SIO255: That Horrendous Debate, with Andrew and Alex Torrez!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 255, I'm Thomas, and I'm joined by, oh, just, just wait, I am joined by one special guest, how's going, Andrew?, uh, good, I know we wanted to maybe do a little bit of debate analysis, so, um, but you know, you know nothing about debate, so we had to bring in an on-the-ground expert, you are purely an armature at debate, debate. So we had to bring in a real expert. Why don't you introduce our guest?

0:00:38 Andrew: Fantastic, Thomas, how are you?

0:00:49 Andrew: I am an armature. Yeah, a podcast debut, a real-life debater for Catonsville High School, Alex Torrez.

0:01:05 Thomas: How's it going, Alex?

0:01:05 Alex: Hey guys, good, very good. How are you?

0:01:11 Thomas: Been better, been better. That was a rough debate. Audience, I'm as confused as you are because I thought the only debate reaction that really anyone would have is just yelling fuck as loud as possible for a half hour. But you guys are thinking, yeah, Is there something more to say beyond that? What do you think?

0:01:28 Alex: Actually, that's, that is very true.

0:01:35 Andrew: Yeah, so, the one thing that really helped me kind of fit all the pieces together this morning, and I had shared out the Atlantic article that came out a couple of years ago, but right after the Democratic National Convention, and it's entitled "What Joe Biden Can't Bring Himself to Say." And it talks about his history of being a kid and an adult, it's lifelong disability of being, being a stutterer, and being reminded that Joe Biden is a stuttering, right, that it, that it requires heroic effort for him to say words, all of a sudden made Donald Trump's strategy last night really fit into place.

0:02:24 Andrew: Right. And it was clear that that the plan was, you know, have this baboon uh across the stage screaming in your ear for two hours, wait until the moment when Joe Biden tripped up at all, right, and then go and, you know, and mock him on national television and hope that that plays into the narrative that the Republicans have been crafting for, you know, the entirety of of the election season of, oh, Joe Biden is, you know, not mentally fit to hold office or or whatever. And and all of sudden, like, that just really came through clearly for me this morning. I'm not sure how you, how you saw it.

0:03:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:07 Andrew: So.

0:03:08 Thomas: I, uh, despite the fact that I talked about that stuttering article a while back after one of the debates, I did clarify that it did change how I thought about his, some of his um difficulty in finding his words. I don't think it's 100 of the issue, I don't think it has been in the debates. I think oftentimes he's, you know, know, he's not as sharp as I would want a candidate to be.

And I think, I think you can mostly tell when it's related to a word, you can tell, because he does the switching technique where if he can't quite get a word out, he'll switch to a, you know, a synonym, and, you know, that's that, that seems like definitely we should all give him a ton of leeway there. But he also, you know, to pretend that that's the only problem he has speaking, I don't think is accurate. He also just says things that are not, he doesn't do a good job of making the case for policies uh sometimes. But anyway, I don't know that uh that entirely was Trump's strategy.

I, I'm having a hard time balancing, like, a, you might be totally right, I don't, like, it could be that, but also, b, I think Trump genuinely does not have control of his person, like, he's, he does, he cannot help, but he's been, he's had four years of being the president and having a bunch of yes men telling him everything and getting high on Fox News and One America Network.

And if you notice the crap that he spewed every five seconds while Biden was trying to answer, all of it was this incredibly online garbage that, like, doesn't even work because you would have to have the 17 layers of Fox News

0:04:50 Thomas: QAnon conspiracy level thinking to even know what he was talking about. So, yeah. But I'm curious, Alex, were you scoring the debate? Did you have a score? What was the score?

0:04:56 Alex: Oh, wow. Um pretty bad no matter how you look at it um Yeah, zero, there's... there's no side, there's... there's just zero, but um, I do think, like, uh, with regards to uh, his switching, like, from one to another, like, using this, like, sort of online uh jargon that's just, like, you know, requires the, like, 17 layers of Fox News to, like, know, but you know, to actually, like, believe what he's saying. Um, one of the things that I noticed, like, right away that he was doing and, like, I looked at dad and, like, we both sort of recognize this, which is, like, he was doing you know, he was filibustering, and, you know, that may not make a lot of sense because it's a debate term. I actually learned the debate term filibuster before the actual political

0:05:07 Thomas: Yeah, just zero.

0:05:55 Thomas: Do

0:05:55 Alex: Term filibuster, so I had to be, like, dad, what's the filibuster, besides, you know, the, like, fast talking, you know, like, just, like, constantly talking. So the idea is that, um, you know, when you're filibustering, it's like used in cross examination.

I don't know, uh, how it works, like, in, like, debates in, like, the courtroom, but at least in high school debate, uh, one of the strategies in cross-ex is to be like, uh, is is to, when you know, they, uh, it's often used, like, when you're not sure of what, you know, you're talking about, or, like, they've got a question that's like, "Aha, I got you," and you want to, like, weasel your way out of it, and so you start being like, so you see, like, the, the, you're gonna say this, but, like, the answer this is that, and you just start, like, going off, and it doesn't really have any sort of purpose or meaning other than to ramble and waste their time. And so, like, it wasn't just that he was, you know, cutting off Biden, but, like, you could tell that, like, Trump, like, can't think of that many words that fast unless he's trying. So you could tell that there was a level of intentionality. He was clearly instructed to do so. You

0:07:05 Thomas: You think anyone can instruct Trump to do anything? I'm not entirely sure.

0:07:10 Alex: Yeah but he had to have there's there's no other way like there's no way as ADHD, as I think his brain is like, you know, being ADHD myself, um, I, there's just no way, like, I'm stuttering my words right now, and like, if I were to try to filibuster, I'd have to have a topic pre-prepared, I'd have to know in advance, like, "Aha, you're gonna say the trap word," and as soon as you say the trap word, my answer is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, nine, ten, that's, that's how it works.

0:07:10 Thomas: Yeah, I imagine he had people trying to get him to do stuff but yeah yeah well Hmm. Possibly, I want to, I wonder about the possibility, though, that, uh, Alex, while you've spent your life trying to actually, I imagine, know what you're talking about and learn the substance behind the points you're making, Trump has done the opposite of that, and that he spent his entire life making words out of nothing, his whole career has been that. Everything about him has been that fake use carl salesman, say as many words, gish gallop, whatever you want to call it, filibustering, I suppose, too. Like, I think that is one perhaps natural skill that he does have, which is you say anything, any question to him or the moderator or Biden or whoever it would be, and he will be able to jump to the nearest 4chan conspiracy theory.

0:07:50 Alex: Somewhat.

0:08:28 Alex: Yeah

0:08:28 Thomas: Or QAnon conspiracy theory.

0:08:30 Andrew: You know, there is some of that, but I think what you saw on display from Trump last night was more organized. Usually when Trump is filibustering, it sounds like the stereotypical third grade book report where you didn't read the book and you're, you know, extemporizing based off the back cover, and, uh, and Thanks.

0:08:53 Thomas: Yeah, that's been his answer to everything.

0:08:54 Alex: Or like all those times I didn't actually read the article for my homework and you know I'm trying to like bullshit my way into pretending that I did

0:09:01 Thomas: Wow, this is news.

0:09:02 Andrew: Thanks.

0:09:02 Thomas: You're grounded now, kid.

