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Singapore. That's bloomberglive.com/Sustainable

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Biz Singapore. Welcome

0:32

back to Bloomberg's special coverage of the

0:34

2024 CNN presidential debate right

0:36

here on Bloomberg Television and Radio alongside

0:38

Joe Matthew. I'm Kayleigh Lines and we

0:41

just witnessed 90 minutes of debate between

0:43

a current and former president for the

0:45

first time in history, a debate in

0:48

which the incumbent Joe Biden often struggled,

0:50

stumbling over his words, misstating figures at

0:52

times, freezing at one point.

0:55

Whereas Donald Trump, who did appear this evening,

0:57

Joe, much more energetic and forceful, often

0:59

said things that were not factually correct.

1:02

Joe Biden continually accused him of lying.

1:04

And yet with a hoarse voice that

1:06

many in the Democratic Party are now

1:08

attributing to a cold, Joe Biden at

1:10

81 perhaps played into fears about his

1:12

age this evening. Yeah, this is

1:14

an interesting exercise. We're probably going to hear a

1:16

lot more about performance than we are about substance

1:18

following 90 minutes to Kayleigh's point

1:20

there. We had one break in the middle

1:23

of this exercise, one toward the end before

1:25

closing statements. The president actually seemed to struggle

1:27

through his closing statement, even

1:29

which is an opportunity to get into something

1:31

that would be more rehearsed. But

1:34

look, the CNN moderators who we just

1:36

watched and listened to did

1:38

not make any attempt to fact check either of

1:40

the candidates here. And I guess that will

1:42

be the job of our panel, Kayleigh. Yeah,

1:45

of course, Joe Biden did at times attempt

1:47

to fact check Trump, at least accusing him

1:49

of lying. Not always, though, providing

1:51

what he says are actually the

1:54

facts. And many times, interestingly, these candidates

1:56

were asked questions that they simply just

1:59

did not. talking about other subjects

2:01

entirely. Donald Trump did that on multiple occasions

2:03

when asked if he would accept the results

2:05

of the election. It took multiple tries from

2:08

the moderator and he said

2:10

ultimately not yes or no, but if it's

2:12

a fair and legal election, absolutely. We're

2:14

gonna walk you through some of the highlights, if

2:16

we can call them that, of this

2:19

first debate in the cycle

2:21

and we'll have analysis ahead with Rick Davis

2:23

and Kristin Hahn. First though, let's check in

2:25

on the spin room in Atlanta with Bloomberg's

2:27

correspondent David Gurrah, who was there on the

2:29

ground. So David, that was

2:31

something to behold. At times, frankly, it

2:33

was uncomfortable. How do things feel in

2:35

the spin room in the aftermath? Yeah,

2:39

I think the two of you have laid that out just

2:41

as I witnessed it. It was a really stark

2:43

contrast and there were moments that were, as you

2:45

said, quite awkward. The contrast really stark between these

2:47

two candidates in terms of their presentation. You know,

2:49

I think that something interesting, you mentioned that there

2:51

wasn't any fact-checking. You did notice that with the

2:53

former president, with Donald Trump, when asked a question,

2:55

he would often take that moment to go back

2:57

to something else that was talked about in the

2:59

question before that. And I did note a few

3:01

times that Dana Bache reintroduced

3:03

the question. You know, this is what we're talking about now and

3:06

give him another opportunity to do that. But

3:08

I agree with your assessment too, that we didn't get a

3:10

whole lot of substance here, a substance that was new.

