The president, former president, making their way off the CNN debate stage looks like Jill Biden, the first lady has come out, former president Trump walking off the stage. The first debate of the 2024 campaign in the earliest presidential debate ever now in the books and in front of the voters tonight, along with Aaron Burnett, the first word on what those voters might make of it from our political professionals, from our CNN Flash poll and swing state focus group. We'll be talking to surrogates, including Vice President Harris, getting fact checks from our Daniel Dale and new reporting from inside both campaigns with the here, CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, Kate Bettingfield, David Urban, Van Jones, Elizabeth Park, Griffin and News 9 anchor, Abby Phillip, and David Axelrod, and CNN chief national correspondent, John King. John, let me start with you, your thoughts. Anderson, this was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists. It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers. And they're having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket, and they're having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include, should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside? Others, or other of the conversations are about, should prominent Democrats go public with that call? Because they feel this debate was so terrible. They do say in moments in the debate later, the president got better and got his footing, but then at the end, even his closing statement was a little halting. The contrast between the two candidates. Let me be clear. None of them and a lot of Republicans don't think Donald Trump had a great night. Donald Trump broke the fact-check machine more than I can count tonight. That will be on the record as we go forward. He refused to answer some very specific and direct questions about his conduct, about January 6th, and what all. So that will be dealt with out there. And sometimes there's a parallel universe between the political elites and the American people. It'd be nice to see what the voters say, but I can tell you, it started minutes in. It started with the first couple of answers, and it has continued throughout the night from, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, to what do we do about this? And it involves very senior people in the Democratic Party, including elected officials saying, we have a problem. And just to cosign what John is saying, I mean, the panic that I am hearing from Democrats is not like anything that I have heard in this campaign so far. And a lot of it has to do with, first of all, there was a deep frustration about Trump's lies. I mean, he lied a lot tonight, but the problem for Biden was that Trump was able to take sometimes incredible falsehoods and turn them into some kind of argument, whereas Biden's answers were in a lot of cases not coherent, deeply problematic that he was not able to take pretty straightforward answers and answer them to the American public. And then also at some points, bringing things up that teed up Trump attacks. So there's a real concern here tonight that there's been some real damage done that cannot be undone. Biden solidified the perception among voters, but especially among his base, they were hoping that tonight would be a game changer. They are now seeing a president who is in the White House, who they do not necessarily believe, can do this for another four years. David Axelrod? Look, I can't argue with either of them about how a Democrat leaders, Democratic leaders are reacting to this poll. We said at the beginning that each person had a fundamental goal. And for Biden, that goal was to appear energetic, engaged, and look like someone who is capable of serving for another four years for president. That was job number one. I actually think he scored a bunch of points. I think if you just judge this on sort of policy stuff, he did score a bunch of points on issues like abortion, for example, on some of the economic issues. But there is a feeling, I think there was a sense of shock, actually, how he came out at the beginning of this debate, how his voice sounded, you know, he seemed a little disoriented. He did get stronger as the debate went on by that time. I think the panic had set in. And I think you're going to hear discussions that I don't know will lead to anything. But, you know, there is a good, there are going to be discussion but whether he should continue. And I think part of it is Donald Trump did not meet his mission either. He could not resist the temptation to be nasty, to provericate about a whole bunch of things, about his own record, about Biden's record, and to seem petty and small at times. So what you saw was a candidate who's deeply vulnerable and a president who may not be able to take advantage of it. But listen, if anybody in America thinks that that was even close to being an okay debate by Joe Biden, I'm living in a parallel universe. That was an unmitigated disaster for President Biden from the second he walked out to the closing statement. The biggest issue for Democrats is abortion. And he couldn't give an answer. He gave an answer, he couldn't even give a coherent answer on the biggest issue for Democrats tonight. I've heard from leading Democrats across the United States, elected governors, congressmen, who are texting me and saying, "I'm worried I'm going to lose if Joe Biden's at the top of the ticket." Bob Casey, I promise you tonight in the state of Pennsylvania is throwing up in his mouth because he knows that if he's got to stand next to Joe Biden, he's going down in Pennsylvania. If he's on the ticket, I don't know how it's going to work. Yeah, look, it was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden. I don't think there's any other way to slice it. His biggest issue that he had to prove to the American people was that he had the energy, the stamina, and he didn't do that. And so I think that is of concern. And I think for a lot of Democrats, that's very disappointing. I will say, Donald Trump also had some really rough moments in this debate. And talking to the Biden campaign, they say their dials started really moving away from Trump as he was increasing his personal attacks on Biden. So I think there was a lot about his kind of character and the kind of personal nastiness that he was putting on display that doesn't help him with the swing voters that he needs. And I also think you saw him continue to get more and more animated across the course of the debate and give some really problematic answers about January 6. Some really problematic answers about Putin. So Donald Trump did not get off scot-free tonight by any stretch. But look, there is no two ways about it. That was not a good debate for Joe Biden, Ben. That was painful. I love Joe Biden. I work for Joe Biden. He didn't do well at all. He did not do well at all. And he looked, you know, I'll give you the