0:09:02 Alex: Yeah

0:09:02 Andrew: Yeah. Thanks for conceding that. I I did want to go back just for for one second to clarify, because, uh, apparently, I mean, this is, it must be in the way that I am communicating it, because someone made a similar comment when I raised this point on the Opening Arguments Facebook group. My point with raising Biden's stutter is not to grade Biden on a curve, right? We're going to talk about Biden's answers and, you know, Alex as a debater, me as a debate coach, like, you can't, all of us as Liz Warren supporters, you cannot help but sit back and go, gosh, I I really wish he'd answered it X way instead of Y way.

My my point is not to, is not to excuse Biden but rather to explain that the sitting president of the United States is an ableist bully and look like we all know that but the, but the idea that he went into a debate and the strategy that they came up with in his war room was, well, just keep yelling at Biden and interrupting, and eventually you'll make him stutter, and once he stutters then you can make fun of it, you know, like the way you always do, and and

0:09:04 Thomas: Yeah, right. OK, right, yeah, yeah.

0:09:54 Alex: For sure, yeah.

0:10:14 Andrew: Everybody thought this was a perfectly normal thing for a president to do, go ahead, go ahead, no.

0:10:14 Thomas: Well, I hear You there, and I take your point. I think I was less responding to you, and I went into the autopilot of talking about how I had brought up the article when I was talking in debate. So you're right. I, my mistake there. But I I think I would say counter evidence to the, to the idea that this was a coherent strategy specifically around his stutter is, I think if you, you think he was going to do some really disgusting bully move of like actually mock his stuttering, he actually had opportunities to do that. And I don't think that he did. I've only watched the debate once, and and that was through my, both my hands were like over my eyes, just like, as I was wishing this would all end. And so I could be wrong in that, but I think there would have been plenty of places for him to do the verbal equivalent of the thing he did with the reporter that we all know is so disgusting.

I mean, that, I don't know how much, like, I hear you, and maybe you're right, maybe it's kind of both, but I do think there's definitely, the strategy was to get him to seem confused or whatever, knock him off his game, game, uh, and I think that that was perhaps a little bit more successful than I'd care to admit, especially early on, um, but I I don't know, do you really think he was gonna try to like mock his stutter specifically? I think if he was going to do that, I think he had the opportunity, and I don't remember him

0:10:33 Andrew: No, no, that was zero.

0:11:00 Andrew: I

0:11:42 Alex: Yeah

0:11:42 Thomas: Doing that

0:11:43 Alex: I think that's a good point, um, particularly, particularly because I don't think that there's any reason to believe that he wouldn't say it while still doing it, because I don't think he's capable of thinking two layers deep. I just don't think he's capable of metagaming at all.

0:11:56 Thomas: That's true you're You're totally, that's the best point so far, because if you're right, he would have just said, "See, he has a stutter," like he would just said it like there There were.

0:12:07 Alex: Yeah, he would've just done it.

0:12:07 Andrew: I That that that is that is a very, very strong counter-argument that I will have to I will have to Yeah I I will have to consider there yeah I think that's right, I

0:12:13 Thomas: Wow. Alex scores a debate point on everybody. I think he's up one to nothing to nothing here. Let me let me add something else, Andrew, onto this, because I can't believe that no one else has brought this up. And maybe I'm glad and I'm I am hesitant to bring it up. But I I have to say that maybe one of the reasons that I was so emotionally scarred by this whole debacle is a particular debate in my experience. And really it has hints of that. Like the reason that I maybe reacted so badly is Trump's strategy was, I would say, a more bullying and even actually less intellectually rigorous approach than Sargon, Carl douchebag, took.

Can you believe that I actually think Carl was like more intellectual in our debate than Trump was in this one than the president, yeah 100 and that is not a defense of of Sargon YouTube asshole, that's that's just saying hello. We've gone, I think that there's also, in addition to the strategy we've talked about, um, I also think there's just a sense that Donald Trump has that, um, Biden is, I don't know what the right word is, maybe beneath him is what I was going to say. I'm not sure that's it.

It's it's that Biden being a candidate for president is not something that Trump is even countenancing, like he's not, he's acknowledging, he's dignifying the idea that this is even any sort of debate between equals or people or anything.

It's just this person, it's pure mockery based on lying that he knows is lying and he doesn't care, uh, in a way that that I think just signals in his, like, fake tough guy thing, despite the fact that, you know, he looks like an emotional baby up there to most people.

0:13:07 Andrew: Then then the president of the United States, yeah yeah yeah

0:14:04 Thomas: But I think to to certain people, this does work. This this way of just signaling that this person is beneath me. I don't even have to care about what they're saying

0:14:13 Andrew: I have a, I have a couple thoughts on that, right. Like the first is yes, right, in in the sense that if you take Donald Trump's debate performances against Hillary Clinton in 2016, right, which were universally panned, right, in which it was, he got, you know, his ass handed to him three times in a row, uh, but but there was that segment that like had him, you know, mouthily going "no, puppet, you're the puppet," yeah, like it And it was just, I mean, again, at a level that, uh, you know, would would would make, make it a six year old blush. Right.

0:14:42 Thomas: From

0:14:48 Alex: Thank you.

0:14:50 Andrew: Like and and then reward that person with the presidency and drop in four years later. And, you know, and you get last night's shit show because, you Know, as as as you point out, you know, whatever we know, a couple of things, right. We know a couple of things that have leaked. One member, I don't know if you saw this. I think it was Rick Wilson, but one member of of the Lincoln Project, right, the anti-Trump Republican group, has said that they have leaked audio from inside Trump's debate prep war room, which that will be interesting if true.

0:15:27 Thomas: This this debate or from 2016.

0:15:28 Andrew: Yes. No, no, no. Yeah, from the 2016 prep. So I saw that. Make of it whatever you will. It was a tweet. So maybe that audio exists. Maybe it doesn't. I think that would be incredibly interesting to find out um it

0:15:30 Alex: Wow.

0:15:39 Alex: I kind

0:15:29 Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah. The leaked audio will be? Okay, Mr. President, so we're thinking Biden's... Did you see on Fox News that they had... And like they just won't even be involved in the debate prep at all? That would be my guess.

0:15:56 Andrew: I I find myself quoting from John Bolton a lot, and and again, I want to be super careful about that, because as we said on Opening Arguments, he may be the worst writer on the planet, and he's in the running for one of the worst human beings on the plan. Right? Like, he is, the problem with Donald Trump is that Donald Trump didn't start enough wars while I was in the White House. Right. But but the thing that, because Bolton is, anybody's narcissism compared to Donald Trump's is,you know, not going to measure on on on any instrument we can detect. Like, Bolton is an unbelievably self-centered guy. You know, you read part of his book too, and like, the book is all, you know, me, me, me, me. And it's like, John, no one gives a shit about you. Right? Right. Like, we we care about the stuff you heard while you were working for.

0:16:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:47 Thomas: I will not let this slander to my character stand. I did not read a second of that fucking piece of shit. I read a lot of reviews of it, and they all said that exact same thing, which is like he is really in love with himself.

0:16:52 Andrew: Oh, OK. Got it. Sorry. OK, fair. Yeah, it's it's terrible. But look, one of the things that Bolton says repeatedly and offhandedly. Right. And this is, you know, as you know from our talk about exceptions to the hearsay rules, like it's it's one of the cues that lawyers tend to use in assessing the credibility of a witness, right, like people will lie straight-facedly about their main subject and sometimes they will be very very good at it, but the stuff they say offhandedly tends to cohere, right, you know, tends to have more of an indicia of truth, so long as it's consistent with everything else. And and Bolton says multiple times, I never saw Donald Trump make a decision in the White House while I was there that was not with an eye towards his 2020 reelection. Right now, on surface, that's insane, right?