3:12

I think of sort of ways that President

3:14

Trump, in particular, reframed things that were

3:16

novel, particularly when it comes to January

3:18

6th. Yes, there is what we've heard

3:20

from him before about those who participated

3:22

in that interaction, in that action

3:25

on Capitol Hill. But then

3:27

kind of using January 6th as this kind

3:29

of pivot moment for the economy and all

3:31

that he inherited then and sort of what

3:33

happened on January 6th to the economy and

3:35

the country as a whole was a, shall

3:37

we say, creative spin on what happened on

3:39

that day. A bit of news

3:41

also from the former president on abortion. Of course, that's

3:44

been in the news so much over these last few

3:46

weeks. And we had that Supreme Court decision this week

3:48

on the heels of the reporting that Bloomberg did yesterday

3:50

about the Supreme Court

3:52

allowing abortions in

3:55

emergency circumstances to happen in Idaho. You

3:57

did have Donald Trump on the record today. saying

4:00

that he defers to the states, but says that

4:02

he is somebody, he is a candidate who's in

4:04

favor of exceptions and a kind of Reaganite mold,

4:06

as he put it. That's what stood out

4:08

to me. I noted with

4:10

Donald Trump in particular, there were three or

4:12

four things he kept coming back to that,

4:15

of course, the migrant crisis as he sees it,

4:17

quantity of people coming into this country. He

4:19

blaming Joe Biden for that and talking a

4:22

bit about sort of what he inherited, what

4:24

Joe Biden inherited was this

4:26

great economy, this great country. Let's

4:28

talk about creative spin for a moment, David, because you're

4:30

right in the middle of it here as you join us

4:32

live from the spin room. This is great, giving us a

4:34

little bit of a walk around. How are

4:37

the two campaigns representing themselves? This is a pretty

4:39

quiet spin room, if we can be honest, before

4:41

the debate started. What are you seeing around you

4:43

now? Yeah, it is a bit quiet. And

4:46

once it ended, there was an eerie quiet to the room as

4:48

well. But you have Matt Arkeman focusing

4:50

here on Sarah Huckabee Sanders,

4:52

who is speaking to reporters now on

4:56

the floor here now filling up with more reporters and

4:58

more surrogates. Let's see if I can get my microphone

5:00

a bit closer and we can pick up anything that she's having

5:02

to say here, Joe, if you just wait with her. It's

5:07

like the least of fun. It's a clear

5:09

contest and it's a win. Win overwhelmingly. Forgive

5:12

me. Yes, I saw her from afar. President

5:15

Biden will still be the Democratic nominee by the time

5:17

we get to November. He is the Democratic

5:19

nominee. He will be on the ballot

5:21

and we are going to defeat him

5:24

this November and elect President Trump the

5:26

next president of the United States. And

5:28

the American people see crystal clear Joe

5:30

Biden's failed policies, whether it's the border

5:33

crisis, Biden inflation or his weak role

5:35

as commander in chief, leading to chaos

5:37

and weak and national security. This was

5:39

an absolute overwhelming knockout victory by President

5:42

Trump against a failed feckless and weak

5:44

Joe Biden. Just step away

5:46

here. She continues again. At least if I make

5:48

the congressman from New York and as

5:50

I kind of walk around the floor to see who else

5:53

is out here. She

5:56

principally they're the only the only surrogate that

5:58

I'm seeing on the floor right You

6:00

know, just picking up there on what she's saying

6:02

about the economy. Again, that was

6:04

something I think that the former president returned to time

6:07

and time again. And you saw,

6:09

as you mentioned at the top, Joe Biden, the current

6:11

president, trying to contextualize sort

6:13

of the economy that he inherited when

6:15

he was president. I found

6:18

it kind of halting in the way that he was able to deal

6:20

with that issue too. David,

6:22

that was great. Thanks for the peek behind the curtain

6:25

there, Bloomberg's David Gurrah with us in the spin room.

6:28

These are the conversations that are going to lead to the coverage tomorrow. And you just

