Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
No handshake at the end of the ABC News presidential debate. Welcome back to special coverage simulcast here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. I'm Kaylee Lines alongside Joe Matthew in Washington. We all just witnessed together more than ninety minutes of debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, in which a range of issues were covered, from the
economy and the border to abortion and foreign policy. There was a great deal with policy focus in this debate tonight, Joe, though we did see attacks frankly coming from both sides against you.
Shatha.
Yeah, we should note for our viewers and listeners they did go into overtime. That was a debate scheduled to end roughly five minutes earlier than it did by the time they got the second commercial break in and closing arguments, closing statements. That is where we were here, So more than a ninety minute romp here, no audience and a
range of issues. To your point, Kaylee, I think we can argue that Kamala Harris had Donald Trump on the defense from the start, got into the economy, moved into abortion. I think an issue we can agree is favorable to her and remarkable to see in this case. ABC News fact checking live on a number of important issues which we have not seen by a lot of networks so far.
Yeah, that included the issue of abortion, Donald Trump claiming that Democrats were supporting including vice presidential nominee Tim Walls, nine month abortion bands or execution after birth. ABC did a fact check that there is no state in which that is legal. We also got a fact check on something being propagated in certain circles regarding the town of Springfield and the idea that migrants are eating dogs. They did reach out to the city manager. ABC did no
credible reports of pets being taken. We also saw a number of other fact checks as well from ABC. It is worth pointing out, though that there were a number of things that we heard from both frankly that we did want to check as well. We heard, once again Donald Trump making comments around the border, the idea that migrants and criminals are being sent in directly to Kamala Harris.
Of course, we've heard similar rhetoric before, and Kamala Harris herself when I wanted to point out she said no, member of the active duty military is currently in a combat zone. We would point out just last month, the US, together with a rock launched a joint raid targeting the Islamic State. Seven American troops were hurt. And of course we saw three soldiers killed in Jordan near the Syrian border earlier this year.
There were a few more where that came from.
Donald Trump said Kamala Harris as a plan to defund the police, which she refuted repeatedly over the course of this conversation. And she said, he said that she has a plan to confiscate everybody's gun. Interesting, Kaylee Kamala Harris telling the audience tonight American voters that she as well as Tim Walls are gun.
Owners, which is not something we hear too often.
Yeah, and that was something that was raised in her primary campaign in twenty nineteen, but of course this is a different campaign now. She was pressed during this debate about some different policy tune she's singing now compared to that the issue of fracking, for example, which she addressed directly. Given this debate took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, critical swing state, made it clear that she does not support a ban on fracking.
That's right.
David Gura for Bloomberg is standing by in the spin room.
We're going to connect with him in a moment.
As the next phase of this operation is the spin itself, Kaylee, Democrats and Republicans acting as surrogates for both campaigns are filling the spin room right now.
Why don't we join David Gura.
He is with Michael Wattley, the co chair of the RNC, just moments after the conclusion of this debate.
David, thanks show, Michael, good to see you, and I'd love to just start by getting your sense of how that went and sort of what stood out to you. I know that there's some focus on policy at the beginning. In the end, what did the president former president need to do and sort of are you happy with with how he comported himself?
Right, Yeah, Look, the president needed to come out here and tell America what he is going to do to solve the problems that Americans are facing right now. Every American family is facing things like inflation, the invasion at the southern border, and frankly our standing in the world. And he came out very clearly and said that he is going to stop the Southern invasion, at the border.
He's going to seal the border. He said that he is going to stop inflationary spending, unleash American energy, and help bring down prices for every American family. And he said that he's going to ensure that America is strong enough to protect our interests at home and abroad, as well as our allies across the world. We feel very good that that's the message that he needed to deliver tonight.
What did you make of the way he responded to what the Vice President said repeatedly, which is it's not time to look back, it's time to look forward. Did he have, in your estimation a good response to that.
I think he did. Look I mean, we want to look forward. This is all about what's going to happen after this election cycle. We're at a critical inflection point here right now in the history of this country, and are we going to be strong or are we going to be weak? Under Donald Trump, we are going going to have a strong economy, a strong southern border, and a strong standing in the world. And under Kamala Harris, the exact opposite is true.