0:17:27 Thomas: Hmm.

0:17:50 Alex: Scary.

0:17:50 Andrew: Because yeah, because there's nothing Trump has done that would in any way make you think that they have a coherent reelection strategy, right, and and certainly nothing you saw last night, right, like that, that I, you know, we saw people in despair, you know, in the opening arguments group, and you know, among the folks on this call and everything else, but like, if if you're a moderate Republican, if you are a potential Trump swing voter, like what last night convinced you to vote for Donald Trump?

0:18:21 Thomas: Yeah. The only thing I can think of is I do know. And again, it's, we've talked about this on OA. I've talked About it here, trying to get into the minds of the, I'm just going to say it low information voter. I don't mean that as like a smear on their character. They're probably much happier than I am not knowing as much about what's going on, but like the people who, cause you know, I've, I've heard these interviews with them, like, ah, they don't, they Don't, they don'T really know that much about Biden. They isn't he, uh, and, and for some of them, this whole. And again, this is another reason I think I was maybe more worried about this debate than I should mention. I shared on Facebook already that, you know, the numbers look OK.

The poll poll numbers after the fact look like Biden was did did fine. I will say that while I guess I was wrong in that I was worrying more than I could have, I still feel like the poll numbers roughly correspond to polarization as it already is in this country. So it's not, you know, it's not entirely clear to me what happened. Like if everybody's like, no, Biden did great. He won. And I was like, well, I'm I'm a little worried. I don't know they did.

0:18:36 Andrew: I

0:19:22 Thomas: And then the polls come and say, like, well, exactly the number of people who like Trump say Trump won. And the number people say, you know, I guess that's a win in effect. But anyway, the whole point of this is I heard in some of those interviews with potential swing voters or independent voters or whatever you want to call them, that, you Now, the the whole crap about Biden being too old and too not with it mentally, not there, that had kind of leaked into their information sphere. Like they had those indications. They're like, yeah, I heard he's not quite, you know, he's, he's not all there anymore. And my biggest worry was, especially with the first 10 minutes of the debate, which did not go well. It just did not.

0:19:58 Thomas: I think it's, it's almost, it's good that later on things, you know, Trump said enough really bad things that are becoming more of a headline because that first 10 minutes was bad. I was worried that people sitting there if they watched it, we're going to be like, wow, yeah, maybe Biden isn't up to this. He doesn't quite look right after those first 10 minutes. That was my biggest worry.

0:19:58 Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:20:16 Andrew: I have a bunch of thoughts on that, Alex, you have done some research on low low information voters. And so, yeah.

0:20:25 Alex: I have indeed.

0:20:26 Thomas: Oh, nice.

0:20:26 Andrew: So, yeah, so, so why don't you talk about that a little bit?

0:20:30 Alex: So most of the research that we've done into low information voters has to do with whether or not they will be actually swayed by what we do, by what we say, by the facts, right? And, you know, to some degree, like you were saying, like, they're probably happy, like, you know, ignorance is bliss, but, um, at the end of the day, like, some things happen and some things don't, and you know it's important to know what's actually real in an era of fake news, um, but I think, uh, one of the most, like, one of those the worst things you can do to that is then, you know, defile the integrity of the system, which, you know, brings us to, like, the end of the debate where they talked about, like, mail-in ballots and voter fraud, which I've also done some of the research on.

0:21:23 Alex: Obviously, all of the claims Trump is making, and I don't want to go out on a limb here and say, you know, everything 100% of Trump ever says is false. You know, that's what PolitiFact is for. So, but, I will say that, you know, the vast majority of his argument about voter fraud is just like, doesn't make sense Because if you think about it, the ones that institute these measures. For example, if you look at literacy requirements, if we look at the citizenship, ID laws,

0:21:56 Thomas: ID laws, voter ID laws. Yeah.

0:21:58 Alex: Voter ID laws and all of the things, like, poll taxes, they're putting into place. Those things are things that Trump does that he's claiming will solve voter fraud, but the voters, like, at the end of the day, like, the voters, either the fraud is on their end or it's on the voter's end, and obviously it's not on the voter's end, so it just, like, doesn't make sense, because if there's problems with the system, it's your fault, because you run the system, yeah.

0:22:28 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, you would try to say that it's obviously the state level or something.

0:22:33 Andrew: Let me give a little bit of context to this, right? The reason why Alex has done research on this is that the current high school LD debate topic is that in a democracy voting ought to be compulsory.

0:22:33 Alex: Probably

0:22:47 Andrew: And yeah, no, no. It's I.

0:22:46 Alex: Should have started with that yeah

0:22:45 Thomas: I agree with that's my stance

0:22:50 Alex: Well it doesn't always work out that way in reality

0:22:50 Thomas: Huh

0:22:51 Andrew: And and yeah, I look and We're going to talk about this on our way. But but one of the things that I think is super interesting is watching how as as these kids go back and forth and prepare nuanced arguments right to respond to to each other's claims that one of of the key contentions in in in terms of whether compulsory voting is a good idea or not is the question of whether it will help solve the problems of Trumpism right or whether it will enable the problems of Trump is right and the argument that it will solve the problem of Trumpism is pretty straightforward that Donald Trump and populists everywhere survive on otherization and excluding/looting people. Look at the entire Republican strategy that we've talked about on always back, you know, since episode number one.

0:23:44 Andrew: And so if you make voting compulsory, right, like Thomas, like you said, I agree with that. Right. Then that sort of takes that major argument out of Trump's quiver. The right, counter argument goes something like this. And and again, you know Alex had sort of alluded to a little bit this and I'll you know I'll let him jump in with some specifics but it says you know there's compulsory voting in Brazil right and Bolsonaro is a Trump style politician and not just a Trump style politician in terms of being a right-wing populist autocrat who's a dangerous monster but in terms of the folks who were embedded in the Bolsonaro campaign back when it was starting like it's it's eerily similar when you read like like 2017 articles about Bolsonaro, around maybe 2016.

0:24:36 Andrew: But but whenever like basically when when he was on the climb through the Brazilian equivalent of the primary, like the articles are very similar to the stuff that we read here in the United States about Trump in 2015 to early 2016.

0:24:50 Alex: Particularly The like online jargon the the Twitter stuff, the idea is uh that that particular study that I think uh he's referencing um talks about uh how like yeah, in Brazil it's uh the it's sort of this like uh soccer culture, like I don't know how to describe it, because I literally gives zero fucks about soccer, but um but like, you know, soccer watchers in Brazil treat the election, I'm not making this up, the evidence literally shows that they treat it like soccer, they just pick the winning side and they like root for their team, they make costumes and signs and all of the things, and then like two months later they forget at all about it, like they just have zero care about any of the policies at all and I was a little exaggerated but like that's the that's global trend in brazil but

0:24:51 Andrew: Right.

0:25:29 Thomas: Yeah

0:25:32 Andrew: And and and think about. Yeah, no, no. But right. But but but think about how that dovetail. Right. Like without knowing this research, like I've called it the, you know, like shirts and skins mentality in U.S. politics all the time. Right. The the internal the internal warrant for that, right, is that because right wing populists aren't running on policy differences. Right. Donald Trump didn't mention a single thing he would do ever. Ever. Right. Like literally since going down that goddamn escalator, the only thing he's ever said he would do is, you know, build the wall and have Mexico pay for it. And yeah,

0:26:01 Thomas: Nope. It's Incredible. That, He's still trying to pull off the "oh, I have a better health care plan," like he's still trying to pull that off. Are You kidding Me?

