Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, Sept. 13, 2024

On Tuesday, Vice President Harris and former  President Trump faced off in what as of right   now stands to be the only debate between  the two nominees, Kamala Harris. Have fun. Thank you. Harris had a bit of a  slow start, but then she managed to drive Trump off the rails,  triggering him with talk of crowd size. By the end of the debate, it was  obvious to most observers, including this one, that there was a clear  winner, but will it matter on election day? Next. Good evening and  welcome to Washington Week, where tonight we will not make a single  joke about cats or dogs because we are a serious show about the  one serious business of a serious city. I'm so old that I can remember  a time when you can get through an entire presidential campaign  without without once hearing about immigrant cat eating or the relative  death dealing qualities of sharks and boat batteries or windmills and  their relationship to bacon shortages. I'm not complaining, I'm just  observing. Tonight, we'll talk about Tuesday's debate and how Kamala  Harris exceeded expectations and how Donald Trump ended the week  by saying essentially not going to do that again. We're 53D's out  from the election, and I'll discuss the state of the race with Ashley  Parker, the senior national political correspondent for The Washington  Post. Eugene Daniels, a White House correspondent for Politico and  co-author of Playbook. Jerusalem Demsas, my colleague and a staff writer  at The Atlantic and the author of the new book on the housing crisis.  And Asma Khalid, NPR's White House correspondent and an ABC  News political contributor. Thank you for joining me, eventful week,  no cats, no dogs. I, I'm serious about it. I'm trying to, and I'm  saying that to myself obviously. um Jerusalem, let me start with you.  This is a fact insufficiently known in Washington as far as I'm  concerned, but you were voted Speaker of the Year for the American  parliamentary Debate Association as a college debater, which meant that  you were the best college debater in America. Um, so you're the  expert, you have the floor. Tell us what we saw Tuesday. Night.  Tell us what we not just what we heard, but tell us what we saw.  Well, you definitely didn't see a college debate on Tuesday  night, so the level was too low, it's funny, I mean when you're in  college debate, you like to think that most of what's happening is  are your arguments winning, but there's this um you know element  that you realize, especially as you start getting good later and  you know, college career that a lot of it also has to do with how  people are perceiving you and you can see that, you know, vice presidential Vice President Kamala Harris really  knew that she was really trying to get in her skin. She's using  her facial expressions to inspire a level of ridicule in the audience and  from the, you know, the metaphorical judges, the voters, um, that there  was something ridiculous about him without having to respond to  specific arguments, she was able to inspire a sense that you know  you don't have to respond to the cats and dogs. All you can say is,  what is there to say to this other than we're going to move on now  how important that is in the long term? Who knows? Obviously it's the  case that both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign felt like  they won that night and in the long term what will matter is the  fact that he wasn't able to answer whether or not he would veto a  national abortion ban, what he said about Ukraine, but at the same  time it's clear that when it comes to how people feel about that night  and the days after they really feel like she did a good job. Ashley, did did does Donald Trump and Donald  Trump's team actually think that he won? Donald Trump's team  absolutely does not think that he won um Donald Trump has insisted that  he believes that he won and he has that ability to convince himself  of certain untruths, so that's more of an open question, but from  your reporting there's no doubt that the Trump people know that  that was not a great, no, and that's that's what you saw midway through  the debate them starting to attack the moderators, them starting to  attack ABC them saying look it's him debating three other people.  That's not the messaging or the spin of a dominant. Candidate out  there, right, right, right, um, Eugene, does it matter? I mean,  yes and no, right? At the end of the day, Vice President Harris  had to perform. Her team knew that there was more pressure on her  than Donald Trump. Donald Trump has done the most presidential debates  of any presidential candidate in history, both primary and 7  general election debates, um, and so she had to kind of step up one  and show people that she had a command of the issue. Um, she had  to and poke and prod him. I think better than any of the people he's  ever debated, right, getting underneath his skin, I think from the very  first moment when she like walked over behind his lectern to shake  his hand, making very clear, as we called it said in playbook this  week um I can the alpha female of all, right, like making it very  clear it wasn't he wasn't expecting that. I don't think he liked it  either, um, and so, um, if whether voters actually care How they did  on the debate stage. It was about making sure that she got up there  and did better than people wanted and thought she was going to do. Asma,  I want you to comment on something that I want to play for you all.  