You're listening too later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
You're listening to the ABC News presidential debate simulcast here on KFI.
And just a moment, we'll be.
Returning to the presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and we will continue until its end, which should be about seven forty or so.
Now, let's return to the debate.
Mister President.
It has been the position of the Biden administration that we must defend Ukraine from Russia from Vladimir Putin, to defend their sovereignty, their democracy, that it's an America's best interest to do so, arguing that if Putin wins, he may be emboldened to move even further into other countries. You have said you would solve this war in twenty four hours, you said so just before the break tonight. How exactly would you do that? And I want to
ask you a very simple question tonight. Do you want Ukraine to win this war?
I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being used lessly, people being killed by the millions. It's the millions. It's so much worse than the numbers that you're getting, which are fake numbers. Look, we're in for two hundred and fifty billion or more. Because they don't ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are. They're in for one hundred and fifty billion dollars less because Biden and you don't have the courage to ask Europe
like I did with NATO. They paid billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars when I said, either you pay up or we're not going to protect you anymore. So that's maybe one of the reasons that don't like me as much as they like weak people. But you take a look at what's happening. We're in for two hundred and fifty to two hundred and seventy five billion, they're into one hundred to one hundred and fifty. They should be forced to equalize. With that being said, I
want to get the war settled. I know Zelenski very well, and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship. And they respect your president. Okay, they respect me. They don't respect Biden. How would you respect him? Why? For what reason? He hasn't even made a phone call in two years to Putin hasn't spoken to anybody. They don't even try and get it. That is a war that's
dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president if I win, when I'm president elect, and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other. I'll get him together. That war would have never happened. And in fact, when I saw Putin after I left, unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell. But after I left, when I saw him building up soldiers, he did it. After I left, I said, oh, he must be negotiating. It must be
a good strong point of negotiation. Well it wasn't because Biden had no idea how to talk to him. He had no idea how to stop it. And now you have millions of people dead and it's only getting worse, and it could lead to World War three. Don't kid yourself, David. We're playing with World War three and we have a president that we don't even know if he's where is our president? We don't even know if he's a president. And just a clarify, he threw him out of a
campaign like a dog. We don't even know is he our president? But we have a president. Mister President doesn't know he's alive.
Your time is up.
Just to clarifying the question, do you believe it's in the US best interests for Ukraine to win this war yesterday?
I think it's the US best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiated deal, because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.
I want to take this device, President Harris.
I want to get your thoughts on support for Ukraine in this moment, but also as commander in chief if elected, how would you deal with Vladimir Putin and would it be any different from what we're seeing from President Biden.
Well, first of all, it's important to remind the former president you're not running against Joe Biden, You're running against me. I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within twenty four hours is because he would just give it up. And that's not who
we are as Americans. Let's understand what happened here. I actually met with Zelensky a few days before Russia invaded, tried through force to change territorial boundaries to defy one of the most important international rules and norms, which is the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity. And I met with President Zelensky, I shared with him American intelligence about
how he could defend himself. Days later, I went to NATO's eastern flank, to Poland and Romania, and through the work that I and others did, we brought fifty countries together to support Ukraine in its righteous defense. And because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country.
If Donald Trump.
Were president, Putin would be sitting in Kiev right now. And understand what that would mean, because Putin's agenda is not just about Ukraine. Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president, and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO, and what we have done to preserve the ability of
Zelensky and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence. Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kiev with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland, And why don't you tell the eight hundred thousand Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.
Vice President Harris, thank you. We've heard from both of you on Ukraine tonight. Afghanistan came up in the last hour. I wanted her to respond to something you said earlier, and now, please, I'll give you a minute here.