We heard a lot from the Vice president about her tax plan, for instance, about the benefits she hopes to get to small business owners. Was it by design that we didn't get a lot of specifics from the former president when it came to his tax plans, which we saw unveiled a couple of days ago at the New York Economic Club.
Not at all.
Look, President Trump has made it very clear he's going to extend the Trump tax cuts. He is going to make sure that we have no tax on tips, and he's going to have no tax on Social Security. What Kamala Harris has said is she is going to let the Trump tax cuts expire, which will be the largest tax increase on American families in the history of this country.
So when she.
Talks about the tax policies that she's rolled out there, she is going to unleash the largest tax increase on Americans and every American family.
Let me ask you about what happens in the coming days, how we kind of move things forward from here? The James Carvill line about you know, you're focusing on districts, not on swing states themselves. What does the campaign need to do in the coming days and we're just, you know, less than two months in till the election itself. How does this translate into momentum going forward as you see.
It, well, I think what we're going to do is continue to go out there and talk directly to the American voters. That's what Donald Trump did tonight, was he delivered a message. He was not there to talk about any particular rebuttals to Kamala Harris, but he wanted to talk directly to the American voters about the issues that they care about. We're going to continue to do that for the next fifty five days.
Michael, let me ask you lastly about if there will be any more debates. Having watched this one, do you think there needs to be more? You in favor of there being more debates between these two cana I.
Would love to have more debates. I think that it's a good opportunity for us to have Kamala Harris try and explain her positions. What we saw today, she's going to double down on every single one of the failed policies that she's championed over the course of her last four years in the White House as well as her
terms in the Senate. Donald Trump is going to continue to talk directly to the American voters about his vision for making America great again, and any opportunity we have to do that we want to take.
Michael, thank you very much, appreciate you. It's Michael Watley, he's the chair of the Republican Notional Committee. Back to you and Washington, Joe and Kayley.
All right. Bloomberg's David Gura with co chair of the RNC Michael Wattley on the spin room floor in Philadelphia. Thank you so much. As we now have the Harris campaign as well, talking about another debate. They say the vice president is ready Joe for a second debate. I guess we'll all have to stay tuned to see if we actually do see that in October. There is an October first debate scheduled between the vice presidential nominee.
A good reminder, so maybe a couple of weeks after that, we could find ourselves here again in primetime. Brian Fallon from the Harris campaign tweeting that was fun.
Let's do it again in October.
And based on what we've just heard from mister Wattley, sounds like that might happen.
Yeah.
Of course the market will be watching as it was watching this debate tonight. Shirley, you're already starting to see movement in the predicted betting odds of the outcome of this election. Over the course of the debate, the line was going higher for Vice President Harrison, lower for Donald Trump.
Right now predict it showing fifty six percent odds of a Harris victory forty eight percent odds of a Trump one that has widened over the course of the last several hours, and of course with us for the last several hours watching this debate here on Bloomberg TV and
Radio as we simulcast it in real time. Rick Davis stone Court Capital Partner and Jeanie Shanzino, political science professor at Ioni University and senior Democracy Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Congress our signature political panel. Rick, if you just look at the odds, I was mentioning, it seems that there is a feeling that Kamala Harris won this debate, that it may make it more likely that she wins.
Yeah.
I think if you put it in a context of who was going after swing voters, you know those folks in suburbs, mostly women, or the white working class, especially males elderly in the Ross belt states, then you could hear her actually reach out to them and talk to them. Clearly, what Trump's strategy was tonight was to fire up the base.
He talked to his own voters.
He didn't talk, you know, anybody who would be considered an independent or swing voter in his rhetoric. And so maybe that was the strategy, and I think they both pursued their strategy in effective way. I would say most of the moments i'm you know, sort of following from this debate or how strong Kamala.
Harris was on national security.
She used Donald Trump's own former cabinet members as a wedge to show his weakness in this category, which I thought was an interesting turn about. And Donald trump unwillingness to say that he would veto a national abortion band, which we have not seen up until this point in time. So there was a little bit of newsmade. And I think this will go down as a very very helpful debate for the American people to judge very two, very different views of America.
