Pod Save America - Hot Takes on a Low Key Debate

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Jon, Lovett, Dan, and Tommy break down Tim Walz's great arguments about democracy and reproductive rights, JD Vance's distortions on Obamacare and immigration, and the other moments that might—might!—break through from a surprisingly collegial vice presidential debate. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor. Okay, let's get right to it. We just watched the vice presidential debate together here in LA. To quote the moderators, Margaret Brennan and Nora O'Donnell,

gentlemen, we have a lot to get through. Uh, we're gonna start with the only thing that truly matters. What did the Insta-Reaction polls say? Very scientific, take them as gospel, and basically, they're all tied. So it's a tied debate. I'm not going to go through all the numbers, but that's what they all said. And even the focus groups, the undecided voters, they were mostly tied.

There was one undecided voter who I was about to say in this debate, like the one thing I could say about this debate is that no one made up their mind based on this debate. Not true. There was an undecided voter in Michigan who said, they're voting for, he's voting for Kamala Harris now based on this debate because of JD Vance's answer on January 6th, which we're gonna talk about in a bit. So that one person plucked from them all is making us all feel like everything's gonna be okay.

Everything's fine, right. It looks like, you know, CBS also did favorability ratings. It looks like both Walls and Vance, their favorability improved based on this debate. All of that said, we got our own panel of undecided voters right here. Uh, what did you all think? Who wants to start?

I think the meta-narrative coming out of tonight will be this respectful tone, and the fact that it kind of reminded people of normal political discourse. You saw that in some of the focus groups. They were like, oh, these people seem nice. They were nice to each other. They talked they didn't were disrespectful I thought it was interesting that JD Vance went into tonight doing the media head fake being like I'm gonna savage him about lying

About his military service and he did none of that. He was conspicuously nice to Tim Walls He praised him constantly he agreed with him And so, you know, it's like hard watching these debates not to let your gut reaction be entirely grading it on style points and Wall seemed a little nervous at the top which is totally understandable. It's his first debate on a national stage and the first question was like, would you bomb Iran?

He's a fucking Minnesota governor, that's not his comfort zone. But he smoothed it out as he went, he sometimes speaks in sentence fragments. He had some answers that were a little hard to follow. There was the China question that we'll talk about. That was probably his worst answer tonight. There were a few times, I think all of us

were yelling at the TV being like, say this. But you know, he went a different path. He also had some really strong moments, though, on health care, abortion access, gun violence. And his best moment was the close with that January 6th question that again we'll get into. So I think JD Vance was smooth and polished and clearly the guy who was in debate club, but it's not clear to me that that necessarily plays well with the voters or that he did much for Trump tonight because ultimately what people will remember out of this debate

will be one moment and it will probably be this January 6th clip that we will talk about later in the show The agri-potami the I I too was moved by the tone of the debate Dan was crying. I Tried to set up a drink with Mitch McConnell afterwards It was the put aside the tone, what was interesting about it really was sort of a pre-Trump debate. It was a debate that it could have been

Romney Obama in 2012, it could have been Obama McCain. It just, it was pre-Trump in two ways. One, no one was screaming at the other person or stalking around or doing incredibly weird shit, which happens in Trump debates. But also there, no one really tried to have a whole bunch of lines. No one was trying to give each other COVID. We don't know yet.

Sweating. Well, let's wait until the test results come back. And there weren't a lot of lines and zingers set up for social media. All the debates, even going back to 2012, were sort of reverse engineered from these moments you would try to get. They could then go viral on whatever the social platform was of that election cycle and neither of the candidates really either tried to execute that or did execute it and so really was just sort of a Two guys talking to each other. I do think that There is this huge gap between how the pundits assessed

Vance's performance and how the voters did and it I think it speaks to the ways in the incorrect ways how the pundits assessed Vance's performance and how the voters did. And I think it speaks to the ways, the incorrect ways in which pundits judge debates. They are, I mean, media folks are all probably members of the same debate club that JD Vance was. They judge it on that, on points and style and poise and language precision. And voters are just kind of looking at it

to get some information, make a big decision. And on that front, I think Wall scored more points than the initial pun it reacts, which suggested that he did. Yeah, it's funny that you say it feels like a pre-Trump debate, because what I was thinking and while watching it is that it actually feels like a post-Trump debate. I was just gonna say that.