Putin would be sitting in Moscow, and he wouldn't have lost three hundred thousand men in women, but he would have been sitting in Moscow quiet place. He would have been sitting in Moscow much happier than his right now. But eventually, you know, he's got a thing that other people don't have. He's got nuclear weapons. They don't ever talk about that. He got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks
about that. And eventually maybe he'll use him and maybe he hasn't been that threatening, but he does have that something we don't even like to talk about. Nobody likes to talk about it. But just so you understand, they sent her to negotiate peace before this war started. Three days later he went in and he started the war because everything they said was weak and stupid. They said the wrong things. That war should have never started. She
was the emissary. They sent her in to negotiate with Zelenski and Putin, and she did and the war started three days later. And that's what kind of talent we have with her. She's worse than Biden in my opinion. I think he's the worst president in the history of our country. She goes down as the worst vice president in the history of our country. But let me tell you something. She is a horrible negotiator. They sent her in to negotiate. As soon as they left Putin did the invasion.
President Trump, thank you did bring up something you said she went to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Vice President Harris, have you ever met Vladimir Putin? Can you clarify tonight yet again?
I said it at the beginning of the debate. You're gonna hear a bunch of lies coming from this fellow. And that is another one. When I went to meet with President's a lanscap Now I met with him over
five times. The reality is it has been about standing as America always should as a leader, upholding international rules and norms, as a leader who shows strength, understanding that the alliances we have around the world are dependent on our ability to look out for our friends and not favor our enemies because you adore strong men instead of caring about democracy. And that is very much what is
at stake here. The President of the United States is commander in chief, and the American people have a right to rely on a president who understands the significance of America's role and responsibility in terms of ensuring that there is stability and ensuring we stand up for our principles and not sell them for the benefit of personal flattery.
We've talked about Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. I do want to talk about Afghanistan. It came up in the first hour of this debate. I wanted to move on to Afghanistan.
Work said. Trump did the most amazing thing I've ever seen. He got these countries, the twenty eight countries at the time, to pay up. He said, I've never seen. He's the head of NATO, he said, I've never seen. For years, we were paying almost all of NATO. We were being ripped off by your European nations, both on trade and or NATO. I got them to pay up by saying, one of the samans you made before. If you don't pay, we're not going to protect you. Otherwise we would have
never gotten it. He said, it was one of the most incredible jobs that he's ever seen done.
Thank you. I want to turn to Afghanistan. It came up in the first hour of the debate, and we witnessed an appoignant moment today on Capitol Hill honoring the soldiers who died in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. I do want to ask the Vice President, do you believe you bear any responsibility in the way that withdrawal played out?
Well, I will tell you I agreed with President Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan, for presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did. And as a result, America's taxpayers are not paying the three hundred million dollars a day we were paying for that endless war.
And as of today, there is not one.
Member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world the first time century. But let's understand how we got to where we are. Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine.
He calls himself a deal maker.
Even his national security advisor said it was a weak, terrible deal. And here's how it went down. He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban. The negotiation involved the Taliban getting five thousand terrorists Taliban terrorists released and.
Get this, no, get this.
And the president at the time invited the Taliban to Cap David, a place of storied significance for us as Americans, a place where we honor the importance of American diplomacy, where we invite and receive respected world leaders.
And this.
Former president as president in invited them to Camp David because he does not again appreciate the role and responsibility of the President of the United States to be commander in.
Chief with a level of respect.
And this gets back to the point of how he has consistently disparaged and demeaned members of our military, fallen soldiers, and the work that we must do to uphold the strength and the respect of the United States of America around the world.
Vice President Harris, thank you President Trump your response to her saying that you began the negotia.
Yeah, thank you. So if you take a look at that period of time, the Taliban was killing our soldiers, a lot of them with snipers. And I got involved with the Taliban because the Taliban was doing the killing. That's the fighting force within Afghanistan. They don't bother doing that because you know, they deal with the wrong people all the time. But I got involved. And Abdullah is the head of the Taliban. He is still the head of the Taliban. And I told that Duel, don't do
it anymore. You do it anymore, you're gonna have problems. And he said, why do you send me a picture of my house? I said, you're going to have to figure that out at Duel. And for eighteen months we had nobody killed. We did have an agreement negotiated by Mike Pompeio. It was a very good agreement. The reason it was good it was we were getting out. We would have been out faster than them, but we wouldn't have lost the soldiers. We wouldn't have left many Americans behind,
and we wouldn't have left. We wouldn't have left eighty five billion dollars worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind. And just to finish, they blew it. The agreement said you have to do this, and they didn't do it. They didn't do it. The agreement was terminated by us because they didn't do what they were supposed to do. And these people did the worst withdrawal and in my opinion, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.
