John Heilemann - “Impolitic” & Trump-Harris Debate Recap | The Daily Show

I knew there would be some Wu-Tang apparel when you walked out there. Well, after you sung the praises of Wu-Tang at your Chicago convention show. You saw that? Yeah, of course I did. You talked about how that era, 1991-1995, four best years in American history. I agreed. - You agree, right? - I agreed. I'm a little disappointed. They promised me Desi tonight. They did promise you Desi. That's why I'm here. I mean, I love you, but like, I was like, I wanted to get the best sub Jon host. First of all, I don't consider myself a sub Jon host. I am the host of the goddamn Daily Show, you will respect that. [CHEERING, APPLAUSE] And you should understand that all of the best groups have a lot of members. ODB, Jizah, Rza, Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck. These are groups. Clans, if you will. - I can't believe you. I can't believe some of the ones you're leaving out there, like Meth, who's going to come over here and beat the shit out of you for that. But here's, here's how you know that I actually knew it was you. - OK. After all that discussion that we had on my podcast last week about the food of Chicago. Yes, I, I was slumming it and I did your podcast. He did. And he was great. He was great. You got to listen to it, Impolitic with John Heilemann. Here's the thing. - Good, good promo. So you didn't come to Philly. No, I didn't. You know what they make in Philly? - What do they make? - Cheesesteaks. Cheesesteaks, famously. There's two of them, two famous cheesesteak makers. Yes, I've been to one of them. Which one? Geno's, I think. Well, we got, all right, now these, these were purchased after, they're open 24 hours. These were purchased in the middle, like about 3 AM. It's Pat's and Geno's, right? Pat's and Geno's, right next to each other. Geno's steaks, right. You're bringing me old meat? Well, no, no. These were transported from Philadelphia as if they were severed limbs, OK. Like, on, on ice. Very well, like, just really hygienic. Don't worry. It's going to be great. - But, yeah-- Cold Cheese Whiz, there's nothing better, there's nothing better. And this is Pat's King of Steaks. Now, these places have been operating in Philadelphia for like 80 years. They're a block away from each other. And people will fight you in Philly over which one of these is better. - Yeah. They're indistinguishable. If you, if you take, if you take a, if you take one of these pieces of steak and cover it in Cheez Whiz-- - Right. --which is what you're supposed to do, and onions, you can't tell the difference. You don't have to eat it now, because I know how it's, eating on the air is not cool. But I wanted to make sure that you had an offering. An offering. What do you think these people want to see, John? These are the smartest, smartest audience on television. Eat it. [CHEERING] N/A And then-- Let's do it. We're going to [BLEEP] do it. I tell you what, we're going to do it. This, this is all going to live on the web now, because this interview has already gone 17 minutes into. [INAUDIBLE] OK, so I'm starting with my Geno's. Yep, that's good. Let's do it. OK. You know, and the thing was, I thought that like a little Michter's 10-year-old straight rye would be the thing to wash it back. I think that looks like a delicious. That's a delicious, delicious, drink. It's a delicious drink. N/A [CHEERING, APPLAUSE] N/A I like my meat, cold and wet, I tell you that. OK, that's a delicious, cold, wet meat. There's nothing better, there's nothing better than cold Cheez Whiz, Jordan. I know, right? Pat, how would Pat describe their attempt at a cheesesteak? Better than Geno's. They would say better than Geno's. That what they would say. Traditionally, there are peppers on a cheesesteak, as well. Some people like the peppers. Some people don't like the peppers. Some people just, you know, it's with the onions, you either order wit or witout. Uh-huh. That's the first question you get. What kind of cheese. Wit and then wit or witout for wit onions or witout onions. You got to have onions. - You got to have some onions. - That's right. - OK, I'm going to try this. And as I'm trying this, I want you to encapsulate as if we are eating in Philadelphia, your experience last night at the debate in Philadelphia. Oh, my god. Well-- I mean, could these things be more oddly phallic? Right? And I know, I know sub sandwiches are phallic, but like something when you make it cold, it feels-- No, I would-- Right, right, right? I mean, I wouldn't say oddly phallic, I'd just say plainly phallic. - They're plainly phallic. - Obviously phallic. - They're plainly phallic. - To the max. All right, the debate. He's having more. He's like, I-- I'm a man of the people. I love your, I love your cold, wet meat. Well, I heard you talking about your, you had Malort in Chicago, and you were, like, waxing rhapsodic about the fact that it tasted like you'd eaten a leg of a wet dog. Yeah, indeed. And I thought if a man enjoys eating the leg of a wet dog or something that tastes like that, cold cheesesteak is the, is the closest approximation on the Eastern seaboard. My, my job for The Daily Show, I get to sometimes sit behind this lovely desk, but most of the year I am out in the middle of the country-- Right. --eating the food that America has to offer. And usually, it is this. And I appreciate, I love it, I'm Tim Walz without the folksy charm, you know. So, send me into your gas stations and I will, I will sup at