11. Advantage Trump: Will the Democrats move to replace Joe Biden?
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Welcome to the Rest is Politics special live post-debate. I feel like I've just gone to an NFL game, Anthony. We are live on YouTube to talk about the first presidential debate that has just wrapped up. This will broadcast, for those of you listening as a podcast, this will broadcast as our regular The Rest is Politics US version on Friday morning UK time. But Anthony and I will take some of your questions. They're great. They're coming in already. But give us a second to

- Digest what we just heard. I was watching with my 24 year old son who said it was as excruciating as watching England play Slovakia when England was paying badly. Anthony, you have been of the view that Joe Biden is gonna win this election. I'm just wondering what you thought of his debate performance because I am getting Democrats flooding my phone saying that was a disaster. - I'm a markets guy. Obviously if I've got something wrong,

I'm man enough to admit that I've got something wrong. And I had to also sell a position when it's going against me.

The prediction markets here in the U.S. are now 67-33, Trump versus Biden, meaning the likelihood that Trump will now win. Trump goes up five, six points likely as a result of this. Can Joe Biden make that up? I don't know. I just want to make three quick points. If the election's held today, Donald Trump is winning this election. If the election's held on November 5th,

Unless something seismic happens to Donald Trump's health, he will likely win this election. So I have to eat the words that I said before. Facts change. When facts change, smart people change their facts. I'll just make three quick points. This is not Joe Biden of 2020. Go back and watch those debates. I did that this afternoon.

He was coherent when he was sitting, his legs were crossed when he was standing. He was listening, taking in the information. He was very confident and he was very sure of himself. He started fumbling with the numbers early on. He said he created 15,000 jobs when he wanted to say 15 million. And he fumbled through the whole night. Last point, whether you like Donald Trump or you dislike Donald Trump,

Donald Trump has done the work to be president. He's out there working every single day. He's meeting with people. He's signing dollar bills of young kids that are wearing Trump wigs. And as a result of which, he was very prepared to use his rhetoric and soundbites effectively tonight. So whether you like Donald Trump, dislike Donald Trump, like Joe Biden, whatever, you know, I have my personal feelings, happy to share them with people.

But the president got pounded. President Biden got pounded tonight. OK, I got my suit on, Katty, because I'm at a wake right now and I'm a good Catholic and good Catholics show up respectfully when they're waking somebody. You and Joe Biden, both good Catholics. Look, I think

Let's talk about optics and the way this looked, because a lot of people are not going to watch this debate the whole way through. I know that there was an opinion poll just before the debate saying that seven in 10 people who intended to vote were going to watch the debate. So the ratings could have been very high. We won't have them by the time we finish this podcast. But for people who are only going to see the clips and

and see this as a visual thing rather than listening to every policy detail. This looked terrible for Joe Biden.

Just the camera shots of Joe Biden standing there with his mouth open while Donald Trump was speaking, he looked old. He looked old and kind of out of it. I was watching the debate with a couple of young people in their 20s, my son and his girlfriend, and they just found it excruciating, the whole thing. They said, they look older than my... He looks older than my grandparents. On top of the way he looked was the fact that his voice was hoarse. I don't know if he has a cold or something, but...

It was hard to hear very well what he was saying, and his answers weren't particularly coherent. I mean, I tried to follow Joe Biden's answers. There was actually...

quite a lot of policy in this debate but you couldn't really make out what he was saying because the combination of his voice being quite weak and the way he spoke, he would start an answer and then segue into something else and then get lost in the sentence and I think before we go much further Anthony we have to talk about that moment early on in the debate that is going to get replayed and replayed and replayed on social media where

where Joe Biden was giving an answer on COVID and then he just lost his train of thought and didn't exactly freeze Mitch McConnell style, but...

He looked really bad. I mean, he just he just he's just sort of lost his. I don't know how else to say it. He didn't really stumble. He lost his train of thought. That was what that was. The Joe Biden look with the open mouth. I don't know who's handling Joe Biden, but a couple of things. If your candidate is hoarse, leak it before the debate. If your candidate has a cold.

