Already, and this is the daily This is the daily ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the second of July.
I'm Zara, I'm Harry. Last week, millions of people in the US and around the world tuned into the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Now please welcome the forty sixth President of the United States, Joe Biden.
Biden's performance unleashed a wave of panic among Democrats' strategists, as senior officials and donors started calling for him to step down ahead of the November election. In today's deep dive, we'll look at the first debate and why there are calls for Joe Biden to step aside. But for Sarah, what's making headlines.
The federal government has appointed the first Illicit Tobacco and e Cigarette Commissioner. Current Assistant Commissioner of the Austra Borderforce, Aarin Dale, has been temporarily appointed until a formal appointment is made. The commissioner will be focused on controlling the importation and sale of illicit tobacco and e cigarettes. Health Minister Mark Butler said that coordinated efforts are working to control these products which are hooking Australians on nicotine.
Starting this month, the visa fee for international students coming to Australia has more than doubled from seven hundred and ten to one thousand, six hundred dollars. It's part of the Federal government's migration strategy, which is targeting so called visa hopping, which refers to overseas students and other temporary visitors changing their visas to extend their stay in Australia.
Staff from Melbourne Airport have allegedly been involved in smuggling illicit substances between Victoria and Tasmania. The Australian Border Force worked with air Border Security at Melbourne International Airport in a one year operation which was aimed at unc covering criminal activity in the Victoria and Tasmania supply chain. An investigation found a number of airline crew members were involved in the domestic distribution of illicit substances.
And today's good news, Simone Biles has made it to her third Olympics after flying through the US Olympic Gymnastics trials. The gymnast holds seven Olympic medals from the twenty sixteen Games in Rio di Genio and the twenty twenty Tokyo Games. Biles scored one hundred and seventeen point two to two five, earning her the top spot at the US Trials, followed by Sunny Lee, who scored one hundred and eleven point
six seven five. The twenty seven year old athletes said quote, I feel like we have a lot of weight on our shoulders to go out there and prove that we're better athletes. We're more mature, we're smarter, and we're more consistent. If you'd like more sports news, subscribe to our sport newsletter. The link will be in the show notes.
Okay, so, Harry, the election in the US is very much nearing and feels like it's all anyone is talking about at the moment. I was on holidays and everywhere I went, you absolutely cannot escape it.
You know.
I had to tell my partner to turn down the volume while he was listening to the debate, because there's nothing that rips you out of your holiday mood more than a presidential debate.
Mean, while every newsroom around the country and probably around the world was turning at the blue heads were turned.
That there was so I want to talk about the debate, but before we get there, can you just give us a bit of a lay of the land. Where are we up to in the presidential kind of nomination process, because it is a process.
Absolutely, So where are we at so far? So I think it's important to say that we did see a debate play out between Trump and Biden. But it's actually interesting to note that neither of them have been selected formally by their parties just yet, so they need to go through what's called a Democratic or Republican convention, so that's host by their parties, where they are officially confirmed as the party's nominee. The Democrats will be hosting theirs
in August, the Republicans in July. Before that happens, they are what's called the presumptive nominees because they've already won all the primary races that they need to and so it's, as the title suggests, presumed that they will be running for their parties come the November election. So we know that Joe Biden will be running for the Democrats as things stand, as with Donald Trump will be running for the Republican Party, and he's trying to get back into
the White House. And so the campaign's heating up. Both candidates are speaking at more and more rallies, and there are many blue and red posters around the US, and the mood was really building, especially in the media when it came to this first presidential debate that we saw late last week.
Talking about the debate, much has been said about it. I want to just get in to quickly the particularities of the debate itself, because it was quite unique, wasn't it. Yeah.
So it was really unusual for a couple of reasons. So first of all, there was no audience. It was just the two CNN moderators and Trump and Biden. That's the only people we heard from. And so there was no doing, There was no hissing, there was no clapping or applause. So you know, when either candidate went to make their maybe mic drop moment, it was kind of unusual, Yeah, because we know couldn't really gauge reaction. The second thing that made it a little bit unique was the sense
that this was deja vu for so many people. We have seen Trump and Biden debate before, so this was the first time that a former president and a sitting president went head to head in a presidential debate.
