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