Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David
Speaker 2: Gura in Atlanta, where, for the first time in history,
Speaker 2: an incumbent president faced off in a debate with a
Speaker 2: former president. Joe Biden and Donald Trump were on stage
Speaker 2: for over an hour and a half on Thursday night
Speaker 2: in a CNN television studio with no audience. We're going
Speaker 2: to play some key clips and all of them are
Speaker 2: courtesy of the CNN Presidential Debate. Within moments of the
Speaker 2: start of the debate, Biden sounded horace, seemed to lose
Speaker 2: his train of thought, and struggled at times to get
Speaker 2: his message across, and that became a pattern throughout the
Speaker 2: time he and Trump spent on stage.
Speaker 3: Dealing with everything we have to do with.
Speaker 4: Look if we finally beat Medicare.
Speaker 2: Trump appeared to test new messaging, notably when the moderators
Speaker 2: asked him about the January sixth insurrection at the Capitol,
Speaker 2: and in a handful of moments, Trump capitalized on Biden's
Speaker 2: stumbles in real time.
Speaker 4: I really don't know what he said at the end
Speaker 4: of those sentence. I don't think he knows what he said.
Speaker 2: Either, we'll dig into these key moments and examine what
Speaker 2: the candidates said about inflation, taxes, and abortion with Stephanie Lye,
Speaker 2: who's covering the debate with me here in Atlanta for Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: and Senior Washington editor Wendy Benjaminson in DC. This is
Speaker 2: the big take on today's episode, the big takeaways and
Speaker 2: even bigger questions coming out of the first presidential debate
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four. Coming to you from the spin room,
Speaker 2: where surrogates for each of the candidates are spinning the
Speaker 2: messages we heard from them to understand how the debate played.
Speaker 2: In Washington, I called up Bloomberg Senior editor Wendy Benjaminson.
Speaker 1: Wendy, great to speak with you.
Speaker 3: Good to speak with you, David.
Speaker 2: I know that you have covered a lot of presidential debate.
Speaker 2: What stood out to you about this one in particular?
Speaker 5: Well, it's less about the arc of presidential debate history
Speaker 5: and more about just how surprisingly old President Joe Biden seemed.
Speaker 5: The one thing he had to do tonight, the one
Speaker 5: job he had, was to assuage voters that he was fit,
Speaker 5: mentally competent and despite the number of years he has
Speaker 5: been alive, still able to carry out the duties of
Speaker 5: the president of the United States, and the reactions that
Speaker 5: we're getting from Democrats as well as other people is
Speaker 5: just that he did not assuage those doubts at all tonight.
Speaker 2: How surprised were you given what we knew of the
Speaker 2: level of preparation that went into this.
Speaker 3: I was very surprised.
Speaker 5: I mean, the guy can't help having a cold, which
Speaker 5: is what his campaign has his aides have been telling
Speaker 5: us from the moment the debate started. But it wasn't
Speaker 5: just the fact that he was horse, which is you
Speaker 5: know happens. He was getting numbers wrong. He said fifteen
Speaker 5: thousand jobs were created during his presidency instead of fifteen million.
Speaker 5: He said some senior citizens now have a two hundred
Speaker 5: dollars annual cap on out of pocket drug prices instead
Speaker 5: of two thousand, and incorrectly said some wealthy Americans were trillionaires.
Speaker 5: Trump very surprisingly seemed disciplined, confident he had prepared.
Speaker 2: Answers Wendy, there was a lot of talk leading up
Speaker 2: to this debate about how low the bar was for
Speaker 2: the current president. For Joe Biden, what was your sense
Speaker 2: of what he needed to do tonight, and how far
Speaker 2: did he come from clearing that he.
Speaker 5: Did not step over that low bar you Like I
Speaker 5: said earlier, he needed to give voters confidence that he
Speaker 5: was capable of carrying out a second term, that he
Speaker 5: was the better option than Donald Trump, and on policy,
Speaker 5: on faith to democracy, on things like that. I think
Speaker 5: Democrats could feel like that is the Joe Biden they
Speaker 5: know as opposed to Donald Trump. But he didn't give
Speaker 5: us confidence that if there were a national security crisis
Speaker 5: at three am, like Hillary Clinton used to talk about,
Speaker 5: that he would be able to handle it.
