debates matter. And this is an example of why debates matter. If he lost the room and those people who are part of the Democratic coalition and part of the so-called base were soft to begin with, this was their main concern. Is he up to it? And they now don't think he is. If he lost that part of the room and some of the general election room, then

then tonight may be one of the most pivotal moments in this campaign. We also know that the people closest to Joe Biden see him the most. They see him more than all of us in the various ways that we see him. So they had some idea that on his worst day, and maybe it was bad luck, but on his worst day, he might come across more like this than on his best day, like State of the Union. Knowing that these people who've been around politics a long time

barreled forward with this plan, which means they either thought the trajectory was bad enough that they were too close for comfort or losing, or they thought the age issue, the can you do the job issue, whatever you want to call it, both are elderly candidates, both are over the retirement age. Donald Trump has a ton of other problems we've discussed tonight and we'll discuss again. But they thought that that issue was holding Joe Biden back. So it seems we don't know what the future brings, but it seems likely.

bad for the for the Biden campaign, that those people knew that knew the risk went in and they went in and they got one of the more negative case outcomes of this. And now everyone's going to live through it. The last thing I'll say about the delegate piece is someone in the Democratic Party put it this way to me tonight. The only way Joe Biden would ever exit would be a decision that he makes. Of course.

As you mentioned, Rachel, there are inputs and pressures on that family, top aides, Barack Obama. You can muse on that and then you get out more to fantasy football. But there is not a mechanism within the party or under the rules or under state laws that use the Democratic Party's delegate system, which is mostly resolved in the states to force that. So so those people who brought him here because they thought this would help. I think it is.

that that strategy did not work tonight. There could be a future debate if they both do it. There's nothing sacrosanct about the current debate schedule. Biden could...

argue they should have even more debates and go around the country and play back and prove it back up if it was an unusually bad night. And they should also look at voters' response rather than the commentariat's response, too. I mean, we saw the voter focus group that we saw tonight with Gotti Schwartz in Phoenix was the most positive response that the Biden campaign has seen all night. And that was from real people and not folks like us. So we're going to take a quick

break. We've got much more still to come tonight as we continue to digest and analyze this first presidential debate of 2024. And as our stomach juices start preemptively thinking about digesting Waffle House, which we've all now been primed for, did they deliver here? Nope. Not with right here on MSNBC. We'll be right back.

Sunday on MSNBC. One night, two documentaries. At 9 p.m. Eastern, To Be Destroyed. The story of one community's fight against book banning. My book, along with four others, was pulled from the shelves. Followed by It's Okay, a short film about embracing differences in small-town America. Can I share some stories with you? It's okay.

Okay. To be different. Back-to-back documentaries, Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC. Today's news requires more facts, more context, and more analysis. The world's never been harder to understand. That's why it's never been more important to try. MSNBC. Understand more. ♪♪

There is no one scorecard for determining who won and who lost last night, but a consensus does seem to be emerging. Ross Perot, the star of the night, partly because no one knew what to expect. Bill Clinton, just good enough. And President Bush, he'll have to do much better.

It was October 1992, George H.W. Bush, Poppy Bush was president. He was running for re-election. And at the first presidential debate that year, he absolutely bombed. If that Tom Brokaw stand-up was not enough to convince you, check out the headline in the Boston Herald the next day. Bush strikes out. A snap poll taken after the debate found the percentage of voters who thought President Bush had won the debate was in the teens.

It was 18%. That first debate went very terribly for Poppy Bush, and indeed, he went on to lose his effort to be re-elected in 1992. But...

Look at the rest of the data here. The first debate also went terribly for Poppy Bush's son in 2004 when he was looking for a second term, running for reelection against John Kerry. Reviews of his first debate performance were just as brutal as the ones had been for his dad. Like this one from The Atlantic, quote, that was George Bush's worst performance in a debate by far ever. My mantra had been that neither Bush nor Kerry had ever lost a debate. That is no longer true.

George W. Bush's approval rating a week before that debate was as high as 54 percent. After his terrible performance in that first debate, it dropped seven points just from that one debate. But of course, he went on to win reelection anyway in 2004. Then there was what happened to President Obama in 2012. Again, looking for a second term, running for reelection up against his opponent, Mitt Romney.

The first debate that year, a disaster for the incumbent president. The headlines were unanimous. Obama snoozes and loses. Romney was hungry. Obama was flat. Mitt Romney comes out on top as Obama stumbles in first debate. Obama had a nine point lead in the polls in September 2012. After his terrible performance in October, he ended up tied with Romney in the polls. But then Obama won election in November and got a second term.

Regardless of the eventual electoral outcome, it is almost an axiom of politics that first debates are rocky for incumbent presidents. Now, why is that? What is it about being an incumbent president that makes you suck at your first debate when you're running for reelection? I don't know. Lots of competing explanations out there, but it does seem to be something that universally holds.

