Why the U.S. presidential debate made for great TV, and Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala

Intro so the thing about a presidential debate is at its core it is a TV spectacle and last night was a show it gave us memorable TV moments it gave us already classic memes it gave us a tale of Swift endorsement it's the day after the debate there is a lot to talk about so let's [Music] go I'm alamin ABD Mahmood this is The U.S. presidential debate commotion listen we talk all the time about this idea that Donald Trump is a creature of Television like he was just made for TV and he really thrives on it but if there was ever a made for TV moment it was last night when he met Kam Harris for the very first time ever face to face in their first unlikely only presidential debate listen to this and I'm GNA actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies you will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter he will talk about windmills cause cancer and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom that people don't leave my rallies we have the biggest rallies the most incredible rallies in the history of politics Donald Trump and K har is showing that K har is there showing that she too can be a m for TV television we wanted to dig into this and how TV can shape our relationship to politics Vincent Cunningham wrote a piece for the New Yorker called the Comm show he's with me now Vincent welcome to the show friend Yow me it's so great to be with you man this is great listen let's get let's get right into it the goal for the Democrats was to Define kamla Harris for the voters who haven't made up their minds yet you watched a debate last night you were live blogging it for the New Yorker tell me about your reaction what do you think well on along those lines in terms of self-de I thought uh Harris did basically what she wanted to do um from the first question which by the way I don't remember the content of the question because she immediately turned it into a little by iography of herself she like I'm a middle class kid she talked about her mom she talked about a cherished family friend and you could tell that that was part of the brief from the very beginning to sort of offer this short biograph biography for those who had not in fact tuned in to the comma show before so there was definitely some of that going on okay so according to the New York Times some of the stuff that we heard reported about this debate was that kamalo was preparing for it with like replica TV lighting a proper stage she had one of Clinton's former AIDS in full method acting mode just kind of inhabiting the role of Donald Trump do do we see that effort that amount of preparation paying off in a show like yesterday for sure kamla Harris she took this uh really interesting tack which was I'm gonna bait Trump I'm GNA try to get him to show his sort of freaky weird Side by doing things like we heard at the beginning of the segment like you know talking about his the way his rallies Go stuff like that by the way like this whole thing of like some Aid dresses up as the other candidate I think the person who did that his name is Philipe Reigns and he also did that for Hillary Clinton it's just funny to me that part of your job would be like every four years I'm gonna develop a highly intricate impression so that like you know it's like I gotta dust off my trump again it's just like I feel I want to interview Philipe about that yeah Philipe get in here it's time for your moment to shine once again um I I think uh so one very useful hat that you wear is that you're also a theater critic you you're you're familiar with the way that um the the debate can be turned into a show into a show and I think we can think about the debate as TV show but also some people experience it as a sequence of social media clips and a sequence of sort of memes if you will which is I think how most people end up encountering the debate through that lens it's the morning after what sticks up for you yeah I think there are a couple things that will uh I think pop out for people again like because t especially as you say in this like little weird way that we watch it now is all about moments yeah um certainly um the moment that you play KL Harris like sort of poking at Trump about um his various insufficiencies whether it's about his rallies or about the way that um other world leaders laugh at him that was another big moment that these these sort of Jabs and then also Trump's continued uh way with saying odd things you know you know whether it's terrible canards about um immigrants and how they conduct themselves in in in people's neighborhoods to uh all kinds of assertions about how he's a leader in in vitro fertilization um just the the strangeness of trump is is imminently sort of clippable and I think that that will continue to be the case after this uh after this debate I'm glad you you brought up some of the weirdness um and some of the sort of like frankly unhinged moments that we saw um on cuz I want to play one you know C Harris was was up there with Donald Trump and we know that he loves cameras but then like he just had these moments where he kind of he there's no other word for it other other than unhinged he demonized certain groups um you mentioned the idea that um he sort of repeated these baseless claims that Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets in Ohio let's listen to this they're eating the dogs the people that came in they're eating the cats they're eating they're eating the pets of the people that live there Vincent I don't even know what to do with that like that's that's obviously getting a lot of reaction I we have to acknowledge also that the way that he speaks sometimes appeals to a lot of Americans do you imagine this morning that the Trump campaign is like happy with that snippet making the rounds like is that was that part of the plan you think they can't be um and this is one of the ways in which I think the ill-advised choice of JD Vance as running mate has continued to pay bad dividends for for for Trump before this debate this was kind of an online thing where JD Vance was kind of putting forward this lie um and saying well even if the people who say this aren't telling the truth it's uncontested that like