How interesting.
Okay, so what exactly did they talk about? Because I think a lot of the kind of post mortem has been about performance, not necessarily about policy. So what specifically were the two presumptive nominees talking about.
I think there were four main areas of policy that were debated. So the first was on immigration, so both men talked about the need to be tough on borders, to crack down on what they say is illegal migrants arriving in the United States. The second thing was the economy. Those were the opening questions about high inflation, about cost of living, about how much families are struggling right now.
So a familiar topic for our Australian listeners.
Very much so. And both Trump and Biden were keen to point at each other's records and say that they were respectively responsible for high inflation and high cost of living for families.
And well, that's the really unique thing, right because normally the incumbent has to defend their record, but here both have been in power at different times and can both be held responsible, you know, for the bad things and for the good things.
It's a strange environment exactly.
So Biden was able to say, you left the economy in a mess, and Trump was out saying the economy is currently a mess. So they were both at pains to emphasize each other's records respectively. The third thing that I think was quite poignant in the debate was the discussion around abortion. And as we know, when abortion gets raised, it can get quite heated quite quickly. It's a very
sensitive issue for many people. But Trump in the debate claimed that everyone wanted the states to control their own abortion laws, and by that he's referring to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. So those are the national protections for abortion access across all of the United States that had been in place since nineteen seventy three.
He also said Biden wanted to legalize late term abortions, which Biden denied straight away and instead said that when it comes to this medical procedure, that should be between a doctor and a woman and not politicians. And I think the final policy area that was discussed a lot during this debate was democracy more generally, but in particular. Trump was asked whether he would accept the outcome of
the twenty twenty four election. Will you accept the results of the election, regardless of who wins, yes or no.
Please if it's a fair and legal and good election.
Absolutely.
At one point, Biden said Trump had quote no sense of American democracy.
So obviously very big issues there, abortion, democracy, the economy, a lot of very meaty policy. And yet, as I said, what's being spoken about now isn't actually any of that policy. I've seen barely, if any kind of commentary around the actual substance of the policy. Everything since has been about Joe Biden's performance.
Talk me through it. Why is that the case?
The conversation turned really quickly into to Joe Biden's performance, and that became the headline. So his voice was noticeably quite hoarse. A campaign source later confirmed that he had a cold. He also stumbled quite a few times. On multiple occasions. He seemed to get lost in what he was saying, sort of go a bit off track, and there was one moment that was picked up and went viral pretty much straight away.
Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the COVID I scud me with dealing with everything we have to do with what if we finally beat Medicare.
And after one of Biden's answers, Trump said this, I really don't know.
What he said at the end of this.
I don't think he knows what he said either.
It's worth remembering Joe Biden is the oldest president in history. He is eighty one years old, and if he carries through for a full second term as president, he will be eighty six once he's completed that term. So there have been concerns about Joe Biden's age up until the debate.
I'm going to say that hasn't necessarily been a new trope that's emerged, but it's certainly been amplified post debate.
I think that this was the moment that a lot of people said, he is eighty one years old, and it shows I.
Think it must be said just before we go on. Donald Trump is seventy eight years old at the moment, a young man, not considerably younger, but certainly the difference in age appeared to be quite prominent during that debate.
Talk me through the reaction. You said, it was immediate.
What were people saying so straight away? CNN, which hosted the debate, had a panel of experts and strategists to dig into some of the issues, but as I mentioned, the conversation was all about Biden's age. A former Democrat staffer and CNN journalist Van Jones summed up them among some of the Democrats and their supporters.
That was painful. I love Joe Biden. I worked for Joe Biden.
He didn't do well at all. So senior Democrats were going out to defend Joe Biden to say that he had been stronger on policy than Donald Trump. But even his Vice president Kamala Harris, had to admit that Biden had had a quote slow start to the debate, and it quickly emerged that there was some serious panic going on among the Democrats. Some donors to the parties suggested there was an urgent need for Biden to step aside.