0:26:19 Andrew: I did the the line of attack last night. And I will come back to that. But we're going down this.

0:26:20 Thomas: Boy, When Do We Get Get his better health care plan. Hey, in my fifth term, I swear to God, I'll finally reveal my amazing better health care plan that I've had this whole time. It just.

0:26:35 Alex: But remember, Trump still can't admit the words law and order make him say it never minding the fact that he did actually say the words in that debate he did say the words just for the record

0:26:40 Thomas: Yeah, you can't say that.

0:26:46 Andrew: The I it it.

0:26:48 Thomas: Well, we've we've we've sidetracked Andrew. OK, Andrew, back to your point.

0:26:51 Andrew: No, no, no. But like, that's a, that's a useful sidetracking, like, because I want to comment on Donald Trump was clearly coached last night that his comeback to all of this was going to be like, well, Joe, you've been in government for 50 years. Like, why didn't you get it done? And you're like, what the fuck are you talking about? You're the incumbent goddamn president. You don't get to say like, oh, I'm running as the outside. Like you live in the White House, dude.

0:27:05 Alex: Yeah and

0:27:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah!

0:27:19 Andrew: Like that. Like, yeah, yeah.

0:27:20 Thomas: These Washington insiders haven't done done anything about covid elect me donald trump yeah

0:27:26 Andrew: And it is it is, again, a reflection. So, you know, I have long said that I think Joe, like the ads Joe Biden should be running in every swing state is just Ronald Reagan in 1980 saying, are you better off now than you were four years ago? Like, because none of these people who are potential Trump voters are right. Like 10 percent of them are unemployed. Like it's it is a significant number of them were dead thanks to Donald Trump. Like, this is a disaster. And you have an incumbent president whose RNC campaign theme was, if you elect Joe Biden, he'll make America as unsafe as it is right now under me, Donald Trump, reelect Trump. Like what?

0:28:13 Thomas: Yeah

0:28:14 Alex: And there's another, another huge argument that I think, like, doesn't immediately come to mind, which is like, yeah, you can flip everything back on them when they're, when, when Trump's like, you know, well, why didn't you do this in your 47 years as vice president. And Biden's like, well, why aren't you doing it now. There's another response of like, that still doesn't justify what you've done. Like, just saying I've done something worse so you're worse like if I you know if you catch me like you murder, right? And I say, oh, well, you murdered a squirrel when you were 12. You actually did it. That doesn't justify me attempting murder.

0:28:37 Thomas: Yeah That, now I do want to say this, by the way, one more point in Alex's favor on that point he made earlier about Trump not being able to keep something. He'd be the world's worst poker player, I think. I'm pretty sure, I don't think he would be be able to do it because I just he

0:28:56 Andrew: Yeah.

0:29:03 Alex: Actually, not worse than me, I have to admit.

0:29:08 Thomas: Um, so he did this thing that is just so funny to me, it's it's one of those, you know, like having a laugh while the world is exploding kind of, kind of funny, um, but when he does this thing of saying, so are you, can, are you, are you against defunding the police? And then Bine's like, yeah, I am against defining. You just lost the left, you just like, he's like, like doing the commentary of the thing, like he's being a pundit in the middle of the, like the strategy would be, oh, get Biden to like, like maybe the strategy would get Biden to say he's in favor of funding the police additionally, you know, because that's going to lose him this Bernie Sanders contingent, hypothetically, like maybe that's strategy. He can't help but just say, I'm going to make you lose the, you Know, it's so dumb.

0:29:28 Andrew: Yeah.

0:29:50 Andrew: But it it.

0:29:53 Thomas: God, he can't not say the quiet, it part loud. Hmm.

0:29:57 Andrew: So in 1988, which I was a little bit younger than Alex is now, and it was the first I could not vote. Oh, I was 14. But I volunteered for the Dukakis campaign and it was the the first of many Andrew was wrong because I was convinced that Michael Dukakis would be the next president of the United States. He lost the state of Maryland, by the way. So so that didn't that didn't turn out super, super well for me.

0:30:25 Alex: Wow. Yeah, even I know what that means.

0:30:30 Andrew: Um, the rhetoric around George Bush was that he'd been Reagan's do-nothing vice president for two terms, which is pretty much true, uh, and that therefore, you know, he was kind of a wishy-washy little wimp kind of lapdog and also out of touch, right? And so a speechwriter put into into George Bush's, this George H.W. Bush, Poppy Bush, right, put into a speech that he delivered on the campaign trail a bracketed instruction about how to deliver the speech emotively. And it was, "Message. I care." Right.

0:31:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:11 Andrew: And basically it was, yeah, like, look, you need to show these yahoos in whatever yokel state you're campaigning in that you care about them. And of course, Right. As it came up on the teleprompter, George Bush looked directly into the telepropter and waggled his finger and said, "Message, I care." And and yes, that was immediately what came to mind when, you know, you had Trump go, "Well, you just lost the left, the Bernie Sanders vote last night." It was it was yeah.

0:31:40 Thomas: It's So dumb. Can I ask you, so I I think, um, getting to the, uh, the first 10 minutes that I said were so bad, the reason I said that is I didn't really, so the first question was on Amy Coney Barrett and I want to get your thoughts on that, Andrew, because I I don't know if Biden made a mistake before the debate in the statement that he made, that that, uh, Chris was Chris Wallace, asshole moderator, that sucked, um, that he set up, because it just put Biden in a horrible position to answer, like, the question was like, you know, Trump, you've said that you get to appoint Amy Coney Barrett because that's elections, and Biden, you said it's an illegal power grab or, you know, something like that.

0:31:42 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:24 Thomas: And it was an awful answer, Biden couldn't give an answer, I couldn't even make sense of what he was saying, what what how, what did you think about that exchange?

0:32:33 Andrew: So, I want to say, I want to say two things here, um, the first, and and put a pin in it because I'm gonna, I'm going to come back, is yeah the the first is ultimately I think this exchange will be good for the the Democratic Party and the Judiciary Act of 2021. And in fact, let me take the pin out. Let me explain, you know, I'll not do a pin. I'll just explain that now. And that is you saw first question out of the gate, Donald Trump, you're going to appoint Amy Coney Barrett. Why? And Donald Trump basically said, well, he directly said elections have consequences, which made me throw up in my mouth a little bit and then said, yeah, look, I got the power. I'm the president.

0:32:41 Alex: You and the pins, man.

0:33:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:23 Andrew: I got a Republican Senate. I can cram her through. I'm going to cram her through and like, that's fine. But again, if the narrative, particularly when he loses in November and they confirm Amy Coney Barrett anyway, that I think makes it easier to sell to the American public in 2021 when you say, okay, uh, this was about, do we have the power and oh, look, we have a democratic president and a democratic Senate. Now their standards, We have the power.

0:33:51 Thomas: Hmm.

