314. Trump stumbles - but did Harris see him off?

0:00Thanks for listening to the Restus Politics, sign up to the Restus Politics Plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestuspolitics .com. That's therestuspolitics .com. At Blinds .com, it's not just about window treatments. It's about you. Your style, your space, your way. Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right. From free expert design help to our 100 % satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

0:32Because at Blinds .com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you. Visit Blinds .com now for up to 40 % off site -wide, plus a professional measure at no cost. Rules and restrictions apply.

0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics and Me Honest Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. And this is a bonus episode because Rory and I in the interests of podcastery and the rest is politics. We both at our various homes got up and watched the Trump Harris debate and we thought we'd just share our views. Yep. You've got me straight off a plane from the United States. So I'm coming from the raw center of this whole thing. So I'm relying on you to be the more awake one and me the slightly more American background one. Okay. Tell us what you thought. What was your basic overall beat? Well, I tried to watch it.

1:22I took on board what David Urban, the Trump guy and Frank Luntz, who interviewed on leading. I took on board what they said and said, when you're watching these people, try and put yourself in the head of a swing state voter. And I tried to do that. And I have to say even admitting my bias, I thought Trump was absolutely awful. And I thought she was good. Right. And I thought she was good from the off. When you're putting yourself in the head of a swing better. So there are different swing vaches. There are, I guess, young African American men who are a big lot who may be voting for Trump, Hispanic men who seem to be voting for Trump in larger numbers.

1:59I guess there's also, talk about Pennsylvania. My guy was a white working class middle -aged Pennsylvania bloke. Okay. That's a rural area. Yeah. I didn't place him geographically. Worried about Trump. Does he really want to go back to all that stuff and not sure about cameras? That's where I was. And you mentioned somebody who will have seen them a lot before. So it's about changing the view. Or maybe we're thinking seeing the fresh because I think that's something that's interesting because I definitely knows him inside out, but doesn't know much about her. And that is, I think, important to think because often in these debates, there are ways of introducing someone, the odd thing about Trump.

2:37We've all seen him before. So there's not much he can say either positive or negative that particularly changes one's perception of Donald Trump. But a lot of it was about Kamala Harris. Yeah. And that's why I said, I think from the word go, so they came out. She went into this handshake, which, you know, a normal human civilization. That's quite a normal thing to do. But he looked quite taken aback by that. You know, very, very uncomfortable. I thought she started quite nervously, but I think she got into a stride really, really well. And the great thing for me, I've always thought he's so thin -skinned.

3:10And there were just these several moments. As she was saying it, he thought, oh my god, here she goes. She's throwing him a big piece of bait. Surely he's not going to bite. So when the one that everybody was talking about was the rallies, you know, I want to invite you to go and attend it on Trump rally. And I said, I'm going to say something slightly strange. I'm going to invite you to attend a Donald Trump rally because what's your name lately? And he could not resist, but I've got the best rallies in the history of the world. And she kept doing that, you know, this thing about world leaders are laughing at him.

3:40And he came up with this ridiculous pin of praise for Victor Orban. And we talk a lot about Orban on this podcast because of his influence. But what proportion of the people watching in America have any idea who he is? So he's holding this guy up as the arbiter of world leadership. And I see another point where I really felt that he had lost it was another piece of bait. When they were talking about immigration, where it was clear from the off he wanted to talk about nothing else. And yet somehow he takes it into this thing about cats and, you know, people in Springfield, Ohio, home of the Simpsons, eating cats and dogs.

4:16Well, let's take it back to the fundamental. So this first debate between Harris and Trump. First on the Met. First time they've met. Both teams have been preparing them very carefully. There's a lovely comic scene in Veepe if you haven't seen it where she's getting her debate prep, which we could maybe share in they in our program notes. But they will have practiced again and again. And she seems to have been unusually comfortable with the idea of Donald Trump. She wasn't sort of thrown off balance by the kinds of unexpected things. He says she made immense use of contemptuous face. One of the ways in which it was set up was no audience.

4:51And usual for a debate. They weren't allowed to interrupt each other. But in most of the ways in which it was picked on television, they had split screen. So while he was talking she was able to raise an eyebrow, peculiar, do all this sort of, and actually undercut off from what he was saying. And he found it literally impossible either to say her name or to look at her. And I mean, is that just the kind of belittling thing is it trying to unnerve her? She was completely not nerved. Yes, completely unnerved. He was trying to unnerve her, but he didn't succeed us what you said. She was unnerved.

5:24Very good. And you're right. The thing about, you know, when you put a hand on the thing and the thing is sort of what we'll see about the head. Where she sort of put her, she rested her chin on her hand. And you just, you could imagine her doing that in court. Right. And I felt there was something quite a prosecutor royal about the whole thing. She was very, very calm. She never went down the kind of rebuttal rabbit holes that he maybe wanted to. So like went to, she's a Marxist. She didn't come out and say, no, I'm not a Marxist. She just sort of laughed it off. Joe Biden hates her. Didn't even address that.