Because the- I don't believe there's a post-Trump. Well, just like that, there, uh, there was, I think like JD Vance is obviously hyperambitious. He's doing all of this, uh, for his own benefits, completely adapted to Donald Trump. But you kind of saw that play out, I think in an unexpected way, which is that a lot of what

this debate felt like to me was JD Vance repairing JD Vance's image, right? He didn't want to be the attack version of JD Vance. He articulated more his philosophies. He has thoughts on Finland. Oh, you brought up Finland? I have thoughts about gun safety in Finland. I have actually a very sophisticated views on family policy.

He took Walls' Finland bait. Right. But, and then, and we'll get to, I think, some of the ways that it, I think, affects the race, which is how he tried to defend a version of Trump that doesn't exist. But it get to, I think, some of the ways that it, I think, affects the race, which is how we tried to defend a version of Trump that doesn't exist. But it really was, I think, you see, what J.D. Vance felt like he was doing out there was,

this is how I wish Donald Trump existed. This is the kind of politics I wish I was free to be able to practice without having to defend Donald Trump's words and deeds. And I think that will do a lot to repair J.D. Vance's image as a weird dipshit. But I don't know that ultimately like, oh, some on style points, JD Vance landed some punches.

How does that help Trump? It doesn't matter how people come away seeing these two figures. It was who articulated a better case for Kamala versus Trump. And I think Tim Walz had that as his plan and JD Vance, I don't think as much did. I was not surprised by JD Vance's performance. Like the guy loves to argue, has no problem lying,

clearly has no shame since he's Donald Trump's running mate after calling him America's Hitler. I also think, Levitt, you always talk about Trump's intellectual zambonis. Yeah. This is like in the intellectual Zambonis, Trump says something crazy and then some pundit at the national national review, like.

Hugh Hewitt usually. Hugh Hewitt usually comes in and there's like actually a theory and an intellectual case behind that and it's all bullshit. That's like the job JD Vance has been running for ever since he went from being a never Trumper to a Trumper. And I also think that like for most of JD Vance's career, he went from trying to impress the center-right,

center-left establishment as a Never Trumper, to then arguing with them and fighting with them as a Trumper. And so he knows how to impress the establishment, which is what he tried to do tonight. Like, he tried to perform a normal version of JD Vance. And I think he was relatively good at that, again, because he was able to lie a lot. Yeah, it's sort of why, like, as the debate was wrapping up,

I think Walls got better as the debate went on and his best moment was in the very end of the debate. But I walked away with this feeling, like, oh, did I just watch something where I, like, I was like, what is this feeling I'm having and do I trust it? And we are the kind of people that are like, kind of naturally inclined to like watch a debate based on points to like be impressed by style,

to be impressed by clean articulation. And like, this has sort of, I think, been a fault of ours when we went back to the 2020 debates and not seeing when like, kind of being worried about Joe Biden, but actually Joe Biden appealing to people that are coming to it in a different way. And I feel like that was my hope coming out of the debate

that actually, if you look at like maybe JD Vance is, I think a little bit tighter of a debater, but Walls is more genuine, a little bit more heartfelt, a little bit more real, even if he stumbles now and again, he kind of delivers something in a way that's more persuasive. And I think that that ultimately is why it looks like a draw. I also think JD Vance just highlighted

that his running mate is deranged and has deteriorated and should never be president. Like, I don't know. I'm sure that's not what he intended. But I think the effect of this debate on some people who watched who may be undecided, and again, I don't think it probably moved a lot of people.

But they're probably like, oh, well, Donald Trump wasn't like that. He's got all the positions that Donald Trump has, but he doesn't sound like a maniac. So I don't know if that really helps Donald Trump. And I don't know if Donald Trump, even though he's seemingly happy with the performance, is going to be really happy with the performance.

I'm curious about the next 48 hours, about JD Vance taking the spotlight, JD Vance saying that spotlight, JD Vance saying that Tulsi and RFK Jr. endorse me, vote for me. I think there's going to be a little bit of Donald Trump not liking this tall grass. Yeah. So we've been talking about the big moment in the debate, which came at the end. It was the last exchange of the night.

The topic was democracy and Trump's responsibility for January 6th. Let's listen. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought like $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. And if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I'm on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had, I don't buy that. Governor. January 6th was not Facebook ads. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen.

