0:00

What if AI could help save wildlife? We're

0:02

trying to help conserve the wildlife

0:05

that lives alongside Britain's railways. That's

0:08

Anthony Dancer of the Zoological Society of

0:10

London. ZSL partnered with Network Rail, which

0:12

maintains all 20,000 miles of

0:14

Britain's railway. Together, they use Google Cloud AI to

0:16

get a clearer picture of the animals living near

0:18

the lines. Here's Network Rail's Neil

0:20

Strong. Using Google Cloud AI, we're

0:22

able to interpret a lot more data than

0:25

we would have been able to with our

0:27

ecologist sitting behind a computer looking at images

0:29

or listening to sound files. Learn

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more at g.co/cloud. From

0:35

the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This

0:38

is The Daily. Today,

0:42

in the first debate of the 2024 presidentories, Joe

0:46

Biden hoped to make the case that

0:48

Donald Trump was unfit to return to

0:50

the White House. Instead,

0:54

Biden's weak performance deepened

0:56

doubts about his own fitness for the job.

1:03

My colleague, Asted Herndon, a

1:05

political reporter and host of The

1:08

Run-Up, explains what happened. It's

1:17

Friday, June 28. Asted,

1:23

good evening, almost good morning.

1:25

By the time we're done talking, it is definitely going to

1:27

be Friday morning. Thank you

1:30

for joining us at what is clearly a

1:32

very tender hour. No, thank you for

1:34

having me. Okay. This

1:36

was always going to be

1:38

a historic debate. Two single-term

1:40

presidents debating each other for

1:42

a chance at a second

1:44

term, both choosing

1:47

to opt out of

1:49

the traditional presidential commission-authorized

1:51

debates. We've never had

1:53

any of this before, but that's not,

1:56

I would wager, what people are going

1:58

to remember about. this debate,

2:00

I suspect they're going

2:03

to remember just how much one

2:05

of these candidates openly

2:07

struggled, struggled mightily

2:09

on the biggest possible stage. Yeah,

2:12

I mean, there were some things

2:14

I was expecting for tonight's debate.

2:16

Bitter insults, an incumbent defending a

2:19

policy record, a challenger really attacking

2:21

it. But one thing I didn't

2:23

expect was for President Biden to

2:26

kind of live up to the

2:28

caricature of him that has

2:30

been really been created over the last

2:33

six months by Republicans. In the first

2:35

10 minutes, he was not

2:37

even just a poor debater. He

2:39

seems like a struggling old man

2:41

in a way that I

2:44

think for a lot of people was

2:47

alarming, not even just

2:49

in a political sense, but in a

2:51

personal sense. And I think

2:53

then the low bar that had been

2:55

created for him for tonight's performance, it

2:58

immediately raised alarm flags that he

3:00

was not even clearing it. Hmm.

3:02

Well, let's talk about what both

3:05

Biden and Trump were

3:07

trying to do

3:10

in this debate before we return to

3:12

the question of how

3:15

Biden did or didn't do and how Trump did

3:18

or didn't do tonight. You know, for Trump,

3:20

there is an electoral opening right now for

3:22

him to really create a coalition that's unique

3:24

for a Republican candidate. If you believe the

3:27

polling or the kind of trend lines that

3:29

we have seen in polling over the last

3:31

six months, Donald Trump is not

3:33

winning back the kind of traditional Republicans he's

3:36

lost over the last four years. He's

3:38

winning over people who were considered

3:41

more traditionally Democratic groups or just

3:43

more diseffective voters in general, younger

3:45

people, people of color, a low

3:48

income folks, black folks. There has

3:50

been a kind of growth among those

3:52

margins that's provided Trump with this ability to

3:54

say that if he can put that

3:56

together in November, there's a real unique path

3:58

for him to. to beat Joe Biden. But

4:01

that path requires a candidate who's kind of

4:03

speaking in more disciplined, controlled tones that I

4:06

think we're used to Trump talking. And the

4:08

Trump campaign was eager to put that best

4:10

foot forward. Now, on the

4:12

Biden side, they have a fundamental problem,

4:14

which is that the majority of Americans

4:16

think the president is too old to

4:18

serve. And the prospect of an 86-year-old

4:20

Joe Biden at the end of a

4:22

second term, frankly, freaks folks out. And

4:24

the Biden campaign's response to that problem

4:26

has been, frankly, to diminish it, but

4:28

also say to watch him. And the

4:30

idea was that if they had an

4:32

earlier debate before the conventions and before

4:34

the race really kicked off, they can

4:36

put some of those concerns to bed,

4:38

as we saw him slightly due at

4:41

the State of the Union earlier this

4:43

year. But as we just talked

4:45

about, Biden provided his party

4:47

no reassurance tonight. OK,

4:49

well, take us into

4:52

the meat of this debate.