And by the way, that's why Russia attacked Ukraine because they saw how incompetent she and her boss are.
President Trump, thank you. I want to move on now to race and politics in this country, mister President. You recently said a Vice President Harris quote, I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black.
I want to ask a bigger picture question here tonight.
Why do you believe it's appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent.
I don't and I don't care. I don't care what she is. I don't care you make a big deal out of something I couldn't care less. Whatever she wants to be is okay with me.
But those were your words, so I'm asking you.
I don't know. I mean, all I can say is I read where she was not black that she put out and I'll say that. And then I read that she was black, and that's okay. Either one who was okay with me, that's up to her. That's up to her.
Vice President Harris, your thoughts on this, I.
Think it's I mean, honestly, I think it's a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people. You know, I do believe that the vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what separates us, and we don't want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us, and especially by race.
And let's remember how Donald Trump started.
He was a.
Land he'd owned land, he owned buildings, and he was investigated because he refused to rent property to black families. Let's remember this is the same individual who took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five young black and Latino boys who were innocent.
The central part five.
Took out a full page ad calling for their execution. This is the same individual who spread birth or lives about the first black president of the United States. And I think the American people want better than that, want better than this, want someone who understands as I do.
I travel our country.
We see in each other a friend, We see in each other a neighbor. We don't want a leader who is constantly trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other.
I meet with people.
All the time who tell me, can we please just have discourse about how we're going to invest in the aspirations and the ambitions and the dreams of the American people, knowing.
That regardless of people's color or.
The language their grandmother speaks, we all have the same dreams and aspirations and want a president who invest in those, not in hate and division.
Vice President Harris, thank you, Lindsey.
President Trump, this is now your third time.
This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country. There's never been anything like it. They're destroying our country and they come up with things like what she just said. Going back many, many years, when a lot of people, including Mayor Bloomberg, agreed with me on the Central Park five, they admitted, they said they pled guilty, and I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately, and if they
pled guilty, then they pled. We're not guilty. But this is a person that has to stretch back years, forty fifty years ago because there's nothing now. I built one of the greatest economies in the history of the world, and I'm going to build it again. It's going to be bigger, better and stronger. But they're destroying our economy. They have no idea what a good economy is. Their oil policies, every single policy. And remember this, she is Biden. You know she's trying to get away from Biden. I
don't know the gentleman she says. She is Biden. The worst inflation We've ever had, a horrible economy because inflation has made it so bad, and you can't get away with that.
You so much. I want to respond to that, though, I want to just respond briefly clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump, and what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country, one who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people. I believe in what we can do to strengthen our small businesses, which is why I have a plan. Let's talk about
our plans, and let's compare the plans. I have a plan to give startup businesses fifty thousand dollars tax deduction to pursue their ambitions, their innovation, their ideas, their hard work. I have a plan six thousand dollars for young families for the first year of your child's life, to help you in that most critical stage of your child's development.
I have a plan that is about allowing.
People to be able to pursue what has been fleeting in terms of the American dream by offering a help with down payment of twenty five thousand dollars down payment assistance for.
First time home buyers.
That's the kind of conversation I believe, David, that people really want tonight, as opposed to a conversation that is constantly about belittling and name calling.
Let's turn the page.
Vice President Marrison, thank you. Let's move on. President, Let's turn the policy.
Please to defund the police. She has a plan to confiscate everybody's gun. President plan to allow fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. Okay, that's what her plan is until just recently, I just want to go.
Something sorry that I need to respect.
I'm sorry, We're going to We're going to move on. By President Trump, this is now your third time running for president. You have long vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. You have failed to accomplish that. You now say you're going to keep Obamacare quote, unless we can do something much better. Last month you said, quote we're working on it. So tonight, nine years after you first started running, do you have a plan and can you tell us what it is?