And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say. He is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just add that. Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation? That is a damning non-answer. So America, I think you've got a really clear choice on this election of who's going to honor that democracy and who's going to honor Donald Trump.

So all the the dial groups, the Harris campaign dial groups, other undecided voters all agreed that that was the worst moment for JD Vance. I think not only because it was an obvious lie, but because he sounded like a fucking politician. I'm focused on the future. There's nothing, I don't think there's anything worse you could have said that I'm focused on the future. Yeah. Most slippery, smarmy, ridiculous line.

Yeah, it would have honestly been better if he was like, he did win that election. Yeah, I stand by it. Yeah, how much you guys think that matters, Dan? I mean, to the extent that anything matters in this debate, I think it matters more than anything else. And you have, the big lie is a signifier of extremism for most voters.

In polling, generally, six in 10 voters believe Joe Biden legitimately won the election. That number is higher among independents, right? The exact undecided voters we're talking about, they do not think that the election was stolen and they think it's really fucking weird that Donald Trump is still talking about that four years later and JD Vance being unable

to answer the question in the most blatant way possible, just might as well hold up a sign that says, I'm a smarmy politician, when you answer the question the way he did, is certainly not helpful to the cause. It's not the size of the lies, the motion in the ocean. I think this will get shared on the aforementioned Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. I was gonna go to Tommy's, I'm like,

Tommy's got the face, he's about to say something funny. It's so hot in here, it's like really late. No, I do, it did come at the end, but I was like, you know what? Speaking of. It's the second time I've done it in two pods. I'm still not over the Pete Buttigieg thing. I know, I've heard about that.

Tim Miller grades all of our podcast episodes and tells us when we did good, and he really liked that one. Just flagging it. Yeah, so it was at the very end of the debate, it was the last exchange, but it seems like in this media environment, it could be the clip that defines the debate.

I think so. Yeah, I think so. I mean, certainly that's what the Harris Walls campaign's gonna wanna do, but I think that so far in the media coverage we've seen before recording, it seems like that's gonna be the big moment. Yeah, and I also would say probably like, if you were just sort of trying to be straight shooters here,

Tim Walz is like, that is JD Vance's worst moment by far, and it was the worst moment of the debate. Tim Walz's worst moment was probably his answer that we'll get to on kind of when he was in China. And like, it was a bad and fomfring answer, but it was an answer about him in a kind of strange and sort of personal way. Like that answer goes to the heart of the case against Donald Trump well let's talk about that let's play that answer from from Tim Walls governor just to follow up on that the question was can you explain the no just all I said on this was is I got there that summer and misspoke on this so I will just that's what I've. So I was in Hong Kong and China

during the democracy protest, went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance. Tommy, before we get into like, whether that was good or bad, or how bad that was or whatever, what was that all about? I couldn't even follow.

So I asked Governor Walz about this when I interviewed him back in February, because I read- This was your fault. Yeah, this was that all about? I couldn't even follow. So I asked Governor Walz about this when I interviewed him back in February. This was your fault. Yeah, this was partially, yes. I had read that he had been in China around the Tiananmen Square massacre, which occurred on June 4th. So I basically said, were you there during the protest

in the Tiananmen Square massacre? He said, I was in Hong Kong, I was in Hong Kong when it happened, I was in Hong Kong on June 4th when Tiananmen happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it turns out that there's some reports from local Nebraska news outlets that say he was in Nebraska on May 16th and he didn't travel to Hong Kong until August of 1989, so a couple months after the protests. He did go from Hong Kong into China, he did teach at a school, he did set up this exchange

program after and like try to build ties between US students and Chinese students. I think what happened is he just kind of misremembered the story over the years, mistold it a few times, and it just stuck in his brain wrong. Like that happens to people all the time. Our memories suck. We get things wrong all the time. And I'm sure it was pretty uncomfortable for him. He didn't seem like totally well prepared. He didn't just like explain it clearly. He kind of told a bunch of bio and it was mostly confusing. I'm guessing most people watching just couldn't really follow what was happening there.

I think maybe people will care. I seriously doubt it. If the Trump campaign decides to really drive this, I guess they could make it a thing. But like, what a waste of time. I mean, I read the CNN story about it before the debate and then watched the exchange and I still couldn't follow exactly what happened.

