Harris Trolls Defensive Trump In Debate | 538 Politics Podcast

so you know normally I try to you know drink a little bit of coffee or something before these late night podcasts maybe a Diet Coke but uh I honestly um I don't think I need it you're just on a natural high I don't think I need it that's that you espresso that's that me espresso that debate was me espresso it was like a punch in the face I don't know I had a cup of coffee [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to this late night post presidential debate edition of the 538 politics podcast I'm gayen Dro we're recording about quarter past 11:00 p.m. on the East Coast after the first presidential debate between Trump and Harris we thought it might be the only it still may be although as soon as the debate ended the Harris campaign proposed a second debate with former president Trump perhaps that's some indication of how they think they performed we will get into it but for starters it was a pretty fiery debate it lasted about 90 minutes they covered all kinds of policy issues they started with the economy Trump quickly started talking about immigration they also talked about tariffs AI Tech abortion the Border Bill and deportations as well as crime and safety they also talked about January 6th they talked about Israel Ukraine Afghanistan healthc care climate change a lot came up and we're going to talk about how the candidates performed and here with me to do that is senior researcher Mary bradcliff welcome to the podcast Mary good evening gayen also here with us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel raikit welcome Nathaniel good evening gayen and ABC politics reporter from the spin room in Philadelphia Britney Shepard welcome to the podcast welcome to the Spin Zone guys okay Bill O'Reilly oh that's no Spin Zone never mind I forgot britty I know you have some very important news that I want you to break right here on air right now I'm going to turn it over to you there was a key endorsement made that you have been tracking for some time now what's in just moments ago childish cat lady herself Taylor Swift has endorsed the Harris walls ticket and that's how she signed the endorsement signed like your favorite childless cat lady Taylor Swift which is something that people have been waiting for the timing speculated is going be a bit closer to an Eros store date is KLA Harrison come out on stage none of that happened it was the moment the debate was over over Tred to launch this endorsement I have no inside knowledge of these things but I think the campaign understands that a lot of the impact or potential impact of a debate on the polls and perception is about the narrative that forms after the fact and so for example proposing a second debate as soon as you are done with the first debate or organizing perhaps a Taylor Swift endorsement at the conclusion of the first debate is probably part of the plan so we'll pull back the carton a little bit on that and not just pretend it came out of nowhere but let's talk about that narrative that may be forming I've been pulling some headlines from some of the major news outlets to see how they're processing it but before we get to that Mary what's your Topline takeaway from the debate so KL Harris clearly came in with a plan to try to bait Trump with uh lines intended I think to needle his his sensitive points and she did that pretty successfully I think throughout the night Donald Trump kept asking for additional rebuttal to little things she talked about his rally size and and things like that um so to that extent I think she did extremely well in executing that plan and Donald Trump did what you might expect Donald Trump to do in those circumstances which is he rambled on and and was defensive and and said a lot of words he had more speaking time than Harris throughout the debate I think the the precise numbers there Mary thanks to the New York Times which has been tracking it was 43 minutes for Trump versus almost 38 minutes for Harris and they also tracked time spent attacking and although Harris spoke less she spent more time 172 minutes versus 13 minutes on the attack yeah and the other thing I was going to say is you know Harris really executed on this particular plan of needling Trump but I did feel like a lot of her answers were pretty vague in terms of specifics right you know instead of talking about what her housing policy was she simply said I have a housing policy and then moved on to something else so I don't know um if that's going to have an impact on the voters that were saying you know we talked about in the the podcast yesterday voters saying they wanted to hear more about Harris's plans and policies I'm not sure if this debate did that for her yeah that's an interesting question Mary we talked about how Trump's approval rating has been relatively stable in the low 40s for quite a long time now at some of his worst moments we have seen those numbers drop off but only to rebound and there's about there's over a month and a half left in this campaign so even if Americans didn't like what they saw in some of Trump's combativeness or defensiveness he does have time to recover but it does seem like there is a lot more volatility or malleability in Americans perceptions of Harris and she didn't do quite as much to maybe Define herself as the moderate on the economy or immigration or things where she might have been seen as vulnerable like she addressed the immigration Portion by saying there was a border bill that I reported that Donald Trump killed but you probably could have gotten pretty specific there about you know what she wanted to do on the wall or whether she thought that the Asylum system was broken or things that maybe could have painted her as more of the moderate on the issue where of course Trump was trying to I think said out and out you know San Francisco liberal something along those lines so if it was about