Trump Runs Scared From Another Kamala Debate! | Bulwark Takes

hey it's me samstein here at the bwork with Andrew Edgar author of the morning shots newsletter one of the great journalistic feats of our era we're actually doing an emergency take this is technically a substitute for Tim takes but uh Tim's not with us Tim worked too much and so we had to step in uh for him here reason we are doing this emergency take is because news has just broken Donald Trump is not going to be doing any other presidential debates I guess that's what he says you should never totally what Donald Trump puts out on Truth or anything like that but here's what he said I'm going to read part of it when a prize feder loses a fight the first words out of his mouth are I want a rematch uh polls clearly show that I won the debate against comrade KL Harris the Democrats radical left candidate on Tuesday night and she immediately called for a second debate she and crooked Joe have destroyed our country blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah she was a noshow at the fox debate and refused to do NBC and CBS com should focus on what she should have done during the last Almost four-year period there will be no third debate exclamation point all that stuff was in all caps at the end um Andrew are you surprised uh not very surprised one obviously uh we all watched the debate as it unfolded and Donald Trump was there so he knows how it went um it was not a super great showing for him are you sure are you sure he was there are you sure he was there he was at least mostly there yeah I mean the the physical corporeal form of Donald Trump was up there on that stage speaking I don't know where where the rest of them was um but it was it was very funny because right you mentioned some of those polls he already had those in his hands like when he went to the spin room right after the debate he stepped up in front of all the reporters he was like let me tell you we've got the numbers we've run the numbers the numbers are very good we're looking at po the worst the worst poll that we've had was 71 that I see we had a 92% rating in one poll 80 20 I told that to Brett Bear we had an 86% rating and another we had 77% one poll is 92% to six 92 to7 it was all online right-wing polls yeah yeah yeah I mean like like like polling polling a debate performance is always kind of silly but you can do it scientifically I mean there have been a couple polls that came out um that basically showed that Harris pretty convincingly won that debate um but the weird thing about it and and the second thing is that like he was just on Fox news this morning um and and they were likewell come on he's on Fox and Friends they were like come on come on to our Network we'll do a debate for you you know we'll have you on with with with uh Martha and Brett and he was like ah I don't know about Martha and Brett I feel like they do kind of a bad job why can't we do a debate with Shan Hannity why can't we do a debate with Laura Ingram or Jesse Waters I mean like he so the W writing was kind of already on the wall that this was a guy who was like trying to go back into his safe space more so than out to do another adversarial uh debate with k Harris I hear you doesn't this like kind of risk though this whole or that he tries to project of like I'm the alpha male I'll talk that to anyone at any time I can debate anybody at any time I mean I'm not saying this is like gonna like his campaign but it does seem like kind of chicken well yeah I mean and that's that is why the first part of that post that you read there is such a loadbearing wall right I mean like like he's he's like I won so she wants to do another one but I'm not going to let her trick me like that you know but but if you look at it I mean like like historically there have been uh presidents who did who had bad first debates right I mean Joe Biden was one and then he didn't get another one um but but if you look back at like 2012 uh when when uh uh Mitt Romney and Barack Obama uh debated and Mitt Romney was widely uh considered to have won that first Showdown uh but then they came back and did another one and Obama quitted himself much better and obviously went on to win that race so like the strategically it is a very bizarre thing for for for Trump to have so dramatically lost I guess like in internally in his own mind it would be interesting to wonder whether he himself accepts the fact that he lost or whether he actually sees those Newsmax polls and things and is like no I did I actually did great yeah but that's my point it's like all the talk after the debate is like is he actually all there is he mentally prepared for this and if you were you know I mean if you were thinking strategically about this the answer would be get him into another debate immediately so that he can Rectify all the fuckups that happened in the first one and here he is he's uh running away from the possibility I I think this is actually kind of mistake remember after the Biden debate the entire question was okay can he get back out there publicly can he prove the doubter is wrong like yeah Trump's gonna go out and do some stuff but I I I think this actually feeds into uh the criticism that he's kind of playing with half a deck at this point um we'll see though we'll see right like I mean who knows if if people actually hold him to this or if he get he even gets dinged let's see if he even reverses himself I me I feel like there's a possibility that he actually is like you know what actually I will do a debate yeah yeah and I