Yeah, it's confusing. But I don't fault him for misremembering because my memory is shit and I can't remember things that happened like two years ago and the stories and where I was. I do think that he knew this was coming and I would have just been a little clearer on like, you know what, I got that wrong.

I messed up and then just. It was 35 years ago, I'd been to China, there were democracy programs. I messed up, I messed up. As advice to all politicians, that's always the best answer. Yeah. Just if you made a mistake,

just own it and move on and be done with it. And you're gonna have to answer it. You can't just like dance around it for a long time and hope the clock runs out. Yeah, I also like the opening question ended up being about foreign policy. He answered that question. Vance says, before I get to your foreign policy question,

I'm gonna do my bio. Walls was looking for a place to kind of do his bio. He realized about him talking about being a teacher. So he does his bio. so it doesn't totally work. So fine, like it's not the way to articulate that answer. That first question just really threw him off. Imagine, this is your biggest moment of your professional life.

You're debating, you're the vice president's nominee, and Iran launches 200 ballistic missiles at Israel the day before, like, and suddenly you haven't prepped for this, you haven't prepared, you haven't thought about what you'd say about this. I'm sure it was like a massive wrench in their preparation. But the point I wanted to make about is just like,

it's very much now kind of like bubbling on the hyper online, right? That like Tim Waltz doesn't tell the truth, he's a serial liar, serial exaggerator, because they try to mischaracterize how he responded when he talked about his family using fertility treatments and a few, and how they kind of have like exaggerated about how he's described his service and tried to lie

and malign him for how he's talked about his service. And I, I do think that like, if that's what they want to focus on, like trying to paint Tim Walz in this way, like I just don't think it works. I don't think it's viable. Like he just comes across as an honest and straight-furthy guy,

and they should be focusing on Kamala Harris and they're defending the world's greatest liar. So I just think the whole thing is ultimately small and stupid. Also, JD Vance's entire life is a lie. Yeah! There's that. I never got to the end of that book though,

but whatever happened to him, I found him in that manger. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. My critique of Tim Walls was less about that, more, I just think he had some missed opportunities, right? And I think that he, you could tell when he, I hadn't noticed this before, but whether it was anxiety or what, he was nervous, but he like, he jumps to the next thought and there were sentence fragments and he didn't quite complete

the thought. So sometimes it was hard to follow exactly what he was saying. And like, even on the January 6th, which was his best answer during that exchange, I was like, why isn't he talking about Donald Trump wanting to pardon the insurrectionists? Yeah.

That's the, that's the most unpopular policy that he has, and it's about moving forward. You want to focus on the future, JD Vance. Uh, your running mate wants to on the future, JD Vance. Your running mate wants to pardon the people who beat up cops. So Tim Walls, you take these lessons and when you're debating Marjorie Taylor Greene

in four years, hopefully, and you can be a little bit more on top of this. But he was, Walls was much better than that on a lot of the other answers. He, reproductive rights, he was really strong. Just like the campaign's been doing in ads and at the convention, he talked about the individual stories of women

who've been injured or lost their lives because of their state's abortion bans. Let's listen. If you don't know Amanda or Hadley, you soon will. Their project 2025 is gonna have a registry of pregnancies. It's going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate, access to infertility treatments. For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child.

This is basic human right. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about healthcare. Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it's diverse. And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona and the proper way to handle this as messy as democracy sometimes is,

is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy. How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography? I thought the geography thing was a great response to Vance because clearly it was, Walls had his prepared first answer there,

but then going back and hitting him on geography because he did California and Georgia was I thought really strong. What did you guys think of that? It was incredibly strong answer. It's right. It fits with exactly how all the polling says you should talk about this.

All the message testing says the ads and the speeches and the messages that lead with people's personal stories are by far the most powerful. It gets at freedom. The geography line undermines Trump's states argument, which is really important. And the Harris campaign has been hammering that Trump advance on abortion for months now,

and it is working, right? We are seeing in polls increases in the number of voters who think Trump would pass a federal abortion ban, who think he's personally anti-choice, who thinks that abortion rights are actually at stake if he's on the ballot. And that matters because in those blue wall states in the New York Times, Seattle poll

that came out over the weekend, abortion is the second issue by far. And so raising the silence of that issue and driving home and pushing on that advantage is incredibly important. So this also goes to the point that JD Vance scored points in the debate on things that don't matter.