defining Trump she probably did a good job if it was about defining herself Maybe that's in question although I'm curious to hear from Nathaniel and britty whether or not you agree with that I don't think that is necessarily wrong overall but it would push back a little bit I think you know she mentioned a couple of times how she like grew up in a middle class family and and stuff like that and gave a little bit of biographical information she kind of made efforts to I guess this isn't really about at defining herself but she like really kind of consciously reached across the aisle or at least across whatever it was by being like you know basically like if the things hearing you know if this is just like kind of the same old politics you know like Donald Trump like negativity there's a place for you in our campaign that sort of thing so I think she did a a good job with regard to that I hear what you're saying though about like you know maybe she didn't go into as many specifics as she could have done you know her answer on the you know question of like why have you changed your position since 2019 you know I think she still doesn't have a great answer there similar to the CNN interview she kind of you know she pivoted and it was a fine answer but she doesn't really have have like a direct rebuttal to that because I think frankly like I was running for president in the Democratic primary at a time when people were very liberal isn't an acceptable answer but even Nathaniel to that end Trump kept saying you want to defund the police the answer would have been as Vice President we increased funding to the police but there was just nothing really said there right so areas where you could have sort of zigged towards the center or whatever um towards covering your ground on a vulnerable issue you didn't hear as much I think on some yeah on there were a few like pitches she let go by but I think there were others that she swung out and made decent contact at like on immigration and stuff like that so I don't know if I you know I think like sure like to the extent that like this debate was mostly about you know going in like voters were most interested in hearing about Harris and that the the election might hinge on perceptions of Harris I think this debate ended up being very much about Trump and I agree with that part of it but I still think you know like at the end of the day guys I don't mean to interrupt you Donald Trump just walked behind me here clearly trying to Define his if you can if you can see he's right over my left shoulder he just walked on to our set yeah he uh is right here talking to Marco Rubio I can even try to bring my camera up to show you can you ask him if he wants to be on the podcast I you know what that's my second question I was gonna ask him first about Taylor Swift and and then but yet there's Donald Trump right behind me I don't even want to I didn't mean to interrupt you in the Danel but it kind of clearly no no it's totally that is interrupt worthy not not not to be The Vibes person but clearly he obviously thinks he has something to speak for himself he's about to walk over to my left to about hundred reporters a thousand in the room and this Gaggle I think I have to go stand on a chair actually to get a sense of how many people are actually even here if you guys can bear with me for a second this is my vantage point for the whole thing um I've never seen a gaggle this big before and I covered the Trump White House for all four years UND hundreds of reporters are running towards him wow he's trying to define the debate in his own terms I think we're about to see live on our air any minute now what he's going to say but clearly he's here and Paris is not and I'm sure he is going to be making a statement about that split screen well that's not that wasn't expected right that that kind of says something no this is no no this is a total surprise this is a total shock and surprise why I'm standing on a chair yeah that that that seems like the position of a candidate who feels like they need to say more to recapture The Narrative so that's interesting and it is interesting to the point that we've made about this debate being about Trump you know we have sparse data in a moment like this but I have been tracking Google Trends data on searches for Donald Trump and kamla Harris and we actually saw higher peaks in terms of search interest for kamla Harris than for Donald Trump so if you are trying to regain in control of the narrative maybe it's because Harris sort of has the wind at her back at the moment there was various different different moments that Harris was most searched versus Trump I mean Trump's one of Trump's highest peak actually related to Victor orbon and if you look at overall search volume on Google over the past 4 hours number one is kamla Harris so she at least sparked interest in herself the debate sparked interest in her the next thing on Google Trends right now is Victor orbon I mean quite remarkable the amount of times that Donald Trump said Victor orban's name who is an authoritarian Head of State for Hungary not somebody that the mainstream Republican or Democrat looks favorably on but to give somebody like that so much airtime is indicative of the fact that Trump was not pitching I mean we talk about whether or not Harris was positioning herself in a way that could shed any concerns about her being too far left I mean Donald Trump was overwhelmingly speaking to an audience that is already familiar with the kinds of narratives that get repeated on conservative media I mean talking about eating pets or you know Ling VI orbon yeah I kept a list of just like right-wing memes that Trump was talking about throughout the debate I have Springfield Ohio Aurora Colorado bacon busing people to rallies I hadn't even heard anything about that quote she wants to do transgender surgeries on illegal aliens in prison something about a