Obamacare was lousy, healthcare always was. It's not very good today. And what I said that if we come up with something, and we are working on things, we're going to do it, and we're going to replace it. But remember this, I inherited Obamacare because Democrats wouldn't change it, they wouldn't vote for it. They were unanimous they would vote to change it. If they would have done that, we would have had a much better plan than Obamacare. But the Democrats came
up they wouldn't vote for it. I had a choice to make when I was president. Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, never going to be great, or do I let it rot? And I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been good to just let it rot and let it go away. I decided, and I told my people, the top people, and they're very good people. I have a lot of good people in this administration.
We read about the bad ones. We had some real bad ones too, and so do they They have really bad ones. The differences, they don't get rid of it. But let me just explain. I had a choice to make. Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot? And I saved it. I did the right thing. But it's still never going to be great, and it's too expensive for people. And what we will do is we're looking
at different plans. If we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population less my and be better healthcare than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it, But until then I'd run it as good as it can be run.
So just yes or no. You still do not have a plan.
I have concepts of a plan. I'm not president right now, but if we come up with something, I would only change it. If we come up with something that's better and less expensive, and there are concepts and options. We have to do that, and you'll be hearing about it in the not too distant future.
Vice President Harrison, twenty seventeen, you supported Bernie Sanders proposal to do away with private insurance and create a government run healthcare system. Two years later, you proposed a plan that included a private insurance option. What is your plan.
Today, Well, first of all, I absolutely support in over the last four years as Vice president, private healthcare options.
But what we need to do is maintain and grow the affordable care. But I'll get to that, Lindsay.
I just need to respond to a previous point that the former president has made. I've made very clear my position on fracking this business about taking everyone's guns away. Tim Walls and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff as it relates to the Affordable Care Act. Understand, let's just look at the history to know where people stand. When Donald Trump was president sixty times, he tried to
get rid of the Affordable Care Act sixty times. I was a senator at the time when I will never forget the early morning hours when it was up for a vote in the United States Senate, and the late great John McCain, who you have disparaged as being you don't like him, you said at the time because he got caught. He was an American hero, the late great John McCain, I will never forget that night walked onto the Senate floor.
And said, no, you don't, no, you don't, no, you don't get rid of the Affordable Care Act. You have no plan.
And what the Affordable Care Act has done is eliminate the ability of insurance companies to deny people with pre existing conditions.
I don't have to tell the people washing tonight. You remember what that was like.
Remember when an insurance company could deny if a child had asthma, if someone was a breast cancer survivor if a grandparent had diabetes. And thankfully, as I've been Vice president and We over the last four years, have strengthened the Affordable Care Act. We have allowed, for the first time, Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of you, the American people. Donald Trump said he was going to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
He never did.
We did.
And now we have capped the cost of insulin at thirty.
Five dollars a month.
Since I've been Vice president, we have capped the cost of prescription medication for seniors at two thousand dollars a year. And when I am president, we will do that for all people. Understanding that the value I bring to this is that access to healthcare should be a right and not just a privilege of those who can afford it.
Has to be to strengthen the Affordable.
Care Act, not get rid of it fast as it roll us in terms of where Donald Trump stands on that.
I want to move to an issue that's important for a lot.
I had a mistake at number one. John McCain fought Obamacare for ten years, but it wasn't only him. It were all of the Democrats that kept it going. And you know what, we can do much better than Obamacare, much less money, but she won't improve private insurance for people, private medical insurance. That's another thing she doesn't want to get.
Exemple are paying privately for insurance that have worked hard and made money, and they want to have private She wants everybody to be on government insurance where you wait six months for an operation that you need to meeting.
President Trump, thank you. We have another issue that we'd like to get to that's important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that's climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change? And Vice President Harris will start with you one minute for you each.
Well, the former president had said the climate change as a hoax, and what we know is that it is very real.
You ask anyone who lives.
In a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or its being jacked up. You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue, and I am proud that as Vice president, over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy, while we
have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels. We have created over eight hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs while I have been Vice president. We have in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world.
