2024 presidential debate | Instant reaction after full debate from political experts

All right. How are you feeling about that? Uh, after watching the first debate, the first time meeting, uh, actually in person for, uh, former President Trump and Vice President Harris, uh, in their first and possibly only debate of this election season. I'm gonna get your name right for the first time tonight. Uh We've got a couple of distinguished guests with us this evening, Jennifer Stoddard Hou, the former chair of the Dallas County GOP, uh, and also Delia Parker MS, the chair of the Denton County Democratic Party. Let me look like you're slipping away the fruits. Oh, yes. By all means, we will give you a pass to that. Let me, can we start, uh, you know, usually we, we kind of go linearly through these things. Can we start at the end though? Uh, and sort of work our way back from there. Uh It struck me there at the very end. Um, the, the closing statements for these two candidates. Um, you know, we talked earlier tonight in some of the breaks about how it didn't seem like we got into a lot of policy. We, we, we didn't get a lot of policy details. Uh It seems like there at the end in that last pitch to voters, uh Vice President Harris was trying to, to paint a, a Rosier picture of, you know, the way forward and, and a vision for the future, at least her vision anyway. Um and she has accused former President Trump in the past of only thinking about himself, but I, I thought it was interesting that he spent his entire closing statement talking about her. What did you think about that? Is that uh just trying to get in there and, and maybe make the case to those people who are still undecided that she's not the candidate or was that the right move? Well, I think he's trying to make a contrast as to do you want the same thing you've had for the last 3.5 years or do you want change? She tries to be the change agent, but the fact of the matter is she's been in the White House for the last 3.5 years and actually the Democrats have had the White House 12 of the last 16 years, I believe. So, he's really the change person. So I think he was trying to say, listen, you say you wanna do all these wonderful things, but you haven't done them, you've been there, you've been part of the Biden administration and you haven't done them. And um so I think he's just trying to hone in to voters if, if you are better off now than you were four years ago, I guess maybe you wanna keep, keep her. But I think most people would, would answer that question and say I'm not better off than I was four years ago. You know, the famous Reagan quote. But it's really poignant here because four years ago, President Trump was the, the president of the United States. Well, you know, and I know that he's a different kind of candidate and a different kind of campaigner and I think people bake that in and then they expect that, uh, from him in a way. Uh, but, but there was, you know, in the closing statement there, you know, he's, he's saying, saying it's a failing country. Uh, we've always heard this, you know, adage that, you know, the, the politician who seems like they are, you know, the more optimistic one usually wins again. Uh, he hasn't changed much from the first time. Uh, and he won before. Uh, is there a risk in that? I think people know who he is. I mean, I just don't see with him that there's a risk. People know that he's very blunt. They know he's a New York businessman. He was like this when he ran for president against Hillary Clinton and won. He was like this when he was president of the United States and he was like this when he ran against President Biden. So he sort of defies that role. I don't think people are expecting him to be different. Well, I think it's important to note when you say he won. He's, he's never won the popular vote. So he won because we have an electoral process and which discouraged lots of young people who didn't understand why on earth is he president? If he didn't win the popular vote? Never. Um, he has shown us who he is and he's never answered any policy position. He's never taking responsibility for anything. And I think what we got out of this is certainly a vision of what type of America we want. And because we weren't really knee deep in policy, we saw that um Vice President Kamala in the end, she closed with trying to be more positive and try to give a little bit more detail about what she wants to target when she becomes president. Now, one thing she said was we inherited the mess that Trump's um presidency created and that was true, but we didn't hear anything about um inflation or why, why we need to go after um price gougers, not um capping prices, which is what they've said. So I think one thing we may agree upon is they didn't talk about the economy as much. But what she did try to say is we inherited a bunch of mess. We're going, we've been fixing a bunch of mess. We've got the, we've got a booming menu, fracturing and all he did is say is no, they do not. But the real, but the reality is we do. We have, we have the strongest economy in the country. Are we feeling it? No, because of inflation and the root cause of that. But we didn't hear anything about that. But if you followed Vice President Kamala at all and listen to any of her policies, she talks about the reason why we have inflation and you can't, he never he there and they can't be done pinpoint a reason why we have higher prices now, other than we have companies that are making record profits using COVID as an excuse to raise prices. I think we should have