6:30

got a nice peek at it right

6:32

there as we now reassemble our political

6:34

panel. Rick Davis, Republican strategist and partner

6:36

at Stone Court Capital is with us

6:38

along with Democratic strategist, Kristin Hahn, partner

6:40

at Rock Solutions. All right, guys,

6:43

we need some honest talk here about what we

6:45

just saw. Both of your phones were blowing up

6:47

through that whole debate, as you heard from your

6:49

colleagues from both sides of the aisle. Kristin,

6:52

all anyone's talking about is Joe Biden's voice

6:54

tonight. I think it was unfortunate

6:56

that he had a cold and that the

6:59

delivery may not have been what we

7:01

wanted. But honestly, the

7:03

thing that struck me the most was just, I mean, Trump

7:07

might have been delivering or had a more

7:09

booming voice, but I was trying to take

7:12

notes of all the lies that he was,

7:14

and then my hands started hurting. So I

7:16

mean, it's really remarkable he's taking credit for

7:18

the insulin

7:21

prices going down, men

7:23

making claims that the election

7:26

was a fraud, wildly wrong

7:28

claims about women in health care. And

7:30

it's funny because I'm like, if

7:32

we're talking about, as your correspondent mentioned

7:35

just a second ago, he made news saying

7:37

he would be okay with exceptions for rape and incest

7:39

and that type of thing. But

7:42

we just saw the man lie for an hour and a half.

7:44

I mean, blatant lies, and we'll see all of that debunked in

7:46

the next, if you don't already know, over

7:48

the next several days. So why would we ever believe

7:50

him? Why would any woman ever believe him? I

7:53

certainly don't. I also thought it

7:55

was interesting that he kept saying that, and it's

7:57

a big point in his campaign that he talks

7:59

about. how the president's weaponizing

8:02

the judicial system and coming after

8:04

him, but he actually said, and

8:06

I quote, he has

8:08

no idea what these cases even are.

8:10

So is it that he's told and

8:12

can't remember what the cases are, or

8:14

is he weaponizing his judicial system?