Speaker 2: As you've listened to and followed what they've said, what
Speaker 2: is the response from those who play that informal role
Speaker 2: with the campaign.
Speaker 5: Well, from what we're hearing tonight, they are, and I
Speaker 5: can't say it in any more pointed way than this,
Speaker 5: they are freaking out. David Axelrott, he's a former Obama
Speaker 5: campaign guy. He was the first one to say it's
Speaker 5: not sure Biden should continue. They are actually thinking about
Speaker 5: whether Biden should continue to be the nominee. And we've
Speaker 5: heard from some Democratic lawmakers saying things like that, I
Speaker 5: think this is a really seminal moment in the campaign
Speaker 5: and it's not the one the Democrats hoped for.
Speaker 2: Walk me through how that would play out procedurally.
Speaker 5: For the Democrats to cut the head of their party loose,
Speaker 5: it would be really extraordinary, And the process would be
Speaker 5: that Biden's closest aids or his family could come to
Speaker 5: him and persuade him to drop out, and then all
Speaker 5: those delegates that the Democratic National Convention who are committed
Speaker 5: to him would then be guided by Biden's camp to
Speaker 5: a candidate he chooses, probably Kamala Harris, although Vice President
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris has already said tonight that she thought Biden
Speaker 5: did well after a slow start.
Speaker 2: We talked about where the bar was set for President Biden.
Speaker 2: How about for former President Trump going into this debate?
Speaker 2: What did he and his advisors sees that they needed to.
Speaker 1: Do in this debate?
Speaker 5: What former President Trump needed to do tonight was show
Speaker 5: a disciplined presidential saying. And it was really interesting to
Speaker 5: see how Trump did that tonight because he said all
Speaker 5: of his greatest hits.
Speaker 3: You know that.
Speaker 5: Biden was the worst president in history. He bragged about
Speaker 5: being a convicted felon and all that, but he did
Speaker 5: it in this calm disciplined way that we don't see
Speaker 5: from Trump at his rallies, and he seemed to stick
Speaker 5: to policy, and so I think he exceeded what people
Speaker 5: expected of him tonight. Whether you like Donald Trump or not.
Speaker 1: It's funny too.
Speaker 2: I think about the format and the forum and going
Speaker 2: into this, there was a lot of speculation that by
Speaker 2: not having an audience, that was going to be a
Speaker 2: challenge for him, but there were actually very few moments
Speaker 2: when he exceeded the time limit.
Speaker 5: For instance, he did stay on message throughout the debate,
Speaker 5: and Joe Biden did too. I mean, the trouble is
Speaker 5: no one expected these rules to hamper Biden. They did
Speaker 5: expect the rules to hamper Donald Trump, and they didn't.
Speaker 5: Had those rules not been there, he would have been
Speaker 5: shouting at Biden and wandering around the stage and you know,
Speaker 5: talking over him, and Biden could have gotten another will
Speaker 5: you shut up man great line like he did in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty, but Trump couldn't do that.
Speaker 2: Stephanie Lai has been following former President Trump on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail for Bloomberg and is here in the spin room,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to know what Trump's campaign team wanted
Speaker 2: to see tonight and if they saw it, Stephanie, what
Speaker 2: did you make of his performance tonight given what the
Speaker 2: expectations were and what you've seen of him in recent
Speaker 2: weeks on the campaign trail, a lot of.
Speaker 6: His responses seemed like canned scripts from his rallies, and
Speaker 6: you know, if it works, it works right. His rallies
Speaker 6: are basically a way for him to respond to Biden's
Speaker 6: agenda and to say, this is what I have to
Speaker 6: offer in a second term. And that's exactly what we
Speaker 6: heard today.