He has a sore throat. He can't speak properly. You got to leak that before the debate so you can set expectations. Number two, if you're going to a split screen, whoever agreed to the split screen on the Biden side should probably leave the campaign at this point. But if you're going to a split screen,

Mr. President, sir, you got to be prepared for people staring at you while the other candidate is there. When you have your mouth open like this, this is a very bad look. And I don't want to say anything that's ageist. I don't want to say I'm just telling you the imagery of this is very, very bad. And let's face it, Katty, you and I both spent a lot of time on television and

hair and makeup works on TV, hair dye works on TV. Donald Trump came hair dyed, made up, and he was energized.

And the president looked 15 years older than Donald Trump tonight. And that matters on television. I'm sorry to say this to the people that like Joe Biden. Obviously, I respect Joe Biden. I respect his service. But I don't understand why the Democrats are.

stuck here at this moment. They could put up a Whitmer. They could put up a Shapiro from Pennsylvania. I could name five or six people that could get in here right now. Gina Raimondo. Okay. Any of those people are incredibly skilled politicians who

and they could school Donald Trump because by the way, I couldn't keep up with the Trump lies. Couldn't keep up with them. He told 30,000 being fact-checked and you didn't have moderators who were saying you didn't answer the question. That is not what happened. I wrote down, I wrote down all the lies. I couldn't keep up with the lies. And, and, and by the way, Gina Raimondo would say, okay, well that's a lie. And by the way, he told 30,450 lies. Joe Biden did keep saying you're lying. Um,

no one lies as much. Then you have to back it up. Then you have to say, this is the fact. You can't just say, oh, you're lying or you're a whiner. You got to say, hey, you're lying. You're saying this, but this is the truth. It was almost like he was falling back on, you're lying. You're such a big liar when he didn't know what else to say. I mean, it came across as a slight crutch during the course of the debate. We should talk about Donald Trump because there was a lot of expectations about whether we would have

the Donald Tripe who showed up from the first 2020 debate who came in kind of hot and crazy. And this format, whether it was this format worked really well for Donald Trump because it cut his microphone. He couldn't interrupt the whole time. He didn't come across as a bully. I had Trump people texting me within minutes of this debate. First of all, after that kind of

brain freeze, lost his way moment, saying, right, Joe Biden's lost it, but also saying Donald Trump is calm. He comes across as presidential. And because there's no fact checking in real time, the audience, the audience isn't going to know whether half of what he's saying is true or false. And actually, by the way, there were things that Joe Biden should have been called up on too, but the audience isn't going to know that. All they heard was that Donald Trump spoke with a strong voice, which made a huge difference.

He spoke in coherent sentences. As my son said at one point, look, we're all talking to each other in the room when Joe Biden is talking because we can't follow what he's saying and he sounds quiet and distant. But when Donald Trump is talking, we all shut up and listen. So every debate has a line. You know, President Reagan said, there you go again. And then with Mondale, he said, let's not use

uh age in this debate i don't want to challenge my uh candidate's youth and experience there are killer lines or you know uh uh dan quayle you're no jack kennedy i know jack kennedy the killer line tonight was i i don't understand what he just said

And I don't think he understands what he just said. That was a killer line. Now, I got to the slightly rambling, securitist way. Maybe Joe Biden's just been in the Senate too long. And that's how senators speak. I want to be fair to Joe Biden. He got better. Let me tell you something about American politics and American television. If you're in the Super Bowl and Pat Mahomes goes up 38 to zero.

and you're in the first quarter, you're shutting the TV off before the half. I mean, unless you want to watch J-Lo or something like that for the halftime concert. But I'm telling you, I believe that these ratings went down over the course of the debate. People like you and I stayed on because we're political aficionados.

But I think the American people are like, OK, this guy's getting destroyed here. It's not even a fight. This is like Rocky, you know, Apollo Creed with Drago and Rocky IV throw the Dow in. The guy got wiped out and they shut the TV off. Why are you laughing?