Donald Trump said he was.
Going to create manufacturing jobs.
He lost manufacturing jobs.
And I'm also proud to have the endorsement of the United Autoworkers and Sean Fain, who also know that part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like happened under Donald Trump's President Harris, thank you.
That didn't happen under Donald Trump. Let me just tell you they lost ten thousand manufacturing jobs this last month. It's going they're all leaving. They're building big auto plants in Mexico, in many cases owned by China. They're building these massive plants, and they think they're going to sell their cars into the United States because of these people. What they have given to China is unbelievable. But we're
not going to let that. We'll put tariffs on those cars so they can't come into our country because they will kill the United auto workers and any auto worker, whether it's in Troit or South Carolina or any other place. What they've done to business and manufacturing in this country is horrible. We have nothing because they refuse. You know, Biden doesn't go after people because supposedly China paid them millions of dollars. He's afraid to do it. Between him
and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine, they get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder, why is he so loyal to this one, that one Ukraine, China? Why is he Why did he get three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow's wife. Why did he get why did she pay him three and a half million dollars. This is a crooked administration and they're selling our country down the tubes.
President Trump, thank you, thank you.
We'll be right back with closing statements from both of our candidates. An historic night this Abcit's presidential debate from.
You've been listening to the ABC News Presidential Debate simulcast here on KFI. We're waiting for the candidates to return. They'll probably give their closing statements at this point. Because of a coin flip, former President Trump will resume, a student will go last.
So I think you've heard tonight two very different visions for our country. One that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past and an attempt to take us backward.
But we're not going back.
And I do believe that the American people know we all have so much more in common than what separates us, and we can chart a new way forward. And a vision of that includes having a plan, understanding the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the ambition of the American people, which is why I intend to create an opportunity economy, investing in small businesses, in new family in what we can do around protecting seniors, what we can do that is about giving hard working folks a break and bringing
down the cost of living. I believe in what we can do together that is about sustaining America's standing in the world and ensuring that we have the respect that we so rightly deserve, including respecting our military and ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world. I will be a president that will protect our fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do. I'll tell you, I
started my career as a prosecutor. I was a da I was an attorney general, a United States Senator, and now Vice President.
I've only have one client, the people.
And I'll tell you, as a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness, are you a Republican or a Democrat?
The only thing I ever asked them, are you okay?
And that's the kind of president we need right now, someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first. I intend to be a president for all Americans and focus on what we can do over the next ten and twenty years to build back up our country by investing right now in you, the American people.
Vice President Harris, thank you President Trump.
So she just started by saying she's going to do this. She's going to do that, She's going to do all these wonderful things. Why hasn't she done it. She's been there for three and a half years. They've had three and a half years to fix the border, they've had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn't she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together, and
do the things you want to do. But you haven't done it, and you won't do it because you believe in things that the American people don't believe in. You believe in things like we're not going to frack, we're not going to take fossil fuel. We're not going to do things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants. We're not ready for it. We can't sacrifice our country
for the sake of bad vision. But I just ask one simple question, why didn't she do it? We're a failing nation, We're a nation that's in serious decline. We're being laughed at all over the world. All over the world. They laugh. I know the leaders very well. They're coming to see me, they call me. We're laughed at all over the world. They don't understand what happened to us as a nation. We're not a leader. We don't have
any idea what's going on. We have wars going on in the Middle East, we have wars going on with Russia and Ukraine. We're going to end up in a third World War, and it'll be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban, she gave it to Afghanistan. What these people have done to our country, and maybe toughest of all is allowing millions of people to come into
our country. Many of them are criminals, and they're destroying our country. The worst president, the worst vice president in the history of our country.
President Trump, Thank you, and that is our ABC News presidential debate from here in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center.
I'm Lindsay Davis and I'm David Buwer. Thank you for watching here in the US and all over the world.
KF I am six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, I'm o Kelly. As we resume our at least post debate coverage. If you've been listening or if you were watching, well there you have it. I got to say it was more substantive than I thought it.
Was going to be going in.
