Capehart and Ponnuru on Harris' debate success and Trump's embrace of conspiracy theories

amna: The presidential debate marks a major moment in the race for the white house and Donald Trump comes under scrutiny for conspiracy theories. On that and more of the week's news we turn to the analysis of Capehart, Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of the Washington post and the editor for national review. David brooks is away. Great to have you with us. Three days after the debate between Harris and trump, only one pole conducted in the days after that gives us a limited view of the impacts. We see the vice president with 47% to Donald Trump's 42% nationally. It is hard to say just yet what the impact of the debate will be. We hope there will be more poles but the Harris campaign feels good about what happened. Did she do enough in the debate to answer questions that voters have? >> If we are being honest, yes and no. The Harris campaign should be excited about where things are. They went into the debate with momentum at their back. Her performance arguably was superb. She answered questions that people had because Donald Trump and Republicans spent a lot of time degrading her and questioning her intelligence and abilities and her accomplishments. Downplaying the fact that she has run for elected office citywide in San Francisco, statewide in California, state wide for ag and senate and nationwide as vice president. And she showed up on that stage and she showed out. She showed she was able to more than handle the debate, the man across from her and to run the country. And this is the fault of debates these days, anyone expecting a deep dive into policy at the debate had their expectations -- they had the wrong expectations. In 2016 Hillary Clinton was criticized for having too many plans and policies. And now people are criticizing Kamala Harris for not having enough plans. If you watch her rallies, she said in the debate but it is an opportunity economy but people say she did not say what that was but she has been talking about it on the campaign trail. Amna: We knew she was going to try to goad Donald Trump into reacting and she did. That worried a lot of Republicans. >> I think that it worried a lot of the people around Donald Trump. He was on notice that that was going to happen but he appears to be congenitally incapable of resisting taking the bait. I suspect one of the reason some of the people around him are all right with the idea he won't do another one is that he would follow the same pattern if he had the debate again. She had flaws as a debater but he had something more like a meltdown. It may not show up in the polls because I think it will be a tight race all the way through but there is no question about who did better. Amna: Do you think the debate will have any impact on his support? >> I think anything that happens in this race is going to have a small effect on the overall numbers but that could still be a big affect entrance of the percentage of undecided voters because this is trench warfare. And I think it will stay that way. Amna: Do you agree? Do you think they should debate again? >> Yes, I want them to debate again. As an American I would like that and I would like the next bait to be focused on policy. But Donald Trump is incapable of not dealing in grievance. And one of the great things that Harris did on the debate stage was she throughout the bait and he took it and he threw some stuff back. She pivoted and talked about what she wanted to do. I would like another debate between them so we can talk about things like -- you both say you don't want to tax tips but how would that work. Today he's talking about no more taxes on overtime. Really? Have her explain more about the opportunity economy and how you will pay for it but it ain't going to happen. Amna: The other big story -- Mr. Trump and Mr. Variance's repeated remarks about the Haitian immigration -- immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio. That has led to threats against the people in that community. And paired with his association with a woman who traffics in racism like this online recently tweeting that the white house will smell like curry if Kamala Harris is elected and echoing messages of white supremacists talking about the replacement theory. This is not a secret meeting that Mr. Trump is having with someone, she is traveling with him. What is the message? >> It is an ugly message. I want to take folks back to 2008 when Barack Obama was going to announce his candidacy for the presidency. And tapes came out from sermons of his pastor. It pushed him to give one of the best political speeches in American history and the best speech on race in history to save his campaign. He was being roundly criticized. Here we are in 2024 and a former president current presidential nominee is flying around with a conspiracy theorist. Can you imagine if Jeremiah Wright had gotten off Barack Obama's plane days after the sermons came out? Who cannot imagine it because it would not have happened. It is shameful that Republicans are not demanding of Donald Trump what quite frankly the nation demanded a Barack Obama in 2008. Donald Trump should be held accountable, he should be held to account for associating himself with this person. And if he doesn't want to come if he wants to rhetorically embrace her, do that. But Republicans need to condemn him for what he is doing. It is harmful for his party but more damaging for the country. >> She has come under severe criticism from even Marjorie Taylor Greene. And she said that she does not speak for Donald Trump or for the Republican party. If Donald Trump believes that, he can say that but he hasn't. He has said that he disagreed with her statement presumably the racist one about curry which smells great, by the way. And what he didn't say was -- this is disgusting. He doesn't care about that. As long as she supports him, that makes her a good person in his eyes. Amna: We heard that Marjorie Taylor Greene says this does not represent the party but he is their presidential nominee and we have not heard a lot of outcry from other Republicans. >> If Republicans did her, -- denounce her, she is obviously not the problem. The problem is that candidate. As long as she supports him, she thinks -- he thinks it is fine. Amna: 18 points between the candidates by one measure which is larger than it was in 2020 or 2016. We know women vote in larger numbers than men in presidential elections. On top of the Taylor Swift endorsement. Is there anything you see that would close the gap? >> I wonder how much the fear mongering that Donald Trump is engaging in will poll some of these women back. I want to be clear -- there has always been a gender gap but a lot of it is driven by African-American women have been solidly in the camp of Democrats. The fact of the gender gap widening says to me that white women are moving in the Harris direction. Whether they stay there is another thing. And a data point to remember, no Democrat running for president has won the majority of the white vote since 1964. >> Young hispanic men and African-American men have shown some signs of being more open to Donald Trump which is also expanding the gender gap. And also watch married women and men versus single men and women. There is the marriage gap. With married women in 2020 they narrowly went for Donald Trump. Will that happen again? Amna: Do you see anything coming from Donald Trump that speaks to the demographic? >> I think it is very hard to ascertain what Donald Trump's strategy is at the moment. The thing he needed to do at the debate was to define her but he was too busy talking about himself to do that. Amna: Great to have you both. Thank you so much. And we will have much more coverage of the presidential race online including a conversation with two linguists about what Donald Trump and Harris' respective speaking styles say about the candidates. >> Every speech in the cycle she seems to be a more traditional politician. She is very rehearsed and under control. She is moving her style towards something that is more legibly presidential. For Donald Trump, his speaking style was honed through his experience in reality television. He learned from working on the apprentice how to build a moment and he learned comedic timing through his rallies. He has learned how to interact with the crowd. He spends a lot of time cultivating his style. Amna: You can find the full conversation on our YouTube page. ♪♪ who geoff: Artist and designer