I love that you're bringing in the boxing analogies for, you know, it was like watching a senior citizen. Anthony during it saying this is a 15 round fight and it's been a knockout at the third round. I'm just saying it was like watching a senior citizens MMA fight. And you're like, you gotta be kidding me. Okay. This is the fight. What are you doing? What are you doing? The bit,

that'll get replayed. We've gone through a couple of them. It'll be the brain freeze moment where he kind of loses his way and ends up, he was talking about COVID and then suddenly talks about Medicare or something. And then it'll be that bit, Donald Trump saying, I don't know, I have no idea what he was just saying and I don't think he did either. But there was one other line, I'm surprised you haven't brought this up, where Trump says, I didn't have sex with a porn star. It's not a line you often get in American presidential debates. Well, somebody's bringing up in the comments, God bless whoever brought this up in the comments, that

I'm touching wood wherever you have wood. OK, so I mean, that is something I said, I think, in the fourth grade. OK, and so and then Trump projecting he turns the bites. Let's not act like children. Yeah, but I didn't bang the porn star and I'm touching wood wherever there is wood. And let me tell you something, OK?

He is an entertaining SOB, whether you like him or dislike him. And this is theater. This is a popularity contest. It's not a hiring decision for the American people. And, you know, the question now, and I want to throw this back to you, Katty Kay, because you live in Washington. They are there's going to be a bee swarm or shark infestation at the White House tomorrow. Joe Biden dropped out of the race. What do you think happens?

Look, I think you're right. What is it that the Democrats always like to say? The bedwetting begins tomorrow. I mean, it's beginning tonight. You look through your Twitter feed and there are influential Biden supporters in the media who are calling for Joe Biden to step down. And for one of the people you mentioned, Gavin Newsom, Meg Whitmer,

Gina Raimondo, it's very, very late in the race for that to happen. It could theoretically be done if Joe Biden woke up tomorrow morning and reflected on this performance and said, look, the American people's concerns about my age are legitimate.

And I just couldn't handle that debate. And that was a terrible performance. I am going to step down. In theory, you could have another Democrat step into the race. I don't know how you would do it, whether they would all jump in and you'd have a very, very short. The primaries are over, so it would have to be done at the convention.

But I have never heard from the Biden campaign, not once, that this is something that he is considering doing. Up until tonight, this is America's choice. This is what America has to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I'm sitting here. I'm flummoxed by what just happened. Like, he had a week to prepare. He's at Camp David. They've got the guy that played Donald Trump in 2020.

You know, Andrew Yang, who ran for president in 2020, said he debated Joe Biden seven times on stage in 2020. This is not the Joe Biden of 2020. And so then the question is, guys, what is Joe Biden going to be like in 2025, 26, 27, 28? What are you guys doing?

OK, I was willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. As I've said, some things have gone well for him. He's done things generally well. And I do think he will protect the system and the democracy. But if you're not up to face Donald Trump,

You're not up to face somebody that was being accused of being a part of the insurrection. Forget about the 34 felonies. As you know, I think that's a joker case. But you have a documents case. You have an election fraud case. If you can't face this guy and you can't verbally jujitsu this guy and hit him a few times and you're sitting there misremembering your lines.

Someone's got to tell you the truth. I know he's the president. I think he knew how badly he did. After that moment where his brain froze and he lost his train of thought, you could tell in his face, don't you think, that he knew that that had been a really bad moment? And then he came back from the break and he seemed nervous. We're getting a lot of questions about whether Joe Biden is now going to step down. Can I just say one thing, though? Donald Trump would be masterful tomorrow morning.

If he gets to a podium in a compassionate way, says, hey, I debated Joe Biden last night. He has served the country for 50 years. I think it's pretty evident that he's not the right guy to serve the country for the next four years. But I'm a compassionate person. Yeah. You see what I mean? And I'm a patriot.