your tables. Or the military. Or the, or the 40 years of military service. OK, if you want to nitpick here, all right. So, you were there. - Right. You were there. You want to know about the debate. I want to know about the debate. You guys want about the debate? [CHEERING, APPLAUSE] N/A First things first. She kicked his ass. [CHEERING, APPLAUSE] N/A Now, I heard, I heard Jon last night talking about how, this is a matter of opinion, people will claim various things. Here's a fundamental truth about campaigns. Both sides have either directly under their, under their auspices or in super PACs, they have they do this thing called dial groups. They get undecided voters in battleground states to watch the debate in real time. And they said, you've seen these things. They, they crank the dial. Do they approve, do they disapprove? And that's how they, that's all they're looking at, is what the dials are showing them. Later, they will look at polling, but on that night-- Internally, they're getting that essentially in real time based on the answers that they're having. And at the end of the night, they know two things. Did, did your candidate perform well with the dial groups? And the dial groups are meant to be representative of groups that are trying to reach and bring over onto their side. And they will know what worked. What are the things that worked best? The, by the end, by the end of the night, if you know someone at a high level of the campaign or either campaign or both campaigns says, as I might, you will know by the end of the night what the dial, what the group said, what the dial said, basically is what they'll say to you. Yeah. And I would say this is a rare moment where the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign were in agreement. The dial said that she kicked his ass. Really? And the Trump campaign was aware of that. Because I don't know if you saw. Donald Trump had numbers. I think one of them was 90. One of them was 74. I think there was a pie squared in there. Yeah, yeah. He had numbers. I thought that was the funniest part when he came into the spin room, because like, Trump is full of shit most of the time and he makes up all kinds of things. But that was one of those things that was the most made up thing on earth. And of course, like the story about how everybody in America wanted Roe v Wade to go away, which we'll come back to, it was easily verifiable, because, of course, all the networks were going to put up their numbers. You know, CNN was broadcasting the numbers half an hour later and showing that, in fact, all their Insta polls also showed that Harris had won. And I'll tell you the other thing is that what she did best on, were all the abortion-related questions, all of the stuff about women's reproductive rights. Those were the things. That stretch, she had about a 2.5 minute answer when she really started to come on strong in the debate and she got very, she was very emotional, very direct, very powerful, they, those, the dial groups loved that. That was off the charts even in the, I mean, these are all undecided voters. So, they're essentially different groups that the campaigns are monitoring, but they're all, there are no Trump fans in these groups and there's no Harris fans. These are ostensibly people who haven't made up their minds. They're, they're undecideds. They're undecided. They're, they're psychotic, insane people who I can't wrap my head around. But these, these undecided, I mean, there was, there was some poll that around 30% of people wanted to know more from Kamala Harris. What did people actually learn about Kamala Harris last night? Well, I'll tell you what. I think there's two ways to look at that. You know, when you think about this from the Harris kind of strategic standpoint. One thing was, that was The New York Times Siena Poll basically said there was a lot of people who still don't feel like they know very much about her and they wanted to know more. That was one thing that you could have tried to aim to do. Tell your story more, try to explain some of your changes on positions, all that sort of stuff, right. But if you look back at the history of presidential debates, the way that they are often remembered is who won them and who lost them, is on one metric and one metric alone, which is like, who commands the stage, who, who commanded the sphere of battle. And for a candidate who's, who's in their first general election presidential debate, Bill Clinton and others would say, Americans are watching to see whether they can imagine this person as the commander in chief, as president of the United States. Can they go toe to toe with an adversary in the moment? Do they command the debate, are they, is the image of command left in people's. It's a plausibility test. And I just think there's no one with eyes in their head who didn't think that Kamala Harris was the one who commanded the stage last night. And that's why between the dial groups and just the plain obvious thing that Trump as maniacal, irrational, mentally, N/A psychologically, emotionally, spiritually failing as he is at this moment, she was, you know. Was she perfect? No, but she was strong, right. And I think that she came across as strong, and she decided to play that prosecutor role and she played it really well. She was incredibly, as you said, incredibly well prepared. And she kept coming back to her, her themes that she wanted to hit. Yeah. And I just, I mean, I can't, as a debate quad debate, which is not how