4:54

And let's explore why this

4:56

night ended up being so

4:58

problematic for Biden. And let's

5:00

try to understand whether Trump

5:02

did achieve his goal of

5:05

being the kind of candidate

5:07

who can assemble this theoretical,

5:09

broad coalition. Well, let me

5:11

set the scene. We're

5:14

live from Georgia, a key battleground state in

5:17

the race for the White House. Good

5:19

evening. I'm Dana Bash, anchor of

5:22

CNN. Dana Bash and Jake Tapper,

5:24

the moderators, introduced both candidates. Now,

5:27

please welcome the 46th president of

5:29

the United States, Joe Biden. And

5:35

when Biden walked onto the stage, I mean,

5:38

it's generous to call it a walk. He,

5:40

frankly, shuffled in a way that was only

5:42

a visual reminder of the

5:44

advanced age of this president. Gentlemen,

5:47

thanks so much for being here. Let's begin the

5:49

debate. And let's start with the issue that voters

5:51

consistently is their top

5:54

concern, the economy. And

5:56

within the first couple answers, what do you

5:58

say to voters who feel they are worse?

6:00

off under your presidency than they were under

6:02

President Trump. We got to take a look

6:04

at what I was left when I became

6:06

president and what Mr. Trump left me. The

6:09

immediate thing that was noticeable was not

6:11

about what he was saying, but about

6:13

how he sounded. The economy collapsed. There

6:16

were no jobs. Unemployment rate rose to

6:18

15 percent. Biden's voice

6:20

was really raspy. We created 15,000 new

6:22

jobs and we brought out another position

6:24

where. It sounded as if he needed

6:26

to clear his throat. He was talking

6:28

really softly. There's more to be done.

6:30

Working class people are still in trouble.

6:33

And it made his first couple of answers

6:35

almost incoherent. What I'm going to do is

6:37

fix the tax system. For example, we

6:40

have a thousand billionaires in America. I

6:42

mean, billionaires in America. And what's happening?

6:45

And then we got to one answer

6:47

that was literally incoherent. Making sure that

6:50

we're able to make every single solitary

6:52

person eligible

6:54

for what I've been able to do with the

6:58

COVID, excuse me, with dealing

7:00

with everything we have to do with. Look,

7:06

if we finally

7:08

beat Medicare. Thank you,

7:10

President Biden. President Trump eventually ended up

7:13

trailing off such that it became clear

7:15

that this was not someone who was

7:17

fully in command of their

7:19

presence at the moment. And

7:21

that really set the tone for Biden's

7:24

performance throughout the whole debate. Right. This

7:27

was the moment, if we're being

7:29

honest, where everyone in politics and

7:31

political journalism's phones just started exploding

7:33

with text messages. All

7:35

of them saying some version of, oh gosh,

7:39

this debate is going really

7:41

quite badly for President Biden. And

7:44

I said to your point about what he was

7:46

seeking to do and the assurances he was trying

7:48

to give people in his party and beyond his

7:50

party. He was not giving

7:52

those assurances at all. One

8:00

says, I think you have to question seriously whether

8:02

he can even make it to the end of

8:04

this night. Another says, man,

8:06

this just doesn't feel good to watch.

