Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is the big
Speaker 1: take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurra in Philadelphia, where
Speaker 1: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced
Speaker 1: off in their first debate. All eyes were on how
Speaker 1: they'd interact, what policies they'd tackle, and whose messaging would
Speaker 1: break through. Harris is a career prosecutor known for her
Speaker 1: pointed questions and Senate hearings and viral moments from her
Speaker 1: past debates, including the twenty twenty vice presidential debate with
Speaker 1: Mike Pence.
Speaker 2: Mister Vice President, I'm speaking.
Speaker 1: People largely expected her to needle Trump in a similar fashion,
Speaker 1: and she did.
Speaker 2: These dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be
Speaker 2: president again because they're so clear they can manipulate you
Speaker 2: with flattery and favors.
Speaker 1: Trump. Ever, the TV showman was coming off his June
Speaker 1: debate with President Joe Biden, whose poor performance led to
Speaker 1: his withdrawal from the race. Tonight, as Harris attacked Trump's
Speaker 1: track record on the economy, abortion, and immigration, he went
Speaker 1: on the defensive.
Speaker 3: I created one of the greatest economies in the history
Speaker 3: of our country. I'll do it again and even better.
Speaker 1: And he tried to turn Harris's tactics against her.
Speaker 3: I'm talking now, you don't mind? Please? Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 1: This was the initial market reaction to the debate. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: saw a one and a half percentage point drop. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at least one notable viewer was impressed with Harris's performance.
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift endorsed Harris moments after the debate. Today on
Speaker 1: the show, Bloomberg's senior editor Wendy Benjaminson and I unpack
Speaker 1: Harris versus Trump and talk about what comes next. This
Speaker 1: is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerra.
Speaker 1: So we just up this pretty historic evening amid an
Speaker 1: historic election, the first debate between Vice President Hairis and
Speaker 1: former President Trump, also the first time that they've met
Speaker 1: face to face. Before we get into the highlights of
Speaker 1: the debate, just set the stage for us here. What
Speaker 1: were the goals for each of these candidates going into
Speaker 1: the debate.
Speaker 4: So, Kamala Harris had two goals. She needed to introduce
Speaker 4: herself to the American people a little bit more, and
Speaker 4: she needed to needle Trump into getting angry, and she
Speaker 4: accomplished both. For Donald Trump, he needed to be the
Speaker 4: sober policy focused former president who would reassure independent voters, women,
Speaker 4: and undecided voters that he could lead the US again,
Speaker 4: and by many measures, he did not meet those goals.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you just about the atmospherics and
Speaker 1: kind of your takeaways in terms of how this debate
Speaker 1: felt compared to the last one we talked after the
Speaker 1: first debate in Atlanta between President Biden and former President Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's probably a one eighty from where they were
Speaker 4: at that fateful June debate. I mean, Democrats probably feel
Speaker 4: now like they had a really good night and Republicans
Speaker 4: are worried as opposed to last time. The Republicans in
Speaker 4: Trump's camp are spinning it that he had a great debate,
Speaker 4: that he owned her, that all these things, but he
Speaker 4: was really really doubling down on some of the most
Speaker 4: Atlanta stuff that his aides want him to avoid.
Speaker 1: What's the big headline in terms of performance for each
Speaker 1: of these two candidates as you see it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was really struck by just how she pulled
Speaker 4: out all of her prosecutorial experience, all of her experience
Speaker 4: getting people to react angrily, how she effectively did that,
Speaker 4: and how ready he was to take the bait. Every
Speaker 4: time she gave him an opportunity to go off the rails,
Speaker 4: he took it, and he took it with Relish. There
Speaker 4: was that one moment where she said something about the rallies,
Speaker 4: but it was supposed to be about immigration, and he
Speaker 4: was like, forget immigration, let's talk about my rallies.
Speaker 3: She said, people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies.
Speaker 3: There's no reason to go, and the people that do go,
Speaker 3: she's busting him in and paying them to be there.
Speaker 1: Of looming large over this debate, certainly, something that was
Speaker 1: talked about a lot going into it was what the
Speaker 1: polls looked like for these two candidates. There was this
Speaker 1: New York Times see in a college poll which showed
Speaker 1: the candidate's neck and neck well within the margin of error.
Speaker 1: More than a quarter of those respondents still felt like
Speaker 1: they didn't know who Kamala Harris is, what she stands for,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of incumbent on her to introduce
Speaker 1: herself or reintroduce herself as the presidential candidate to them
Speaker 1: in that regard. What kind of impression did she leave tonight?
Speaker 4: I really do think that that was her weakest moment.
Speaker 4: She was supposed to paint her own picture of who
Speaker 4: she was, and instead she was so focused on getting
Speaker 4: under her skin and making him react that she led
Speaker 4: him define her as why didn't she do this? Why
Speaker 4: didn't she fix things in policy that as a vice
Speaker 4: president she couldn't fix. He kept defining her in these
Speaker 4: crazy ways, and she didn't take the bait like he did,
Speaker 4: but that left the definition to him.