And I'm a patriot and I want the best for the president and I want the best for the White House. We've got great comments here. Why don't you pick some of these comments? There's some really good ones here. So Leo Fordham has written in, do you think it's too late for the Democrats, even if they do replace Biden? I feel like it could be really hard to overcome the feeling brought on by him, no matter who may step in. I think that's such a, I mean, that's a very smart take on this because has Biden tainted democracy?

the Democrat. Look, this is a hypothetical. I don't even, if I had to put my money somewhere and Anthony's fortune is enormously superior to mine, if I was actually less, I'm going to bet Anthony's fortune on this because that's a much more exciting bet. If I was going to bet Anthony's fortune on this, I would bet that Joe Biden does not step down. But if he did step down, do we think that actually now the rest of the Democratic Party

is just being tainted by this experience. How do they come back from this? I want to stay for the record that Katty K has more Prada than I have. Okay. I just want to make everybody sure everybody knows that. Okay. I'm not going to tell you any more secrets about my- My God. That's it, Anthony. You are outside my shopping secret circle now. Oh my God. That's it. You've blown it. Look, you've made me blush. I mean, that's just not- I'm glad I made you

I am never telling you where I go. That is the first and only time I've ever shopped in that short store. And if I ever shop there again, I'm not telling you. I tell you. Don't feel bad about it. I'll probably have to get you a product gift certificate at this point. But here's the thing I would say.

about that statement. I think that that is true, but I would still throw the Hail Mary. They had these superdelegates. They could get them to drop out. They could have a superdelegate meeting before the convention. And then they could say, here's the guys we're going with.

And then they got us consolidated and they got to unify. There's only one person in America that could tell Kamala Harris to step out of that ticket. I believe that's Barack Obama. I think she's got to get promise a Supreme Court justice appointment to do that. Rumor was that they offered her the last one. She said no to that one. But I think at this point it would be good for the country for her to do that. They go with two younger people. Maybe it's a Raimondo and a Shapiro or Whitman.

Whitmer and Shapiro. I don't know, but they could. Okay. People are mentioning Gavin Newsom, whether you like Gavin Newsom, you like what he's done in California or not. He would have wiped the floor with Donald Trump tonight. He, he would have been on point. He crushed Ron DeSantis on Fox news a couple of months ago. He would have been on point. He would have been in control of the facts and he would have crushed Donald Trump tonight. Josh Shapiro would have done the same. He's an excellent debater. He's so smart. He's,

He's the next generation, you know, the governor of Pennsylvania. I think, I mean, I had a really interesting conversation with a Democrat about two days ago who was saying, look, there's these whispers going around that actually, I mean, this may be them trying to console themselves, that if Trump wins in November, maybe that's not so bad for the party because they will, the Democrats will do really well in the midterms and then it sets them up for 28 with this whole next generation. I think that's,

pulling at straws. By the way, Katie, I'm just telling you, if I was debating you, I'd grab one thing, Prada, you go bright red. Jesus Christ. I got to prepare you better, okay? I'm going to handle you. I'm going to handle you. We have to debate each other, okay? Listen, cone of secrecy here. All right. You have lost my trust. Okay, so let's get another cup

of questions because they're all so good. Okay, Katty, how do you turn it around? That's a great question by John O'Hurt. Yeah. The problem is that Democrats have come out over the last six months and said,

We recognize he's old, but I tell you that when he's not got the cameras on him, when I'm with him in the Oval Office, he's super sharp and he's on it. And that is the Joe Biden who is leading the country. Well, now the country feels they've seen Joe Biden without a prompter in front of them like he had at the State of the Union. And they're just not going to believe those Democrats anymore. So I think there has to be some candor. I think you're right. They've got to come out and say, OK,

The president felt that really didn't represent his best effort of running the country. But this is all the things he's done for America. And the debate format didn't work for him. He's got this stutter that he's overcoming. I'd get the surrogates out there. I don't know that I'd get Joe Biden out there saying that was a fuck up.