8:09

I mean, it was an immediate sense

8:11

of panic that was spreading among the

8:13

party. And I think it's because, you

8:15

know, typically these debates have an air

8:18

of optics and showmanship, but for Biden

8:20

and his kind of political challenge, it

8:22

was really about that sense of energy

8:24

and about that sense of command of

8:26

stage because the question of age has

8:29

been so circling around his candidacy. And

8:31

so for him to immediately come out

8:33

with a both presentation and

8:35

an answer that was frankly not substantive

8:38

and hard to follow, it sent the

8:40

concerns to the roof. I mean, things

8:42

went from zero to 100 very fast,

8:44

partially because I think that's

8:46

what people were coming in seeing as

8:49

a baseline for him. And he very

8:51

immediately stumbled. I would make an analogy

8:53

to like an Olympic hurdler, right, where

8:55

at the first hurdle, he fell. Donald

8:58

Trump, on the other hand, doesn't seem

9:01

to have lost his edge. That

9:03

becomes very clear from the beginning

9:05

of the debate and instead is

9:08

displaying his usual swagger as well

9:10

as his usual challenges with the

9:12

facts. Yeah, absolutely. To the

9:14

extent that Donald Trump can be focused

9:16

on policy, he came out in that

9:18

mode today. We are the greatest

9:20

economy in the history of our country. We

9:23

have never done so well. We

9:27

know that the campaign really wants to focus on three

9:29

things, inflation, immigration, and

9:37

crime. The only jobs he

9:39

created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back

9:41

jobs that bounce back from the COVID. And

9:44

you could see Trump really returning to those in the early

9:46

kind of 10, 15 minutes. He

9:48

inherited almost no inflation and it stayed that way

9:50

for 14 months. And then

9:53

it blew up under his leadership because they spent

9:55

money like a bunch of people that

9:57

didn't know what they were doing and they don't

9:59

know what they were doing. He repeatedly tied. Biden

10:01

to rising prices and tried to frame the economy

10:03

that he stewarded as president as significantly better than

10:05

the one that we are experiencing now. Migrant

10:08

crime. I call it Biden migrant crime.

10:10

They're killing our citizens at a level

10:12

that we've never seen before. He framed

10:14

the country as safer four years ago

10:16

than what we're experiencing now. And it's

10:18

a shame. What's happened to our country

10:21

in the last four years is not

10:23

to be believed. You could see him

10:25

trying to follow through on the kind of

10:27

classic premise of a reelection campaign where

10:29

the challenger really tries to ask the

10:31

question, are you better off than you were

10:34

four years ago? And so

10:36

we got the Donald Trump version of that

10:38

tonight, but we should be clear. It's infused

10:40

with a lot of his usual set of

10:42

falsehoods as we have come to expect from

10:44

him. And what struck me was for all

10:47

the exaggerations and some of the falsehoods in

10:50

what Trump was saying, the

10:52

contrast between his swagger and

10:55

his presentation and Biden's became

10:58

the most pronounced

11:00

part of this back and forth. Yeah,

11:03

I think you're right that Trump sounded and felt

11:05

a little more, dare we say,

11:08

presidential than Biden in those first

11:10

10 minutes. But the bar was

11:12

on the floor because the president

11:14

came out with such, I think,

11:16

a shocking level of incoherence that

11:18

it made Donald Trump, the

11:21

Donald Trump we have seen spew

11:23

falsehoods, conspiracies, unhingedness at every turn.

11:25

It made him seem like the

11:28

person who kind of had their

11:30

ducks in the row. There's

11:32

40% fewer people coming across the border

11:35

illegally. It's better when he left office.

11:37

And in a kind of crystallizing moment of

11:39

this interaction. And I'm going to continue to

11:41

move until we get the total ban on

11:45

the total initiative

11:47

relative to what we're going to

11:49

do with more border patrol and

11:51

more asogamos. After one

11:53

of Biden's more meandering answers, Trump

11:55

responds with a quip that really

11:57

said what everyone was thinking. President

12:00

Trump. I really don't know what he said

12:02

at the end of their sentence. I don't think he knows what

12:04

he said either. Look, saying that I don't

12:06

know what Biden said at the end of the sentence, and

12:08

I don't know if he does either. This

12:11

is the first presidential election since

12:13

the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.

12:15

Wade. It feels like

12:17

a strong topic for Biden in this

12:19

part of the debate was

12:22

going to be abortion. Which returned

12:24

the issue of abortion to the

12:26

states. Correct. And the

12:28

moderators bring it up. It felt

12:30

like low-hanging fruit, an opportunity for

12:32

Biden to blame Trump for the

12:34

fall of Roe v. Wade and

12:37

score some real points on the board.

12:39

But it didn't feel like that's what

12:41

happened. No, it didn't. And I think

12:43

that speaks to the point that came

12:45

through during this debate that was consistently

12:47

not the message, it was the messenger.

12:49

Abortion has been a politically

12:51

potent issue for Democrats and something that

12:53

folks have been looking for Biden to

12:55

speak to directly. Do you support any

12:58

legal limits on how late a woman

13:00

should be able to terminate a pregnancy?

13:02

I support it Roe v. Wade. And

13:04

he kind of botched that framing. Which

13:06

had three trimesters. The first time is

13:09

between the woman and the doctor. Second

13:11

time is between the doctor and an

13:13

extreme situation. The third time is between

13:16

the doctor, I mean between the woman

13:18

and the state. He was trying to

13:20

seemingly make an analogy about trimesters that

13:23

didn't really come through very clearly. And

13:25

so that I think was a

13:27

moment where when the moderator brought it

13:29

up, he would feel Democrats think, okay,

13:32

this is something that might play better

13:34

for us than the economy or

13:36

immigration. But like a lot of

13:38

things in this debate, Biden just didn't seem to

13:40

put it together that well. Eventually,

13:43

in this first half of the debate, things

13:46

start to get a bit more personal.