Nancy Pelosi January 6th tape uh son Victor orbon what else I got the mayor of moscow's wife the mayor of moscow's wife that was my drink that was that was the shot that I took and I mean I I think you know this is what I was talking about before when you see Trump taking the bait when Harris needles at him he goes to these talking points that you have to be pretty well versed in Mega Media to understand what he's talking about in a lot of these cases right I I think it was gayen I was talking to you during the debate like I think like Trump turned in what like could charitably be described as like a base first performance like maybe to his the type of person who goes to his rallies the type of people who follows him on Truth social or whatever it sounded okay and he was certainly giving a lot of red meat and saying kind of a lot of the same grievance fueled stuff that he has been saying for many years and like to that type of voter you know maybe it sounded good but like he was not reaching it out at all beyond that like conservative media bubble which obviously is a problem when you're trying to win a majority of Voters or a majority of Voters in certain States uh whereas I do think like I said before Harris was kind of in sometime a couple of points like explicitly saying like hey if this sounds crazy to you come over to me so in that sense I think you know it was a missed opportunity for Trump to say the least which is why I think oh sorry guys I think this is why you're hearing people scream over me he's trying to redefine The Narrative right now was trying to get a sense to figure out what he was saying it's almost impossible to hear him even from our our vantage point but I I would just like to say it's like he's so you know aware let's put it that way of how important that Monday quarterback is right and how much that second and third day narrative is going to be and how Harris came up just to answer your question from the beginning gayin was Harris successful and defining all of her policies no but I think there was a success in defining who she is as a potential commander-in-chief right unflappable unable to get under her skin even if she's not like producing the most viral moment she's able to keep at him and I think that that she you know she really had a lot to prove on that and probably executed that pretty fine which again I don't think he would be here a 100 feet from all these media you know if he didn't feel some kind of way about that yeah and to the point that Nathaniel just made about welcoming people into the Democratic tent never in my life as a high schooler during the Iraq war did I ever think I would hear a democrat in a debate say I have the endorsement of former Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney and then not say oh there are many things that we disagree on but on this we agree it was just I have the endorsement of Dick Cheney full stop there was no qualification and Liz Cheney of course she mentioned as well there was no qualification of you know we have our differences it was just and I think it was more towards the January 6th democracy part of the conversation a pitch to rep rep an as well Mary I was just going to say to Nathaniel's point about this being really from Trump a Bas first debate The Washington Post was running a little focus group of 24 swing voters during the debate asking them to respond to some of the things the candidates said and so on uh and they just posted that of their 24 22 out of 24 said Harris performed better little anic data yeah is exactly it's always tricky for for us you know on these immediately after debate reaction podcasts because obviously you know we are the data analysts and at this point we have so little data and it does feel like we are like only slightly better than like you know the giant CNN panels um but like at least we're slightly better that is yes exactly right we have a we have a little bit of data we we have knowledge about how like data has worked historically right and like that kind of thing but anyway it we'll be interesting I obviously we'll be watching closely the the polls that will presumably start dropping in the morning about who performed better and and we'll have an article on the site about that is as soon as we have enough polls to write about it I wouldn't be surpr like my guess based on having seen this debate and how past debates have worked out is that most people will say that Harris won I won't be surprised if it's like narrower than maybe like the narrative quote unquote has it because obviously like Trump has a significantly sized base and like a good share of those people will probably say think that he won even maybe more than like obviously normally you're always going to be like oh yeah my Party's candidate won but like a lot of those voters might genuinely think he won because he was speaking their language yeah I think that's right I think you know in the post- debate polling one thing I'll really be watching out for is not just the margin between the two candidates but Trump's vote share specifically because we know that Trump has a certain percentage of the population that is going to vote for him so if we see his vote share drop a more a lot I would expect that's more due to um differential non-response than to real shifts in opinion and it would be pretty fleeting so Britney I know that we have made uh you answering this question Difficult by asking you to jump right on this podcast with us as soon as the debate ended but what are you hearing in the spin room about how the surrogates are trying to spin the performances of the two candidates well I mean I just heard from Donald Trump who was right behind us again trying to claim that he won obviously so hard to qualify because he was able to prove that this Administration has made a mockery uh the economy is so bad I think a lot of it is stuff you've been hearing from the base this entire