Speaker 2: So he's been workshopping a lot of this on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail. Exactly how did his prep look going into
Speaker 2: this debate?
Speaker 6: We know that he was doing policy session with high
Speaker 6: profile Republicans and was working with his advisors with the
Speaker 6: campaign to get a sense of what he would want
Speaker 6: to talk about, what he should talk about. And right
Speaker 6: before the debate, two of his senior advisors convened one
Speaker 6: a press call and basically said, on our end, we're
Speaker 6: looking through every single public remark that Biden has ever made.
Speaker 6: We're doing the legwork, and we're making sure that President
Speaker 6: Trump knows what to expect and how to respond. And
Speaker 6: so he did actually engage in quite a bit of preparation.
Speaker 6: It's just not the traditional standing at a podium having
Speaker 6: someone play your mock opponent.
Speaker 1: Coming up.
Speaker 2: We moved from style to substance. What did the candidates
Speaker 2: say about topics like January sixth, abortion, the economy, and
Speaker 2: Trump's guilty verdict. We're back and I'm speaking with Senior
Speaker 2: Washington editor Wendy Benjaminson, who's based in DC. Wendy talk
Speaker 2: about some of the specific issues that came up, some
Speaker 2: of the most important questions and answers I think we
Speaker 2: got during the course of this debate, And I'll start
Speaker 2: with January sixth. There was this kind of astonishing moment
Speaker 2: in the debate where former President Trump rolled out this
Speaker 2: completely new message when he was asked about what happened
Speaker 2: on that day. Let me just play a bit of
Speaker 2: tape from the debate.
Speaker 4: On January sixth, we had a great border, nobody coming through,
Speaker 4: very few. On January sixth, we were energy independent. On
Speaker 4: January sixth, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had
Speaker 4: the lowest regulations ever. On January sixth, we were respected
Speaker 4: all over the world.
Speaker 2: That clip is courtesy of the CNN Presidential Debate. Wendy
Speaker 2: can you walk me through what you were thinking as
Speaker 2: someone who covered Trump's twenty sixteen campaign, his twenty twenty
Speaker 2: campaign January sixth as well, it's aftermath. What did you
Speaker 2: make of that moment in the way the former president
Speaker 2: reframed it on the stage.
Speaker 5: I think it was genius marketing, which Trump has made
Speaker 5: a career of. I mean, it is a real recasting
Speaker 5: of history to say that on January sixth, everything else
Speaker 5: in the country was great. That was really kind of
Speaker 5: a remarkable moment that I don't think Joe Biden capitalized
Speaker 5: on well enough.
Speaker 2: I mean I heard it and wondered if it just
Speaker 2: caught him so by surprise it was something he could
Speaker 2: have even fathom thinking.
Speaker 1: The former president.
Speaker 5: Would say, maybe that's it, because it really was a
Speaker 5: jaw dropping moment to sort of recast January sixth is
Speaker 5: a lovely day except for that one little thing.
Speaker 2: So wend he paints January sixth and this decidedly rosier light,
Speaker 2: and then right after that he insists that on that
Speaker 2: day he offered police support, he said, military support, national
Speaker 2: Guard support to go to the Capitol, and that that
Speaker 2: offer was turned down by then. How Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 2: can we fact check that claim from the former president.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not true. First of all, the DC National Guard,
Speaker 5: which is who would have responded in that case, does
Speaker 5: not report the president. He cannot call them out. They
Speaker 5: report to Senate leadership. And I believe the Capital Sergeant
Speaker 5: at Arms, there was Capital police who were called to it.
Speaker 5: In fact, I believe there was even a call to
Speaker 5: the Pentagon by people in Congress to see if regular
Speaker 5: military should show up, and that didn't happen. So no,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump did not offer help to Nancy Pelosi, and
Speaker 5: she did not reject any help that didn't come.
Speaker 2: The debate began with a conversation about the economy. The
Speaker 2: two moderators said, this is what's front of mine to
Speaker 2: so many voters in this country, and there was a
Speaker 2: lot of finger pointing about the post COVID economy, about
Speaker 2: inflation in particular. Who do you think came out of
Speaker 2: that section looking stronger?