And where Walls was at his best was on the exact things that matter to voters, like reproductive freedom. Tommy, what did you think of Vance's, he kept bringing up, we have to earn voters trust on this issue. It seemed like he was trying to soften the edges of the typical Trump Republican answer

and Vance answer on abortion because he has had some really wacky things. Yeah, I mean, I guess it folded into his broader strategy of like, hey, I'm just a good guy. I feel your pain. Let's agree to disagree and find common ground. But like, I don't know, earn your trust on this issue. Like what does that mean to someone who lives in a state

where women are dying because they can't get an abortion care? You know, it's just, it did not, I don't think it's going to work for them. He also lied about saying he never supported a national abortion ban. JD Vance absolutely supported a national abortion ban. The CBS polling on the issues showed that Governor Wallace did way better than JD Vance in terms of voters, the response when talking about abortion and healthcare. Yeah, that was also another moment where it was much more about himself, like he was talking about what he'd said in the past and his own views on abortion.

I also do think like it was like one of Tim Walz's best moments in the debate, but to the point John was making, it was also a moment to say like, earn people's trust, you're for a national abortion ban. You've had this, you said Donald Trump would veto it. He now say he wouldn't back you on that. Like there were places where you could like, I think. Your running mate says that women should be punished.

Right. So the women should be punished for abortion. Like the whole point, your position is that you don't trust women. Yeah. Why should they trust you? So clearly unsurprisingly, Vance went into the debate

wanting to make every single answer about immigration. Here are some of the key exchanges. And that's the thing that I think we should be able to find some common ground in, but we can't blame immigrants for the only reason. That's not the case that's happening in many cities. Tim just said something that I agree with. We don't want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country, which does drive

up cost him. Twenty-five million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It's why we have massive increases in home prices. Thank you, Governor. And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status. Nora, so much to get to.

Thank you, Nora. I think it's important because the debate, Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check. And since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on. The rules were no fact checking, no fair. I'm supposed to be able to lie the whole time. I wouldn't have agreed to this debate

if I know there was gonna be fact checking. Does anyone believe that immigration is why housing costs are high? Is that credible to anybody? No, it's, I mean, there is a case that in Springfield, because many of the Haitian immigrants were living together, are living together in houses, like five or six of them in a house who have come here, that it was making housing too expensive for like a family of two who lived in Springfield and they were driving

houses because they could live in a house, more people could live in one house. Sure. I know this is like a long thing. Once again, the legal migrants. Legal migrants. Right. Yeah. But again, you know, and walls and, and, uh, and Vance had this exchange too, about housing, like JD Vance and Donald Trump have no housing plan. They had no plan to reduce the cost of housing. If all the Haitian migrants that are there legally left Springfield tomorrow,

housing prices in Springfield and all across the country would still be way too high. And they have no plan except to buy some federal land and build a house on a park somewhere. And deport people. Right, yeah. Yes. How do you guys think he did on immigration? You think you think Vance scored some points there? I guess, I mean, I don't know. Like, it was, obviously it's like a better issue for him. I think Walls, I think, did a good job

when he talked about Donald Trump standing in the way of the bill. So that was a good moment for him. And he had been heating up by the time we got to that part of the debate. So I think it probably is yet another place where it like kind of battles to a draw. I don't know that people buy all this anti-immigrant stuff

from Vance, that moment where he said, I'm not blaming migrants for the cost of housing. I'm blaming Kamala Harris. Like, I feel like that has to read people of housing, I'm blaming Kamala Harris. I feel like that has to read people as absurd. This housing problem is a very old and long growing problem. It's not something that began under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it's a generational failure.

People were coming in under Donald Trump and Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Just the idea that you're gonna lay this. They even keep referring to it as the Kamala Harris administration. I just don't think people buy it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.

I just, and this is true in all things, but especially on immigration, they keep saying Kamala Harris let them in the country. Let these people bring fentanyl in the country. People don't think the vice president can do that. It's just simply not, it's absurd. President, you know, is the commander in chief, make some laws and then the vice president lets in fentanyl.

Has the full authority to just let in drugs at the board. Yeah, but actually, you know, the vice president has one vote in the Senate, same as JD Vance, right? Like where's JD Vance's record? JD Vance had the audacity up there, like I think Republicans in the Congress let Donald Trump down.