0:33:52 Andrew: We're going to undo this. So so ultimately, I think the substance of that is going to be good in the long term. Now, I will not lie to you. I was I flummoxed as flumboxed, as I am now, searching for words, because Joe Biden has an incredibly easy answer to this, which is to look into the camera and go, "Maybe you don't remember 2016. I do, because Republicans took my words out of context and invented something they called the Biden rule that says in an election year, a president can't appoint a Supreme Court justice." You can go back and play clips. You could play clips of Lindsey Graham saying word for word, "If I have the opportunity, opportunity, and I vote for a Republican nominee in the last year of his presidency, then you can use my words against me." Well, I'd like to use their words, right? Like, that's such an easy thing. And and remember, Joe Biden was the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 200 years.

0:34:03 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:34:49 Andrew: Right, like, this is this is something that is in his, it is something he understands, it is something he was masterful. We've talked about Robert Bork and, again, the first season of Opening Arguments. But what Joe Biden did as leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee to defeat Robert Bork in 1986 was masterful. And it was, in fact, the reason why he became a candidate for president of the United States in 1988. And arguably could have won if not for the Neil Kinnock gaffe, which seems, yeah, which seems unbelievably quaint now. But but yeah, so it was there. There is, you know, the the baseball metaphor is that ball was set up on a tee and Biden came up and, you Know, not only swung and missed, but like swung weakly and missed and hit himself on the backswing. And, you know, it was it was as terrible an answer as I could possibly imagine that if you want me to critique and again, you know, we've talked about everything else and I want to be clear, like, it's super hard when,

0:35:25 Thomas: Plagiarism and yeah yeah

0:36:04 Alex: Yeah.

0:36:04 Andrew: You know, an orangutan is screaming at you for two hours.

0:36:06 Thomas: For for certain, yeah.

0:36:09 Andrew: Yeah. To do anything. I thought it took Biden about 45 minutes into this debate to remember he's running against a goddamn monster. Right. And and and that was really sort of the problem out of the box of that is that, like, each and every one of these questions, like, you just need to turn around and remember the outrage. So, like, for example, it was really good. Like, we're still going to bash on a lot of the Biden answers. And and and the first 20 minutes of the debate usually sets the tone. So you were right to to think, like, this is going to be a disaster.

Didn't expect the president to endorse white supremacy in in a in a televised debate that that that uh that that drowned that out. Well, to contrast that with when they were going back and forth over COVID about 45 minutes in and Biden was like, this is the guy that told you to inject bleach and not wear masks. Let's not talk about like if Biden were president, we'd have a billion deaths. Like that's ridiculous. And, you know, it's ridiculous, right? Right. Like there's a certain level at which, you know, you when the opponent's argument is preposterous, that like

0:36:23 Thomas: Yeah yeah Yeah.

0:37:21 Andrew: Engaging with it beyond that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard anyone say. And I'm on the stage next to Donald Trump is a bad idea. You know,

0:37:21 Alex: Seeing

0:37:29 Thomas: I

0:37:28 Alex: Him have that, like, wait wait wait moment, it's coming from you, the person that injects bleach into your arm to, you know, cure coronavirus, like that moment is like that is like the moment you want to see, like, that's the moment where he was able to like collect his thoughts, like, and that happens to me, like, all the time in debate rounds when I'm getting, like, pursued by this, like, annoying sequence of cross x questions and they're like, "So you'd agree that democracy is bad, right? And if democracy is bad, then you'd agree that," I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, you've missed the entirety of the point."

0:38:02 Thomas: Think that, um, there were certainly moments where, uh, again, I'm glad that toward the end of the bait, I agree with you, Andrew, that he, he got his bearings a little bit better. Um, I think I'm also just, I'm glad, that I never thought I'd say this, but again, it may be all down to polarization, but I'm glad that I think I underestimated the American public a little bit, uh, apparently, because I just was worried about how much the optics might work, you know, know, like, how how many, that maybe too many people might buy into this idea that Trump is strong because of what he was doing. And Biden was, that that was my fear. I'm not I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm not saying that the the right thing or the true, the reality is we we know that Trump is a deranged piece of shit who's being emotionally abusive and doing all these things that are going to be hard for anybody to deal with.

0:38:56 Thomas: But I was worried that, you know, and part of it, honest, honestly, in my opinion, a A lot of it is probably because Biden is a man. I think that maybe some of these tech tactics would have worked in the in the public on a female debate opponent, possibly. I don't know, because because as as has been pointed out, you know, I don't know that Hillary or any woman would have been able to get away with saying, well, you shut up. You know, like that's not going to work. I think, you know, so so a lot of that is playing in Biden's advantage.

I would one one moment I was going to bring up, which was a good moment for Joe Biden in that he mainly just got to be a person while, you know, his opponent was a fucking nightmare piece of shit, which was when he was talking about his son you know and one thing that just, god, as someone who has known a narcissist or two, the the idea that, like, Joe Biden is going to talk about his son Beau and Trump is like no that's not yeah yeah, who died of cancer, and

0:39:12 Andrew: Yeah.

0:39:24 Alex: Yeah

0:39:59 Andrew: Who who died of cancer?

0:40:04 Alex: And Trump is like, like, wait,

0:40:06 Thomas: Trump's like what are you talking about hunter he's like no I'm talking about my other son you know like and Trump's like, oh, I don't know that, you know, like it is the only thing that matters to this.

0:40:06 Alex: You mean Hunter?

0:40:16 Andrew: I wasn't coached with attacks on your dead son.

0:40:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. The only thing that matters to this fucking psychopath asshole is the thing that, like, the point he wants to make for his evil purposes, like, no other, no other humans exist, but the ones he cares to talk about right now. And I think that really was a bad moment for Trump. And I think I, that especially when, when Biden talked about, you know, like, yeah, my son did have a drug problem and he's worked through it. And I'm really proud of him. I actually think that'll resonate, especially we've all forgotten, I think, because of this pandemic and the horrible things have been going on. But we were in the midst of, you know, a horrible of the opioid epidemic. But that, like, and that is hitting people in these crucial swing states, especially hard.

0:40:20 Andrew: Yeah.

0:40:20 Alex: Yeah.

0:41:05 Andrew: And in deep red areas,

0:41:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And so the idea that like Trump's going to mock, uh, Yeah. Hunter Biden for having a drug problem. Uh, and that's going play well with these people who are like been ravaged by this opioid epidemic and, and all this. And meanwhile, while his, uh son Don jr is visibly, uh Coke induced at all times, uh just as, and I'm glad, uh Biden didn't bring that up because it's better to just be a decent person and not worry about it. But the idea that that was going to play well for Trump, I just do not see it. And so that was, in my opinion, a good moment for

0:41:08 Andrew: Right? Like, yeah.

0:41:41 Thomas: Biden.

0:41:41 Andrew: But I agree 100% on that was a good moment for Biden. I think that there were, again, the first 20 to 30 minutes sort of sets the tone. And it was, you know, it was sort of painful to watch Biden kind of take a while to adjust to his environment. There were a number of those, I think, really humanizing moments. The one that really struck me, and again, not a hard question to answer, but in telling the story of, right, because Chris Wallace says, you've said that you began your campaign when you saw Donald Trump talk about the Charlottesville rallies and say that with respect to white supremacists, there were very fine people on both sides.

0:42:33 Andrew: And Joe Biden did in that answer exactly what I wished he had done in answer number one. Right. Like he looked straight at the camera and said, yeah. And and told the story in what I thought was clearly a moving and heartfelt way. Right, like it was not if it was rehearsed, it was better rehearsed than anything else on that evening. Right. And, you know, I mean, I said on Twitter, like, I did not expect Joe Biden's best question to be like, you know, the the problem of race in America. But it was.