you know migrants have murdered American children all these uh either distorted or totally untrue um claims and Trump who is a kind of Hoover for little memes and bits of information from the internet and then always kind of them upward into his uh rhetoric of course picks this up and and starts to regurgitate it so it was a totally unforced error that was not presented to him as a question he brought up this eating pets thing unprompted um so I think that will be one of the things that he regrets most although you said as you say some people in his party uh some people who vote for him and have done so uh several times now um don't mind that kind of thing so it's hard to know exactly where it kind of Nets out I like the phrase of unforced error because that makes me think about how there was a report before the debate that the Kamala uh campaign wanted um unmuted mics they wanted both candidates to have their mics sort of unmuted so that everybody just sort of has ability to speak whenever um um and and I think like that's a part of that bait thing that you're talking about because I think he would have just invited Donald Trump to interrupt in moments that would have maybe even been more absurd than they're eating the pets of the people who live there um ultimately the mics were ended up being muted who do you think that ended up serving if anybody at all I don't think you know I think it kind of zered out you could still kind of hear them um speaking even when the mics were off saying like no no no I'd like to answer that so there was still an element of cross talk yeah but the even the fact that they had that argument that we know that Harris wanted that I think is a kind of a net positive for Harris only in that it reminds us that this guy can't be trusted right there is an element of out of control sort of word vomit to him that is UN becoming of a potential President right and and and to the extent that that is something that matters to you it's good to be reminded of that whenever you can so even just having the argument about the mics I think is kind of like vaguely good for Harris even if it doesn't necessarily move a vot well one of The Surreal parts of this campaign and there's been so many surreal parts of this campaign as we watch it is that you know to go back to the piece that you wrote you you sort of talk about how up until Joe Biden dro Dred out of the race people really didn't conceive of K Harris as a particularly good orator not someone who makes for great television in part because her personality off camera doesn't necessarily come through let's just take a listen to this the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body I have talked with women around our country pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage being denied care in an emergency room because the healthare providers are afraid they might go to jail and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot the idea that she wasn't a good ordor was kind of out there I think you watched this debate yesterday you have to wonder has she made up the ground in terms of the way that she's thought of yeah you know it's it's interesting uh her rhetorical strength here to for has not been on the campaign stop but rather in the hearing room uh the the Senate Judiciary Committee the Committees that she has served on in her role as sort of the prosecuting question asking you know cross-examining prosecutor and I think debate is a little bit more like that than it is like campaign speech you know what I mean the element of back and forth the element of direct confrontation is there and I think she's a little bit better at that than she is at being on the stump but what that clip also proves is that she is best when she's talking about things that she actually does care about and the issue of abortion is something that is one of the few threads in her career that has sort of spanned her entire career in a way that makes makes us think that it's something that really matters to her and also she perceives it correctly I think as one of her strengths in this election the first presidential election after of course um the dobs decision yeah that sort of negated roie wi so I think that's her pressing her advantages in a way and you can kind of see the excitement in her even in her voice and her phys presentation you could see it on tevision that that Advantage sort of helped her to achieve yeah there's a there's a certain calm and sort of you know she's in her kind of natural element um in that particular space another thing that jumped ahead at me about your piece was that your description of of K Harris's smile you call it the smile of Common Sense talk to me a little bit of what you mean about that how fundamental is that to her appeal you think well you know so much of her it seems to me uh not only her private political philosophy but the way that she has uh sort of executed her office her various offices in public is to say look you may have reservations about the office that I am occupying you may not trust prosecutors you may not you may have big problems with the way Justice is carried out in San Francisco in the state of California in the Senate right the the ceremonial roles that I inhabit might be things that make you uncomfortable but I am someone of Goodwill I'm somebody who you know this is the kind of like room where it happens philosophy of government which is like you know as long as the right person is in the seat we can get things done even if we we agree that the system is not ideal and so this this idea of like she's just a person with common sense like if you talk to her um away from the podium away from the hearing room you probably find someone who cares about the things that you care about I think that that that almost like sub verbal communication to the is the basis of the whatever we would call her Charisma and I think if you if you actually watched the debate yesterday entirely with your television on mute I think you would have just seen the split screen of Donald Trump sort of looking angry and then kamla Harris smiling from most of that debate what does that tell you the idea that she has even in that environment kind of remembered to keep that um disposition um as as a part of the story she starting to tell yeah