You've been in the Congress, right? You haven't passed a bill, you have nothing to your name. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciated Governor Walz's decency in saying you're blaming migrants for everything and that's unfair and it's wrong and it's egregious. I think he maybe spent a little too much time doing that. I wanted him to pivot harder and go on attack. I think the strongest messaging was when he talked about the bipartisan immigration

bill that Republicans and Democrats came together to do in Congress and that Donald Trump tanked. I do think JD whining about the fact checks will be another thing that spins out on social media. It'll be very useful for the Harris campaign in the future because JD famously says he likes to make up stories about immigration to advance his lies and agenda. So yeah, the CBS poll showed it was basically a draw

on immigration though they favored Vance by a little bit. Yeah, I was, and Walls was trying to get there when he was talking about Springfield, cause he was like, what happened to this community and the bomb threats at school and stuff like that. And, and Vance jumped in and be like, oh, you care about the immigrants, you care about the migrants,

but not the people in Springfield. And I do think that Walls could have been, you know, there's an opportunity there, I think for Harris and Walls to be like, this is like people in Springfield are not better off because JD Vance and Donald Trump have been, you know, there's an opportunity there, I think for Harris and Walz to be like, this is like, people in Springfield are not better off because JD Vance and Donald Trump have been running around saying that Haitian migrants are eating dogs and cats. Like they've had bomb threats,

like the people who live in Springfield, who've lived there for a long time, like they're not better off because of this, it's bullshit. And like, they're just trying to divide people against each other. Like I do think there's an immigration message that you're right, Tommy, talks about what people are dealing with on both sides of the same thing.

It can go to all things, right? It's January 6th and the big lie too. Yep, same stuff. Donald Trump and JD Vance will say or do anything that will get them power no matter who it hurts. Exactly, including the people who support them. Including their own supporters. Especially those people.

One area where Vance didn't have a great answer was on whether we should have more gun safety laws. Let's listen. And I say this not loving the answer, because I don't want my kids to go to school and a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of security But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better We have to make the doors stronger. We've got to make the windows stronger. Well, I think all the parents watching tonight this is just your biggest nightmare look I got a I got a 17 year old and and

He witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don't leave you. The NRA, I was the NRA guy for a long time. They used to teach gun safety. I'm of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice. That's not where we live today. This idea of stigmatizing mental health,

just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent. And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it just is the guns. Hearing it again, I think that might've been one of his best answers. Yeah, because also it was something he came back to.

There was a lot of kind of, I don't know, it was a little bit of like kind of a gauzy section of the debate when they were going back and forth on guns because JD Vance is like, oh God, if only there was something was someone to stop my policies from causing all of these problems. There was a lot of like, I hate that we have to harden our schools like they're fucking military barracks,

but there's just nothing we can do. And I wanted Tim Walsh to hit him back, but then he made that answer I thought was very good because he finally kind of came back to like, it's not about how Finland has as many guns as we have or the fuck we were talking about. Sometimes it's just about the guns. Wait, I mean, JD Vance caveated his answer for how to prevent children from getting shot

by saying this answer sucks. We need to lock the doors? No, stronger doors. Stronger doors. Stronger doors and stronger windows. Stronger windows. Like that is- Fortify first grade classrooms. That is not a credible or serious answer. And I thought Walls was emotional. He told the story

about his son. And then he credentialed himself as a gun owner who supports the Second Amendment. But he's not willing to do nothing in the face of children getting shot over and over and over again. I thought it was compelling and real and came from a sincere place.

And JD Vance just sounded like a smarmy prick. It's wild that both members of the Democratic ticket are gun owners and the Republican nominee can't buy a gun in some states. That's true. That is a fair point. All right, so toward the end of the debate, moderators asked about healthcare

and Donald Trump's now infamous comment that the Harris Walls campaign turned into a big ad that they're running all over the country. It was out today. It's about healthcare. It's about Trump saying he has concepts of a plan for what to replace the ACA with after he kills it. Let's listen. I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along. He ran on the first thing he was

going to do on day one was to repeal Obamacare. On day one, he tried to sign an executive order to repeal the ACA. He signed on to a lawsuit to repeal the ACA but lost at the Supreme Court. He would have repealed the ACA had it not been for the courage of John McCain to save that bill. Something that these guys do is they make a lot of claims about if donald trump's becomes president all of these terrible consequences are going to ensue

but in reality donald trump was president inflation was low take-home pay was higher and he saved the very program from a democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership one of the most one of those calling answers i've ever heard in the debate i that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership. I mean. One of the most, one of those galling answers I've ever heard in a debate. I really- Is that true?