got into that a little bit more because people do wanna hear about how we have to continue to move forward. Let me ask briefly, I have to run downstairs and, and do a quick TV, hit at the top of our 10 o'clock newscast in just a moment. But we, we saw Trump animated and angry tonight. That's not unusual for him. That's what he, that's his brand. Harris had to come out here and define herself. And the question is, did she do that tonight, Jennifer? Do you think she did? I don't think she did at all. Really? What I think she did. She spent all of her time giving speeches, attacking Trump and trying to hit trigger points with him and trying to get him ruffled but he was the same time to work several times though. He was just gonna turn the whole way through. He never really picked a fight with her. He didn't turn around and look at her. He was very good. He was very disciplined about not getting into a tit for tat with her, at least visually. And, um, I don't think he had a lot of choice. I mean, the moderators basically asked very few questions that didn't favor Vice President Harris. So this is exactly why Trump's tactics only and he was only talking to his base if you see tonight's show and say he was defending himself when literally, he's the one who said that immigrants are eating people's animals. Ok. He said that multiple times, he said that people are having abortions at, at nine months, at nine months they're delivering and they're having abortions. He's making these outrageous. He also said crime is up and through the roof. Uh And then it's a that crime actually. And on all three of those things, the crime is up and through the roof. The thing about abortions being carried out after the baby is born. And on the, uh the statement that he made about immigrants eating dogs and cats, the moderators did fact check him on all three of those uh as well as uh his recent comments that he did lose the last election by a whisker. And they were asking him, is that a change from, you know, you saying for so long that it was stolen. And he said, well, that was sarcasm recently when I said it was by a Whisker. And David Muir, uh, responded that he watched the videos of him saying that they had lost by a whisker and it did not be, um, uh, uh, uh, sarcasm. So there were some, uh, instances of fact checking. I don't remember seeing any instances of fact checking. Uh with Vice President Harris tonight, we didn't see, I don't think any fact checking in the first debate uh between Trump and Biden and there were instances in which it was, you're sitting there waiting and it just didn't happen, right? But you can say there was no fact checking. But what did price President Kamala say? That actually was a lie. President Trump literally said statements that were lies and contradicted himself and statements that we have. We know that he said he didn't take responsibility for anything that has happened. And, and that's why he had to be fact checked. When you're telling the American people. Democrats wanna have abortions at nine months. Those are such outlandish statements that are not even rooted in reality. Immigrants are eating your, your animals. I don't, I'm, I'm not even certain. He didn't say immigrants are, aren't eating Children. Did he say that? He did not say that? He did not say that I'm but Vice President Harris absolutely said that she's never been in favor of banning fracking and I've seen her say it with my own two eyes on several broadcasts. She, she wa she denied many of her policies if you go to her ac lu um you know, report that she filled out. It's pretty shocking and she backed off of all that stuff, but she didn't say I've changed my mind and here's why I've changed my mind. Here's what made me think differently. She, she, she acted as though she had never really supported this policy because the question to her was specifically, you said you wanted fracking, but now you did it, but you're saying you haven't changed your values. So in actuality, it wasn't that she made a statement. They actually asked her, how did you change your position? And, and she said we need to depend less on foreign oil. We need to learn how to have different ways of having energy. And she, she has evolved her position on fracking. She didn't say I never said that that's actually completely untrue. I think her position on fracking because she wants to win state of Pennsylvania. Well, I think it's important to evolve. We did not see an evolved Donald Trump. Tonight, we saw the same Donald Trump. We saw the bitter, we saw the angry, we saw the hostile, we saw the name calling. We saw the year year we, and, and even though none of them were able to bring in policy although Vice President Kamala tried to address what her priorities would be in her closing, she was able to draw a, you guys keep chatting with Wheeler here. She was able to draw a wait, I'm gonna try this one. She was able to draw a contrast between herself and him, even though they, they weren't allowed to really get into their policy. She drew a contrast in terms of this is what you have to look forward to again. And it, and, and sitting there watching him completely lie. I don't know why he elongates um things in the end that she's black or the immigrants or whatever we saw. We were, it's almost like we went back to PTSD and we could remember do we want to go back four years to this type of temperament? And I think since they didn't do policy, we had to look at them today and say who has the temperament that we want to move forward? That's really all they, they presented today.