Um, it's a moment from the debate that really gets at the heart of  the challenge that Kamala Harris poses to Donald Trump. Let's  listen. It's important to remind the former president you're not running  against Joe Biden, you're running against me. I believe the reason  that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours  is because he would just give it up. And that's not who we are as Americans. The thing that he hasn't been  able to do in the last month or so is a just his. View or or or or become  accustomed to the reality that he's running against this 60 year old,  very sharp. African American slash South Asian woman, not. Ancient  Joe Biden, which was the target in the long lead up to this  moment. Um, why is he not? Showing a a learning curve here?  I would say a couple of reasons. One is that he had not anticipated  this change to happen, right? You heard for weeks after it  happened, this sort of nostalgia for Bayn he was cheated out of the  race. It's the kindest messages I think we heard from Trump about  Biden in many years, but also I would say, I mean the reality is that  that what we saw on the debate stage to me was that you know Trump's  central message for much of this campaign cycle was one major thesis, and that was  that Joe Biden. His opponent was too old. Um, that argument has  gone out the window now that he's running against a woman who is  nearly 20 years younger than him. She has suddenly become sort of  physically the change candidate. I mean her campaign talks about a  new way forward. I would make the argument that not very many of her  policies are actually different than Biden, right? I mean, Republicans  have tried, I would say Trump didn't do it that well during the  debate because he was rambling, but they have tried to tether her  to Biden and whether it was on, you know, Ukraine support for  Ukraine, whether it was on the war in the Middle East, whether it was on the immigration pretty much to a tee  most of her policies echo President Biden's, but she is physically  manifesting change and a new way forward and and Trump's campaign wanted him  to do that on stage, but instead he said that um Joe Biden hates  her. He can't stand her. So we were supposed to tie Kamala Harris and  Joe Biden together and what he did was draw even further for  voters, um, a a line between the two. It's so interesting. I mean, as  I'm watching it. And I'm familiar with some of Trump's trigger words.  It seems as if, oh, it almost is like somebody asked Chat GPT,  give us a list of 20 words that always trigger and you had, I mean, from crowd  size to the the the the the words that he cannot stand to hear, John  McCain with the thumbs down hand gesture and also more subtly  mentioning Wharton that he has a lot of pride in to rebut his economic  argument. I mean, those Easter eggs were both subtle and very  blatant. So, so, so, so the goal was, was to psychologically undo him  and I'm fascinated by the internal Trump campaign dynamic where they  obviously had to anticipate that people advising him that she would  try this, and they probably told him, but. It doesn't seem Jerusalem  that it's like at the end, you know, when he was doing his closing  remarks, it's almost like he came back to himself and he  remembered the message to be getting. It's the first time you really  hear him make the claim that, you know, that she that she's going  to be a continuation of Biden that you know if she wanted to do all  these great things she's talking about that why didn't she do it  in the last 3.5 years and it was almost like you saw him re-entering  his body after being pushed to, you know, his, you know, trigger  points on all of these different topics, so you know, I do think that  it was a where he was not expecting to be rattled by her and was clearly  underestimated. One thing that was also striking to me is if you  listen to Trump rallies, he's not been shy about saying Kamala  Harris's name. I would argue he often mispronounces it, calls her Kamala.  I mean he mispronounced it a whole host of ways, but during the  debate, I don't believe we ever heard him once utter her name, which  was just striking to me because Harris repeatedly did, you know,  talk about, talk talk to Trump by name. He just never spoke or something  about the way he speaks about her publicly and has been reported  privately is he's very dismissive of her. He, he has said he doesn't  believe she's smart and so there's something also about someone who he  views as somehow other and beneath him. I mean he's made that very  clear. I wonder if he feels that way anymore. going up against him  toe to toe and getting under his he underestimated the adversary  is what you think. I mean that's underestimates kind of an Occam's  razor thing. That's the most obvious conclusion we could draw that he  Just went in there thinking that what what is and then and then could  not maintain the self-discipline that his aides had tried to prep  him for for 90 minutes because he was so frustrated that this woman  who he did not believe