8:16

So there were so many, I

8:19

don't know, I wasn't expecting anything different from President

8:21

Trump, but despite the

8:23

delivery, I think

8:25

there couldn't be two

8:27

more distinct choices, and

8:31

that was true before tonight, it's still

8:33

true now, and it'll be true tomorrow. But

8:36

despite all of these factual inaccuracies, Trump did

8:38

indeed lie at times, and Joe Biden attempted

8:40

to call him out on that, and yet

8:42

at times, Joe Biden himself struggled to articulate

8:45

what exactly the facts were, even his own

8:47

facts, misstating the number of jobs, for example,

8:49

created in his administration at one point, calling

8:53

into question his own policy

8:55

on Medicare after freezing for a substantial

8:57

period of time. Rick, I'm looking at

8:59

the traffic on social media, other reports

9:01

I'm seeing, and many are suggesting that

9:03

the Democrats are going to have to

9:05

put someone else forward as the nominee

9:07

after tonight. Yeah, when you think

9:09

back about what we were trying

9:11

to handicap this debate

9:14

going into it, what was Trump gonna need

9:16

to do? Trump 2.0 needed to be more

9:18

disciplined, he needed to be less aggressive, he

9:20

needed to not talk over Biden, those

9:23

things he accomplished, right? I mean, he got hot

9:25

toward the end of the debate, and

9:27

I think it actually took something away

9:29

from his performance, but at the end

9:31

of the day, Trump kind of delivered

9:33

on the style at which everyone set

9:35

the expectation to, and the only thing

9:37

anybody expected Joe Biden to do was convince us

9:39

that his age is not a factor in

9:42

being a candidate for president, or potentially a

9:44

president for another term, and he did

9:46

not accomplish that task. You

9:48

know, you've mentioned it very clearly,

9:50

his halting inability to finish

9:52

his sentences, he looked

9:54

very over-prepared, he seemed to have a hard

9:56

time getting the numbers out, and

9:59

we have to. to remember this was

10:01

his idea to debate this early,

10:03

one-on-one, with Donald Trump in this

10:06

kind of a venue with no

10:08

limits on fact-checking. And so Joe

10:11

Biden's job was to be the

10:13

fact-checker. But instead, he just

10:16

accepted any topic that Donald Trump

10:18

wanted to talk about and

10:20

responded to it as best he could, but

10:22

not with necessarily a fact-check that could say,

10:24

hey, you're lying about this, and this is

10:26

what the real story is. It was more

10:28

kind of a personal response. And that's the

10:31

thing that I think most people

10:33

are going to take away from this debate

10:35

is this was a very intensely personal debate

10:37

where there were two guys who clearly didn't

10:39

like each other, who had a totally different

10:42

version of America, and neither one of them

10:44

really delivered any kind of a good

10:47

outcome for themselves. But the performance by

10:49

Joe Biden has to create questions in

10:51

the Democratic Party's minds as to whether

10:54

or not they have someone who's up

10:56

to the election. They've got five months

10:58

to go, and this was not a man

11:00

who I would say you'd ever want to put on a debate

11:02

stage again. The

11:04

Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit returns

11:07

to Singapore on July 31

11:09

for solutions-driven discussions on unlocking

11:11

growth in times of increased

11:13

ESG scrutiny and competition. Join

11:16

global business leaders and investors to

11:18

drive innovation and scale best practices

11:20

in sustainable business and finance. Learn

11:23

more at bloomberglive.com/Sustainable Biz

11:26

Singapore. Let's

11:28

give a taste here as part of

11:30

our special coverage of the CNN presidential

11:33

debate, a moment here for Joe Biden, talking to Donald Trump about

11:35

morals. The

11:39

crimes that you are still charged with, and think

11:42

of all the civil penalties you have. How many

11:44

billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for

11:46

molesting a woman in public, for

11:49

doing a whole range of things, of

11:51

having sex with a porn star, of having

11:53

sex with a woman who's a prostitute, of

11:56

having sex with a porn star on the

11:58

night while your wife was. pregnant,

12:00

I mean, what are you talking

12:02

about? You have the morals of

12:04

an alley cat. An

12:07

alley cat, Kristin, I'm not sure how many

12:09

20-somethings I've ever heard that word

12:11

used in that way. When you listen to

12:13

him speaking so quickly like that, sometimes

12:16

not able to get all the words out, coupled

12:18

by the voice that was struggling with a cold,

12:21

freezing up at times, a halting performance, as we

12:23

heard from a couple of folks. Democrats are gonna

12:25

be upset about this, worried about this tomorrow. How

12:27

can you with a straight face tell people that

12:30

he's gonna be in good shape four years from

12:32

now running this country? I mean, I think

12:34

also, in addition to that, he was trying to

12:36

fit too many things in to his answers. Right,

12:38

I mean, Trump is really

12:40

good at taking one idea and running with

12:42

it. Whether that's true

12:45

or not, usually mostly false. But

12:47

trying to fit too much, you know, and

12:50

if you're quiet and you don't have

12:52

that booming voice, then it's hard for people to hear. Well,

12:54

there were a lot of questions about his travel schedule. He

12:56

was in three different time zones over the last two weeks.

12:58

Was that a fail on his

13:00

staff's part? He's the President

13:02

of the United States. I wouldn't presume to know

13:04

exactly where and when he needs to be where he

13:07

needs to be. But he'll have some work

13:09

to do after this. Of

13:11

course, as we consider what this debate ultimately was

13:13

about, we're here analyzing the performance of both of

13:16

those candidates, but they did at

13:18

times talk about policy. Joe Biden

13:20

decided to close out his remarks talking about economic

13:22

policy, what he wants to do in taxes, and

13:24

to get inflation down. Donald Trump

13:26

did at one point talk about tariffs, suggesting

13:28

they're not going to drive prices higher. He

13:30

said it just will force other countries to

13:32

pay us a lot of money. Rick,

13:35

for a voter sitting at home, do

13:37

you think any of that realistically broke

13:39

through, or was the performance aspect ultimately

13:42

too distracting? Yeah, I

13:44

think it was very hard to get past

13:46

the performance. And also the hatred between the

13:48

two individuals, right? I mean, that is a

13:50

block to actually hearing anything positive coming out

13:53

of their mouths. They

13:55

talked to each other more than they talked to

13:57

the American people. And that was a stark departure.