Stunning. Did Trump save the ACA? It was Paul Ryan who was trying to repeal it. Trump saved it from Paul Ryan. Well, that whole answer too, like I do think the part where he says like, oh, I do worry about that framing, right, like, oh, they say Trump is so dangerous,

but things were actually better. Then you're like, on Obamacare itself, JD Vance does this sort of intellectual nonsense around it. Well, actually, concepts of plan is actually how you make laws, you have an idea, and, but like, you can go look. Guy's been running for president and president for the last nine years, still has no plan.

Yeah, he's just waiting. Donald Trump was so horny for repealing the Obamacare that after the House passed the repeal, he didn't wait for it to pass the Senate to do what looked like a signing ceremony in the Rose Garden. He took a picture with all the Republican House members behind him to celebrate repealing Obamacare. They did not have a plan to replace it.

The reason John McCain did a thumbs down on repealing Obamacare was not because he was in favor of Obamacare, is because there was no plan to replace it. The reason John McCain did a thumbs down on repealing Obamacare was not because he was in favor of Obamacare, it's because there was no plan to replace it. That was the reason. You say Donald Trump's president, all these bad things are gonna happen. He was president and people didn't, 20 million people didn't lose their healthcare

because John McCain stopped him. Yeah, because they didn't do the bad thing. Yeah, and by the way, like- Because Democrats and everyone else in the whole country hated it. It was the least popular Donald Trump had ever been in his whole presidency and he tried and tried and tried it and everyone else and the whole country hated it. It was the least popular Donald Trump had ever been in his whole presidency. And he tried and tried and tried it and he failed

because he's bad at governing. It's a. He doesn't need a plan. I think that answer was an example as to why JD Vance is a good debater and a shitty politician. Yeah. Because it, like you see the intellectual exercise in his head, like I'm not just gonna say

it didn't get repeated, I'm gonna say he saved it because I'm gonna take this arcane out of context. Well, because Trump says that. And he knows he has to mirror Trump's line among this. And it's obviously not believable. And I agree with Lovett that the argument that Democrats say these bad things are gonna happen when Trump is already president is one of their better,

even if it's a very fallacious argument, on a lot of issues like when we call him a dictator and he was president for four years, democracy didn't end, all of that. But the one issue where it is the worst argument is this one, because he tried in every way possible to repeal the ACA in the most visible way possible throughout his entire presidency.

And by the way, succeeded in getting rid of a really important part of healthcare, which is reproductive healthcare, for millions upon millions of women. Also, you know, they can go interview a bunch of Republicans in Congress, and they can all say, look, if Donald Trump wins again, we don't have the appetite to go through

ACA repeal again, blah, blah, blah. Even if they don't do that, even if they don't have the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which of course we know they're gonna try to do, but even if they don't, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris passed in the Inflation Reduction Act

subsidies for the ACA that mean that millions of people around this country are paying lower premiums than they were before because of those subsidies. They are going to expire at the end of 2025. And Donald Trump and Republicans have already said they do not want to extend them. And so even if nothing happens, three and a half million people will lose their health insurance just if Donald Trump doesn't do anything, just if he wins. And you know, so like the idea that, oh, Donald Trump's got nothing's gonna happen,

like no, everyone's gonna, people are gonna pay more for health care if Donald Trump wins, guaranteed. Anyway, I think, I do think that's one that the Harris campaign, I thought that was gonna be the moment that they were gonna push tomorrow, were it not for the January 6th answer that came afterwards,

but they've been doing the concepts of a plan ad today. I kinda think that there'll be a healthcare push in the next week, or there should be. I hope so. There should be. All right, final thoughts on this debate. What do the campaigns do with this debate? Anything, the Harris campaign talks about January 6th moment, the Vance campaign,