5:55She hates Israel. She kind of did a little bit. But and I, the thing that really struck me was at the end when they, they had a commercial break and the two presenters had right and now you've both got two minutes. She used the two minutes, clearly with her, but very well rehearsed, to set out a kind of summary of everything she's said in a very positive, optimistic way about the future. And she was by this stage so insolent his head that he basically spent two minutes saying how awful she was. And I think that said to me, when I said you before, I felt that in Trump Hillary Clinton, Trump got inside her head.

6:31In Biden, Trump, Trump did not get inside Biden's head. And I think in this one, Kamala Harris has got inside his head in a way that will have left his team last night feeling, why did you not stick to the strategy that we agreed? Let's go back to the strategy. So one of the things I noticed with Kamala Harris, which was impressive. I mean, she did debate well. And I think if we're right that basically nobody's views on Trump's going to change very much, his very firm supporters will still have responded to his comments about immigration, and cost of living, and how terrible Biden is. And obviously his strong opponents went into the debate thinking he's a crazy old man and he did a lot to confirm their general view that he's crazy on.

7:11So it was Kamala Harris who was really up in lights there. And she came in six months ago, people would have said that she's spoken word salads. She hadn't had a great performance as vice president in terms of dealing with immigration, the border. People were very anxious about her as a candidate. She did some very good speeches at the Democrat National Convention, but people even there were saying, yeah, that's fine, but what's going to happen when she's into the debate? People were worried that because the mic was muted, she wouldn't be able to do her normal prosecutorial stuff of interrupting him.

7:48But I thought just as a setting aside the policy, we're going to process in a second, but just as a pure exercise and technique, one really good example of the way that she did it well was in the middle of the debate when the question of January 6th had been raised, he gave one of his responses, blaming everybody else. Yeah, I just turned out to make a speech. And when it turned to her, she very deftly did three things, first, she said, I was there. Second, she said, this is and she became very serious. She didn't avoid it. This is a threat to the constitution of her law. And thirdly, she said, and it's not an isolated instant, she turned it into a bigger thing.

8:27So there was the personal, there was the incident itself, and then there was the biggest story she made around it. And my only complaint, though, is that the were occasions when she went on too long. That was an example where I wanted to applaud after 30 seconds after 60 seconds. Yeah, I think the, no, I'm not going to say that. I'll get that. Because they said right at the start, you have two minutes and then you can come back with one minute answers. But the truth is, you don't have to use all of that time. But I see that he had 11, I think it was 11 minutes more than her. Oh, goodness. Of the microphone.

8:56Right. And I'll tell you when I realized that I felt that the Trump people realized they were losing, he was losing was when you saw this rash of kind of Trump people on Twitter saying, this is the worst moderated debate I've seen. The story tonight of these bias moderators. And I think if they were biased, I don't know they were. But if they were biased, I think it was they were allowing him far too easily to break the rules to speak over to carry on with when it didn't help him. But I think it damaged him. Yeah. I think some of his worst excesses came through when he was insisting on coming back often because she was yet again, just doing a little dig that she knew he would feel he had to come back at.

9:34And that's where I think the narcissism came through. You can obviously read a lot about the strategy from when you see the in the so called spin room afterwards. Where there are all the surrogates are out there talking on one of the things that her surrogates will say was he was all about himself. She's all about you, the American people. Can I just it's a bit unfair to you because you're a friend of Hillary Clinton's but being non -triple for a second stepping back, what is it that Kamala Harris was doing which was more successful than Hillary Clinton? What did Hillary Clinton slightly fail to do in these debates with Trump?

10:01I think that Hillary Clinton is in you met her when we were in Belfast, you know, all the team that were with us, they sort of said, God, she was so warm. She was this, she was friendly. And I think there was something particularly when she was going for the presidency that she sort of hemmed herself in. She wasn't actually always being herself. She was very, very, very tightly controlled. Whereas I think what we've seen of Kamala Harris and she came on the kind of global scene as the candidate which we saw very close up in Chicago is somebody who that genuine empathy is coming through all the time.

10:33And by the way, the point about preparation, Hillary definitely prepared a lot. Kamala Harris clearly has been prepared a lot and I think did it very much with that sort of legal mind frame. But I don't think Trump did prepare that much and where he did prepare. I think he's got himself into a mindset where he's surrounded by a set of advisors who he senses are very, very worried about him. And he always thinks he knows best. And I think there's a part of him. I'll bet you, for example, he went into the spin room at the end of the event. Right. I bet you they begged him not to do that. Because what it signaled was they won't be able to spin this.