I will also mention that Donald Trump was no exception. When he was the incumbent four years ago, it was not that long ago. I'm sure you remember how that went for him. But I think this headline at The Guardian sums it up well. This was after the first debate with Donald Trump as the incumbent and Joe Biden as the challenger. Quote, Donald Trump ensures first presidential debate is national humiliation.

It's always the case. And tonight, Joe Biden was the ninth incumbent president in a televised general election debate. He and his team very, very, very much wanted to defy the debating incumbent curse. They did not defy the debating incumbent curse.

That said, losing the first debate is not a fatal thing for incumbent presidents. It is a historical certainty that they lose the first debate. But in terms of its overall electoral impact, history says, meh. Joining us now is former Republican Party chairman, the co-host of The Weeknd here on MSNBC, our beloved friend Michael Steele. Mr. Steele, it is great to see you.

How are you doing, my friend? What a night. Everybody rested and raring to go, right? We are hydrated. We did our weird yoga poses that make our backs hurt less when we sit here for six hours at a time. We're great. What did you think of the debate and what have you been hearing from people tonight who saw it? So I have thoughts. I

And I'll start with where you left off. Everything you said about those other presidential debates are absolutely 100 percent correct. But what you did not have after them was the incumbent president's party openly musing about taking him off the ticket.

And I think that that is something that is very different in this one. Tonight, you have MAGA gloating and Democrats outwardly worrying about the state of the race to the point that they are not hiding their discussions about how they get Joe off the ticket.

I think a lot of that is unfortunate. I think a lot of that is overblown at the moment, but I get the emotion. I thought Claire was an exhibit of that emotion, of that gut punch that she referenced that a lot of Democrats are feeling. But here are a couple of things that I think need to be focused on, just kind of putting my sort of campaign party hat on and sort of rally the troops, you know, get your ass in gear conversation.

One is Nicole said it best own tonight. Don't pretend it was something it wasn't. Sit down with Joe. Play that tape. Play it and slow mo that sucker if you have to to get him to appreciate exactly what it was we saw and how he performed.

and how in many respects he let himself down because if any of us know the president and a lot of us do have seen him over these many, many years, we know how much he regards being honest about that. So let him be honest about that and have that assessment and take him out of situations where he's seemingly lying about his performance.

He will endear himself. He will move people to appreciate a lot of things about him if he owns the moment. I thought, for example, Lawrence was also very clear in how this thing needs to get laid out. Again, you know, don't overthink what happened. Rethink how you move forward.

Reimagine what tomorrow looks like. And by tomorrow, I mean morning Joe tomorrow. All right. And really begin to put in place the next set of building blocks, because right now MAGA's on the run.

They got this baby. You should see and hear the stuff that's coming up, right? They are primed. They're ready. They're like, we told you this is what he was. Joe Biden is old and out of date. Donald Trump is the man. All of that crazy. But Donald Trump is a serial liar. He's a petulant little boy in a man's orange suit.

Right. And he sits here and he tells lie after lie after lie to lie. Joe Biden, to Jen Jen Psaki's point, was not prepared to deal with that. And he was ill prepared because he was fed numbers instead of doing what I've said from the very beginning of the day. I was on Morning Joe and said Joe Biden would be the nominee of the Democratic Party because Joe Biden is his best when he is Joe Biden.

And they forgot that his campaign forgot that they put that cocoon around him as president and a fact him up with all these facts and numbers and the man got lost. So there's some things that are recoverable here, but they have to first start to own the moment. And you don't really kind of do that by pushing the vice president out there.

I think the president at some point has to look America in the eye and go, I'm sorry I let you down. I should have been better prepared.

And you know me better than that, you know? And that's not how my parents raised me, and that's not how I'm going to lead you. And I think that moment sort of takes what happened with Donald Trump, because guess what then, Rachel? All of a sudden, all the stuff that we're not talking about that we heard and saw with Donald Trump kind of comes back and refocus. People get to look at it and go, yeah, now that I think about it, Donald Trump said some crazy behind stuff, right? Right.

So I think that this is Democrats need to, you know, bring it down. Stop the stop the. Oh, let me tell you what I'm hearing from operatives and others and just reset. Michael Steele, tough love. We always get tough love from you, Michael. Thank you so much. Our friend Alex Wagner joins us right now. She is in Atlanta at the site of the debate from the rapidly emptying spin room or still full spin room. Yes.

Rapidly emptying? Very much empty. Okay. I noticed the people we could see behind you weren't in focus either then or now, but it looked like the people who were behind you before were standing. Now it looks like they're all lying down.

That's the debate in a nutshell right there, Rachel. And there's not even pizza. I know you have pizza at 30 Rock. There's no pizza here. You know what's here? Matt Gaetz and Stephen Miller. Oh, that's who I was talking to earlier. No, you cannot imagine. Have you seen the I believe that in the dictionary, when you look up schadenfreude, it's a picture of Matt Gaetz and Stephen Miller after this debate. Well, what did they tell you? I won't I won't.