0:43:06 Alex: Yeah the race training the uh race sensitivity training I

0:43:10 Andrew: Yeah, it was such it was such a a heartfelt answer. And again, did did did he do great on the specifics of like, you know why are they ending racial sensitivity? No. Like, yeah, but but but he spoke, I think, movingly from the plate, right? Like if you, if you were to ask, right. Uh, you know, take all the 70 year old white dudes that you know. Right. And you want to explain the concept of white privilege to them. Right? Like I think Joe Biden proved to me last night that he would not along, right. That he would be like, yup, that's 100%. And do I know all of the times, am I going to get it right? Uh, probably not. Cause I'm a 70-year-old white dude. Um, but, But but like like that's pretty good. And again, again, I guess I guess we are sort of grading on a curve here. But like that's that's sort of what I love for people that like grew. I mean, and remember, like Joe Joe Biden's formative political years were, you know, over battles, over affirmative action that our side lost.

0:43:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:23 Alex: Mean of course not nobody expected him to oh

0:44:18 Andrew: Right. Like Jesse Helms got elected to the Senate in North Carolina in 1984 against an African-American challenger, Harvey Gant, by running an ad of white hands crumbling a rejection letter on the screen with the voiceover. You were qualified for that job, but they gave it to a minority candidate. And yeah, like that's it.

0:44:42 Alex: My god oh yeah

0:44:44 Thomas: They still think that. That's what conservatives still think.

0:44:49 Alex: And like the the part where trump is like uh trump is Just like, you know, they're violent. They're running through the streets of Kenosha, burning things down. It's a great fire. We're putting out the fire. Make no mistake, he means the black people fire. Like, that's what he means. He's saying we're going to bring the police out on minorities.

0:44:49 Andrew: And and yeah, yeah, and and that's a good example of where, again, I wish Biden had been able to look into the camera and say, do you mean as president? Will I call out brown shirted, ununiformed secret federal police to come tear gas protesters and throw journalists into vans and hit and blind journalists with rubber bullets? No, no, I will never do that. Yeah, I kind of would have liked Biden to have said that, that that that would have been a good moment. I

0:45:49 Alex: Yeah, his answer sort of was a bit ambiguous. He dodged back and forth on that issue. Issue, I, I, I don't, I think he's not entirely certain and I think that's a function of, I think to some degree the, the protests have like opened his awareness in this, in this issue. I think like before he would have been more closed on it and and more conservative.

0:46:11 Andrew: Think that's right.

0:46:11 Thomas: Hey, Andrew, before we run out of time, I want to make sure to get your thoughts on something I think in the OA community has been debated a little bit, which is, what do you think about Biden's answer to court packing? And was it the filibuster? There's one other thing.

0:46:26 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was absolutely he was asked, will you essentially I'm paraphrasing now because it wasn't quite this clean. He was asked. Will you promise not to blow up the filibuster and promise not the pack the court? And Joe Biden, as as in the debate sense, as Alex pointed out, filibustered that answer. He refused to come out and say, no, I won't do that. He left that tool in his toolbox. And I would couple that with the answer. Right. Answer number one from from President Trump on why he can cram through Amy Coney Barrett. I, you know, I got the power, so I'm going to do it. And I think you saw Joe Biden like it was incredibly encouraging to me that somebody whose every instinct is right.

0:46:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:14 Andrew: Compromise, mediate. Right. Like and asked, will you take 100% advantage of the power if you get it? Basically said, like, well, let's talk about that after I'm president. President uh you get

0:47:26 Thomas: Yeah, we'll see. Yeah I think That, that's strategically the right way to go. I actually think, like, as much as I'm very nervous, because I really, really need Biden to have the guts to do all this stuff, and I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure that he will, because he is is such an old institutional dinosaur. I'm a little bit worried that he's not going to do everything that he needs to do, which would be catastrophic in my opinion. But having said that, I think it's probably more important to not signal to all kinds of people, the right, maybe some of those elusive independents we were talking about earlier, that you're going to like blow up the system and do a bunch of things that I think will be perceived by a lot of people as like cheating. Like I think it will

0:47:28 Andrew: Yeah no yeah

0:48:13 Alex: Yeah

0:48:13 Thomas: Be perceived as unfair, uh, to do court packing, to do, you know, DC state or whatever it may be. I think it might be a good idea to, to, to not camp, to not just be out with it, to kind of play that one close to the vest. Uh, and then hopefully that means you just do it once you have the power to do it. So you get kind of the best of both worlds there and not scaring people, but then just still doing it. Um, but I, you know I don't know for sure that that's what he's doing, but I know that I'm already planning on voting for Biden, so maybe strategically it's better to let me be a little nervous about it than somebody who's way more on the fence about Biden.

0:48:15 Alex: Yeah

0:48:43 Andrew: Yeah

0:48:53 Alex: He knows he's going to be quoted on it, like he's, he, he knows he can't get away with just like erasing his words the way Trump does when Trump just says something wrong, he's like, oh, I never said that, like you never heard that, and, and you know, and his base just goes with it, but like Biden knows that that's not how it works, and that won't work for him, so he has to, he has to be on the fence on as many things as he possibly can to, you know, appeal to everybody of

0:49:19 Andrew: So So, so two things that I want to say to that, right, that, that are, that are very, very encouraging in, in my view, one, Joe Biden was well prepared and perfectly willing to throw the left wing under the bus last night, right, he did it twice, he did it on the Green New Deal, he did it on defund the police right and he did it generally

0:49:39 Alex: Course trump

0:49:40 Thomas: I already like where you're going with this.

0:49:40 Andrew: Yeah no

0:49:40 Alex: Thinks trump but trump thinks the left is everything except his face like there's a different left here all

0:49:46 Thomas: No, no, no.

0:49:45 Andrew: No I no I agree I agree but but but hear me out on this right so the first yeah yeah so the first was it in general issues right he was Joe Biden was prepared to say yeah no I'm not with the crazy left that's what Trump wants you to think but I beat Meet Bernie Sanders. I'm not the crazy left guy. I am the safe Democrat guy. And the fact that he didn't go with, oh, no, yeah, no. That's a fringe position. I m not in favor. Right? Like, the fact he didn't go with that instinct, I think, A, is very encouraging, and B, I I think illustrates that this topic is something that has been discussed, right, within Biden campaign HQ,

0:49:50 Thomas: He's making an encouraging point that I like.

0:49:50 Alex: Right yeah one

0:50:17 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:50:34 Andrew: Right? Within the people who will become the government if he wins. So in other words, I share all of your trepidation, right. We've talked about this a lot. I've talked to Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk, and that was before, you know, that was 2017, right? Right. Like there are six, seven, eight, nine more risks since then. We've talked about how the next president has to do a shit ton of work behind the scenes. It's why we were all Liz Warren supporters and and nervousness about is is Trump up is Trump is is Biden up to the task of doing that? Is he up to the task of playing hardball enough to do, you know, to to get those things done? And I got a little bit more confidence that that maybe he was last night.

0:50:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:51:23 Thomas: I see your point. I think that's a good point. And I think, you know, his his gut reaction answer had this not been something that they've already talked about, I'm sure would have been the institutionalist answer of like, oh, no, that's how the system works. We have nine justices, blah, blah. And so I think you're making a great point.