this is totally goes to the issue of debate as or the idea I guess I should say of debate as television show right um part of the thing is to remind people who are on the fence but who you know don't like the Democrats but probably have some residual distaste for Donald Trump is to remind in this like direct communication sort of way like you don't like this guy do you remember how weird he is remember how chaotic it was when he was president yeah um and to the extent that you can get that across without even having to say a word I think there's an efficiency to that yeah yeah well Vincent we're not going back but we are going to move forward here in this conversation because we got to talk about the other news that happened immedi I'm talking immediately right after the debate [Music] yeah going to change got Taylor Swift's Kamala endorsement do it's over but it's just begun only only that is a bit of Taylor Swift with only the young listen it's not a song you hear very often I'm not going to lie to you yesterday Taylor endorsed Kay Harris as president I want you to hear Tim Wall's hearing live on air for the very first time that Taylor has endorsed Kamala all those things I I am incredibly grateful first of all to Taylor Swift I say that also as a cat owner a fellow cat owner uh look this would be the opportunity swifties uh kamah harris.com get on over there give us a and get things going look there's been a lot of anticipation for this moment honestly I was surprised that it happened this early Tyler fogget is here and she is also I think surprised at Happ this early hi Tyler welcome to the show hi thanks for having me here yes of course it's also a delight it's a delight to have both Vincent and Tyler on because you guys are both colleagues who spent much of the night talking yesterday and then you're here with us Tyler look we're both swifties I think there was this anticipation that you know Taylor would endorse combo at some point I didn't think be this early I didn't think it would be this full-throated endorsement are you as surprised as I am absolutely I mean I think it's some it speaks to the power of Taylor Swift and her longtime publicist tree pain that Taylor has managed to do something that is honestly pretty expected in a completely unexpected way um that also brings the most possible attention to it yeah um I think um you know I recently did a piece for the New Yorker about the power of the celebrity endorsement and when I did that piece I was speaking to some democratic strategists who told me that um you know there was this rumor that Taylor Swift was going to appear at the DNC and these strategist told me that you know actually the best thing that Taylor could do is you know not appear at the DNC but just do something you know further down the line um something that brings a lot of attention to the campaign ideally um there's like a Vibes Z aspect to it so in the same way that Charlie XCX tweeted that comma is brat you know the best thing would be either for Taylor to bring Comm on stage at the ARs tour or to create some kind of viral moment which I think is exctly what Taylor did with the um you know signing off her Instagram post endorsing Harrison walls with um childless cat lady yeah um so yeah I think um I'm pretty surprised by how this went down but I'm not surprised that it happened well I mean like Vincent mentioned this earlier the idea that JD Vance is such like a gaff machine on this campaign the idea that Taylor would sign her endorsement with childless cat lady in reference to a JD Vance comment that he made a few weeks ago um it it sort of I if I was you know I can imagine if you're Donald Trump you're like you did it again JD you really gave you know um you gave the other side some weapons to use here I I gotta say Tyler like the last few days have been particularly fraud for swifties because Taylor Taylor Swift has been photographed with Britney Mahomes she's a wife of Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and there was this speculation that Britney herself is a Trum Trump supporter we don't know whether she is or not but we know that Trump personally has thanked her on social media many times how do you think that Britney Mahomes side plot figures into Taylor Swift's decision to endorse a couple things I mean I think you know there's definitely the narrative that part of the reason why she endorsed so quickly rather than doing something at the arys tour or further down the line is that she was getting so much vital online for hanging out with a presume Trump supporter that she kind of had to come out and say something like it was starting to be a PR crisis um but I think the other thing is that hanging out with Britney momes and also just showing that um you know she doesn't actively detest people who might be Republican or who might like Trump is you know I think it's actually something that'll help the endorsement endorsement go further um you know these strategists that I I mentioned earlier I mean they were talking about how an endorsement just does so much more when the person who is endorsing seems somewhat apolitical and so I think that even though Swift you know made a documentary a few years ago coming out as a Democrat and endorsed um you know Biden in Harris in 2020 the fact that she was hanging out with a trump supporter you know someone who's allegedly a trump supporter right before endorsing just makes her seem more apolitical and more reasonable honestly she's like she's like us it's like she can um you know have Thanksgiving dinner with her Trump supporting uncle but still vote for Harris and so I think that that'll speak to people I Vincent I don't know what your relationship is to the Taylor Swift Universe uh Tyler and I are both on the record as just like gigantic swifties that's the thing we talk about but but Vincent I'm going to ask you about the timing you know because like this debate had barely ended and then she drops this endorsement she did we should say she did a similar thing to the Grammys you know all these artists are getting the flowers and then she chooses that moment to announce that she's releasing a new album and she got a lot of criticism for that there is something about Taylor Swift that sort of lends itself to the accusation that she's sucking