time arguments that are not new I really think at all I think they're unable to point to really any one moment for her where she flubbed she didn't call anybody the wrong name she didn't falter she I mean look at her performance versus Joe Biden of course the bar is tectonic right but you know and so they're not able to say well look how bad of a job he did and she is made in his near image they're playing Freebird it's all the classics right and you from what I could get bits and pieces Trump was trying to replay the same thing and I mean it helped from KLA Harris even say something that I forgot that she's a gun owner yeah you know she's like kind of throwing out these things talk about median voter right like say hey Tim Walls is a hunter and a gun owner and guess what you didn't know this about me so am I right so he can't even come out and say the NRA is a voted him and you know and she's so horrible for gun owners right so she really I think preempted a lot of the incoming of course she knew was gonna happen because she she knows what what the Playbook is yeah maybe trying to Pivot back to the issues that they know are the most important to Americans like the economy and immigration the moment that you brought up about gun ownership Britney was funny I know you weren't quoting directly but basically lindsy Davis asked a question about Healthcare and Harris said thanks for the question I want to follow up on something that was just said about whether we would take people's guns away both uh governor wals and I own guns and then sort of moved on I thought for a second that that might be news but she had talked about owning a gun previously we mentioned that we don't have a ton of data in this moment but our producers have been very diligently tracking the mentions of different words throughout the night and so I do want to cite some of that data which is that the economy was mentioned 20 times which is it's it's towards the top it's the topic that they started off with and it was something that Harris did tend to come back to when she said Trump isn't talking about things that are important to you I want to build a middle class opportunity economy a distinction with the first debate between Trump and Biden is abortion so AB was mentioned a total of one time during the first debate and I think that was used as evidence that Biden was incapable of sort of pivoting the conversation towards Democrats strengths whereas this time around it was mentioned eight times either abortion or reproductive care and I think Harris's response to that question where she detailed the circumstances under which somebody might need an abortion were one of the most Stark moments of the debate in total yeah I mean she I think that abortion exchange coming so early in the night and I think really establishing the tone like was was really what uh kind of grabbed my attention like I think she had some of her strongest lines she's clearly more comfortable talking about it than Biden was and like you mentioned this Mary in in some of our internal slack chats is that like Trump wouldn't let it go like this is not a topic that Donald Trump should want to be talking about it's literally of of all we at ABC News and IPOs asked a question like on like 11 different issues would who do you trust more Harris or Trump on 11 different issues abortion was the issue that had the biggest Gap in favor of Democrats and so that is an issue that Trump should want to move on from as quickly as possible but he kept on bringing it back up and like doubling down and like defended the Supreme Court which is also not popular and it was just a very bad strategic decision from him so I thought that was a really bad exchange for Trump uh and kind of set the tone of him being on the defensive throughout the rest of the night I think related to that gayen what I thought you were going to say about that first debate with respect to the economy was that you saw a very disciplined Trump in that first debate where he kept on bringing everything back to either the economy or immigration and this time around he was kind of taking the punches and like reacting rather than being in control of the narrative and pivoting things around and I think that is kind of maybe the one biggest difference between these two debates although that sounds silly because I think the one biggest difference between the two debates was that Joe Biden wasn't there um being extremely uh incoherent but anyway which was I know we I know we mentioned this in the beginning but which was KLA Harris's campaign's goal and I will say I think we will have a CNN poll probably as soon as tomorrow morning so I am really curious with this the that poll results because I I feel like it might be really interesting to see if they have anything on women I mean Donald Trump knows that he lost the last election from no small part because he lost Suburban women and I'm sure we can get into all the numbers there but as The Vibes lady um I I thought that he would go out of his way and his campaign would go out of his way to make a point of they've quotequote done for women maybe mentioned Nikki Haley sudden endorsement you know Nikki Haley said just a couple of days ago don't talk about KLA Harris personally what she looks like her form her fashion I'm curious what women for him like if I'm looking to I see step Miller spinning right not exactly the Trump campaign strongest surrogate talking about what women in the suburbs might want to hear but I'm looking around the Democratic Surs Governor Lan Grisham is right in front of me talking about abortion they have the former group of pro-choice n they have all these reproductive groups you know spinning on the floor for Harris well Democrats have the opposite issue they got to win men yeah young men yeah men are the um the real swing voters right I think women especially Suburban women are pretty blue these days but yeah yeah