13:48

They start to get a bit nastier

13:50

between these two candidates who clearly do

13:52

not like each other at all. And

13:55

interestingly, given your framing of, you know,

13:57

would Trump moderate some of his... his

14:00

excesses. It was

14:03

Biden who went there first.

14:06

Yeah, it was. And you know, we

14:08

should put the background here. There was

14:10

previous reporting that Donald Trump had called

14:12

fallen soldiers suckers and losers while touring

14:14

a military grave site. I went to

14:16

the World War Two cemetery, World War

14:18

One cemetery refused to go to. He

14:21

was standing with his four-star general and he

14:23

told me, said, I don't want to go

14:25

in there because there are much of losers

14:27

and suckers. And that's what Biden was referring

14:29

to framing Trump as someone who has consistently

14:31

disrespected veterans. We're also in a situation where

14:33

we have great respect for veterans. My son

14:35

spent a year in Iraq. But

14:39

Biden lands on saying, My son was not

14:41

a loser, he was not a sucker. And

14:43

then looks to Trump and says, you're the

14:45

sucker. You're the loser. You're the sucker. You're

14:47

the loser. And

14:49

I thought for me, this reflected the

14:51

Biden campaign strategy of wanting to draw

14:53

Trump out to kind of bring out,

14:56

let's say, more chaotic version of him

14:58

that was less stuck to the policy

15:00

script. And so I was looking at

15:02

this moment to see, OK, how is

15:04

Trump going to respond to this? First

15:07

of all, that was a made up quote,

15:09

suckers and losers. They made it up. It

15:11

was in a third rate magazine that's failing

15:14

like many of these. He denied kind of

15:16

making the suckers and losers remark about dead

15:18

soldiers, but he didn't kind of respond on

15:20

the personal level in which Biden was trying

15:22

to draw him out to. It was made

15:25

up by him just like Russia, Russia, Russia

15:27

was made up just like he reframed the

15:29

conversation about commander in chief to be about

15:31

the kind of global instability that has happened

15:33

under Biden's watch. I tell you what happened.

15:35

He was so bad with Afghanistan. It was

15:38

such a horrible embarrassment, most embarrassing moment. This

15:40

is when he mentions the kind of Afghanistan withdrawal.

15:43

We lost 13 beautiful soldiers and

15:45

38 soldiers were obliterated. And

15:47

by the way, we left and kind

15:49

of starts framing the world as more

15:51

generally unsafe under Biden than it was

15:53

under Trump. That's why you had no

15:55

terror at all during my administration. This

15:57

place, the whole world is blowing up.

16:00

under him. Now, certainly

16:02

that's done in a kind of Trumpian

16:04

way, but it was an example of

16:06

him, at least at that moment, not

16:08

really meeting Biden in the mud and

16:10

trying to stay focused on what I

16:12

think was his campaign's goal in this

16:14

night, which was to present him as

16:16

someone making a policy first challenge to

16:18

Biden rather than a personal one. Right.

16:21

And what seems to happen for the next 10 or

16:23

15 minutes in the debate is that Biden

16:25

keeps trying to get under Trump's skin

16:27

and really make the case that

16:30

there's nothing about him that

16:33

makes him fit to be president. Yeah.

16:35

You could feel President Biden trying to

16:37

draw out the more crazy, chaotic side

16:39

of Donald Trump. Some of the attacks

16:41

were lighter. And now he says that

16:43

he loses again such a whiner that

16:45

he is, that it could be a

16:48

bloodbath. Things like calling him a whiner,

16:50

for example. For doing a whole range

16:52

of things, of having sex

16:54

with a porn star. At one point, he

16:56

pointed out the allegations that Donald Trump had

16:58

sex with a porn star while his wife

17:00

was pregnant. You have the morals of an

17:02

alley cat. And at another point, the

17:04

only person in this stage is a convicted felon

17:06

as the man I'm looking at right now. He

17:09

mentioned the most serious, I think, of

17:11

the political allegations, which is the idea

17:13

that Donald Trump has convicted felon is

17:15

unfit to be president. And you could

17:17

see Trump physically wince when the words

17:19

felon were set out loud, which I

17:21

think is reflective to just how much

17:23

that label really stings him. I'm

17:26

going to give you a minute, President

17:28

Trump, for a follow up question I have.