I would get surrogates out there a lot saying the two minutes is very hard for somebody with a stutter, but he's running the country. They just have to keep going, litigating his record. And we keep hearing that the Biden campaign team is the best in the business, that Jen O'Malley Dillon is fantastic. This is what I hear time and again. The people around him in

in Delaware are really good. And that's why they're so confident. They've got this. They know what they're doing. They're building this machine. We've spoken about this on the podcast, Anthony. They've got these offices around the country. They've hired people around the country. They've got a really good campaign machine. After seeing tonight's debate, I don't know that I trust that narrative. If that's what they are producing after a week of prep...

How good are they at everything else? I mean, I don't know. Why should I believe that this machine they're building around the country is so great if they can't get through a live debate? One of the comments is, will there be a 25th Amendment vote?

vote at the House. I don't remember the procedures exactly, but you've got to get the cabinet involved. So you've got to get the cabinet to say the president's incompetent, and then they push the vote to the floor. I don't think you're going to get the cabinet of Joe Biden to do that, but I think people are saying that to me all night in the text. I have a question for you, Katty Kay. Go on. September 10th. Um,

I don't think it happens at this point. How could it happen? How can it happen? How could it happen? I mean, how can I mean, but on the other hand, if they don't do it, that's an admission of how badly he did. You know, Carl, I could just let you know, Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed, when you knock him through the ropes like that, he can't come back and fight again. Right. Yeah. I mean, listen to this.

That's a sporting reference right over my head. It's Rocky IV. It's Rocky IV. It's my vintage. I was 21 when the movie came out. Okay, why was more not done by the moderators to fact check? Zach Taylor, that's a good question. So I don't think they had the –

time to do that. And I think they made a decision not to do that because they were on a shot clock, two minutes over here, two minutes over there. And I think that one of the big things about doing it at CNN is that CNN is perceived to be anti-Trump.

And so I don't think they could have done that. I think it would have played very bad for the moderators and very bad for CNN. And there's something about Donald Trump that we all have to accept. He can say two contradictory things at the same time and he gets away with it. Why does he do that? I don't know. He's born on June 14th. He's a Gemini. Maybe there are two people trapped inside of one body. And so we let him do it. But other people couldn't do that. John Kerry was for the war before.

he was against it. We went after him. We're throwing haymakers at him. I remember that. Donald Trump can say anything. I love crypto. I hate crypto. Last night, I woke up and decided to hate it again. We're like, it's good. Whatever you want to say. Actually,

You know what he did that was smart tonight? Donald Trump, he went in with one message and that was about immigration and almost every answer, whether it was about the economy, whether it was about climate, whether it was about healthcare, whether it was about inflation, he brought it back time and again to immigration. He kept talking, whether it was about African-American voters, he would talk about black jobs. The immigrants have come in and taken black jobs around the country. The kind of thing Joe Biden would never say and probably wouldn't get away with. But he did, he managed to

Stay on message. I was taking my luggage off the luggage rack this morning. I took a red-eye from LA, Delta flight.

There was an African-American. It was first class. Don't start. I was in first class. OK. And there was an African-American guy next to me. He looks at me. I'm taking my luggage off. He goes, Mooch. I said, yes. He says, you're the man. He goes, are you going to vote for Trump? Just let me know. You're voting. I said, no, you know, I'm not voting for Trump. If you know who I am, you know, I'm not voting for Trump. He says to me, I'm voting for Trump and you're voting for Trump.

I said, yeah. He goes, by the way, whether or not you think the country's racist, you think Trump's racist, it doesn't matter to me. What's going on now at the border is nothing that anybody can tolerate. I'm voting for Trump. Yeah. And that, hey, look, that's a sample. I'm getting my luggage. Yeah. I'm just making a point. It resonates.

When he said that, you know, immigrants are coming in and taking black jobs. I mean, literally called the black jobs. But it's like that resonates around the country. OK, wait a second. Lisa's much smarter than I am and quicker on the draw because she says as a press guy, I want to ask Anthony, how do you spin Biden's performance? Go on. Let me throw it back to you. I would say that the president was not well tonight. He had a cough.