Some people wanted more details on policy proposals tonight.
I'm not sure they got a lot of.
Them, but one of the biggest questions facing Kamala Harris tonight was is she competent? Did she project competency for people didn't know a lot about her?
You know, I think she did. I don't think Kamala Harris had a moment which is going to say go viral, which we sort of look for in this day and age. But she projected strength, she projected competence. She certainly is knowledgeable. And you know, I'm thinking to the end of the debate Donald Trump's line, why.
Didn't she do it?
That's where his team wanted him to start the debate. He waited until the last what were we on minute one hundred and ten by then to do that when people are tuning out. Had he started there, he would have had a better night. But he had a tough night because he didn't start there. She was in control. She put him on the offensive. I mean, she put him on the defensive rather many times throughout the debate, and he didn't seem to find his footing until the
very end. And I think if we think about moments that define a debate, one thing that will define the debate will be him talking about illegal immigrants eating pets, something that has clearly been he went there. It's fact jacked it's so obviously not true, but that's what he went to as opposed to where his team wanted him to go issues economy, immigration, and the idea that she's in office right now she could be doing all these things.
So I think it was a wasted opportunity for Donald Trump, and I think she did what she needed to do to show American people, particularly in those swing states, that she has the competence and the ability and the strength and the know how to do this job.
And it did seem the vice president was able to successfully go Donald Trump into responding to her directly a few times, including when she raised his rallies.
You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about wind mills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.
She said, people start leaving.
People don't go to her rallies, there's no reason to go, and the people that do go, she's busting him in and paying them to be there.
Rick, did Donald Trump have to do too much defending and responding tonight?
Well, she trolled him well on that one and frankly many others. I mean, he did take the bait repeatedly, which actually is the opposite of what he typically does. Usually he's the one trolling and hoping that his opponent takes the bait. So there was a little bit of turn about his fair play tonight on the behalf of Kamala Harris. But I would say that I think people
will take away from this two different visions, right. I mean, you can parse the fact that there aren't very many hardcore policy discussions that were today, But we had a very dark, dystopian point of view from Donald Trump on the future of the world and America's place in it, to the point where he even said in the clothes that you know, we were headed toward to World War three and nuclear weapons.
Right.
And yet on the other side of that you had a candidate and Kamala Harris who kept talking about the future and didn't want to go back, and it's in her advantage to not do that, but she did an effective job of painting a completely different, much more moderate
and rosy picture of the future of our country. And so if people are looking at sort of the simple aspects of you know, what is it that we believe the current condition of our country is and where we think it's going to had They had plenty to choose from a very very stark contrast between the two candidates.
Interesting face off on geopolitics when it came to the matter of Ukraine. When it came to the matter of Israel, Donald Trump said Israel will not exist in two years if Kamala.
Harris is elected president.
Harris said that Vladimir Putin would be sitting in Kiev right now if Trump were president.
Are either true?
No, I mean, both of those are not true. And you know, I think that Kamala Harris did an effective job in terms of responding on that Israel point. But the reality is, in both cases what we heard from them on these geopolitical issues where you know, these sort of broad statements where you didn't get any meat. You know, Kamala Harris, how are you going to end this war in Israel? She said, We're gonna keep working on it. There was no end. Donald Trump, what are you going
to do about Ukraine? It wouldn't have happened if I was there. So I didn't feel either one of them gave really satisfactory policy responses in either of those situations.
Donald Trump would not answer definitively if he wanted Ukraine to win the war, just said that he wanted couple.
Times on that that might be one of the biggest pieces of news to come out of this debate.
That just wants the wor to end. He says, we want to go back now to the spin room floor in Philadelphia, where we find Bloomberg's David Gura together with the Democratic Governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper.
David, Yes, the governor of my home state, North Carolina. Governor Cooper, thank you very much. And I heard you before this debate talking about the need for Vice President Harris to really emphasize economic issues, and we saw that at the beginning of the debate and the end as well. Your reaction to what you saw in the degree to which there was engagement on the top of the economy and specific she was very strong.