up all the oxygen in the room do you think that applies here like is there something to be said for letting kamla have her post- debate moment and then announcing the next day or does that actually like make a difference at all you think well I I found that weird from not the Swift perspective but from the Harris perspective specifically wondering whether that this was done in coordination with the Harris campaign like to do it directly after the debate bespeaks some level of coordination that I would love to know more about I don't know if we'll ever get that information um but um it is still it's not September 21st yet so this does this is technically still a cruel summer Swifty I don't know and so I think like she is someone who can sort of with a kind of like uh maybe cruel maybe just sort of blank like efficiency notice moments this is her great gift it seems to me is the gift of timing you know that she not only knows the power of her voice but when it is most powerfully deployed um yeah to me it seems like maybe good it's like hey here's a debate where Harris we could say I think most people think she won but that doesn't mean that there's an an avalanche in the polls that's happening so maybe to put an exclamation point on a good night is a is a is a a good use of the the resource that is Taylor Swift I should say like Tyler like immediately after the debate you know the the Harris campaign started selling friendship bracelets um and so it's not like this was it it certainly gives off the impression that Vincent was talking about the idea that this was coordinated what do you what what do you make of the timing do you think she's stealing commas Thunder or do you think she's sort of adding to the push I think she's adding to to it um I think that this was unequivocally a positive thing for Harris and I I totally agree with Vincent I mean even the way that the post was written where it's you know sort of like many of you I watched the debate last night I feel like my takeaway from the post was one Taylor Swift is endorsing kamla Harris and two KLA Harris totally won the debate and um I think that a lot of people even if they're not necessarily fans of Taylor Swift and aren the kind kinds of Voters to be moved by her in a genuine way I think that they walk away with the feeling that clearly Harris W or else why would you know arguably the most famous person in the world be endorsing her directly after um you know her encounter with Trump Vincent I I there is somebody listening to this conversation right now going I mean how valuable can a Taylor Swift endorsement really be what's your read on this like is it does it matter does it make a difference at all how valuable is it well to me it speaks to what I think is the great necessity for Democrats in this election which is not necessarily persuasion but in enthusiasm right if if if more people show out in the places that they show up show out whatever in the places that they need uh votes um that's good for them I think High turnout is good for the Democrats in this election like it is in most uh elections and um nobody draws a crowd like Taylor Swift so that and Taylor Swift now because of her uh sort of romantic relationship is on our T TV's most Sundays in front of lots of big crows um so um to the for me it's a get out the vote move and I think you know it could it could matter and on the margin sure that I I think like Tyler when we talked about this uh we we had a pre-tape about this yesterday um and in no way did we anticipate that Taylor was going to an outside endorsement which is why you're here now live um and I really appreciate it but something that you sort of brought up yesterday is this idea that like she is sort of capable of appealing to a wide SWA people and and and the idea that like Britney mahomes's involvement um in in in the public sphere of Taylor Swift actually lends itself um to Taylor becoming more credible when she says you know what I'm still on on on on Comm side even though I have some friends who might be Republican it is worth noting that Taylor will resume her tour again um in October and like she's got dates in Florida and she's got dates in Indianapolis I'm like those are places where Democrats might actually need the help the idea that this endorsement might play into the resumption of the the arys tour is already kind of out there do you see that being a part of her sort of resuming the tour at all or do you think we're going to keep the music and the endorsement separate for now my guess is that it's going to be pretty separate um I might be biased um but I was um supposed to attend one of Taylor Swift's concerts in Vienna um a few weeks ago and it was cancelled essentially because um it was being targeted by ISIS and after that concert cancellation Taylor Swift went on Instagram and basically posted something that was like I will never do anything that puts my fans at risk and a lot of people actually took that message to mean that Taylor wasn't going to be endorsing anyone in the election like she was just going to be silent apolitical not do anything um to you know sort of bring negative attention to her and so I think that I'm you know I'm glad that she didn't just decide to stay silent because I think she's famous enough that she could have gotten away with silent and it wouldn't have damaged her in any real way um but my guess is that I don't know I I would be surprised if the tour changes in any um you know genuine way because of the endorsement but I think like you know Taylor can now go into the tour um without a bunch of people online you know gossiping about whether or not she's a secret Republican as I uh as I say you know the the quote often in the fandom is the devil works hard but tree pain work Works harder and like but this is truly um has come to pass in this particular uh incident uh Vincent and Tyler I appreciate you guys being here I appreciate you shedding light on this thank you so much for your time and for being here thanks so man thank you of course my pleasure Tyler fogget is a senior editor of the New Yorker Vincent Cunningham writes for the New Yorker he also co-hosts a weekly podcast critics at large aake on your the moment you the news screaming inside and did all that you could do the game was the ref got