Speaker 5: That one might have gone to Biden a little bit,
Speaker 5: because in that moment and in later moments, he actually
Speaker 5: and finally acknowledged what voters have been wanting to hear,
Speaker 5: that yes, all the economic indicators are going in the
Speaker 5: right place direction, but I'm still paying too much at
Speaker 5: the grocery store. I'm still paying too much of the
Speaker 5: gas pump, and my salary isn't going up. He's beginning
Speaker 5: to acknowledge, and he started this about a week ago,
Speaker 5: the pain that Americans are feeling. Donald Trump is so
Speaker 5: full of superlatives all the time. I had the greatest
Speaker 5: economy in the history of the world that it sort
Speaker 5: of cheapens the moment that the economy was good. But remember,
Speaker 5: as soon as COVID hit, the economy really took a dive.
Speaker 5: While Trump was president. I think Trump was pretty effective though,
Speaker 5: in pointing out the sort of basic question that Ronald
Speaker 5: Reagan started back in nineteen eighty are you better off
Speaker 5: today than you were when I was president? So a
Speaker 5: lot of people really do feel that, well under Trump,
Speaker 5: you know, things were better. They're not as great now,
Speaker 5: and so I'm gonna you know, people are saying they'll
Speaker 5: go back and vote for Donald Trump. That is what
Speaker 5: we're seeing in the polls.
Speaker 2: Wendy kind of complimentary to this was a conversation about taxes.
Speaker 2: What did we hear from each of these candidates about
Speaker 2: what they would do in a second term when it
Speaker 2: comes to tax policy.
Speaker 5: Well, Trump really did sort of skate over the most
Speaker 5: controversial part of his tax policy, which is making it
Speaker 5: a lot easier on rich people and corporations. You know,
Speaker 5: Joe Biden has always had this position that people who
Speaker 5: make over four hundred thousand dollars should pay more in
Speaker 5: taxes and people who make less than four hundred thousand
Speaker 5: should have pay less in taxes. But Trump talked about
Speaker 5: the tariffs that he's going to place on Chinese exports
Speaker 5: and how that is going to keep prices down and
Speaker 5: that will fund all of the things that he wants
Speaker 5: to do. The trouble is, every economist and every expert
Speaker 5: in trade will tell you that that's not true. It
Speaker 5: is Americans who will end up paying for those tariffs,
Speaker 5: not the Chinese.
Speaker 2: Another big issue that came up during the debate was
Speaker 2: abortion rights. On the heels of this decision by the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court in Idaho versus the United States, allowing for
Speaker 2: emergency abortions in that state, Donald Trump coming out saying
Speaker 2: he supports exemptions related to rape, incest and protecting the
Speaker 2: mother's life. He kind of couched this, as you know,
Speaker 2: Reagan favored exceptions for things I do as well.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised to hear that from the former president.
Speaker 5: This has been part of an arc that Trump has
Speaker 5: been on ever since the court that he appointed overturned
Speaker 5: Roe versus Wade and left it to the states to
Speaker 5: decide abortion rights. What Trump has been doing is he's
Speaker 5: realized that a pure pro life, anti abortion rights message
Speaker 5: is an election loser. You know, the vast majority of
Speaker 5: this country favors abortion rights.
Speaker 4: I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and the
Speaker 4: life of the mother. I think it's very important. Some
Speaker 4: people don't follow your heart, but you have to get elected.
Speaker 2: Also, that clip is courtesy of the CNN presidential Debate.
Speaker 5: So what he has been doing is trying to find
Speaker 5: ways to moderate himself on the issue. And tonight he
Speaker 5: came out and said he also supported the abortion pill
Speaker 5: being legal across the nation, which was a much more
Speaker 5: moderate position than he's taken.
Speaker 1: What do I want to turn to immigration?
Speaker 2: This is something that former President Trump brings up a
Speaker 2: lot on the campaign trail. How did each candidate position
Speaker 2: himself on that issue?
