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more at nature.org/solutions. This

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is Madeleine here with my dad, John, and

0:23

we're missing the presidential debate tonight to see

0:25

the Rolling Stones in Chicago. This

0:27

podcast was recorded at 11 32 p.m. Eastern

0:31

time on Thursday, June 27, 2024. Things

0:34

may have changed by the time you hear it. And

0:37

here's the show. Oh,

0:42

congratulations. That's much more fun. Good

0:44

for them. Hey

0:46

there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

0:48

I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting.

0:51

I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign.

0:53

And I'm Mara Liasen, senior national political

0:55

correspondent. The CNN presidential debate has now

0:58

concluded. You can hear Stephen in the

1:00

spin room with his ambient noise back

1:02

there. And I want to go ahead

1:04

and talk about what stood out to

1:06

both of you. Mara, let's start with

1:09

you, though. What stood out to you

1:11

from tonight? What stood out for me

1:14

was that Joe Biden

1:16

didn't even surpass the low expectations

1:18

that had been set for him.

1:21

And I've never gotten such a

1:23

stream of texts from

1:25

heartbroken and panic Democrats as

1:27

I have tonight. The

1:30

reason this race has

1:32

been so close is not because

1:34

Donald Trump has been outperforming

1:36

or overperforming his numbers from

1:39

2020. It's because

1:41

Biden has been underperforming his numbers

1:43

from 2020. And he

1:45

called for this debate. He asked for it

1:47

to shake up the race and

1:49

his performance in the debate failed

1:52

to do that. From the start. From

1:54

the very start, the first 30 seconds

1:58

because his bottom line is. Number

2:00

one job tonight was to show people who

2:02

were worried that he was too old that

2:04

he was up to the job and he failed

2:07

Here's a pretty early on example

2:09

of that making sure that we're

2:11

able to make every single solitary

2:13

person Eligible

2:15

for what I've been able to do

2:17

with the with the Covid excuse me

2:20

with dealing with

2:22

everything we have to do with Look

2:27

if We finally

2:30

beat Medicare. Thank you president

2:32

Biden president Trump. Yeah a combination of

2:34

hard to hear and hard to follow is not good

2:37

Steven what stood out to you

2:39

during tonight's debate? Yeah And

2:41

so I'm sitting here in the spin

2:44

room where right now the surrogates from

2:46

both campaigns are being mobbed by Cameras

2:48

and reporters and questions about everything that

2:50

just happened in the last two

2:53

hours or so The thing that stood

2:55

out to me is something that I've

2:57

seen time and time and time again

3:00

on the campaign trail is that Trump's

3:02

vision? for America how he's attacking Joe

3:04

Biden and how he's painting his Presidential

3:07

run this time is just this

3:10

dire doom and gloom vision I

3:12

mean to hear Trump tell America is

3:14

in shambles right now and it will

3:16

maybe cease to exist if he's not

3:18

elected again and I think that's something

3:20

that has resonated and

3:23

really rooted itself in the psyche

3:25

of the Republican Party right now

3:28

and it's something that is Very

3:30

motivating for a very very devoted

3:32

base of his but it's also

3:35

something that is Off-putting

3:37

to more moderate voters to people

3:40

who you know Don't necessarily

3:42

feel like they can't walk outside

3:44

of their door because everything is

3:46

terrible under Joe Biden's economy And

3:48

I think in a bit of

3:50

a contrarian take from Mara I

3:52

think Biden's performance was not great

3:54

at the beginning overall still not

3:56

that great But I don't

3:58

think in the long run It is going

4:00

to matter as much as what Trump

4:02

is saying and doing is presenting himself,

4:04

because, I mean, remember, part of

4:07

the reason that Joe Biden won the first time

4:09

was because he was not Donald Trump. And that's

4:11

kind of what we're seeing in this rematch here

4:13

in 2024. Yeah. And

4:15

look, if voters are trying to decide between the

4:17

guy that they think is too old and the

4:19

guy they think is too dangerous, I

4:22

don't think that Trump necessarily

4:24

quieted their concerns tonight. Trump

4:27

certainly came off as more vigorous than

4:29

Biden did, but he didn't

4:32

pivot to offering a positive

4:35

vision for the future. He still came

4:37

off as angry. And even

4:40

though the moderators didn't fact check

4:42

at all during this debate, I would

4:44

say the vast majority of

4:46

claims he made were demonstrable lies. And

4:48

Mara, I would also say that in

4:50

this fog of war immediately after the

4:52

debate, there's a lot of hot takes,

4:55

there's a lot of thoughts, there's a

4:57

lot of people texting and tweeting and

4:59

everything saying 25th Amendment now, or we

5:01

need a brokered convention. But

5:03

what is going to be important is

5:06

what trickles down not just to the

5:08

pundits and the reporters and the people

5:10

shaping the coverage of this campaign, but

5:12

to those people that are maybe on

5:15

the fence about voting or the people

5:17

that still could conceivably choose between

5:19

the two candidates or a third party candidate or

5:21

not voting at all. If

5:23

you look at things in isolation, for example,

5:25

the comments at the end of the debate

5:28

were very different than the beginning of the

5:30

debate. And so I think it's still too

5:32

early to say what effect this is going

5:34

to have. I will say, though,

5:36

debates typically don't move the needle. This

5:39

one in this election year with these

5:41

two candidates could be different. Yeah.

5:43

And you know, when you talk about the

5:45

things that trickle down to voters and really

5:48

stick with them about debates, they're those moments

5:50

that become viral. They're the memes. And

5:52

there were just a lot of camera

5:54

shots of Joe Biden with his mouth

5:57

open. And when he talked,

5:59

he sounded like. like a desiccated husk. Those

6:01

are things that are gonna be replayed ad

6:03

nauseam on social media, and they might be

6:05

the things that voters end up remembering because

6:07

they're just gonna hear about them so much.

6:10

Yeah, and you know, I try to watch

6:12

the debate at times through the lens of,

6:14

like the kind of voter that Stephen just

6:16

described, like someone who might be on the

6:18

fence, maybe unsure of how to vote, and

6:20

hasn't really been paying that much attention to

6:22

the election up until now, which I think

6:24

is a lot of voters. This was an

6:26

opportunity for both Trump and Biden to make

6:28

a pitch to those voters, to provide maybe

6:30

some clarity on big issues, policy-wise, that the

6:32

country is facing. And I gotta

6:34

say, I don't know how anyone walked

6:36

away from this debate with like a

6:38

better picture, specifically on policy. Some really

6:40

important issues were brought up, like inflation

6:42

and childcare costs. And I don't know,

6:44

I didn't hear many lucid clear policy

6:47

proposals. And I mean, a lot of

6:49

this got mired in like kind of

6:51

tangential conversations. Like, I mean, what was

6:53

that conversation about Gulf? I

6:55

mean, I can't even, how is this, in the

6:57

90 minutes we have to debate the

6:59

future of this country? How is this taking up

7:01

this much time? It was

7:03

really kind of striking to me. You know, there's

7:06

the hypothetical meme about, oh, what is the

7:08

average voter in a diner in the Midwest

7:10

think about this? I mean, honestly, they might

7:12

talk about the bickering back and forth over

7:15

the Gulf scores and who's more physically fit,

7:17

but honestly not in a good way for

7:19

the future of democracy, which also was a

7:22

topic of discussion. And we're

7:24

definitely gonna talk more about that soon. For

7:26

now, a quick break, more in a second. Support

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