And let's talk about this being a simulcast. If you only listened to the debate, you probably had a very different experience from if you saw the debate. And what I mean by that is you didn't get to see the facial If you were just listening, you didn't get to see the facial expressions. You didn't get to see the posture, you didn't get to see the looks that were thrown each way. You didn't see how even though you couldn't hear someone interrupt, if you're watching TV, they
could visually interrupt through their facial expressions. You could see when they disagreed or when they shook their head and got a better sense of what the next response was going to be. So, if you only listened to the
debate on KFI, there's nothing wrong with that. I just know that your experience for the debate would be very different from if you had seen it, and earlier this evening when I was sitting in with Tim Conway Junior for the run up, I made a similar comment how this tracks with history, whether it were the first televised pressent sidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy where people were watching it for the very first time on TV, most people heard it on radio, and the
people who heard it on radio fought that Richard Nixon had won, and those who saw it on TV because Richard Nixon did not do well or look well under the lights. He was sweating profusely, and you can go back and watch the debate to see exactly what I mean, felt that he did not win. So the perception of this debate probably will vary widely just given how you may have experienced it and consumed the information. That said, for the first seventeen minutes in I would say the
debate was pretty straightforward, standard questions, standard answers. You could tell they were pretty much on script. They were not allowed any written notes, but you could tell that their answers were pretty much scripted because there's certain questions you could pretty much predict we're going to be asked. But after that seventeen minute mark, and I made a little mark at that time because I wanted to put a pin in. It's like, okay, this is where things were
going to change. It's seventeen minutes in. I could feel if you were listening it. Listening to it, you might have felt it, but if you're watching it, you definitely saw it.
It took an emotional turn.
It was at that point that former President Trump increased his pointed attacks. You noticed some on site fact checking of former President Trump regarding abortion. This was not done in previous debate that it wasn't done in the debate with Joe Biden, and we didn't see it in other interviews in town halls. So this was something which was new, but you could tell that it was ramping up in
an emotional sense. There were some moments where the former president Trump made an attack about Kamala Harris being a Marxist. Harris did not take that bait, she did not respond to it. And this is the sum of the strategy which is used going in where you try to make a personal remark and force your competition or I should say encourage her in competition to respond and get off message, get off the actual policy that you're trying to talk about. Get off your vision for the future, and you talk
about a personal remark and you talk about the past. Now, I will say that Vice President Harris was able to do that to a certain degree when she started talking about former President Trump's rallies and then Trump went into a long diatribe about his rallies and talking about himself instead of talking to the American people and his vision forward. Now here's the question I always get after every single debate, and I usually give the same answer, if only because
it is still applicable. It's not a cop out, and it's never wrong. It's real simple. Who wanted a debate is yet to be decided said. Who won the debate is the person who's in a better position tomorrow because they have the spin room going on right now, and people will try to cast this debate as Trump one, Harris one. Trump did this, Harris failed to do that. Harris was better at this, Trump was poor at that. That's what the spin room does, trying to shape people's perceptions.