17:32

After a jury convicted you of 34 felonies last month,

17:35

you said if reelected, you would quote,

17:37

have every right to go after, unquote,

17:39

your political opponents. You just talked about

17:41

members of the select committee on January

17:43

6 going to jail. Your main

17:45

political opponent is standing on stage with you

17:47

tonight. Can you clarify exactly what it means

17:49

about you feeling you have every right to

17:51

go after your political opponents? And then he

17:53

talks about January 6. Well, I said my

17:55

retribution is going to be success. We're going

17:58

to make this country successful again. because right

18:00

now it's a failing nation. It

18:02

becomes very clear that he's trying to

18:04

obfuscate his own role in what was

18:06

that day. On January 6th, we

18:08

had a great border. Nobody coming through,

18:11

very few. And Trump goes into a

18:13

soliloquy about... On January 6th, we were

18:15

energy independent. On January 6th, we had

18:18

the lowest taxes ever. We had the

18:20

lowest regulations ever. Oh, January 6th, we

18:22

had a good economy. On January 6th,

18:24

we were respected all over the world.

18:27

January 6th, our role was respected in

18:29

the world, completely actually diverting the question

18:31

that was at hand, which is, did

18:33

Donald Trump encourage a mob that struck

18:36

at the heart of democracy? You have

18:38

80 seconds left. My question was, what

18:40

do you say to those voters who

18:42

believe that you violated your constitutional oath

18:45

through your actions and inaction on January

18:47

6th, 2021, and worry that you'll do

18:49

it again? Well, I didn't say that

18:51

to anybody. I said peacefully and patriotically.

18:54

And Nancy Pelosi, if you just watch

18:56

the news. And

18:58

so that's the kind of push

19:01

and pull that we were seeing

19:03

play out on the stage, which

19:05

is that certainly Trump was engaging

19:07

in his normal level of kind

19:09

of dodges and falsehoods. But it

19:11

was coming off, I think, more

19:13

successfully than some expected, partially because

19:15

Biden was just ineffective in landing

19:17

some of those attacks. We'll be

19:19

right back. Google

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Cloud AI allows us to have access

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to huge amounts of computational scale to

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work on really important problems in the world. Learn

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how organizations are building with AI from Google

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Cloud at g.co.com. I'm

20:07

Julian Barnes. I'm an intelligence reporter at

20:09

The New York Times. I try to

20:11

find out what the U.S. government is

20:13

keeping secret. Governments keep

20:16

secrets for all kinds of reasons. They

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But we at The New York Times

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that by subscribing to The New York Times. So

21:01

instead, the second half of the debate starts

21:03

with a question that feels quite

21:05

central to what you described as

21:08

Trump's strategy of trying to build

21:10

this bigger coalition that exists in

21:12

theory that he's trying to make

21:15

real in November. And it's a

21:17

question the moderators ask of Biden

21:20

and why he seems

21:22

to have disappointed

21:24

black America. Yeah,

21:26

and you're right. Biden knows that

21:28

black voters are an overwhelmingly democratic

21:30

constituency. And theoretically, if those folks

21:33

came home to support him, it

21:35

wouldn't be much harder to see

21:37

the path for Donald Trump's victory.

21:39

What do you say to black voters

21:42

who are disappointed with the progress so far?

21:44

So he tries to give a little two

21:46

part answer here. I say I don't blame

21:48

them for being disappointed. Inflation is still hurting

21:50

them badly. For example, I provided for the

21:53

idea that any black family first

21:55

time homebuyer should get a $10,000 tax credit,

21:58

both acknowledging that black

22:00

voters are right to feel some

22:02

disappointment in Democrats while also pointing

22:04

to some things his administration has

22:07

done to provide support for those

22:09

communities. He's blaming inflation, and

22:11

he's right. It's been very bad. He

22:13

caused the inflation, and it's killing

22:15

black families. And do you see

22:17

or Trump saying that none of

22:19

those things are mattering because inflation

22:21

is hurting black communities more? His

22:24

big kill on the black

22:26

people is the millions of people that

22:28

he's allowed to come in through the

22:31

border. They're taking black jobs now. And

22:33

also that immigration is taking what Trump

22:35

dubs, quote unquote, black jobs. Now,

22:38

I'm not exactly sure what black jobs

22:40

are, but we could guess that Trump

22:42

here is trying to mean that influx

22:44

of immigration has hurt specifically black communities

22:47

more than other ones. And you haven't

22:49

seen it yet, but you're going to

22:51

see something that's going to be the

22:54

worst in our history. Thank you. That's,

22:56

again, Trump hitting that three-pong message in

22:58

one, inflation, immigration,

23:02

and crime. And those things are

23:04

all wrapped up in that answer.