Speaker 5: During this debate, Trump was no matter what the question was,
Speaker 5: he always came back to Biden's border policies because I
Speaker 5: believe he knows that after the economy, immigration is a
Speaker 5: top issue with many.
Speaker 2: Voters, and he would go back to this time and
Speaker 2: time again. If the question was about Ukraine, if it
Speaker 2: was about suspective of foreign policy, would he would come
Speaker 2: back and talk about immigration. He kept bringing it up
Speaker 2: himself in his responses.
Speaker 3: Exactly he would do it on any issue.
Speaker 5: Remember that Biden and the Republicans in Congress had negotiated
Speaker 5: a bipartisan bill that would have tightened security on the
Speaker 5: southern border, and Donald Trump told the Congressional Republicans to
Speaker 5: scuttle it, and scuttle it they did, And so all
Speaker 5: Biden had to do was say, I was on the
Speaker 5: cusp of fixing this problem, and you stop me from
Speaker 5: doing that. Had he said that, he would have scored
Speaker 5: tremendous points. But he sort of waffled and tried to
Speaker 5: say that, but didn't really say it in a forceful way,
Speaker 5: and I think lost the point on that issue.
Speaker 2: Last thing I want to ask you about is how
Speaker 2: President Biden brought up what happened to former President Trump
Speaker 2: just a couple of weeks back in New York. He
Speaker 2: was found guilty by a jury on thirty four felony counts.
Speaker 1: How forcefully did he make.
Speaker 2: That argument to the American people that he was on
Speaker 2: stage with a convicted felon.
Speaker 3: He actually didn't do badly on that point.
Speaker 4: The only presu of the stage is a convicted fellows
Speaker 4: man I'm looking at right now.
Speaker 5: He had that one singer you have the morals of
Speaker 5: an alley cat, which is sort of an old fashioned expression,
Speaker 5: but you know, but it seemed to work. And Donald
Speaker 5: Trump didn't do himself any favors when he said, you know, yeah, sure,
Speaker 5: I'm a convicted felon, but look at my poll numbers
Speaker 5: went up and I got more money and that sort
Speaker 5: of thing, and he seemed to really dismiss the notion
Speaker 5: that he was convicted of crimes and faces jail time,
Speaker 5: and also the moral and legal and ethical quandaries of
Speaker 5: having a president who is a convicted felon. I do
Speaker 5: think that was where Biden was the strongest in talking
Speaker 5: about Trump's moral lapses things like that, and he cornered
Speaker 5: Trump into saying I never had sex with a porn star.
Speaker 4: I didn't have sex with a porn star.
Speaker 2: That clip is courtesy of the CNN Presidential Debate. There's
Speaker 2: a tendency to say who won this, who lost this?
Speaker 2: Could you answer that question tonight?
Speaker 5: Trump won the debate tonight, Biden lost the debate tonight.
Speaker 5: You know, this was the moment where he was going
Speaker 5: to show that he was forceful, that he was on
Speaker 5: top of issues, that he was the guy to as
Speaker 5: Democrats are saying, save democracy from Donald Trump, that he
Speaker 5: was better and better for the American people than a
Speaker 5: convicted felon who was oversaw January sixth.
Speaker 3: And all of this.
Speaker 5: And I don't think he did it. I don't think
Speaker 5: he achieved what he wanted to achieve. He had the cold,
Speaker 5: he was, he forgot numbers. He just didn't seem that strong.
Speaker 5: He just looked like a very old man. And Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: who's only four years younger, didn't.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Wendy, Yeah, thank you. Get some rest.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: I'm David Gura.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Julia Press with support from
Speaker 2: Alex Segura and Thomas lou It was mixed by Alex,
Speaker 2: who also fact checked the episode with Thomas kim Gettlson
Speaker 2: and Naomi Shavin, who also edited this episode. Are our
Speaker 2: senior producers, Nicole beemsterbor Is our executive producer. Sage Bauman
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