Welcome back to Bloomberg's special coverage of the twenty twenty four CNN presidential debate right here on Bloomberg Television and Radio alongside Joe Matthew, I'm Kaylee Lines, and we just witnessed ninety minutes of debate between a current and former president for the first time in history, a debate in which the incumbent, Joe Biden, often struggled, stumbling over his words, misstating figures, at times freezing at one point, whereas Donald Trump,
who did appear this evening, Joe, much more energetic and forceful, often said things that were not factually correct. Joe Biden continually accused him of lying, and yet with a hoarse voice that many in the Democratic Party are now attributing to a cold Joe Biden at eighty one perhaps played into fears about his age this evening.
Yeah, this is an interesting exercise. We're probably going to hear a lot more about performance than we are about substance. Following ninety minutes. To Kayley's point, there, we had one break in the middle of this exercise. One toward the end before closing statements, the president actually seemed to struggle through his closing statement, which is an opportunity to get
into something that would be more rehearsed. But look, the CNN moderators who we just watched and listened to did not make any attempt to fact check either of the candidates here, and I guess that will be the job of our panel, Kyley.
Yeah, of course, Joe Biden did at times attempt to fact check Trump, at least accusing him of lying, not always though providing what he says are actually the facts. And many times, interestingly, these candidates were asked questions that they simply just did not answer, talking about other subjects entirely.
Donald Trump did that on multiple occasions. When asked if he would accept the results of the election, it took multiple tries from the moderator and he said, ultimately not yes or no, but if it's a fair and legal election, absolutely.
We're going to walk you through some of the highlights, if we can call them that, of this first debate in the cycle, and we'll have analysis ahead with Rick Davis and Kristen Hank.
First, though, let's check in on the Spin room in Atlanta with Lomberg's correspondent David Gera, who is there on the ground, So David, that was something to behold at times. Frankly, it was uncomfortable. How do things feel in the spin room in the aftermath.
Yeah, I think the two of you have laid that out just as I witnessed it. It was a really stark contrast, and there were moments that were, as you said, quite awkward. The contrast really start between these two candidates in terms of their presentation. I think that something is you mentioned
that there wasn't any fact checking. You did notice that with the former president, with Donald Trump, when asked a question, he would often take that moment to go back to something else that was talked about in the question before that. I did note a few times that Dana bash reintroduced the questions and this is what we're talking about now,
and give him another opportunity to do that. But I agree with your assessment too that we didn't get a whole lot of substance here, a substance that was new. I think of sort of ways that President Trump in particular reframed things that were novel, particularly when it comes
to January sixth. Yes, there is what we've heard from him before about those who participated in that insurrection in that action on Capitol Hill, but then kind of using January sixth, this is kind of pivot moment for the economy and all that he inherited then, and sort of what happened on January sixth to the economy and the country as a whole was a shall we say, creative spin on what happened on that day. A bit of
news also from the former president on abortion. Of course, that's been in the news so much over these last few weeks, and we had that Supreme Court decision this week on the heels of the reporting the Bloomberg did yesterday about the Supreme Court allowing the allowing abortions in emergency circumstances to happen in Idaho. You did have Donald Trump on the record today again saying that he defers to the States, but says that he is somebody. He is a candidate who's in favor of exceptions in a
kind of Reaganite mold. Has he put it. That's what stood out to me. I noted with Donald Trump in particular, there were three or four things he kept coming back to that. Of course, the migrant crisis as he sees it, quantity of people coming into this country, he blaming Joe Biden for that and talking a bit about sort of what he inherited. What Joe Biden inherited was this great economy, this great country.
Let's talk about creative spin for a moment, David, because you're right in the middle of it here as you join us live from the spin room. This is great giving us a little bit of a walk around. How are the two campaigns representing themselves? This is a pretty quiet spin room, if we can be honest. Before the debate started, what are you seeing around you? Now?
Yeah, it is a bit quiet, and once it ended there was an ear quiet to the room as well. But you have Mattur camermon focusing here on Sarah Hockey Sanders, who's speaking to reporters now on the floor here now filling up with more reporters and more surrogates. Let me see if I can get my microphone a bit closer and we can pick up anything that she's she's having to say here, Joe, and if you just way with.
Resimblest, it's a clear contest and it's a win win overwhelming me for president.
Forgive me, yes, I saw her from Afar chrisident Biden will still be the Democratic nominee.
By the time we get to November, he is.
The Democratic nominee.
He will be on the ballot.