I don't know, the Vance campaign. Ooh. Yeah, the Vance campaign. I don't know what, the Vance campaign. Ooh. Yeah, the Vance campaign. I feel like, yeah, I think it's pushing out that democracy clip. I do think that it's worth going through, like, there was a few times around the debate where JD Vance basically kind of invents a version

of Donald Trump that doesn't exist. It's obviously not as important as the comment on democracy we're all talking about, but there was this moment where Vance basically says, oh, Trump peacefully transferred power and all Donald Trump has ever said is he wanted the rules to be enforced fairly. It reminded me of like the biggest creeps

on the fucking internet during Gamergate, like attacking women online and being like, this is about ethics and video game journalism. Like being like, oh yeah, that's what it was about. It was about the fair administration of the electorals. And there was that moment, there was a moment on healthcare where I do think you can go and just take Donald Trump's absolute worst comments

and take JD Vance's lies about them and put them side by side, and I think it'd be pretty powerful. Yeah. Do you think we get another debate? Donald Trump came out tonight and said, again, no more debates. I don't know why you guys think that there might be

another debate. I mean, I think if, I don't think Trump wants to do it really or else he'd do it. His staff obviously doesn't want to do it because he was so terrible the last time. Yeah. Well, the Harris campaign wants it. They're desperate for it.

The media is desperate for it. Everyone wants to do it except for the Trumps. I mean, we saw CNN, Caitlin Collins just hammering Donald Trump Jr. over it. Yes, Donald Trump Jr. was such a fucking whiny little baby that he said that even Fox couldn't fairly moderate the debate because they would try to appease the left. As they always are, you know Fox.

Thetic weakling. I do like the, like JD Vance basically kind of inventing a nicer version of Trump, Donald Trump pulling down the 60 minutes interview, like I think all of that is the same reason they won't want to put him in front of another debate, which is the Donald Trump that doesn't exist and isn't real is like the best version they can have out there.

But I do wonder if like 48 hours of coverage of how great JD Vance did and how JD Vance outshined Trump and how he didn't really defend Trump and was really more about Vance. Like I got I'm curious how that how that how that affects the narcissist. Yeah, it's always hard to get inside Donald Trump's lizard brain. And like, I was thinking that, you know, maybe he's like, I don't want JD Vance to have the last word here. But it's also, they don't have that much time. And it's clear that the Trump campaign thinks

they are sitting on a lead, that they are doing well, they're doing well in the polls, that JD, like I think they're buying their spin on this, which is why they probably don't wanna do another debate. I think that's probably right. Now, whether they're right or not, who knows, but like I think that's probably what they think. One thing I do hope that comes out of this debate is,

according to the CNN Snap poll, Tim Walz's favorability went from plus 14 before the debate to plus 37 after the debate. I think that speaks well to his character, his presentation, the tone of the debate, the think that speaks well to his character, his presentation, the tone of the debate, the fact that he talked about things that people cared about in a way that connected. That most voters don't know what Tiananmen Square is. That most voters don't give a shit what happened in 1989. And so I think it just

speaks to the fact that he's an asset and we should get him out there and he should be doing a lot more interviews and be on the trail and doing things. I understand that they were probably getting through debate prep because that was far more important. And it also prepares you for future interviews. But now I'd love to see just Harris and Wells hit the gas, be a little less risk averse, do some more stuff and just talk to them. Well, we had Toml Harris on the All the Smoke podcast.

Which is a great interview. Awesome. One of the best interviews I've ever seen. All the Smoke podcast at Folks Oh know is two former NBA players, usually they focus on basketball, but it was an amazing interview. But they were members of the We Believe Warriors team from 2006.

And she was funny, she was thoughtful, she was very comfortable. It was just a fantastic interview, I agree. And especially if there's not gonna be another debate, which I don't think there will be, they're gonna need to find ways to break through. And not break through all the coverage because not everyone watches everything

at the same time anymore, but just taking more, just having more opportunities to get out there. Especially on stuff like Val the Smokepod where they're not, the people who watch that show or listen to that show are probably not consuming a ton of political news. It's a sports show. Get in front of those people who are not gonna hear about you in other places.

Tim Walls was on the We Rate Dogs YouTube channel the other day. That's great. I noticed that, I noticed that. It sounds ridiculous, but it's actually quite smart. Maybe they get hosted at their debate. She's like, little boops. Okay, couple quick things before we go.

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