23:06

And it's really the pitch that

23:08

Trump is giving to black voters.

23:10

So this is Trump executing on

23:12

the strategy that you

23:15

mentioned him wanting to execute on

23:17

in this debate, which is finding

23:19

a way of appealing

23:21

to this group of voters traditionally

23:23

democratic through and through who are

23:26

intrigued by him and might

23:28

come to him in this election. He is

23:31

threading a complicated needle in seeking

23:33

their votes. He's seeming

23:35

to succeed a bit. Yes and no,

23:37

because I also think this answer was

23:39

a real reminder of how Donald Trump

23:42

is not a natural communicator on these

23:44

issues. There were some moments in this

23:46

debate that definitely reminded us of the

23:48

Donald Trump who lost four years ago,

23:50

frankly, because most of the country did

23:52

find him unacceptable. Will you take any

23:54

action as president to slow the climate

23:56

crisis? Let me just go back to

23:59

what I said. he said about the

24:01

police. When asked

24:03

about climate change, he doesn't answer the question

24:05

at all. 38 seconds left

24:07

of President Trump. Will you take

24:10

any action as president to slow

24:12

the climate crisis? And then after

24:14

a follow up by the moderators,

24:16

he goes on to kind of

24:18

classic Trump soliloquy. So I want

24:20

absolutely immaculate clean water. About how

24:22

I want absolutely immaculate clean water.

24:24

I want absolutely clean air. And

24:27

we had it. We had H2O. We

24:30

had the best numbers ever. We have the

24:32

best H2O. It's

24:34

the Trump of the memes that frankly,

24:36

I think it's him further away from

24:38

who he wants to be if he's

24:40

going to pass his own kind of

24:42

standard in terms of reaching different folks

24:44

for November. Right. What

24:46

kept striking me in this second

24:48

half as in this climate change

24:50

exchange is just how consistently Trump

24:52

is not answering the questions that

24:54

the moderators are asking him. Oh,

24:58

absolutely. Whether it be questions

25:00

about childcare, Medicare, whether it's

25:02

questions about opioids. These are

25:04

core issues people cared about.

25:06

And Trump almost never responded

25:08

to the moderators direct questions

25:10

about those things. He almost

25:12

always stayed in those three

25:14

buckets that were clearly his

25:16

focus to attack Biden. Economy,

25:18

immigration, crime. It's around

25:20

here that the moderators turn

25:23

to a question that has

25:25

been on everyone's mind at

25:27

this point all night, which is the candidate's

25:30

age. And they start with

25:32

Biden, whose age has been quite present

25:36

in this debate. So tell us how that

25:39

unfolds. Yeah, the

25:41

moderators put to the candidates directly the

25:43

question about whether these are people who

25:45

even physically or mentally can lead the

25:47

country for the next four years. And

25:50

Biden, I have to say, didn't inspire

25:52

much confidence. First of all,

25:55

I spent half my career being

25:58

criticized being the youngest person. He

26:00

starts off by saying he spent half his

26:02

career being criticized for how young he was.

26:04

And then he goes on to say that

26:06

you should judge him for the job that

26:08

he's done in office. Look at what I've

26:10

done. Look how I've turned around the horrible

26:12

situation he left me. He's

26:15

saying to judge him by what he

26:17

did rather than how old he is.

26:19

The problem is that the first part

26:21

of the debate was so defined by

26:24

how inarticulate he was that the question

26:26

of age had been subtly already answered

26:28

and he had flunked that test. Now,

26:30

Trump responds in a maybe even more

26:32

ridiculous fashion. What do you say to

26:35

voters who have concerns about your capabilities

26:37

to serve? Well, I took two tests,

26:39

cognitive tests. I aced them, both of

26:41

them, as you know. Talking about the

26:43

mental acuity test that he has taken.

26:45

I just won two club championships, not

26:48

even senior, two regular club championships. I'm

26:50

focusing on his own golf game, saying

26:52

that he can hit a ball 50

26:54

yards and that that's an example of

26:56

how he feels like in physical good

26:58

shape akin to 25 and 30 years

27:01

ago. Right.

27:04

And this is when we enter the strangest

27:06

moment I have to think in presidential debate

27:08

history, two rather old men

27:10

wrangling over who has the better golf game.

27:12

Look, I'd be happy to have a driving

27:14

contest now. I got

27:16

my handicap, which when I was vice

27:18

president, down to a six. And

27:23

by the way, I told you before, I'm happy to play

27:25

golf if you carry your own bag. Think

27:27

you can do it? That's the biggest line

27:30

is a six handicap of all hours.