0:51:23 Andrew: Um yeah I I was and and the reason, well, thank you a for the compliment, uh, but yeah, I'm still behind, uh, but but the reason that I'm able to make that point is because when Chris Wallace asked that question, I inhaled sharply because I was worried that was going to be the answer, right, and and and again, if it had been the answer, I was prepared to come out and say, okay, like, uh, we've got to lobby Joe Biden publicly starting now, like I get it, I understand, I'll let you know, like all the reasons that you just made, um, but but that it's important enough to me, right, it's it's enough, like look, the answer that I feared is the answer I gave on Opening Arguments and I gave, you know, on the David Packman Show, right, like, I mean, I I am publicly on, you know, video, audio, print, everywhere in 2017 saying let's not pack the court, let's not blow this up, um, and you know and it took until now for me to say, all right, well, all

0:51:44 Alex: For Andrew

0:52:02 Thomas: Yeah,

0:52:49 Andrew: The arguments yeah, that's right. And this is, maybe we'll still talk about this on OA, but like, it, lots of people have kind of quoted my own words back at me from our last week's episode on on OA on Amy Coney Barrett, and they've said, like, well, if the Democrats pack the court, then Republicans are going to pack it again when they get back in power. And my answer to that is yes. Right. Like in the medium term, this is a terrible solution. And everything I ever said about why court packing is a bad idea is 100% still true. The only problem is we don't get to the medium terms unless you do it.

0:52:49 Thomas: We're out of other options. Mm hmm. Yep. Yeah.

0:53:29 Andrew: Right? Right. Yeah. You have with a Roberts court. Right. You have the possibility of what actual, you know, what the probably apocryphal story of, you know, the switch in time that saved nine and under FDR. But like you have some possibility that John Roberts does what he did on the Supreme Court this term and basically like gets a handle on the howler monkey contingent, contingent, and is like, come on guys, like we we are the goose that lays golden eggs here, right, like we get to decide laws, we got this, we get the sweet gig for life, we get to wear these cool robes, nobody can touch us, don't screw it up, uh, and and now like the inmates run the asylum, right. Like once

0:54:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:54:13 Alex: It's it's the gorsuch court now oh

0:54:13 Andrew: Yeah it's the amy coney barrett court yeah keep

0:54:17 Thomas: So we are we are somehow already out of time, which is amazing. There's so much more we can talk about. I want to get any last Alex thoughts on the debate thing. I'll give you a prompt, Alex. I want you to know, in one of your debate competitions, if Trump did what he did, would they call security?

0:54:35 Thomas: What would be the score assigned to you? Or would they tell you, not only are you out of this debate, we're failing you in high school? What would happen?

0:54:35 Alex: Geez well

0:54:46 Andrew: There. So

0:54:46 Alex: Okay so, yeah, so at the end of the day, like, the round's decided by the judge, so the judge gets to decide, you know, how you win, so a lot of debaters have started doing uh things to call out like what's happening in the round and actually turn that into a way of winning the round, so um, for example, you know, if I were to get up in the debate round and like, you know, read a whole bunch of racist slurs, the opposing debater would be like, um, obviously you shouldn't be reading racist slures in debate round, I mean you shouldn'T reading racists slurs ever, um, so judge, vote them down, I don't care what they've have said in this round about the topic, you should vote them down, uh, just because they've, you know, done something racist, and a lot of judges are very persuaded by that and especially when it comes to racism, but there's like a lot, you know, more nuanced things, because then you start getting into, uh, you know, like frivolous arguments, like, oh yeah, you need, you shouldn't be wearing shoes in a debate round, and I'm not kidding, there is actually shoes theory, um, and it has actually won rounds before, but the point being, um, yeah, you could definitely, uh, like, indict or critique Trump's behavior in the round, um, it all depends on, are you willing to get a judge that hears you out, but I think there's a more, uh, there's, uh, there's a more like central issue here, which is I just think he would get kicked out for evidence ethics, like, evidence ethics, it is a thing in debate and And you can get disqualified from tournaments for lying, misrepresenting, miscutting your evidence.

0:56:20 Alex: And I feel like Trump wouldn't make it past the first speech before, like, somebody's going to challenge him and he's going to lose that challenge. So that's my thought. It's like, it's bad on a whole number of levels. I just, it, it also just like not his activity, but you know, assuming he's in it, he'd just just lose but but you definitely

0:56:43 Thomas: So what you're saying is the president of the United States would not be able to even get through a high school debate.

0:56:44 Alex: Oh oh definitely not the high school would totally smoke their way through that round.

0:56:50 Thomas: Wow. Ahead, Andrew, well.

0:56:55 Andrew: Just a little bit of a note. I don't know if you've seen this, Thomas, but the Nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates has released a statement that says that for the future debates, the moderator will have the power to mute the speaker so as to prevent interruptions. Um it

0:57:16 Alex: Yes okay I think we can all breathe now yeah

0:57:21 Thomas: It's just like, who could have seen this coming, except literally anyone, is what frustrates me about this, like welcome to the year 2016 debate. Moderator Of whatever presidential Commission on whatever, ever, like, I, this was so obvious, and the idea that Chris Wallace is out there like, "Boy, that didn't go well," you know, I'm like, yeah, no shit, dude, what did you, what have you all been watching these last four years? How did you not know that this is how this was gonna go I

0:57:29 Andrew: It it yeah

0:57:46 Alex: They they've not they they did Not, I mean, like, so many people just didn't want to watch this at all, like they're just done with it. It's fatiguing.

0:57:55 Thomas: I Have To say The one example I was gonna bring up with Chris Walls, as well, I, I think people are going too easy on this guy, he's driving me nuts, but pretty early on he was, uh, when Trump was interrupting, interrupting, interrupting, interrupting, Chris Wallace was like, "Well, hold on, you're gonna like this next question," like he's like, he's appeasing the the fucking drunken psychopath at Thanksgiving, like, "Oh, hold on, racist, you're going to like, I'll ask a question that's like kind of geared toward your racism, but probably in a more subtle way since I'm one of the nice Republicans that's more respectable," that kind of thing, like it's terrible, and he would take every opportunity, Wallace would take every opportunity to make it a both sidesy thing. Like he would go like, well, like he would be kind of, you know, just sort of trying to, um, muscle through it by not being specific. He'd like, oh, okay.

0:57:56 Andrew: It So

0:57:56 Alex: Yeah.

0:58:42 Thomas: Okay. And then the minute Biden would jump in, then he would get like, oh, you both need to stop your, you Know what I mean? Like every time. And it just drove me fucking nuts and I can't stand that guy

0:58:54 Andrew: So Three, three super quick things about that, right, one, remember that Chris Wallace Is a conservative Fox News host, I Know Alex had to ask me that, right? Like, so so Number one, right, his instinct is certainly not to help Joe Biden, number two, I, I think what we saw was that, that, that yes, there was that both-sidesism in the first kind of 20 minutes, but by the end of the debate, right, I, Chris Wall- like right

0:59:00 Thomas: Yeah yeah well

0:59:05 Alex: I actually asked Yeah.