They, um, Matt Gaetz offered thoughts and prayers and, uh, something about all, all that is left of Joe Biden. And now is his dental records. Obviously Matt Gaetz is prone to hyperbole. And Stephen Miller, uh, said that Donald Trump did no prep for tonight's, uh, performance, not even a policy refresher. He was just speaking from the pure id of Donald Trump, uh,

the wealth of experience he got as president and he brought the country along with him. You know, obviously this is a night they're very happy with. Joe Biden's difficulties are there.

highlight reel but i spoke to jd vance as well who spoke briefly about you know donald trump's what he believes stellar performance and i also spoke to senator marco rubio who is maybe waiting here to get the call that he will be donald trump's vice presidential pick but otherwise had some thoughts uh about the performance tonight i have it on tape let's take a listen okay

The real question is, were you better off when Trump was president? Did you have more money in your pocket? Was the country safer? Was the world more stable? Or are you better off under Biden? And if the election's about that, Trump's going to win. And I think tonight Trump took an enormous step in the direction of convincing people. We'll see. You know, we'll see what the polls show. But I believe he took huge steps in the direction of convincing people that, in fact, things were reminding people that things were better off when he was president.

I don't think we can ignore the president's performance. And I don't take glee in saying this, you know, but I do think it's harmful to his candidacy, but it's potentially harmful to the country. I mean, adversaries are going to watch it. It confirms what perhaps they had already suspected about him. And, you know, but I do think my core takeaway from tonight was I think President Trump did an excellent job of outlining why things were better, why he was president and how things have gotten worse since he hasn't been.

You know, I got to say, Rachel, this is the line from a lot of Republicans, how good a job Trump did. And I did press review on what specifically he thought was so good about Trump's performance, because I watched the same thing he did and didn't see any grand policy articulation or vision for the future, not even a 2025 2020 Project 2025 vision.

I think they're largely resting on the laurels of if you can rest on the laurels of someone else's poor performance. And that's what's got them feeling good. But in terms of Trump being, you know, eviscerating Biden, I'm not sure you really saw that. No, we didn't. I mean, I don't think there was anything memorable and positive from Donald Trump this evening. I think there were some memorable negative. I think the line, I didn't sleep with the porn star was a moment. Yeah, I did.

And I did ask Stephen Miller about that. I said, are you winning or are you losing when you have to say you didn't sleep with a porn star? You didn't have sex with a porn star. And Stephen Miller said that it's the media's fault for focusing on that. And I said, I didn't say that. Your guy did. He then went on a tirade about the media.

we'll treat you to that tape tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Perhaps we will save you from it. I mean, also, I mean, it does also just, I mean, there was a lot of litany, there was a litany of stuff that President Biden had presented to former President Trump in terms of like, you got to pay, like, what is it, close to a billion dollars with your civil liability for molesting that lady and for the sex with the porn star and for the lies and for the fraud. And the only one he chose to rebut is the one on which we just had seven and a half hours of bullshit

very, very granular detailed testimony under oath in a criminal courtroom about the fact that it did happen.

So that is just like not a great I mean, just pick one of the more obscure ones, not the one that was just proven before a jury. So that was hard. Rachel, Rachel, we know we know about newspaper spanking and I'm sorry to bring it back up, but that's the level of granular detail we know about in terms of Donald Trump's. Oh, yeah.

Shall we say dalliances with Stormy Daniels? That's where we're at as a country. But it's a very astute point that you're making about how the the the performance concerns about President Biden in terms of being very soft spoken at times inaudible, having halting speech and taking a very long time to get warmed up to where his answers were punchy and to the point.

That is they want to make that the story of the debate. And for many people, that will be the story of the debate. But if there is an indelible line, it is the Stormy Daniels line from the debate. And I think the one sort of indelible moment in terms of something said by either candidate is the weird thing about Donald Trump criticizing Joe Biden's golf swing and bragging about winning golf tournaments when he was asked about child care. I mean, we had a debate. We had a focus group.

a debate focus group in Phoenix. And that was the first thing the first person told us they thought was ridiculous about this debate was the kibitzing about the Gulf when they were asked about substantive things. So I do think that there is a, I just sort of feels like there's a, there's a tale here of the consequence of Donald Trump's performance tonight in addition to that by President Biden.

Yeah. And certainly there's going to be more parsing of that performance in the hours and days ahead. So, you know, perhaps that changes the overall dynamic of it. Perhaps it doesn't, but it hasn't happened yet.

Alex Wagner in the debate spin room tonight. I wish you pizza and Waffle House if you can get there. Thank you, my friend. We've got much more ahead here tonight. In our special coverage of the first presidential debate, our friend Simone Sanders has been talking with people inside Democratic politics. She's going to be talking to us about what she's hearing, her first reaction to tonight's debate. She's been, of course, a key person in the Obama-Harris universe, has key insights for us. Simone will be with us right after this. Stay with us.

And now...

All MSNBC original podcasts are available ad-free and with bonus content, including How to Win 2024, Prosecuting Donald Trump, Why Is This Happening, and more. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.