11:06I've got to go do myself because they will not be saying it wasn't very good. Right. So that was I think indicative of him not working in with a strategy in a team that he trusts. Whereas I think she's got a strategy in a team that she trusts. It is a problem. That, isn't it? I mean, if I think about when I went on tilt in my Boris debate, just bring it home to something that I felt strongly that you're right. When things begin to go off the rails, you have this terrible thing where you think, oh, well, I've just got to be authentically myself. And you begin to, and you begin to, and you begin to, you begin to, you begin to underestimate your opponent.

11:35And I think that's what maybe sight you what's going on here. He will have convinced himself that he's much better than she is. He will have convinced themselves that she's rubbish. He will have thought himself, I don't really need to prepare this because everybody will see that she's rubbish. And all I've got to do is be myself, be Donald Trump. And as you say, that didn't work. And he particularly didn't seem to be good at her learning the insults. I mean, one of the other differences with Hillary Clinton is that Hillary Clinton did occasionally have a go at him, but it seemed wasn't as effective.

12:02As a judge or understated, they were provocative. Yeah. And the smile, he's obsessed with her smile. She didn't laugh, but she smiled a lot. She's got a lovely smile. And she smiled when he was being particularly ridiculous. So for example, when she says, you know, everybody knows, everybody knows she's a Marxist. Yeah. Her father was a Marxist. She could have gone, that is utter nonsense. But she didn't, she just smiles it off. Yeah. And I think he was, I think he had a sense as a thing went on of, I'm not getting to her. And the more that went on, the more you felt she was getting and boy should get him.

12:38I mean, she was belittling him and humiliating him. But as you say, okay, she doing it was quite a lot of lightness to touch, which must have been very unsettling for him. So the thing about, you know, 80 one million, you were fired by 80 one million people and Donald Trump's having difficulty processing that. Yes, he exactly. You could imagine, as you said that, I thought, I bet you, he's seeing a shrink about how do I process the fact that 80? And if he's not today, yesterday, we'll be today. All her saying, you know, you're here in Pennsylvania and you might be explaining to, you know, 810 ,000 polls shown in the state that you would hand over to Poland to a dictator who would eat you for breakfast.

13:12And, and he hates the idea that someone can eat him for breakfast. Right. He's the big match. So guy, but I thought that she handled the theme of the dictators quite well. These are people that you like because he want to be like them. But they like you because they know that you're vulnerable to flattery and favor. Okay, right. We're going to have a quick break and then I know you want to come back and be maybe a little bit more critical than I've been of Carman Harris.

13:36This isn't ad from BetterHelp. At the moment, we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alice's cold plunges, could be my attempts to meditate or the digital detox that I'm doing in Colombia. But of course, one of the things that we know is that it can be incredibly valuable to talk to another human being, somebody who's actually been trained as a therapist to work through these ideas calmly, objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise.

14:12They've got over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than 5 million people globally and you can join a session literally at the click of a button. Change therapists anytime. It's obviously not about fixing you but it's about hearing yourself clearly, maybe for the first time. So talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at betterhelp .com slash rest politics. That's better H -E -L -P .com slash rest politics.

14:44Welcome back to the rest's politics special edition on the US electoral debate with Rory Stewart and me at a Campbell. So I think that Kamala Harris stuck to the formula. But let me point to a couple of things where I think there isn't a C. One of them is that on some of the policy stuff, Trump simply failed to deliver what could have been quite good attack lines. So he talks about Afghanistan. There is no doubt that Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan was a catastrophe. And Kamala Harris is trying to take credit for anything around the Biden regime. So you've got to take blame as well. What could Trump have done to land that better?

15:27Another example. She was the immigration's are and the number one issue for many people in the selection is immigration. And she clearly is associated with what's perceived as a failed control of the immigration. What could have done to land that better? Because I guess if you want to Trump's advice is you'd think, okay, there are a couple of things there and I think Costa Living is probably the third. Where if you're trying to win this election, there are a lot of American voters who agree with Trump on the withdrawal from Afghanistan on immigration and Costa Living. How could he have landed it better I think by being more disciplined.

15:59The one point from her perspective got really worried was at the start when she looked and sounded a little bit nervous and it was clear he was basically going to make immigration part of every single answer. When it came to the question about immigration, he sort of went off on one of his weird rants and rambles and they became ever more extreme. I think if he had been much, much more disciplined about saying, and I wouldn't necessarily put Afghanistan in the same bracket, but if he'd have said relentlessly, failed on immigration, failed on the economy, he would have forced her, I think, to engage much more in rebuttal.

16:35It's interesting how all through this week there's been, where you were in America, you know there's been this big argument about Afghanistan going through the media, it's mainly through circus, but on the economy and immigration, they do have answers, but I think that what she was trying to do is just let Trump run on, let him rage away. And I will just focus on the things that I want to communicate and I want to say. So I think what he didn't do was draw her into a debate about those issues because she was able to laugh off the fact that he's talking about immigrants eating cats and dogs. So is there, let's just try one more time.