27:32

Eight handicap. I have to say,

27:34

like this moment personally kind of

27:36

bumped me. There

27:39

was a one minute period

27:41

where the two options to

27:43

leading the country were arguing

27:45

over their golf handicaps. I've

27:47

seen this way. I know you swing. I

27:49

mean, let's see something about

27:51

the debate about whose golf

27:54

handicap was better felt like

27:57

a distillation of the failure.

27:59

this debate to really provide

28:01

the American people with the

28:03

options and the kind of

28:05

serious policy discussion that the

28:07

office warns. Thank you,

28:09

former President Trump, President Biden.

28:12

Stay with us because we have

28:15

full analysis of this debate. Anderson

28:17

Cooper and Aaron Burnett starts now

28:19

on CNN. I said

28:21

by the end of this 90-minute debate,

28:24

it really felt like the

28:26

consuming question that it produced wasn't

28:29

so much about whether Donald Trump

28:31

was going to assemble a coalition

28:35

that won him the presidency.

28:38

The burning question seemed to be

28:40

around President Biden and his weak

28:43

performance. And so I want to

28:45

make sure we end there

28:48

with an understanding of

28:50

what now happens because

28:52

of how Joe Biden performed and

28:56

what it's going to mean for the rest of

28:58

the race. Yeah, I

29:01

had come into the debate thinking

29:03

that the onus was on Donald Trump

29:06

to prove himself as

29:08

a disciplined challenger who could

29:10

take what was a polling

29:12

possibility of a broad

29:14

coalition and make it real. But

29:17

frankly, that belief was based

29:19

on the assumption that Joe

29:21

Biden would clear the baseline

29:24

of coherence that would make

29:26

the age question at least

29:29

neutralized for the night. But

29:31

by the end of the night, it

29:33

became clear that that wasn't where

29:35

the conversation would be. I

29:38

think that Joe Biden's

29:41

performance was frankly so

29:43

disastrous that a

29:45

Democratic party freak out

29:47

that has been bubbling under a

29:50

lid for months now has now

29:52

exploded into the open to the

29:54

point where you have... Look, it

29:56

was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden. I

29:58

don't think there's any way. way, any other way

30:01

to slice it. His former communications director

30:03

on television saying that was a poor

30:05

performance. Right. Kate Bedington, that struck me

30:07

too. His former White House communications director

30:10

went on TV and said that was

30:12

a disappointing debate performance

30:14

from President Biden. Something Democratic

30:16

communications directors don't normally say

30:18

on the record moments after

30:20

a debate ends. Absolutely.

30:23

I mean, also. Some

30:25

within your own party are wondering if

30:28

President Biden should even step aside. What

30:30

do you say to that? Listen, first

30:32

of all, I saw an interview with

30:34

Vice President Kamala Harris and Anderson Cooper

30:36

immediately after debate with the vice president,

30:38

the cheerleader in chief for the president,

30:41

said very explicitly, yes, there was a slow start,

30:43

but it was a strong finish. She would not deny

30:45

he had a rough start, but believes that he

30:47

got better at the end. So I'm not going to

30:50

spend all night with you talking about the last

30:52

90 minutes when

30:54

I've been watching the last three and

30:56

a half years of performance and saying

30:58

the last 90 minutes does not erase

31:00

the last three and a half years,

31:02

a real acknowledgment of the whole that

31:04

Biden frankly put himself in throughout tonight's

31:06

debate. But I got to say, as

31:09

someone who has dedicated the last year and

31:11

a half to asking

31:13

a lot of Democrats questions

31:16

about how we arrived at

31:18

an 81 year old president

31:20

running for reelection, they have

31:22

consistently dismissed the overwhelming evidence

31:25

that most Americans thought Biden was too old to

31:27

run for a second time. I

31:29

brought that question to them at the DNC

31:31

as they were making his path to the

31:34

nomination easier. And the answer

31:36

that frankly, we got at the time was

31:38

that Donald Trump will

31:41

be so inherently invalid. None

31:43

of that would matter. But there

31:45

was no evidence to support that. That was

31:48

their own belief that that would

31:50

just change. And then tonight,

31:52

not only did Donald Trump not seem

31:54

like someone who was completely unfit for

31:57

the office of president, but

31:59

that Biden. Biden was the

32:02

memed version of himself, the

32:04

incoherent falling off a bike

32:06

TikTok caricature of himself. And

32:08

I think now that Democrats

32:11

are openly panicking about what Biden should

32:13

do next, about what the party should

32:15

do next. They have a

32:17

lot fewer options at their disposal.

32:19

Right. There is really no plan

32:21

B because of how Democratic leaders

32:23

handled this situation for so long.