0:59:26 Alex: Will you condemn white supremacy that's a pretty pointed question you

0:59:27 Andrew: That was yeah it was that was as oh go oh

0:59:31 Thomas: Hold on that's him giving Trump a chance that's Him trying to help Trump because in his mind Chris Wallace is like here's an easy one for you here let me hand you a layup uh and then Trump drop

0:59:38 Andrew: I don't think that No, I disagree. I

0:59:38 Alex: Think I don't know how can you expect him to answer that way though but

0:59:48 Thomas: Kicks the basketball through the roof of the the thing like doesn't get anywhere near the basket you don't think that's chris wallace trying to just give him a that you don'T THINK THAT'S CHRIS WALLACE TRYING TO JUST TEE UP WE'LL GO BACK TO BASEBALL JUST SET THE BASE BALL ON THE TEE AND THEN DONALD TRUMP HITS LIKE HIS OWN DICK WITH THE BAT LIKE INSTEAD OF THE BALL YOU DON'T THING THAT'S WHAT THAT WAS

0:59:55 Andrew: Like my Tea My Tea Analogy Was better? Yeah, no.

1:00:07 Andrew: No, I I think you... you can't have spent any time in, in or around... the let me not phrase it like that. Chris Wallace knows that Trump's base is, is rabid white supremacist. He knows that that is as much a gotcha question for, for Trump, and this is how he's thinking about that. He's thinking that will be my gotcha question for Trump, because I'm an even handed journalist, that is on a par with getting Joe Biden to disavow the Green New Deal. Right, I, 100%. That's what Chris Wallace was thinking.

1:00:46 Thomas: Maybe I take it more

1:00:48 Andrew: Can go again

1:00:48 Thomas: As like uh bet hopefully this doesn't still happen as much but back in the 90s if there was like an employee was sexually harassing you know like a co-worker and then the boss comes out I like hey chris you didn't mean anything bad by the things you were saying to julia right and then that's like the button and the chris can be like no of course it's not see julia like come on that's that's how I took it

1:01:13 Alex: But he started by saying sure sure sure I'll do whatever you want yeah yeah I agree, but then when he doubled down, he doubled down and said, and and Biden kind of aided him in this, and and said, well, so will you do it, will you say it, will actually say, and and you know what you would expect from any decent human being is, "I hereby condemn white supremacy," supremacy on camera, but like he would just like stand by, but like yeah they doubled down and then he Said, "Stand by." He started with, "Sure, sure, sure," but he wouldn't say the words, "I condemn white supremacy."

1:01:13 Thomas: Yeah yeah

1:01:18 Andrew: Yeah I I think alex's point yep yeah I think Alex's point is really well taken that if it was a setup for that, then when Trump says, "Yeah, sure, I'm willing to condemn white supremacy," right, it was, I think, telling that both Biden and Wallace sort of leaned in and were like, "Okay, well, are you going to do that?"

1:02:06 Andrew: Yeah. Go again. Like, because it, it, if you were just using it in the, you know, in the hypothetical that you gave, like saying, "Well, see, he said he was willing to condemn white supremacy," and you're like, "Yeah, right, but he didn't do that." Like, I, I, I give Wallace points for saying, for saying, saying, "I'm willing to do it" is not the same as actually doing it, right? Like, like, that's like, yeah, I'm totally willing to apologize. All right, moving on. What? I apologized. What are you talking

1:02:06 Thomas: We're waiting Yeah, all Right. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah.

1:02:33 Alex: Yeah

1:02:37 Thomas: Wallace was like, "See, everyone, he's fine." Yeah, that would have been different. Yeah, okay. All right. What was the, I think there was another point you were gonna make, two or three, but

1:02:41 Alex: Yeah.

1:02:37 Andrew: About? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I think it probably got subsumed. I mean, I would say this. I think by the end of the debate, I have not seen any post-rounding with Chris Wallace, right? Right. I mean, he still has to go back to Fox News, which is doing their damnedest to get Trump elected, reelected. Right. And and I have not seen that how he's been received back at the mothership. But I can't think it's well. Right. Like it. He certainly, you know, said, no, this is this the president who is, you know, stomping all over the rules here, so uh, I, I am really, really happy that Wallace was the first moderate, right, because it interferes with the Republican playbook to blame, you know, I mean, could you imagine if that was Rachel Maddow?

1:03:42 Alex: Yeah.

1:03:42 Andrew: It would just you know yeah

1:03:43 Alex: That would have been the worst.

1:03:45 Andrew: They would have just been like, oh.

1:03:45 Thomas: Yeah, I guess My point is sure to all that, but still, fuck Chris Wallace. Like, I don't, it's not that he did. He didn't do a good job. Like, he still, he, the trap that they've all fallen into is, well, Donald Trump's going to complain and say that you're biased. So, therefore, they're like going out of their way to be way more than than fair to Donald Trump and to give him every opportunity when what he really needs to do is just recognize no matter what you do, Donald Trump's gonna complain. So just try to actually be fair. That would be the better course of action.

1:03:51 Andrew: Yeah. It,

1:04:19 Thomas: You're not going to do. I don't think there was a way of moderating, moderating that debate that Chris Wallace could have done that wouldn't have resulted in Donald Trump shitting on him because that's just how it's going to be. I mean, yeah,

1:04:32 Andrew: I I think that's right, and the analogy that comes to mind is what we have been able to do sort of slowly over time in science journalism, right? Like, and it's an area you and I, Thomas, care about a lot, like, and and you saw that because of the journalistic both sides standards. Right. That that allowed creationists and, you know, naturopaths and nut jobs to be like, well, like, what's the, other you know, you had a pro vaccine person on, let's get an anti vaccine person on, and like the press fell for that, like, hook, line and sinker for decades until it was like, "OK, we get it, like your training is, here's the person on one side."

1:05:21 Andrew: Now, here's the person on the other side. We've been balanced. When somebody says a fact, you're not required to put up somebody to say nonsense to counterbalance that. And and again, now apply that to the president of the United States. Right. Right. Like I would not want that under normal circumstances, the New York Times to like editorialize in its stories, except right. Like I wouldn't want them to editorialize against George W. Bush, war criminal, the person I thought was the worst going to be the worst president in American history. Right. Like, I would not want the New York Times to have to change their journalistic standards in their reporting to talk about, you know, to say today, George W.

1:06:07 Andrew: Bush said, you know, that Colin Powell went to the United Nations to present evidence of, you know, chemical munitions factories in Iraq, knowing, by the way, that those were, you you know, baby formula factories. Right. Like, and they've started all of that as a long winded way of saying they've starting to do that with respect to Trump. Right? Like they've started on page a one to say the president repeated the assertion that X, even though the facts are that Y, right? The facts are that not X.

1:06:41 Thomas: I think the mic muting could work. I also think that why don't they just say like, hey, if anyone interrupts, the other person gets a plus 10 seconds. Imagine if it's just like by the end, they're like, well, Biden just gets to talk the rest of the debate because he

1:06:42 Andrew: And yeah,

1:06:55 Alex: I was just gonna say biden's just gonna be there like into next week if

1:06:58 Thomas: Had the moderators like, well, Joe, I guess the next hour is yours.

1:07:04 Andrew: Definitely.

1:07:04 Thomas: Just whatever you want to say.

1:07:04 Alex: It's just a time penalty trump is just gonna be like fine I'm just gonna keep filibustering let him have next week

1:07:09 Thomas: Yeah, true. True. Maybe do both. Yeah. Good point. All right. Well, we're way over time. We got to get out of here. Thanks so much, guys. I really appreciate it. Alex, I'm sure you've started a podcast that you need to plug by now, right? Are you in the family business?

1:07:18 Alex: Thank you working on it working on it yeah

1:07:24 Thomas: Yeah. All Right. Thanks so much. Good luck in all your future debates and don't try Trump's tactics at home, everybody.

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