is on the level of him was getting the better  of him time and time again the way that he's interacted with women,  whether they be women politicians or women reporters, the ones that  kind of catch the worst from him are often black women and women of  color who are reporters especially when you think. About people like  April Ryan, people, uh, my one of my predecessors, Yamish like,  right, like the way that he spoke to them was different than the way  that he definitely how he spoke to men, but def and also how he  spoke to white women and you saw that on stage he he often does not  think that black women or women of color, it seems, um, can rise  to the same level as him and if you think that way, watching someone  do that and actually get under your skin and have a strategy that  in poking at little things that bother you that That is going to  come out and there's an irony to it too because he thinks he's such  a populist, right? And there's a level that like you said, he's  so proud of being a Wharton, this Ivy League school and Kala Harris  is someone who did not attend an Ivy League school. She feels she  doesn't have the academic credentials, the intellectual credentials to  stand up next to him and then when she's able to get under his skin,  and I think it's even more shocking to his senses. Yeah, no, I, I is  this that's an interesting point. I, I'm trying to understand the  reason that he didn't look at her. Yeah I know I wonder if it goes to  something that Eugene is talking about or if it goes to a strategy  of, I mean, she was directly right after and, and, and it can be interpreted  as fear, it could be interpreted as contempt. It could be interpreted  as just a, I'm going to look at the audience the whole time and  I don't care about her. I don't know what or I'm not gonna look at  her cause I might get too pissed off and make a face that might turn  off the the white suburban women assumes a level of discipline. No, no. Yeah, the only discipline in his approach  and obviously, you know, I'm just imagining, and there's a little  reporting around, but I'm just imagining that there's uh that  there is, you know, she's going to try to get under your skin. She's  gonna try to get under your skin and you know, obviously for Kamala  Harris, they did endless prep and real debate prep because  traditional debate he does not do that, right? He talks about it as like  going out and talking to the people and doing his rallies is the way  that he does debate prep. That did not work. She did actually. Should  there be prep where um a former Hillary Clinton aide Philip Philip  Ryans, who played Donald Trump for Hillary Clinton, did the exact  same thing for her, where they sat across said, you know, near  each other and had an actual debate, and Philippe, those we, we know him  from years of covering. Philippe is a person, um, I'll put this  diplomatically, he doesn't mind getting under your skin when it's when,  when it's appropriate to the, to the moment from his perspective,  yeah, yeah, yeah, he probably, he didn't leave character actually.  They say, um, the, uh, I, I wanna, I wanna play something else. This is  a compilation of Trump's statements from that night on a particular,  particularly dark theme. Our country is being lost. We're a  failing nation. If she's president, I believe that Israel will not  exist within 2 years from now. We're playing with World War II and we  have a president that we don't even know if he's, where is our  president? We're a failing nation. We're a nation that's in serious  decline. This is the most divisive presidency. In the history of our  country, there's never been anything like it. They're destroying our  country. So on the general theme of I'm old enough to remember X,  I'm old enough to remember, uh, Ronald Reagan mourning in America,  Ronald Reagan as the sunny Republican antidote to the molaise and the  moroseness of the Carter years, um, and you know, the Republicans are  traditionally the party that says uh, you know, uh, uh, it's all  sunny uplands, America is a great place. It's the party that  in recent years has embraced. visible signs of patriotism. This  is dark. I mean, this is really, really dark. Ashley, what's going  on here in his, in his mind, maybe nothing new because his harks back  to American carnage, but I was really struck by this, this, uh,  this, this view of America as this dystopia. Well, if you've been  paying attention to his rallies, his posts on social media, his interviews,  he for a while now has been painting this incredibly vivid  sort of grotesque caricature, dark dystopian and generally utterly  fictitious of America and So, for instance, I, I mean, I could take  the whole show, but I'll be quick. He talks about transgender kids  going to school. You send little Johnny off to school in the morning  and they come home from school having undergone gender reassignment  surgery is one. He talks about how you can't go out to get a loaf  of bread without getting raped, mugged, or shot. He talks about  how people are aborting kids after birth, which is actually infanticide  and illegal, um, and he talks about, I apologize for bringing this up here. But Immigrants in Springfield, Ohio  eating cats and dogs, and that is just the image of the nation that  he is painting. He thinks it will work to his political benefit  clearly, but some of those are just so caricatured. I mean, there's  parents who send their kids to school and can't get them to come home  doing basic math, right? The idea that surgeries are going on in  elementary schools is just absurdist. Uh, so, go, go on with that theme.  