and the last time we checked in on um on Cross tabs and polling this was looking like it might be a historic gender gap to rival 2016 so we'll have to see if either campaign can really um turn that around but uh yeah I think you're absolutely right that uh Harris has been significantly overperforming with women you know Nathaniel you were saying something about you know he kept coming back to this abortion issue and actually I think he did that with everything right like he seems to have last word syndrome he can't let anything go without being the last word on the topic and I think that really worked to his detriment tonight yeah it was interesting that he took the opportunity to ask for rebuttal far more frequently than Harris did and to your point Nathaniel as well about how Trump was disciplined in the first debate and able to gear everything towards his strengths on the question of the Border there were 15 mentions tonight it was one of the most mentioned issue but that's only half of the mentions of the first debate when it was mentioned 32 times and so he did keep coming back to it but was still less he had less opportunity to keep steering the conversation in the direction that he wanted it to go in so this is the fun part of the evening where I am going to read you some of the headlines the early headlines that are emerging from the debate and you get to tell me who's done the best job describing it okay so number number one the New York Times Harris puts Trump on defensive in Fierce debate number two Fox tune in full analysis after Harris and Trump trade barbs in high stakes debate CNN Harris baits Trump in contentious debate uh BBC Trump and Harris Clash on key issues in fiery presidential debate a lot of these are quite similar Newsmax Harris Trump go on attack over inflation abortion borders and more these are all pretty similar although I do have I got one for you from The Drudge Report the night Trump lost it all that's a little bold uh oh when when you lost that's a bad use of headline right there like debates are not won or elections are not won and lost in debates like there this could be forgotten in a week the election is eight weeks away well ask ask Joe Biden I mean might not win it might certainly lose your job I guess that's fair but um true game changers are extremely rare and like the campaign it you know it was to to paraphrase Nathan Gonzalez friend of the podcast this election was extremely close before this debate and it will be extremely close after this debate well not if you listen to Breitbart Breitbart says soundbite tsunami Harris unloads barrage of canned lines sound B tsunami I do like that that's kind of a new one to me I never really heard that before nice literation there I do think she did have there were a couple of lines that she had that I thought were quite effective but were also obviously like things that she had rehearsed um like the your fired one the American people Milli Americans fired you yeah that was a great line she did that one in the mirror a bunch of times it's no Donald Duck we're gonna call you Donald Duck not to bring back a vintage but was that Hillary Clinton or was that Joe Biden that was Chris Christi Chris Christie that was Chris Christie oh that was Chris Christie calling out Trump for not coming to the primary debate stage he's going to you know Dodge the debate so much we're going to call him Donald Duck and we have from MSNBC Harris's forceful attacks put an angry Trump on defensive that's a pretty good one they're all kind of mad lied with the same thing yeah you know I feel yeah I I think we get the point here right is the media broadly correct have they correctly summarized how this debate went well you know we're part of the media so I don't know that's how I would summarize it but I think we need to wait and see how the American people reacted quite frankly call me quaint I mean we don't matter in the face of the 100 somewhere between 150 and 160 million of Americans who will cast a ballot this fall folks it is all about you it is not about us and with that any final words on the evening I am I am sure we left some things out I am curious if Donald Trump will do a second debate now we know Harris has made the proposal she had and Trump has floated certain dates remember that uh Mara Lago conference when he when he floated a couple of dates I wonder what this means for him or this is his one and done he showed up to the spin room and he's made his Mark and see you in November yes you have to imagine that his advisors would not be champing at the bit to agree to a second debate yeah you never know he kind of goes you know he's a rogue a rogue wolf a lone wolf in in this pack that we call political life yeah that's the question whatever his advisers say will he listen to them I guess I would just say that like the format of the debate worked well with like the muted mics and everything uh I think you know it was as the headline said you know it was kind of fiery and interesting throughout um you know despite you know lasting almost you 2 hours I it was I guess like you know an hour 45 but uh I wasn't bored um which has not always been the case uh with uh with political debates um particularly primary debates but um yeah so I think it was a pretty crisp uh and and good engaging debate and hopefully the American people felt the same way and with that folks now it is up to you thank you Mary Britney and Nathaniel for joining me on this late night podcast I really appreciate it thanks for having us thanks gayen glad to be here my name is gayen Duo our producers are Shane mcken and Cameron shavian and our intern is Jayla Everett you get in touch by emailing us at podcast 538.com you can also of course tweet at us with any questions or comments if you're a fan of the show leave us a reading or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us thanks for listening and we will see you soon [Music] a