And we are going to defeat him this November and elect President Trump the next president of the United States, and the American people see crystal clear Joe Biden's fail policies, whether it's the border crisis, Biden inflation, or his weak role as commander in chief leading to chaos and weak in national security. This was an absolute, overwhelming knockout victory by President Trump against a failed, feckless and weak Joe Biden.
What do you just step away here? As she continues again, that's the least Stefanic the congressman from New York. And as I kind of walk around the floor to see who else is out here, she principally there the only surguit that I'm seeing on the floor right now. But you just picking up there on what she's saying about the economy. Again, that was something I think that the
former president returned to time and time again. And you saw, as you mentioned the top, Joe Biden, the current president, trying to context you lize sort of the economy that he inherited when he was president. I found it kind of halting in the way that he was able to deal with that issue too, David, that was great.
Thanks for the peak behind the curtain, mayor of Bloomberg's David Gura with us in the spin room. These are the conversations that are going to lead to the coverage tomorrow, and you just got anice peak at it right there. As we now reassemble our political panel, Rick Davis, Republican strategist and partner at Stone Court Capital, that's with us, along with Democratic strategist Kristin Hahn, partner at Rock Solutions. All right, guys, we need some honest talk here about
what we just saw. Both of your phones were blown up through that whole debate, as you heard from your colleagues from both sides of the aisle. Kristin. Anyone's talking about is Joe Biden's voice tonight.
I think he was unfortunate that he had a cold and that he you know, the delivery may not have been what we wanted, but honestly, the thing that struck me the most was just I mean Trump might have been delivering, you know, had a more booming voice, but I was trying to take notes of all the lies he was not and my hand started hurting. So, I mean,
it's really remarkable. He's taking credit for the you know, the the insulin prices going down again, making you know, claims that the election was a fraud, wildly wrong claims about women healthcare. And it's funny because I'm like, you know, if we're talking about, as your correspondent mentioned just a second ago, he made news saying he would be okay with exceptions for a rape and incests in that type
of thing. But we just saw the man lie for an hour and a half, I mean, blatant, Liz, And we'll see all of that debunked in the next if you don't already know, over the next several days. So why would we ever believe him? Why would any woman
ever believe him? I certainly don't. I also thought it was interesting that he kept saying that, and it's a big point in his campaign, you know that he talks about how the president's you know, weaponizing the judicial system and coming after him, But he actually said, I quote, he has no idea what these cases even are. So is it that he's too old and can't remember what the cases are or is he weaponizing his judicial system? So there were so many I don't know. I wasn't
expecting anything different from President Trump. But despite the delivery, I think, you know, there there couldn't be two more, you know, distinct choices, And wasn't that was true before tonight, It's still true now and it will be true tomorrow.
But despite all of these factual inaccuracies, Trump did indeed lie at times, and Joe Biden attempted to call him out on that, And yet at times Joe Biden himself struggled to articulate what exactly the facts were, even his own facts, misstating the number of jobs, for example, created in his administration, at one point calling into question his own policy on Medicare after freezing for a substantial period
of time. Rick, I'm looking at the traffic on social media, other reports I'm seeing, and many are suggesting that the Democrats are going to have to put someone else forward as the nominee after tonight.
Yeah, when you think back about what we were trying to handicap this debate going into it, what was Trump going to need to do? Trump two point zero needed to be more disciplined, He needed to be less aggressive, he needed to not talk over Biden. You know, those things he accomplished, right. I mean, he got hot toward the end of the debate, and I think it actually took something away from his performances. But at the end of the day, Trump kind of delivered on the style
at which everyone set the expectation to. And the only thing anybody expected Joe Biden to do was convinced us that his age is not a factor in being a candidate for president or potentially a president for another term. And he did not accomplish that task. You know, You've mentioned it very clearly, his halting, inability to finish the sentences. He looked very over prepared, He seemed to have a
hard time getting the numbers out. And we have to remember this was his idea to debate this early one on one with Donald Trump, you know, in this kind of a venue with no limits on fact checking, right, and so he Joe Biden's job was to be the fact checker. But instead he kind of just accepted any topic that Donald Trump wanted to talk about and responded to it as best he could, but not with necessarily a fact check that could say, hey, you're lying about this,
and this is what the real story is. It was more kind of a personal response. And that's the thing that I think most people are going to take away from this debate is this was a very intensely personal debate where there were two guys who clearly didn't like each other, who had a totally different version of America, and neither one of them really delivered any kind of
a good outcome for themselves. But the performance by Joe Biden has to create questions in the Democratic Party's minds is whether or not they have someone who's up to the election they've got five months ago. And this was not a man who I would say you'd ever want to put on a debate stage.