The question I have, maybe this is his, this is. maybe this is a  strategy. I mean, it's not a strategy for expanding the base necessarily,  but it's a strategy for keeping the base. Yes, it's a familiar  place, right? Like I feel like even when you saw in 2020, are you saying  that dystopia is his happy place comfortable place, right? I mean,  you, you go back to 2015, 2016 that cycle when he first announced  he was going to run for president. It was these allegations about  Mexicans sending out their best into the country, some of them are rapists.  I mean that that is his. Familiar line. I think what is Unusual and  maybe different this time to me, particularly with the allegations  about what's not true going on in Springfield, Ohio is that he  pinpointed a specific community and as has been reported, I mean that  community is facing repercussions. They're schools are being closed  out of danger though that you know he is someone who excels when people  feel like it's a change election, right? Like there's a reason why  he did not do well in a re-election race where he has to say, let's  talk about how great I just did for 4 years, like, you know, even if  there were things he was pointing to around the economy that he  thought were a specific achievements, he couldn't inspire a sense of  pride in America. I mean, obviously it was a dark time, there was  COVID in the country, so it's hard to do that, but he really does  well when he inspires fear in the electorate, and his goal is to  say, I'm here to be your champion against these dark forces that are  amassing and when he can't play that role and in some ways Harris  is precluding him from doing that by not representing the previous  administration or and she's kind of a new fresh face. But for him,  he wants to be a change candidate. He wants to be someone who's who's  talking about how dark things are, one of the most remarkable  moments in the debate came when Trump was asked if he wanted Ukraine  to win in its war against Russia, Russia's war against Ukraine, I  should say, and and the remarkable thing is he didn't say yes, which  would be the easiest, most bipartisan thing for an American politician  to say yes, I want Ukraine to win. Um, and I, and I want to play  something for you. This is, this is his running mate, JD Vance, um,  talking, uh, at, at greater length about uh their their view of  this, this war. So listen to this. So I think what this looks like is  Trump sits down. He says the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, you  guys need to figure out what is a peaceful settlement look like  and what it probably looks like is something like the current line  of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized  zone. It's heavily fortified, so the Russians don't invade again.  Ukraine remains its independent sovereignty. Russia gets the  guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine. It doesn't join NATO. It doesn't  join, you know, some of these sort of allied and institutions. So  Jerusalem, what's going on here? When, well, we saw a post, you know, the  Iraq war, that the whole country's mood towards intervention really turned,  right? Like Democrats, Republicans across the board. But there was  still a sense in most of the foreign policy establishment, most of the  leadership of both the Democratic and Republican Party that we have  allies in the world and there are people you should fortify with,  and there are people that you stand against and liberalism is still a  thing that people stand for. But Trump has always been very outside  of that sort of dynamic, right? He doesn't view the rest of the  world that way. He sees strong. men that he lies with people  like Putin, people like Xi, and people like Netanyahu, and  then there are people who he thinks are weak and that's his vision of  the world. He doesn't really see value in investing in his allies.  He sees NATO as not a place where American strength can be found  and can be built and allyship can be found, but a place where they're  taking advantage of us, right? They're, they're making us exactly  and we need they need to pay in more and and are not doing enough.  