are people going to vote. Eight weeks from now is when the Election Day is. Yeah. These people are still undecided. Most of people are not waking up today going, OK, I've decided. Well, she looked, she looked, she looked presidential. Yes. And as you said in off camera I think to these fine people out here, you know, you're dealing with a lunatic. You're dealing with a, with a pathologically lying insurrection-fomenting, democracy degrading, defiling asshole. And, and so-- [CHEERING, APPLAUSE] N/A Allegedly. So, you're, so it's a, it's a tough. Like, imagine how like what that, you know. Well, I-- --the challenge involved in doing that and holding your composure. And I'll say, you know, because no one did this better than Jon did on the night of the first debate. I get it, you like Jon Stewart, [BLEEP]. Well, hey, he did, look, you, he's like your comedy hero. I like Jon Stewart as well, OK, yes. But he put up those pictures of Biden slackjawed. It was a four box. And he's like, when they did the debate prep, did nobody show him these pictures, because these don't look great. She was so aware of the split screen and how the split screen would work, that I feel like it was like a bizarro world Biden debate in a lot of ways last night, right. Because Trump, the split screen that-- that with Harris was doing to Trump what the split screen with Biden did to Biden, right. Biden suffered in that split screen with Trump. And Trump suffers in that split screen with her. He looked angry almost throughout. He did without the sound on. I don't disagree. And I, and I do think, I think Kamala looked more than adept. She did look presidential. I think she was masterful in many ways of both seeming above the fray, but also poking him as well. Yes. But this audience is different. I think people don't see Donald Trump. I don't believe people saw that and saw Donald Trump for the first time as a diminished man. No. He looked angry, but anger has been something that he's been selling the American public. And there's that 45% who love that. Do you actually think-- - I don't think-- --that that diminished. I don't think you're really going to take away Trump voters from Trump. I think what you're, what she's trying to get across I think now, is that he is not just the old candidate in the race now. The generational contrast. She wants to be change. She wants to be younger. And she is, in some ways, implicitly pushing like the argument that took down Biden, which is that, I mean, Donald Trump's mental acuity, I say this not in a in a just a trashing him kind of way, which I'm happy to do sometimes, but-- I think, I think about a minute and a half ago. But he just, but he's, he's getting worse. I mean, he's never been wholly linear, let's put it that way, right. But if you go back to 2016 when he really won the election with against Clinton, in those last 10 or 12 days of the election, they managed to get him to talk about trade, the border wall, China. And he was actually a pretty disciplined candidate for the crucial 10 or 12 days of the election. Now, there are a lot of Republicans who look at, well, she has this momentum. What's going to change between now and Election Day that will halt her momentum? One thing is like some external event. You know, you know, Vladimir Putin does something, China does something, some kind of cyber war, a Russian, martian invasion, you know, that, that someone has to repel on the White House lawn. Another is, Harris [BLEEP] up. You know, she messes up somehow. She didn't do that last night, right. We will all agree about that. And the third thing, which Republicans all are hoping for and praying for, and what they've been trying to beg Trump to do, is be a disciplined, focused, rigorous, consistent candidate. Make these arguments. That's, they're begging him to do it with this idea in mind that he can pull it together in these last eight weeks and become this thing that occasionally he was in the past. I just think if you watched that debate last night, there's none of that there. There's none of that there. When he started talking about the dogs and cats and the pets being killed, do you know how that question started? I don't remember. It started with David Muir asking him about immigration. Was it? Yeah. Now, in the Biden debate, go back to my bizarro world thing, the Biden debate, rightly, Biden got a question about abortion, his strength, and turned it into an immigration question. Right. And that's when you knew he had really lost it. Yeah. You're like, what are you doing? You're talking about immigration. They set you up. They put it on the tee. Abortion, talk about Roe v Wade. Last night, Trump got asked about immigration, the issue he wants to talk about. That's his sweet spot. But Harris had baited him on the crowd size thing, so he turned away from immigration and then proceeded to discuss the size of his crowds, World War III was coming, the size of his crowds again, and then the apparent obviously completely made up holocaust of the cats, dogs and pets in Ohio. Bear in mind, that in the last 100 years of occupants of the White House, every single one of them has had a pet, except for Donald Trump, because he's a sociopath! Because-- Maybe he doesn't like to snack at night, you know. He doesn't, he doesn't, the guy cares less about dogs and cats than any occupant of the White House ever. And that includes like other bonafide sociopaths. Well, it is such an example, too. You give Donald Trump enough time. He's not