17:05Your Trump, I'm Kamaharis, what would be a way of framing it that would almost force Kamaharis to engage in response rather than laugh it off? I would have asked very, very specific questions about numbers. Right. I would have asked very, very specific questions involving data. The problem with him, is that he just makes up the numbers. When you hint into the spin room, he basically said, well, that was of the 70 debates I've done, whatever it is, that's the best debate I've ever done. We've got the numbers, I'm winning by 70%, 90%, 63%, they say, where are you getting these numbers? And he said, I feel good.

17:40And then did this, this is classic spin. You know, the Kamaharis team say they'd like another debate. Ah, well, they're saying that because they know they've lost. I feel that he, on the data, because he just makes stuff up, because he says, I delivered the most jobs in the history of the world, I'm the most popular, I've got the biggest crowds. He talks in these superlatives, without ever having real figures. It means that when you come to something like the immigration and the economy, he started off by saying, you with the immigration czar and then went off on one of his tangents. He should have been armed with fact, information.

18:12She would then have been forced to rebut it and then it'd have been just sort of down having a messy draw. So he clearly thought one of his kill effects, which he returned to, I think, at least twice, perhaps three times, is to say, you're criticizing me for putting tariffs up. You say that's going to put up the cost of loving for people, but you didn't get rid of my tariffs. You kept my tariffs against China. If you disagree with my tariffs, why did you keep them in place? But again, she didn't feel any need to respond to that. No, I think the way that he debates has given her almost like strategic opening, sort of, to ignore the substance of what he says and stick to what...

18:44No, there's a risk in that. There's always a risk in that. People think you're not answering the question. The thing on tariffs, by the way, if you've been following in America, I've seen a lot of stuff really, really, really critical of the New York Times, because they have just been swallowing this line from Trump that if you put tariffs on goods, the country that you're putting them on will pay the price. And there's been this huge argument going on. And I sort of felt that was another one where she might have come back when he talked about tariffs, kind of, say the American people. China's going to pay.

19:15And so I think she's going into sort of non -rebuttal mode, which historically, my campaign style would always rebut. But I can see why with Trump is not the sensible thing to do, because the minute you're into a kind of messy argument about, he said she said, I think you go nowhere. The other thing I quite enjoyed was, I thought the moderators got a lot of flak from both sides. They always do. But actually, I think they did a pretty good job, because he's so difficult to keep under any control. They did call out, I think, four occasions, stuff where they said, no, that's not true. There's no evidence of that.

19:46There's no evidence of that. Well, the statute that we've talked to the city manager and Springfield, and there's no evidence of any pets being eaten by immigrants. That was a very crazy moment. When he said, they're coming over here and they're eating our pets. That's stuff, though. I mean, presumably he's getting it from somewhere. He's seen it on social media. He said it on television. Yeah. Somebody said on television. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But this is the whole thing. I mean, the other thing, he's spent a lot of time watching television eating his big Macs. Well, if you read Michael Wolves' book of his first term, I mean, he spent the whole time watching big Macs and talking to his friends while watching television, a couple of things maybe to close off with.

20:18I thought the one of the most significant exchanges policy -wise was on Ukraine, where twice he was given the opportunity to say that he thought it would be good for the world and good for America if Ukraine won against Putin. And he would not say that. He just kept saying he could sort this war out in five minutes. And I thought she absolutely nailed him on the response with the point, but dictators you made earlier. And the second thing I think that's worth reflecting on, if you remember in Chicago, the buzz of excitement that there was around the place when it was thought that Taylor Swift might be turning up to endorse Kamala Harris.

20:54Well, now she's done it. And she's done it in a, I think, a pretty brutal way for Trump, because she's basically said that one of the reasons she's chosen to do it was because the Trump campaign were using AI to suggest that she was supporting Trump. She then went into a long thing about how don't just take other people's words for it, do your own research, check out these people, check out their programs. That's why I've done. And I'm supporting Harrison Wolson. When this was thrown at Trump, when it was announced in the wake of the debate, he looked pretty shaken. What was lacking, and I think does matter, and it's a bit sad in this is policy.

21:36And I think we can all feel that Kamala Harris performed well as a technical bit of debating she performed well, or certainly much better than people feared. But this is an American economy which has now got astonishingly rising debt. It's an economy where we don't really know what their answer is going to be to providing healthcare, particularly for the poorest people in the country. It's a country whose foreign policy is arranged around Ukraine and China, but we don't really know what role the US is playing in Africa and the rest of the world. And I think it's a little sad. If you compare it to the kind of things we talk about in UK politics, you know, we will have detailed discussions about your grubful towers or water policy or the NHS that in this US debate, it's coming down so much to what happened in January 6th, what shall we use our an abortion?