14:00

from Joe Biden four years ago, where he would

14:02

take time to look directly into the camera and

14:05

talk directly to the American people about

14:07

issues he thought were important. So I

14:10

think it was relatively void of any

14:12

real policy prescriptions. I mean, even the

14:14

closing statements didn't really punch through a

14:17

specific policy idea. Joe

14:20

Biden talked about making the tax code

14:22

simpler and fairer, but he didn't give

14:24

any real details behind what that would

14:26

look like. And Donald Trump, I mean,

14:29

arguably he did what he does every single day on

14:31

the campaign trail. When he goes to his big events,

14:33

he just makes things up. And he

14:35

talks about how great they are. And I'm

14:37

sure his campaign was cringing when he got

14:39

into a contest of wills

14:41

over who's got the better golf game and

14:43

how many country club championships he just won.

14:45

That was a moment. And

14:48

so I don't think either one of

14:50

them distinguished themselves particularly well. I mean, the idea

14:52

that we're even talking about Donald Trump winning

14:55

a debate is because it was such a

14:57

disastrous performance by Joe Biden. And

14:59

so if you were a independent voter, a

15:03

swing voter from one of the key states looking into

15:05

this debate saying, who's got something that I can latch

15:07

on to that I'm going to be

15:10

excited about voting for? I

15:13

don't think either one of them were able to accomplish that

15:15

goal. And if anything, I wouldn't

15:17

be surprised that the double haters get

15:19

bigger, not smaller as a result of

15:21

this debate. That's saying something. It plays

15:23

poorly for both candidates in your opinion.

15:26

By the way, our Atlanta bureau chief in the room

15:28

says no democratic surrogates on the spin room

15:30

floor right now. Kristen, how long is

15:33

it gonna take the party to come

15:35

up with an answer to this? I mean, I think

15:37

they're gonna have to come up with how they're gonna

15:39

talk about it immediately. And I think that the campaign's

15:41

ready to do that. And I think if you're gonna

15:43

look at, the

15:45

president is right on the issues. He

15:48

was up against a liar. The

15:50

performance wasn't what it needed to be. The

15:53

campaign's gonna have to be in full mode,

15:56

out there talking to people about what

15:58

makes this president different. these issues

16:00

are so important to the American

16:02

people. And it's not an easy

16:04

thing to do when you have somebody that you're up against

16:07

that's just lying. Yeah. As we

16:09

are in our final minute here, I would just point

16:11

out that we are now two weeks out from

16:13

Donald Trump's sentencing in New York when

16:15

he was convicted of 34 felony crimes.

16:19

And we are just days out from getting a decision

16:21

from the Supreme Court on whether he has presidential immunity

16:23

in another case with which he has been

16:26

charged and in regard to January 6th.

16:28

So there could still be much to develop in this

16:30

race. And yet it feels like Joe, that

16:32

something did shift in this race this evening.

16:35

It did. We'll see how things feel tomorrow.

16:37

And of course we'll be back to hash

16:39

out the details on the day after. Our

16:41

thanks to Rick Davis, Republican strategist and partner

16:43

at Stonecourt Capital and Democratic strategist, Kristen Hahn,

16:46

partner at Rock Solutions. A perfect panel with

16:48

some smart insights tonight. Kayleigh, we have a

16:50

lot to learn tomorrow as

16:52

the campaigns get on the road. Donald

16:55

Trump's going to Virginia, Joe Biden to North Carolina,

16:58

and it continues. We'll have another debate

17:00

in September, assuming that takes place. That

17:02

concludes our special coverage of the first

17:04

2024 presidential debate. Thanks for

17:06

joining us on Bloomberg TV and

17:08

radio. The

17:15

Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit returns to

17:17

Singapore on July 31st for

17:20

solutions driven discussions on unlocking

17:22

growth in times of increased

17:24

ESG scrutiny and competition. Join

17:26

global business leaders and investors to

17:29

drive innovation and scale best practices

17:31

in sustainable business and finance. Learn

17:34

more at bloomberglive.com/sustainablebizsingapore.

17:38

That's bloomberglive.com/sustainablebizsingapore.