prepped for anything. He's always grasping at straws. And frankly, he's only got a handful of straws, right? He's got, he's got his immigration, his wall, he's got a couple of things. He's going to bang that drum and whatever he read on the internet that day. Right. And that's what you see getting amplified. He brings the internet to life. And you saw Laura, you saw when he arrived in Philly, Laura Loomer, who's like literally the craziest person on the right, crazier than anybody in the history of the right. That's a hell of a crown to wear, I got to tell you. When she got off the plane, you knew, you were like, he's going to be talking about, about the, about the cat carnage in the nonexistent cat carnage in Ohio. And I will, I will say this again to the question of can he be a disciplined candidate. What's the other thing he was supposed to do last night? Tie Kamala Harris to Joe Biden's economic record. The first time he mentioned it, was at the one hour and 24 minute mark of a, of a one hour and 30 minute debate. And the way he mentioned it was to say, she is Joe Biden, she is Joe Biden. And again, back to the split screen, Kamala Harris is like, I don't really think I'm Joe Biden, you know. I mean, can people see that I'm not Joe Biden. He did it. He finally decided to do it, he did so badly, that she could just like knock it away with a laugh line. - Yeah. Well, she got asked that question right off the bat and she said, I'm going to talk about my history instead. Yes, totally. And you heard JD Vance afterwards and the spin room where I was talking about how, you know, Trump made these points in his closing statement. I'm like, ha, now that's a strong candidate. The one who remembers, hey, it's my closing statement, I might want to say that thing about Biden, you know, at the end here. Do people around, I guess my question, do people around him, one, do they really have an expectation of changing Donald Trump in that way? And two, did they have a sense of what truly is happening? I hear the moment where Donald Trump comes out and he has those bullshit numbers. And of course, he's always pulling out numbers that make the most sense to him. But are they giving him numbers that make him comfortable in that moment? What is what is their awareness, the Trump, the Trump circle, what is their awareness of what is happening? It's not a monolith, right. You know, Trump has now brought Corey Lewandowski back into the fold. Corey Lewandowski is the ultimate, let Trump be Trump candidate. Trump, Corey was, was exiled. Now he's back. His job is to do things that make Trump happy, so that he will not be exiled again. The professionals in that group, people like Chris Lacivita, the campaign manager, and Susie Wiles, the co-campaign manager, you could say whatever you want about, about them and their values or whatever in working for Trump-- --but they're professional people who've run important campaigns before and they are, they are the ones begging Donald Trump to please talk about how she's a San Francisco liberal, talk about how she's a flip flopper, talk about how she's a phony, talk about, try to make her explain how she went from being in favor of all these liberal positions to being against them. And they are, I think, constantly must live in hope, because if they don't live in the hope that they can change them in some way, you know, the world is very cold and dark. If you think that, if you think that this Donald Trump is going to be the Donald Trump you're going to get for the next 55 days before Election Day, because that's a Donald Trump, I'm not saying he can't win, Jordan, because it's going to be really, really close. But man, I think every Republican strategist in the country looks and says, if this guy ran a standard Republican campaign against her, there's a playbook. And he would appreciably increase his odds of winning if he were to be able to remotely execute that. And we have no sign that he can. There's this also the thing you were talking about this a little bit before. You know, I've been in a lot of spin rooms in my life, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I'm very impressed. Pretty cool room to be in. You get to hang out with the Scaramucci now and then, yeah. You get to be with the Mooch. Here's the thing about this. People go, you're, are you, somebody wrote to me last night, a friend who said, were you in the room where it happens? I'm like, no, the press is never in the room where it happens. We don't sit in the debate hall. We sit in a room next to the room where it happens and we all get to sit together in a giant room watching it on TV. - But this-- Just like you at home. And the only advantage is, that when it's over, a bunch of professional liars come out and get and we get to be lied to, to our face. But, but, but don't you think there's something-- And I never miss it. I never miss it. But it feels like we talked about this in the beginning of our show. It feels like Trump thinks that is the room where it happens. Well. He doesn't, he doesn't prep for a debate to articulate a vision of the future to America. He preps for a time to, to lick his wounds and bullshit the press with more cameras. That's, that's where all his energy goes. You got the show. - Totally. Sadly, people shouldn't be performing for you. That's a nightmare. - 100%. People should be, Trump should be performing for the people at home, but he doesn't see it that way. You know, I think I may have told you this story for a little while