mean there have already been so many little reversals already and and and there's always a little bit of this kind of debate chicken stuff although not usually quite as definitive as what he said there will be no third debate but on on on the point about just kind of like damage control I mean I think the Biden comparison is pretty interesting right because like Biden has this really bad debate back in June uh and then very quickly that that creates this uh or that that that leads into this reversal in their strategy where they're like okay we have to clean this up he starts doing all kinds of press where he hadn't been before but what it but what that all that that additional press turns out to show is that he the debate was basically an accurate showing of of his abilities I mean he he had a lot more stumbles he just he could not he could not um kind of put that all behind him like they hoped to and I think if you're if you're if you're Donald Trump and you're looking at this strategically or or more specifically if you're Donald Trump's advisers and you're looking at this strategically maybe the conclusion that you come to is look we had him pretty well prepped to do another debate along the lines of the first one where the where the goal was to stay on message to stay boring to project this kind of Aura of of of um just kind of quiet uh competence where you're just talking about policy you're just talking about the things everybody didn't like about Joe Biden's term uh and and basically allow just sort of everybody's Gauzy nostalgia the time that used to be to fill in around you and let you win and make you seem competent but but and he tried to do that for about 20 minutes and then KL Harris made fun of his rallies and rattled him and got him mad and he couldn't and he and all that planning just went out the window he couldn't stick to it at all anymore so I do wonder if you are Chris lva and Susie WS like like maybe you're thinking okay he couldn't do it that time what makes us think he would do any better of a job of staying on message right next to her up on stage a second time and and why should we expect it would be better and maybe it's better just to rip off the Band-Aid and say there's not going to be yeah but he doesn't sure but he's his own he's his own boss like it's I it's going to be his choice but whether to do this debate not Chris or sus right like so clearly he feels like this was a negative the other thing that this does though is it kind of complicates this whole talking point that I think was successfully chipping at Harris's support which was that she ducked adversarial questioning and that she was not exposing herself to the public now Trump definitely does way more interviews many of them in friendly confines but not all of them um but you know there's a whole subset of you know analysts and commentators out there who've been like pounding the drum about how dare KLA Harris only do two debates and you know how dare she not do all these media interviews and now they just get to point to Trump and be like we wanted to do another debate and this guy said no so it kind of hands her a little bit of an escape hatch too yeah and I I I I completely agree with that by the way like like I think that that KLA Harris got pry Lucky in terms of how little uh kind of dwelling on some of those pain points for her they did in that first debate and a lot of that was because Trump was self-destructing on stage um and and that he was not pressing any of those things except in a couple of very small instances but I think I I think it's very likely that that if you got a second debate kind of the whoever ended up moderating that would have looked at kind of the The Narrative around the first debate and been like all right like let's let's make one of our strategic plans to push back on her specifically more on of this stuff um and so I think yeah I mean I it's it seems like a complete complete uh failure to just kind of capitalize on that on the part of the Trump campaign all right so what what let's do over under uh or what percentage would you give the chance that he reverses on this the chance that he reverses on this or the chance that they actually end up debating because I I think like even if he reverses on it now let's do both let's do both let's do both chance that he reverses then chance that he debates I would not put it higher than like a 20 25% chance that he reverses he was very definitive I don't know maybe maybe you disagree what do you think I gotta go with I'm going to go with 30 to 40 35 35 I'm going 35% chance he does a 180 and says you know what change my mind uh all right then chances the debate happens very very small right I mean don't you think like five to 10 Perc maybe even less because I think like even if he reverses there's a couple things one maybe he reverses but is still like demanding that it be the the uh I don't know the Bill O'Reilly debate or something like that yeah like like like that's possible and obviously that's not going to happen but then also like we just talked about it is not necessarily in KLA Harris's strategic interest to do another debate the only reason for her to do another debate would be so that she wouldn't have to back out of another debate right like so so I mean he's given her this beautiful opportunity I see maybe maybe but they had such a good debate I feel like they have the W unless they were trying to play chicken with him and be like they called his buff they like we let's do it again and he was like no right right but don't you think