Again, let's give a taste here as part of our special coverage of the CNN presidential debate, a moment here for Joe Biden talking to Donald Trump about morals.
The crime. So you are still charged with and think of all the civil penalties you go how many billions of dollars do you own? Civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things of having sex from the porn star on the night wife's trainer. What are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat.
An alley cat, Kristin. I'm not sure how many twenty somethings I've ever heard that word used in that way when you listen to him speaking so quickly like that, sometimes not able to get all the words out, coupled by the voice that was struggling with a cold, freezing up at times, a halting performance. As we heard from a couple of folks, Democrats are going to be upset
about this, worried about this tomorrow. How can you with a straight face tell people that he's going to be in good shape four years from now running this country?
I mean, I think also in addition to that, he was trying to fit too many things into his answers, right, I mean, Trump is really good at taking one idea and running with it, whether that's true or not, usually mostly false, but trying to fit too much, you know, and if you're quiet and you're you know, you don't have that booming voice, then it's hard for people to hear it.
So there were a lot of questions about his travel schedule. He was in three different time zones over the last two weeks.
Was that a fail?
I mean the staff's part.
He's the president of the United States. I wouldn't presume to know exactly where and when he needs to be where he needs to be, but he'll have some work to do after this.
Of course, as we consider what this debate ultimately was about, we're here analyzing the performance of both of those candidates. But they did at times talk about policy. Joe Biden decided to close out his remarks talking about economic policy, what he wants to do in taxes and to get inflation down. Donald Trump did at one point talk about tariffs, suggesting they're not going to drive prices higher. He said, it just will force other countries to pay us a
lot of money. Rick, for a voter sitting at home, do you think any of that realistically broke through or was the performance aspect ultimately to distracting?
Yeah.
I think it was very hard to get past the performance and also the hatred between the two individuals, right, I mean, that is a block to actually hearing anything positive coming out of their mouths. They talk to each other more than they talked to the American people, and that was a stark departure from Joe Biden four years ago, where he would take time to look directly into the camera and talk directly to the American people about issues he thought were important. So I think it was relatively
void of any real policy prescriptions. I mean, even the closing statements didn't really punch through a specific policy idea. Joe Biden talked about, you know, making the tax code simpler and fairer, but he didn't give any real details behind what that would look like. And Donald Trump, I mean, you know, arguably he did what he does every single day on the campaign trail. When he goes to his big events, he just makes things up and he talks
about how great they are. And I'm sure his campaign was cringing when he got into you know, a contest of wills over who's got the better golf game and how many country club championships he.
Just was one.
And so I don't think either one of them distinguished themselves particularly well. I mean, the idea that we're even talking about Donald Trump winning a debate is because it was such a disastrous performance by Joe Biden. And so if you were an independent voter, a swing voter from one of the key states, looking into this debate saying who's got something that I can latch onto that I'm
going to be, you know, excited about voting for. I don't think either one of them were able to accomplish that goal, And if anything, I wouldn't be surprised that the double haters get bigger, not smaller. Well as a result of this debate.
That's saying something. It plays poorly for both candidates in your opinion. By the way, ar Atlanta burea chief in the room, says, no Democratic surrogates on the spin room floor right now, Kristen, how long is it going to take the party to come up with an answer to this?
I mean, I think they're going to have to come up with how they're going to talk about it immediately, and I think that the campaign's ready to do that. And I think if you're going to look at you know, the president is right on the issues, he was up against a liar. The performance wasn't what it needed to be. The campaign is going to have to be in full mode, you know, like out there talking to people about like what makes this president different, why these issues are so
important to the American people. And it's not an easy thing to do when you have somebody that you're up against just lying as we.
Are in our final minute here, I would just point out that we are now two weeks out from Donald Trump's sentencing in New York when he was convicted of thirty four felony crimes, and we are just days out from getting a decision from the Supreme Court on whether he is presidential immunity in another case with which he has been charged and in regard to January sixth, So there could still be much to develop in this race. And yet it feels like Joe that something did shift in this race this evening.
We'll see how things feel tomorrow, and of course we'll be back to hash out the details on the day after our Thanks to Rick Davis, Republican strategist and partner at Stone Court Capital, and Democratic strategist Kristen Hahn, partner at Rock Solutions, a perfect panel with some smart insights tonight, Kaylee will have a lot to learn tomorrow as the campaigns get on the road. Donald Trump's going to Virginia, Joe Biden to North Carolina, and it continues other debate
in September. Assuming that takes place. That concludes our special coverage of the first twenty twenty four presidential debate.
Thanks for joining us on Bloomberg TV and radio.