in 20, in 2015, 2016. Don't tell me, don't re-tell me a story, for god's sake. Well, these people haven't heard. Trump liked me for a little while. He liked you? Is that right? I wrote a tweet about him when he first entered the race in 2015. I said, you know, the Republican party is getting more racist, nationalist, and xenophobic. I think Donald Trump has a chance to win. And I saw him, had a face to face interview with him the next day and he said, and he after he had tweeted, @jheilemann. is finally starting to understand me. And I went into this interview with him and I said, you know, I thought you might be pissed. And he was like, no. At that moment, it was, there were people who didn't think he could win and people who thought he could win. Binary. And if you are on the side of people who took him seriously, he didn't care why. You could have said, the whole country is now members of the Ku Klux Klan, Donald Trump is a shoo-in. He would have been like, thank you for understanding. He didn't care. He just didn't want to be, he didn't like the people who were saying he has no chance, he's a buffoon, he's doing this as a branding exercise. I was on the other side. And for a little while, whenever I would see him, he would say, Heilemann, you're starting to understand me, we're both German. And that always freaked me out. Because I'm, because I'm not like really German, like in any meaningful way, you know. And I mean, the name, I'm from German descent, but I'm not like, I didn't like, grow up in, in, in Munich, you know, or, you know, it's not my. - But he saw something in you. - Yes. It was very like, it was always like, a lot of like, he's always like, you know, yeah, I like-- You're starting to come around on the Trump. The haircut, you think? The meaner, the meaner I was, the more he liked me, until, until he then got an office and my secret service code name became that mother-[BLEEP]. Well, that's a, there you go. That's a step up. That's a step up, right? That's a step, that was a step up. I'll tell you what you can see in the spin room last night, though, is that it's not hard to know the things that you find out from your sources about how the dial groups went. Yeah. It's not hard to read the faces. And I will tell you, I posted a tweet last night. I took a picture as I was walking out of Matt Gaetz. What's his name. - Stephen Miller. - Stephen Miller. Mm-hmm. Matt Gaetz, Stephen Miller, and this, the skinniest, most incel-y looking guy in the world who was carrying their little sad sign out in the spin room, because they have a little person who carries a sign. If you were in the spin room, they would carry a little sign that would say, Klepper on it, you know. - Lovely. Or if they wanted to get some attention, it would say, Stewart. OK, the god damn it. - And then people would-- - Unbelievable. Or Desi. Or Desi. - Unbelievable. - Or Desi. You know what, I'm going to get-- Or Roy. Or Roy Wood, Roy Wood. [CHEERING, APPLAUSE] Yeah, there you go. N/A Jordan, Jordan, Jordan's having a hard time with that, with that, with that wax there. It's a, it's a, it's a hard wax. It's a hard wax. It's a, it's a hard. Can I, have you been have you been skimping on the gym sessions lately? What's going on? I've, I'm waiting till after the election, you know. This is, this will be good later, yeah. N/A But this picture. Now, I'm not going to be able to do it. Yeah, I was going to say, look at this, look at this, it's tough. This is the rye, though, the bourbon is much easier to open . Is there no one around here who can help us here? This, this, this is that. That's, that's really well waxed on. - Is it? - It's like Miyagi. Wax on, wax off. - Stay focused. All right. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. I got to wrap this up. This ain't a [BLEEP] podcast, OK? Gaetz, Gaetz, Miller, and this little skinny kid. Yeah. Right. They looked so sad. And, you know, I saw the various response tweets. People would say, you know, an incel, a neo-Nazi and a pedophile walk into a bar. N/A That's the way, that's the way a lot of great jokes start. And Matt, Matt Gaetz is wearing these white like Skechers with like, like black jogging pants as his suit bottoms and then a suit jacket on top. I mean, he looked like he was ready for Del Boca Vista, basically. At his age-- I mean, honestly, I think that's a step forward, if he's trying to appeal to the older folks, I think I'll take it with Matt Gaetz. But I'll tell you, when I looked at that, I was thinking about what I what I had thought as I heard about the dial groups from the insiders in the campaign, I thought, you know, David Plouffe, David Binder, the focus group polling impresario from Obama, who's now working for Harris-- --they are not like champagne popping types, you know. They're like, they like try to keep, but they were metaphorically popping champagne corks last night at how well their candidate did. In the Trump world, they were popping like either like Maalox or Klonopin, I don't know which. But they were, they were not, and when those guys showed up and I looked at them, I was like, those guys are either very, very sad, very, very drugged up, or someone killed their pets. N/A They lost, they looked like a bunch of guys who had their had their cats and dogs like taken out by some imaginary Haitians in Ohio. Yeah, take it from the sad man in the Sketchers. I think that's how the debate went. Be sure to check out John's column at Puck and its podcast Impolitic with John Heilemann.