Speaker 3: She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist.
Speaker 4: I do think she was tremendously effective, however, on the
Speaker 4: abortion question.
Speaker 2: Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term,
Speaker 2: suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency
Speaker 2: room because the healthcare providers are afraid they might go
Speaker 2: to jail, and she's bleeding out in.
Speaker 3: A car in the parking lot. She didn't want that.
Speaker 3: Her husband didn't want that.
Speaker 4: He started to talk about how it's now up to
Speaker 4: the states. That's what conservatives have wanted, which has just
Speaker 4: read me to traditional conservatives as well as MAGA conservatives.
Speaker 4: The idea that it is up to the states, it
Speaker 4: is up to local governments to set policy.
Speaker 3: Every Republican liberal conservative, they all wanted this issue to
Speaker 3: be brought back to the safe where the people could vote,
Speaker 3: and that's what happened.
Speaker 4: He said that, but then he flipped into this thing
Speaker 4: about executing babies after they were born.
Speaker 3: Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month
Speaker 3: is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it's
Speaker 3: an execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born
Speaker 3: is okay.
Speaker 4: Which is just wholly fictional, and I think lost the
Speaker 4: point on that one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, the candidates on policy proposals, in their own words,
Speaker 1: we're back, and I'm here with Bloomberg Senior editor Wendy Benjaminson. Welly,
Speaker 1: let's dig into some of the issues that came up
Speaker 1: during this debate. We've talked about abortion. It started with
Speaker 1: the economy, in this question of our voter is better
Speaker 1: off today than they were four years ago. That was
Speaker 1: what the moderator posed. It gave them an opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk about their policy proposals to combat inflation. This is
Speaker 1: something we've heard and it's talking about a lot in
Speaker 1: recent days. Did we learn anything new tonight on the
Speaker 1: candidate's economic policy positions.
Speaker 4: Not really that much. And I will say that I
Speaker 4: believe Vice President Harris kind of whiffed the first question,
Speaker 4: and yet it was an impossible question for her to answer.
Speaker 4: Many Americans feel that the economy is not better off,
Speaker 4: whether that's true or not, so she couldn't really answer
Speaker 4: the question directly. Instead, she turned it into her opening
Speaker 4: argument about what she will do for the country.
Speaker 2: We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing,
Speaker 2: and the cost of housing is too expensive far too
Speaker 2: many people. We know that young families need support to
Speaker 2: raise their children, and I intend on extending a tax
Speaker 2: cut for those families of six thousand dollars, which is
Speaker 2: the largest.
Speaker 4: But it was an unsatisfying answer.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, Former President Trump kept coming back to the issue
Speaker 1: of immigration. He would mention conspiracy theories. Vice President Harris
Speaker 1: blamed former President Trump for the failure of a bipartisan
Speaker 1: immigration build. He suggested it could have been handled by
Speaker 1: executive order and that she's embarrassed by her kind of
Speaker 1: track record. Is what he called being a borders are
Speaker 1: That's not what her title was. Could you give us
Speaker 1: just a gut check from Washington? What was your takeaway
Speaker 1: from all the finger pointing on the yush of immigration that.
Speaker 4: We saw well, it was sort of the same theme
Speaker 4: we've been talking about, where he had an opportunity to
Speaker 4: score points. He had an opportunity to expand his support
Speaker 4: beyond his base and make some valid points about the
Speaker 4: state of immigration in the country and how there were
Speaker 4: a record number of border crossings during the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: But again he devolved into talking about Haitian immigrants in
Speaker 4: Ohio eating people's pets.
Speaker 3: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs the people that came in,
Speaker 3: they're eating the cats, they're eating they're eating the pets
Speaker 3: of the people that live there.
Speaker 4: And that's where David Muir had to come in and say,
Speaker 4: you know, I talked to the city manager. Nobody's eating
Speaker 4: anyone's pets. So again he sort of missed that opportunity.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a bit about foreign policy. There was some
Speaker 1: discussion about tariffs sometimes spent on Ukraine and Afghanistan, Israel
Speaker 1: hamas competition with China. What were the notable kind of
Speaker 1: policy propos or positions that you heard tonight when it
Speaker 1: comes to foreign policy, and be drilling down a little
Speaker 1: bit on global trade policy.
Speaker 4: Well, I was really interested to hear what Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: would say about Israel because she wants to stem the
Speaker 4: loss as Biden was seeing among voters of color and
Speaker 4: young voters who are much more sympathetic to the Palestinians
Speaker 4: in the Israel Hamas war. And yet you know her
Speaker 4: husband is Jewish, she's outspoken about anti Semitism, and so
Speaker 4: she did a pretty good job of threading that needle
Speaker 4: where she pretty much chewed to the Biden administration position
Speaker 4: on Israel and it is right to defend itself. But
Speaker 4: she brought up the Palestinian deaths and called for a
Speaker 4: two state solution, which I thought was a smart way
Speaker 4: to balance them without going against the boss too much.
Speaker 4: The boss being Biden.