32:26

Yes, there is no plan

32:28

B because they refused to ask the

32:30

questions that would even lead to the

32:32

creation of a plan B in

32:34

the lead up to this. And so

32:37

there aren't really clear solutions as

32:39

to what Democrats should do going

32:41

forward, and that really, I

32:43

think, is going to scare a lot of

32:46

Democrats. Because if you're

32:48

someone who wants Joe Biden to be president,

32:51

a lot of those people believe that

32:53

Donald Trump is a grave danger to this country.

32:56

And the belief was that Joe

32:58

Biden was the person uniquely positioned to

33:00

stop that from happening because he had

33:02

done it four years before, because

33:05

he had done it four years ago. I

33:08

think what's changed from last night to today is

33:11

a realization that actually nominating

33:14

Joe Biden might be the biggest risk for

33:16

the party and be the very thing that

33:19

makes a second term of Donald

33:21

Trump most possible. Well,

33:28

thank you very much. Thanks

33:31

for having me. For

33:38

more in-depth coverage of the 2024 presidential

33:41

race, check out a

33:43

said show The Run-Up, which comes

33:46

out every Thursday. You

33:48

can find The Run-Up wherever you

33:50

listen. We'll

34:03

be right back. How

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can AI help the farmers who are feeding the world? Jiva

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Learn more at Google Cloud at

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g.co.com/cloud. Here's

34:52

what else you need to know today. On

34:55

Thursday, the Supreme Court blew

34:57

up a landmark legal settlement

34:59

between prosecutors and Purdue Pharma,

35:02

the maker of OxyContin. The

35:05

settlement would have channeled $6 billion

35:07

into alleviating the opioid

35:10

epidemic that Purdue Pharma

35:12

allegedly played a major

35:14

role in creating. But

35:17

the settlement relied on a promise

35:19

to shield members of the Sackler

35:21

family that created Purdue Pharma from

35:23

future lawsuits. And in

35:26

their five to four ruling, the

35:28

Supreme Court found that shield to

35:30

be illegal and invalid. The

35:33

case was one of several major rulings

35:35

on Thursday. In another

35:37

decision, the court temporarily cleared the

35:39

way for women in Idaho to

35:42

receive emergency abortions when their health

35:44

is at risk, despite

35:46

a state law there all but

35:48

banning the procedure. In

35:50

a third decision, the court blocked

35:53

a federal plan to reduce air

35:55

pollution that drifts across state lines,

35:58

a legal defeat for Purdue. President

36:00

Biden. A

36:04

quick reminder about this week's episode of

36:06

The Interview. David Marchese

36:08

talks with Eddie Murphy about

36:10

his long career in comedy,

36:12

his return to the Beverly

36:15

Hills franchise, and about

36:17

what it's like to make his idol,

36:19

Richard Pryor, laugh. I

36:21

could have died right there. You could have

36:23

crashed a plane right there to make Richard

36:25

laugh. I made Richard laugh for real. He

36:28

laughed like this. Today's

36:35

episode was produced by Claire

36:37

Tennisgitter, Nina Feldman, and

36:39

Shannon Lin. It was edited

36:41

by Mark George, contains original

36:43

music by Dan Powell and

36:45

Marion Lozano, and was engineered

36:48

by Chris Wood and Alyssa

36:50

Moxley. Our theme music

36:52

is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lanzferk

36:54

of Wonderly. The

37:05

Daily is made by Rachel

37:07

Kwester, Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tennisgitter,

37:10

Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad

37:12

Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung,

37:15

Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee

37:17

Young, Lisa Chow, Eric

37:19

Kruppke, Mark George, Luke

37:21

Vanderplug, MJ Davis-Lynn, Dan

37:24

Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael

37:26

Benoit, Liz O'Bailen, Asta

37:28

Chottervedi, Rochelle Banja, Diana

37:30

Nguyen, Marion Lozano,

37:32

Corey Schrepple, Rob

37:34

Zipko, Alicia Butitube, Mooj

37:37

Zaidi, Patricia Willens, Rowan

37:39

Imisto, Jody Becker, Ricky

37:41

Navetsky, Nina Feldman, Will

37:43

Reed, Carlos Prieto, Ben

37:45

Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexi

37:48

Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern,

37:50

Sophia Landman, Shannon Lin,

37:53

Diane Wong, Devin Taylor,

37:55

Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Knatt,

37:57

Daniel Ramirez, and Brendan

37:59

Klink. That's it for the

38:01

Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on

38:03

Monday. Can

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name is Ed Liu. I'm a former

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NASA astronaut and I'm currently the executive

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