The New York Times editorial board also published an opinion piece calling on the president to make way for another candidate, saying, quote, Joe Biden was not the man he was four years ago when he beat Trump.
I don't think that the power of a New York Times editorial can be underestimated like that. He is so key in so many states to you know, the perception of how the Democrats positioned and how they're thought about. For The New York Times to come out with that was fairly strong.
There would have been a lot of thought going into that article before it was published. It definitely wasn't an off the cuff piece of commentary. It's an entire editorial board at one of the most respected newspapers in the world.
Yeah, and then when straight after the debate, when you refreshed the New York Times website, it was just like op ed after op ed after op ed, and they were all saying the same thing.
It's quite remarkable.
But even if they were saying the same thing, even if there were some donors and some fellow Democrats who were worried, like does that mean anything? Are we expecting Joe Biden to actually heed those calls and to step aside.
So, just going back to a point that I made a little bit earlier, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have both not yet been confirmed as the candidate's fisher party, not officially, not quite yet. So there are two scenarios that could potentially play out between now and the Democratic Convention, which is between the nineteenth and the twenty second of August, so in about six weeks time. The first one is that Joe Biden could voluntarily step down as the Democrats
chosen candidate and give way for someone else. Now who that someone would be is another matter altogether. It's possible it could be Kamala Harris, but her pole ratings have been quite consistently low. But some other names that have been floated around, the California governor Gavin Newsom or the Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. But there's a whole pool of people that they could choose from these high level senior
Democrats that could come forward at that point. So it's really not too clear yet.
But for that to happen, the key thing that needs to happen is that Joe Biden needs to step.
Aside, needs to choose to do it of his own accord.
Okay, what's the second scenario?
So the second one's a little bit more difficult. Basically, high level Democrats would have to change the rules about how they choose their candidate in time for the convention and then put someone else forward.
Sounds complicated.
It could take me in entire episode Sarah to explain. But for the sake of time. I think it's just worth noting that most experts are in agreement that that is very unlikely to happen. That the more probable scenario of the two would be that Joe Biden would step down of his own accord, that he would make way for someone else.
Okay, so a couple of scenarios, one of them being that Joe Biden voluntarily steps down.
Is he going to? What does your crystal ball tell you?
I'm going to say confidently no, Yeah, I don't think Joe Biden will step down. He has been pretty clear that he isn't going to at this stage. He spoke at a campaign rally in North Carolina a few hours after the debate where he really dug his heels in and he was going to keep going.
I don't walk as easy as I used to, I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. Well, I know what I do know, I know how to tell the truth.
He had a lot more energy during this rally.
It was quite remarkable.
Yeah, it was quite a shift. I think a lot of people did notice that that this was a Joe Biden that had some zeal And some energy to just really keep going, and he looked like he was definitely wanting to take on Trump and that he believed that
he could as well. So The New York Times is also reporting that Biden is currently at Camp David, which is the president's country retreat, where he's surrounded by his family and they're trying to figure out how they can manage the anxieties of the Democrats and what the next steps will be in their campaign. And I think there's
also just one thing that's really important to note. I think we can get carried away talking about the debate and analyzing the debate and Biden's performance or Trump's performance for that matter, and I think it's important to just
remember that debates don't necessarily win or lose elections. So if we cast our minds back to twenty sixteen when Hillary Clinton was running against Donald Trump, Clinton won pretty much every debate between the two of them, and a lot of the polls also pointed to her winning on the day, as we know, she wants to be right, Yeah, yeah,
she lost in twenty sixteen. It was a little bit of a shock for most people, but it just goes to show that You really just don't know what's going to happen until people are filling out the ballots on the day and that they go in there with their little pencils and they choose who they actually want to be their president exactly.
Thank you so much for that explanation, Harry, and thanks for listening to The Daily os. If you learn something from today's episode, you can hit follow on Apple or Spotify, and if you are watching this episode on YouTube, you can hit subscribe.
We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Dunda Bungelung Kalgutin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.