Speaker 2: I said, then, I say, now Israel has a right
Speaker 2: to defend itself, we would, and how it does so matters.
Speaker 4: Trump really surprised me by saying that his only goal
Speaker 4: in Ukraine was to end the war, as if he
Speaker 4: didn't really care whether Putin took Ukraine or not. And
Speaker 4: that was surprising to me that he painted it as
Speaker 4: I don't want there to be any more human deaths,
Speaker 4: but it was really like, sure Putin could take Ukraine,
Speaker 4: why not.
Speaker 3: I will get it settled before I even become president.
Speaker 3: If I win when I'm president elect, and what I'll
Speaker 3: do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other.
Speaker 3: I'll get them together. That war would have never happened.
Speaker 4: On global trade. I think Kamala Harris had a really
Speaker 4: nice turn of phrase when she called tariffs the Trump
Speaker 4: sales tax. She was trying to explain to people who
Speaker 4: may not be that familiar with tariff policy that when
Speaker 4: you charge even foreign companies more to import their goods,
Speaker 4: they will pass that on to the consumers. And I
Speaker 4: think sales tax was a really effective way to say it.
Speaker 2: My opponent has a plan that I called the Trump's
Speaker 2: sales Tax, which would be a twenty percent tax on
Speaker 2: everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month.
Speaker 4: I think he scored some points with the success he
Speaker 4: had in his first term of getting NATO countries to
Speaker 4: contribute more to their own defense. He keeps phrasing it though,
Speaker 4: as if they paid the United States, and what he
Speaker 4: means is they increased their own defense spending.
Speaker 3: I said, either you pay up, or we're not going
Speaker 3: to protect you anymore.
Speaker 4: But it was a success in his first administration, and
Speaker 4: he was wise to point that out.
Speaker 1: I think back on that debate in Atlanta, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: seemed to distance himself from comments that he'd made previously
Speaker 1: denying the results of the twenty twenty election. During this
Speaker 1: debate in Philadelphia, when David More brought up the January
Speaker 1: sixth insurrection and election integrity, even citing Trump saying he
Speaker 1: lost by a whisker, doubled down on the idea that
Speaker 1: he actually won in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Look, there's so much proof. All you have to do
Speaker 3: is look at it, and they should have sent it
Speaker 3: back to the legislatures for approval.
Speaker 1: What did you make of his return to denying the
Speaker 1: outcome of the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 4: Right, that was a moment where I really think he
Speaker 4: may have helped with his base. He may have thinking
Speaker 4: he was at a rally and sort of forgetting the goal,
Speaker 4: which is again to attract undecided, independent other voters who
Speaker 4: might not yet be sold on Kamala Harris. And instead
Speaker 4: he just completely doubled down and went on this long
Speaker 4: spiel about how he really did win the election, how
Speaker 4: he got more votes. He just kept going on and
Speaker 4: on about that and then made it even worse for
Speaker 4: himself by acting as if he had no responsibility no
Speaker 4: part in January sixth that the only person who died
Speaker 4: was and sadly Ashley Babbitt, one of the protesters went
Speaker 4: In fact, several law enforcement officers lost their lives after
Speaker 4: that incident.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you what I realized maybe an unfair question,
Speaker 1: and that is, if you had to make a judgment
Speaker 1: call about who won this debate, which maybe the last
Speaker 1: debate we have beened tween now in an election day,
Speaker 1: who would you say one? Who did you say came
Speaker 1: out ahead in this debate?
Speaker 4: I think Kamala Harris came out on top of this,
Speaker 4: even though she may not have succeeded in getting her
Speaker 4: own story out there to the American people as effectively
Speaker 4: as she wanted. What she did was what Joe Biden
Speaker 4: could not do in June, which is show voters that
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is still Donald Trump, that you know, he
Speaker 4: much more wants to talk about the size of his
Speaker 4: rallies than policy. And you know, that was where I think,
Speaker 4: you know, she really succeeded. And again he failed to
Speaker 4: expand his base at least in this debate.
Speaker 1: Wendy, as we were kind of processing what had unfolded
Speaker 1: on the debate stage, when Taylor Swift posted a picture
Speaker 1: of her with a cat and through her support behind
Speaker 1: Vice President Harris. What do you make of the endorsement.
Speaker 4: I mean, Taylor Swift is incredibly influential, and tonight she
Speaker 4: said Kamala Harris one tonight she said she was a
Speaker 4: childless cat lady who was going to vote for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: And I think that was just the perfect bow on
Speaker 4: the end of Kamala Harris's night.
Speaker 1: Wendy, great to talk to you. If there's another debate,
Speaker 1: no doubt we'll do it again.
Speaker 4: Let's do it again.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: I'm David Gura. This episode is produced by Julia Press
Speaker 1: with support from Alex Sagura and Thomas lou It was
Speaker 1: edited by Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by Alex, who
Speaker 1: also fact checked the episode with Thomas. Kim Gittleson and
Speaker 1: Naomi Shaven, who also edited this episode, are our senior producers.
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