We should have told people that we didn't tell him that he was right about a lot of his facts. But he was he was slow footed on responding to Donald Trump's lies tonight. But if you check, I think we have to relitigate Mr. Trump's record versus Mr. Biden's record. But let's face it, President Biden did not have a great night tonight. He wasn't feeling well.

And by the way, there's nobody in American politics that would do that. He would score points if he did that. But these guys can never admit weakness. They can never admit any blood was spilled anywhere. So there'll be a group of hacks in that spin room right now trying to tell you how well Biden did. And they will do what I did. They'll list all the lies that Donald Trump had. And it's a bunch of nonsense. OK, this is imagery. This is verbiage. This is command. This is self-confidence.

This is how do you litigate against somebody else? This is litigation. And and he didn't have it. And if you want to pretend that he had it, that's fine. We can pretend that he had it. But I got to call balls and strikes, OK, because I'm with the admittable Katty Kay. And I can't be sitting up here hacking for Joe Biden. I'm not that kind of a person anyway. Yeah, no, we're going to always call it as we see it. And was it not terrifying how the debate degenerated into back and forth about golf handicaps?

It was terrifying on a number of different levels. Okay. So my 25-year-old son texted me and said that he watched the Nixon-Kennedy debate this morning. And he said, my God, Dad, I mean, this is degenerated into this childlike spit for spat. And, you know, the guy on Barstool Sports and I was like, let's skip the election and let's have these guys go play golf. Let them play 18 holes for the presidency. But-

But it doesn't matter. The point is, that's where we are in our society. And we have to break that fever. And by the way, we were much smarter at this. In 1944, Henry Wallace was basically a communist. Roosevelt went to people, said, hey, I'm obviously dying. You can just tell by looking at me, I'm obviously dying. I'm going to run anyway because I can win this thing for the Democrats.

But you better get to the convention and pick somebody that you guys like because I'm not going to make it 44 to 48. And they picked Harry Truman. So what are we doing right now as a society? Are we just going to play identity politics or are we going to have performance politics? If I was on Biden's board, I would say that sucked. You're going to have to do something.

I'm the chairman of the board. You've got to step down. Who should replace you? Let's have a caucus. Let's get in the room. We have these superdelegates. And let's take another shot at this thing because you don't want Trump to be the president. Again, this is me talking to Biden. If I'm Trump's team right now,

I'm saying leave the champagne on ice, get to a microphone tomorrow and be compassionate to Joe Biden and get back on the campaign trail. Trump said something tonight that resonated, whether people like this or not. He said, hey, I'm back in this because he's not doing a good job. I would be I wouldn't be here. OK, and it resonates with people. He's going to trust me. He was testing that tonight. He's going to use that night now over and over again at all these rallies. Yeah. And.

And I mean, like I said, I think he was very good at staying on message tonight. I mean, he talks in these crazy superlatives that, you know, the economy was better under Trump than ever before. The border is more open than it has ever been. I mean, he talks,

in ways that aren't supported by the facts, but there wasn't a chance for the moderators to fact check him or they decided that they were not going to fact check him. I'm not quite sure why they decided not to fact check him. And maybe Joe Biden should have done that fact checking, but Joe Biden couldn't jump in with, he could have done some fact checking. He could have jumped in with a punchy sentence or two. I mean, when Donald Trump came in and said, you know,

Now there's evidence that Nancy Pelosi didn't accept the guards that I offered on January the 6th. Joe Biden needed to have a fact there and come back and say, that's not true. There is no evidence that Nancy Pelosi was offered that guard. There's no evidence that she turned it down. That is a lie, but he can't put it that succinctly. And so he tries, that should have been Joe Biden's strongest moment, the January the 6th stuff.