But all that aside, the actual winner of the debate will have an increased position tomorrow. They'll have better polling, they'll have better donations. They will be in a better position tomorrow than they were today, and largely that's predicated on how people feel about the debate. They had different
goals going in. Trump I believe, was trying to get Harris off her mark, as they say, trying to disrupt her, trying to confuse her, trying to insult her in a certain way where where she might have not been able to stay on message. That was the goal coming in why because if you can get Harris off her mark in her message, then she would seem less presidential, seem
less ready for the position, less suitable for the office. Harris, conversely, was trying to make sure that she was speaking to the moderates, the independence, those people who might have been disaffected Republicans who possibly were never Trumpers, but you wanted to make sure, if you're a Hair supporter, that you just didn't stay home, or that you just didn't leave that portion of the ballot unselected, but you made the
affirmative choice to vote for Kamala Harris. Her job was to get the people who might have been persuadable, the people who did not know her, the people who might have been open to a different choice that was her job, and to do that, you could see. The strategy was clear. Was you could see that she was looking into the camera talking directly to the American people, trying to say, hey,
I am here for you, not for me personally. And I'm just basically paraphrasing her message because it was repeated most of the night, how she was talking about her vision for the American people. Now, what she did do, what I thought was effective. I don't know if it means that she would have won the night, but I
do think it was effective. She was able to get Donald Trump to spend most of his time talking about the past, talking about what he did when he was in office, relitigating more than four years ago, and historically that doesn't help when you're trying to look forward. But again, it doesn't matter what I think. It matters how voters will respond to this performance. And let's be clear, all
this was performative. This is not about who has the best plan, because, honestly, let's be honest, Donald Trump did not say much in the way of specifics for his plan, and let's be honest, people are not voting because of someone's plan. This tonight was performance art because that's where we are as a nation. We aren't assessing these candidates relative to who has the better health care plan. And if you wanted to see who had the better health care plan, we all have Google, we all know how
to get to their websites. We didn't necessarily need them to break down point by point what their plan would be, and we could go into a long civics discussion about, Yeah, just because you have a plan doesn't mean that you'll be able to get it through Congress and then get it to your desk as president and be able to
sign off on it. So or at least for me personally, I don't get too hung up in plans because we all know that it doesn't mean much until you know exactly the makeup of what would be the eventual Congress. Because as it stands going into this November general election, it looks like, at least from the math and you look at the seats which are available on the Senate side, the Democrats are having to defend more seats then they will have the opportunity to win away from the Republicans.
Put another way, there's not a good map for them to retain control of the Senate. It's more likely than not that the Democrats would lose the Senate, and it's not a guarantee that the Democrats would take control of
the House. So that means, regardless of any plan that either candidate has, we're looking more likely than not than divided government, where you may have the president will represent one party, one of the chambers of Congress will represent his or her party, and then the other chamber will
represent the opposition party, which means more gridlock. It means less likely that anything actually gets passed, which which means it doesn't really matter how good of a plan we might have heard tonight or didn't here tonight.
As part of this debate.
So that's why we shouldn't get too bogged down in the minutia and not lose sight of where we are in America in twenty twenty four. We are highly partisan, we are highly cynical, and we're also highly unlikely to come together on one accord for any reason whatsoever, or any piece of legislation. But again, come tomorrow, it won't matter what I say, it won't matter what your favorite commentator will say, because everyone's spinning right now in the studio.
I see Senator Marco Rubio on NBC.
News, and I see on Fox News they're replaying portions of the debate. I see on Fox excuse me, Fox eleven. I see Alex Michaelson with our own John Cobelt from KFI right now debating Lisa Bloom and everyone is spinning. But nothing that anyone has to say is going to have as much impact as when the numbers come in tomorrow, the types of donations which will probably come in tonight and will be reported in the coming days. The change if at all, in polling. And here's the connection and
relationship between polling and donations. Increase in polling will lead to it increase in donations. Why Because an increase in polling will tell big fundraisers and also small donation funders that there is increased excitement and there's an increased belief and viability in a campaign.
And when the big donors see it increase in.
Polling, they are more inclined to further support a campaign. If you go back to Joe Biden after that last debate, to put all this together, Joe Biden going into that debate with Donald Trump had already had had a great fundraising quarter. He had outraised fundraised Donald Trump by almost one hundred million dollars if I'm not mistaken. But because of the poor debate performance, his big funders.
Refuse to continue funding his campaign.
And part of his dropping out had to do with his lack of support going forward, and you need to have that money through the rest of the campaign. And there was a loss of confidence in his campaign even though he had a sizable war chest. Because of the dropping polling right after that last presidential debate, he also lost his top funders. And that's how we ended up with Kamala Harris. So the polling is inextricably linked to
the fundraising. And if you see tomorrow the next day, a wide change in the polls where either Kamala Harris goes up or down or Donald Trump goes up and down or down, you will probably see a correlation to the fundraising. And that will tell you definitively and conclusively who won the debate. Not me, not you, not anyone you're watching on TV right now. It's later with Mo Kelly KF I am six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
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