I do think he's also found though that there's domestic appetite for  Or saying, OK, enough is enough, right, with sort of endless support  for Ukraine because you know this is an argument, it's an  argument you'll hear when you go out and talk to voters in certain  parts of the country that they feel like the roads aren't being built  or that their schools are sufficient that they don't have enough money  for groceries. Now whether these things, I'm not saying if you stop  sending money to Ukrainian weapons you would suddenly have money to  build, you know, state of the art schools, but there is a frustration  with high costs of things here and people see that. It seems that  maybe this is a failure on the Biden administration's part to  explain something, but The, the money that's going to Ukraine is in the  form of weapons that are built, made in America in American factories  by American workers paid for by the US government, but it's a,  I mean not to put it in a cynical sense, but it's also a jobs  program, so it doesn't that they did that for a while. I was so confused  that they didn't keep harping on that, right? Like it is, it is  such an easy to me and probably maybe maybe you guys disagree but  like easier to tell the American people we're selling this. you guys  don't understand, but we're sending these because we're also doing the  jobs here. Everything we're sending over there we're placing here the  job we're not sending troops and we're not sending troops your  daughters and sons are not going the signal difference between this and  that does not seem to have resonated. They didn't do it for very long,  right? It popped up in in a couple of speeches and then they've just  moved on from it and it's it it to this day it's probably the best  ar one of the best arguments they have for continuing to send it to  those who have issue with it. I want to ask a question about a  controversy. Involving something that, uh, Kamala Harris has said Donald  Trump brought it up in the in the debate. He said that she supports  transgender surgery for immigrants being held in federal prison.  There was a lot of back and forth, you know, she doesn't believe  that, but in fact she did tell the ACLU in in 2019, I think it was  2019, uh, there was a question on a, on a questionnaire that she supported taxpayer funding for gender transition  surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners. So far as  I know, the campaign has not Said, uh, or she is certainly not said  if she still believes in this or if she's shifting her position on  this. Eugene Asma, what's going on with that particular issue? I  mean, she hasn't talked about it since, right? It's not been an issue  that she has talked about. There's a few issues that she's kind of  changed her um position on now um after 3.5 years as vice president,  I think largely what's happening with kind of the different vice  president, the different Senator Harris in 2019 and now is that at  the time There was a Democratic Party that was kind of chasing  itself to the left and you had all of these, um, it was like 20  something people who were on stage, almost other than Joe Biden who were  saying, I'm going to chase Bernie Sanders. I think the party, um, is  a Bernie Sanders party. They learned the hard way that that's not the  case and so they had these different types of positions where whether  it's that that one or or fracking or all of these others that she  held at the time I think you know you would probably as a prose as  something completely different. And I think if and when we see her  campaign address this if they're forced to, it will fall into the  my values have not changed bucket right values have changed my  policy positions, but my values are what she what she said about  immigration when she kind of came out with some different um ideas on  immigration is that the last 3.5 years watching and and and dealing  with immigration has kind of influenced her decision, which is, I think,  you know, most Americans probably will give them credit for that,  but she hasn't said that about the others I think it's worth. Thinking  about the dynamics of a primary too, right, because the way that  this policy position came out is that the ACLU sent a questionnaire  to candidates, and people had to respond to it and you know  that the dynamic is just not exist in rule of fight club never respond  to a questionnaire and in the minute that we have left, I was  gonna ask about Laura Lumer, but I kind of feel like just saving it  for next week and maybe that issue won't be around. I'm going to go  and give you 50 seconds, Jerusalem to talk about your book in the  context of uh Of the campaign, housing crisis, how does it relate to  the immigration crisis? Yes, I mean this has been a big talking  point for JD Vance and Donald Trump. They're looking for an  answer because you know, the Harris campaign has been very clear that  they're going to be focusing on policies like building more housing  and providing down payment assistance, and there has to be an answer to  that that plays into this sort of populist rhetoric and so they've  decided to focus on the fact that, you know, immigrants have come into  this country and are contributing to demand for those houses. There's  There's not good evidence for this. We know that actually the  majority of home price appreciation happened because of Americans  seeking houses and remote work demand shifts, but you know, you can  read more about it in my book that was a perfect, perfect, uh,  enlightened self-serving pivot, um, I, I appreciate it very much,  but unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now. Do read her book.  Uh, I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing  their reporting and to our viewers at home, thank you for. Joining us  for a close look at the way stricter abortion laws affect OBGYNs. Please  read Sarah Zhang's article. That's something you won't recover from at a  doctor's office at the Atlantic.com. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night  from Washington.