Donald Trump got away with this with saying stuff that wasn't true but he got away with it because Joe Biden isn't agile enough. I mean, I think that that's the big takeaway from this debate Joe Biden is a lot older than he was this other quick question here is RFK jr. A side winner of this debate on the Martin I Louise I think RFK jr. Is a side winner. I think the problem is is

he's yet to get on all of the state ballots. And so he doesn't have right now any path to 270 electoral votes. But yes, I think he is a side winner.

Because I think he is a guy who is competent. He can talk and he may not agree with him. He has a worm in his brain and this sort of thing. But the president did poorly tonight. There's somebody here and I love this commenting section. I hope you don't mind me just saying this because someone here is saying that on Twitter right now on the Democratic handle, they're exclaiming that the president won.

Okay, so when you do that Orwellian type of nonsense, particularly in a society right now with these phones, YouTube, CNN, when you do that kind of nonsense, you're now turning people off.

You know, it's better to come at people and tell them the truth. They're going to respect you more. They say, hey, that sucked. We're going to be right back at it tomorrow. They're not going to trust anything else you say, right? We've got another five months of this, four months of this campaign. I'm not, if they try and spin us that this was a great night for Joe Biden, why am I going to believe them when they say we have a really good campaign operation and we're confident that we're going to win? I don't believe that. No, no question. If I'm being told, you know.

that this was a great night for him. There's somebody here saying that they're watching on C-SPAN. That's interesting, saying that Gavin Newsom is looking very defeated. By the way, for Bitcoiners that are on this commenting section, Bitcoin is rallying, by the way, because Trump is quote-unquote pro-Bitcoin, and you can see Bitcoin rallying tonight with the expectation he's going to win. Have your book sales gone up too? My book sales? Yeah. You know, as I told you, it's an international bestseller. Yeah.

If you don't believe me, you can walk over here. I'm in my basement right now and I've got a lot of books here. I can prove to you that it's an international bestseller by the number of books I have personally bought. I'm in my basement too. And between the Halloween decorations and the Christmas decorations, there's a pile of books of mine too that haven't been bought. Hey, listen, but I've got both of your books over there on that bookshelf. Both of them are great books. But here's something I want to say to you and I want to get your reaction.

In 2020, boring was good. Remember Volvo, boxy but good? We got a guy who's an elder statesman. He's boring. He's going to cross his legs. He's got the big caps on. He's got a confident smile. And we're going to go back to some level of normalcy, 81 million votes. Boring right now is not the flavor of the month. I'm just letting people know this, okay? So let's replicate Joe Biden's campaign of 2020 right.

wrongo. You're in 2024. You're coming out of COVID. You're four years past COVID. The American people don't want that. The American people want a revitalization of America. The American people in the world want an American renewal. They want an American reset where we speak confidently about our alliances. They want somebody going to tell people the truth about the debt. Here's a 10 or 15 year plan to get us out of this problem. That's what the American people want. And

They don't want boring, Katty. I want you to respond to that, you know, because I think that's what he was in 2020. It's not working now. Boring plus stuttering plus I don't look like your grandfather anymore. I look like your great grandfather. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. This is what's frustrated the Biden campaign is that people in the country have what they call Trump amnesia. They've forgotten what it was like under Donald Trump. They've forgotten what that 2020 moment called for. It was COVID. It was chaos.

Donald Trump had been at his most extreme. And it was at that moment that people wanted boring. And that's why they wanted Joe Biden. He was solid. He was boring. He was the guy that could beat Donald Trump. So that's why they called for this debate. I mean, this is all the Biden campaign's making. They called for this debate now early in the campaign in order to remind people that