she like shot the moon so hard that like given this golden opportunity to like just have that be the only debate in people's minds they would be happy to take that well they have another there is going to be another debate they haven't canceled the walls JD Vance debate so there is that debate but that's like that's like you know that's the B team no one's Really Gonna vote on that maybe they okay the fact the fact that there's that I'm going to revise my number up say 15 15% chance that that that we actually do end up with another with another why is that you think that something will something dramatic will happen and then it'll be in their interest to actually have another presidential debate yeah I I mean I I just had that number so much lower than the other because it seemed so plausible that even if Trump changes his mind that kamla and her campaign would essentially say well come on you said we're not gonna have a third debate We're not gonna play these games with you we're done here um and just let that let that hang as sort of like the sole thing in people's minds but yeah I mean it's possible that how could J how could JD Vance not do better than Donald Trump did I mean kind of he's like a debate guy right he's kind of like the The Debate Club kid in a lot of ways um so was he in a debate Club I mean he seem like gu just me an a no I think he was kind of a burnout in high school right I mean he had that he he straightened up in the military as sort of yeah yeah he he he he he came to Debate Club later in life I want to talk briefly about uh one of my favorite stories that's happened in the debate related to the first debate which is um there's a thing going around that um KL Harris got the uh answers or some coaching because she was wearing have you seen this one she was wearing these pearl earrings that have audio earpiece embedded in them and uh there's a whole thing on the right that's like she cheated like this is this is this is proof look at her earrings that she was wearing there are actual audio earpieces have you seen this stuff oh yeah I mean I I haven't exactly looked into it I wouldn't say but I've I've looked into it I've seen the tweets going around what what' you find out it's not true oh my God yeah this is this is the type of Journalism you get at the bull workk it's not true I just want to be clear I've discovered this uh she's worn the proof is she's worn those earrings before so and there's picture proof and so if this um unless she's been constantly coached with this technology over like many uh months in years I'm just going to break some news to people she was not wearing a bug or or you just blew this whole thing wide open right I mean maybe this is just like well the funny thing about this was the funny thing about this was um the Trump campaign started pushing it uh a little bit yesterday they that Jason Miller put out a tweet where he's like talking about this article with like you know the eye emojis oh uh the article was written by I think like whatever John Salmon's news Outlet is and it kind of dealt with the issue credulously and and it yeah and it quoted a managing director for the company that makes the earrings uh that said you know they did kind of look like ours but then later in the it was very clear later in the quote that they were just playing a prank because they're like we're going to design one to for Donald Trump's usage to level the playing field but it's really tough to make that color of orange and it's like but just the news took it as a very serious quot and didn't realize they were being trolled so I thought that was oh man that was very clever by the man such a funny I mean like it's not like she had any like any like enormously effective she didn't make Trump people just planned really well right I mean she had a bunch of like lines Andrew if I if you were take if you were in a debate and you had some Jackal in your ear telling you hey do this do this it would probably you up You' probably do worse right I I did a radio hit just this morning where like I could got a little bit of my own feedback of my own voice in my ear because system was not set up correctly I almost died like I almost had to hang up it was like I cannot imagine imagine somebody talk like yipping at me as I'm trying like formulate thought she just she prepped she did the work like he could have done that that would have been okay earpiece yeah the earpiece did not like omit like some sort of uh radar or sonar to like make Trump say they're eating the dogs that was not what the earpiece did Trump did that it had nothing to do with the anything K was wearing on her ears it's ridiculous it's a great storyline but it's totally ridiculous and alas I don't think we're going to get another chance to have these types of story lines because it looks like uh looks like we're done with the debate um Andrew thank you for uh joining us on an emergency session I know to the viewers out there I I I'm so sorry we're not Tim we're not Tim Miller we just aren't and and I know you'll have to deal with that we already know feel like you have to tell us in the comments yeah we we know and you know it pains us also when we see that the viewer numbers are so much lower uh so maybe you can do more for us and help our OS by sharing this video and then subscribing to our YouTube page and then telling everyone to check out the bullwark uh and also more importantly to check out morning shots which Andrew writes every day with Bill Crystal Andrew thanks man really appreciate it bu thanks Sam take care guys