She looked presidential tonight, and I think she showed to the American people how she will be a president for all Americans and that it's time to turn the page on Donald Trump. She put him on the defensive on pretty much every issue. She has a detailed plan on the economy, he doesn't. She believes in protecting women's reproductive freedom. He couldn't even answer the question about what he would do about a national abortion ban and started babbling about
student loans twice. On immigration, he never explained why he killed the strongest immigration bill of a generation. And on foreign policy, I thought she was very strong in showing how many of his former military advisors and foreign policy advisors don't believe he's capable of being president, how he cozies up to dictators and that they can bend him
to their will with favoritism and with flattery. And I believe that this is a debate tonight where Kamala Harris shows that she has the medal to serve as commander in chief and to lead this country governor.
She's going to go to North Carolina in a couple of days. She'll be in Charlotte and in Greensboro. She's been to the state many times, as you know, you've been with her for most of those visits. What does she need to carry over from what we saw on stage tonight to North Carolina? As you talk to your constituents, what are they most eager to hear from her when she goes through to campaign.
This will be her eighteenth visit to North Carolina as vice president. We're going to try to reach people who haven't been involved in politics and really how bothered voting. I think she is causing excitement in those people. The way she responded to Donald Trump's assertion about her race, about how we need to pull together as a people and concentrate on things that bring us together instead of divide us.
I think that was a.
Very strong moment for her. I also think Donald Trump was incoherent and unhinged and obviously very angry because he deserved to be defensive about all of these issues.
Let me ask you lastly, what it's going to take for Democrats to carry North Carolina. There's been a lot of talk about the purpling of the state for so long now stepping back, yes, to look at the presidential election, but others, what's it going to take to get Democrats to win here in a couple months?
Well, I could say more votes, but obviously this is going to be this is gonna be a binary grace. It's Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris. But it's really for the heart and soul of our country. It's about character. I believe the people of North Carolina will see through Donald Trump. Yes, North Carolina voted for him in twenty twenty, but it was the closest win that Donald Trump had,
only one point three percent. I believe that when you think about the plan that Kamala Harris has and the chaos that was caused by Donald Trump during those four years, I think the choice is clear and we know that if Kamala Harris wins North Carolina, she is the next president of the United Date.
Yep, butter, thank you very much, a pleasure. It's Roy Cooper of the state of North Carolina. And back to you guys in Washington, Joe and Kayley.
All Right, David Gura, with great work from the floor of the Spin room. We thank you reporting for Bloomberg on this important debate night.
Thank you, David.
With some final thoughts now from our signature panel. Rick Davis and Genie Shanzeno are with us our signature panel on an important night. But Kaylee, I feel like we need to talk about something that's just crossed the Instatagram. Yeah, this is maybe the most important potential endorsement of the cycle.
Taylor Swift says she will be casting her vote for Kamala Harrison Tim Walls in the twenty twenty four presidential election because she fights for the rights and causes she believes a warrior needs to champion them. She also says she's done her research and made her choice or research is all yours to do. She signs it Joe Taylor Swift Childless cat Lady, and it is a picture of her with her meetings around there.
Today I let to talk about pats Rick. Is this a big deal or not?
Yeah?
No, this is a big deal. She obviously has an enormous following. I can't imagine a better thing to hit the Spin room just moments after the debate ended, when a massive endorsement like this culturally puts her in the middle of the mainstream America.
Yeah, no, I think that.
I was just going to say, now we've seen the debate, it's all about the Spin post debate, and I think this is like a nuclear bomb for Spin.
What does this mean in our thirty seconds remaining?
In our thirty seconds remaining, you know, this is a big deal and it has been a pet night. So Taylor Swift ends it with a cat lady comment, and the Swifties are happy and she has an enormous pull. This is not what he wanted to hear tonight. You know, this is you know, he was worried about what might happen in this regard. He talked about wanting her endorsement, and she went the other way. So this is the.
Taylor Swift kid rock campaign. Apparently. I guess it happened before our eyes. Rick Davis, G. D.
Schanzeno, thank you for being with us. You've been watching special coverage of the ABC News presidential debate simulcast on Bloomberg TV and radio.