Donald Trump is really like. They wanted Donald Trump to get up on that stage and be the Donald Trump of 2020. And he wasn't. He didn't tell the truth all the time, but he sounded coherent. He spoke in short sentences. He made sense. He sounded strong. He sounded vibrant. All of

the things that the Biden campaign didn't want to happen, Donald Trump brought to the stage. So maybe Donald Trump in a way is going to present himself as back to kind of not boring, but at least strong. And

and fit and healthy and as he said at one point in the debate he was talking about abortion and again it wasn't true what he was saying but he was talking about abortion he said it's the democrats who are the radicals i could see this is another thing i think he's testing out i'm not the radical i'm not

not the chaos agent. I'm not the one you can't rely on. That's Joe Biden. He's the radical. You can't rely on him. He's too old. That's unsafe. And I think he's going to turn the tables on that argument. It's an interesting point. And I think it could work for him. There's a gentleman by the name of David Hardisty. By the way, there's somebody saying we should run for presidency in 2028. There's a small hitch there I wasn't

Mooch and Katty for 2028. What a ticket. Well, first of all, as you know, I'm running for reelection on my marriage, Katty. I think my wife believes in castration. So I don't I don't see that in my future. But then again, I don't think you I don't think you were born. I don't think you were born here in the US. So I know I wouldn't be on that. And I probably don't meet the height requirement. But anyway, let me just bring this up. Mooch, I presume you're no longer confident Biden can win.

This is from David Hardisi. Hopefully, sir, I'm pronouncing your name properly. And so I'm going to say something weird here. People are going to probably disagree with me. No, he can still win.

Why? This is a very polarized country. This is a very polarized election. People have made their minds up, Katty K, already. On the margin, maybe somebody will go for Trump. Maybe the overnight polling will be for Trump. But no, Joe Biden, if he doesn't drop out, assuming he's not going to, he could still win the election. I just don't know how they're going to put him up on September the 10th for another debate. I don't know how they're going to do that. And David, if they do that...

and he performs like this, then we'll be sitting here hopefully after the debate. Hopefully you guys will still be tuning into us and I'll tell you what I really think, which is no, we won't be able to win. But right now it's still early and people are polarizing. They've made up their minds most of them. - Yeah, I do think it's worth pointing out as Zed is saying, it's still over four months away to election day. This was a pretty awful gaffe, but it doesn't mean that Biden's team can't spray back a lead in that time. And we live in an, talking of amnesia, we live in a kind of amnesia short-term memory society, right?

I can't remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. Yes, this is going to be a terrible bloodbath tomorrow and Democrats are going to do a lot of bedwetting and there's going to be a period of anxiety, but there are still four or five months to go and

And other things can happen. And we don't know what those things are going to be. And these images are not going to look good for Biden. But other things can get in in the race between now and November. And people move on. Right. They move on to the next thing. They move on to the next conversation. And we should never underestimate the ability of people to forget, like me, what they had for breakfast and what happened yesterday in a debate. I agree with all of that. I guess the only thing that one quick point that I would just add for people is.

is that what you witnessed from Donald Trump, if you took President Biden off the screen and you just looked at Trump, it was his canned speeches from his rallies. And they should have had quotes from people like Mattis, quotes from people like Kelly, quotes from people like Secretary Esper. Here's what the people that work with you said. You have no executive management skills.

You're a chaos-oriented person. You're bringing in Looney Tunes people. They should have listed the top 10 things from Project 225. Right. So what the hell are you doing? You're going to bring in Looney Tunes people. You want to fire 50,000 people in civil service and have them take MAGA tests to see if they can be in the civil service. What the hell are you doing? You're trying to destroy this great country and the ideal and a dream of America.

I don't know why they didn't go with that. They were like, we created 15 million jobs. You're a whiner. Even the democracy section, somehow Donald Trump came off stronger on the whole democracy section than Joe Biden did just because his answers were weak because he didn't

He didn't have answers. He didn't have good anecdotes and he wasn't punchy. Okay. I've got no sympathy for saying it's 20 past 11. We've got somebody texting in from Finland saying it's 6.20 in the morning. It's 3.20 PM in New Zealand. I think all of this, my head is spinning and I'm getting jet lag. It is time for us to go to bed. Thank you guys for tuning in though. Thanks for tuning in. And we will be back next week with more of The Rest Is Politics US from me, Katty Kay. Good night. Good night, guys.