analysis, you know, kind of have the old man versus the con man. I can walk you through how I'm supposed to see it and say it, but I just want to speak for my heart. I love that guy. That's a good man. He loves his country. He's doing the best that he can. But he had a test to me tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base. And he failed to do that. And I think there's a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now. We're still far from our convention. And there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward if he will allow us to do that. That was not what we needed from Joe Biden. And it's personally painful for a lot of people. It's not just panic. It's pain of what we saw tonight. And if I may just add to that, I think Joe Biden lost in the first three minutes. I think a lot of voters probably tuned out and millions of people are having conversations with their families, with their friends, of if the president is up to the task and if he should step aside. And I'm someone who believes the former president is a threat to democracy. I think he is a threat to the America as we know it. He wants to fundamentally change our institutions. He has laid out what his plan is. I am not confident that that is the man to take him on. You cannot tell me democracy is on the line and then give that performance tonight. If based on that in 18 weeks, Donald Trump will be the president elect. The people doing focus groups tonight, and we'll see if our style group with Laura Coates confirms this, that Biden actually scores pretty well on the issues when he's talking about the substance. And Trump's numbers went down both because he was ducking questions. He was lying about some things and he was refusing to answer some of the some of it was the tone. They don't like it. So when you see that, you know, when you see sort of the statistics, you know, you're going to look at like, Oh, that's a mixed bag. But to Vance point about the president's performance, that's what caused the panic. So the question is, and my question actually is what happens because to his, it's a great political strength of Joe Biden is his resilience and his stubbornness. It's also sometimes a blind spot because he is so stubborn. It's going to be very hard to someone. And I don't know who it is who could go to Joe Biden and say, you need to do this. Number one, the question is again, like, I'm just telling you, to Abby's point, I've been doing this for 30 something years going on 40 years and I have never, ever had what happened on this thing tonight happen in the middle of the debate. It started early and it continued. And to Vance point, Van made a very important point. These are people who love Joe Biden, who who credit Joe Biden for kicking Donald Trump out of the White House. They're Democrats. The Democratic Party is a very diverse party. It fights about a lot of things. It has generational issues. It's had regionals and everything else. The thing that unites the Democratic Party is trying to keep Donald Trump from getting back into the White House. They love Joe Biden for kicking him out. They don't want him back. They came into this debate nervous that Biden was in a weak position. They leave this debate panicked. John, if you love the guy, how could you put him out there? That's hard. If you love him, if you love Joe Biden, if that was my father, you don't put a guy in that situation. It's a great point. These guys, these guys know this better. These guys know this better because they talk to them. There's this legacy in the Democratic Party. You don't challenge the incumbent because when it's happened in the past, they haven't beaten the incumbent. And then the incumbent is lost in general. It was actually Donald Trump that helped make Joe Biden the nominee because there was a feeling that if there were a primary, that that would weaken, that Biden would probably win, but it would weaken him in a general election. And so there were people who could have run and didn't run because the history of that is bad. The point is now he is the nominee of the Democratic Party. This isn't the 60s. Okay. Voters choose the nominee. He is the nominee. Only he can decide whether he's going to continue. And as you point out, and as Kate knows very well, this is a guy with a lot of pride and who believes in himself. And the idea that he's going to say, you know what? I had a bad debate. I think I'm going to walk away from this. I find it hard to believe. It was also an and I'll let you, I know Sky to jump in. But it was also, it was, it was an atypically bad performance. Okay. And it was also one night. So yes, it was an important night. Yes. But it was one night in the course of a campaign. So I think let's see how the problem, the problem, the problem, the problem with the one night, the problem with the one night is that it's a one night that help confirm people's fears. It's the one night that everybody was watching. It was, that was essentially, you know, Trump said, you ought to take a test. That was his test. And people are going to feel that he came up wanting. Not on the substance. I think he actually won on the substance. I don't think Trump did well. I think what it says to a lot of people, a lot of active Democrats is, man, we can beat this guy, but I don't know if we can beat him with the press guy, we hurt for you. When we came on before this debate, I said, I thought this candidacy was teetering and everybody jumped on me. Yes, we did. Yes, we did. Every single person out here. I just, I just, the candidacy has fallen. Okay. Man, I know you're speaking from your heart. I'm worried about the president. We should pray for the president. I think his advisors, I think the White House and I think his family have a lot of explaining to do to their party and to the American people. This night, this one night was caused by and asked for by the Biden team. They wanted this night. And this is what we got. We have been told for weeks, weeks by Democrats who say, Oh, in private meetings, I've seen Joe Biden do cartwheels and handstands while doing trigonometry while solving all the nation's problems. We now know that every single person who said that has been lying to the American people, including Kevin McCarthy. We've been told Kate, I mean, just said everything we've been told about his mental acuity by these Democrats has been a lie and everything we think we knew has been confirmed. I got a text from her friend. She's not terribly political. She'd maxed out to Biden in the last election because she hates Donald Trump. She said to me, I will never forgive the Democratic Party for this election. If the Democrats truly believe that he is an exist, correct to democracy. And that's not just some talking point. They will wake up in the morning and they will do something else because this is not sustainable. That's another point about there are Democrats who are panicking. And then there are a lot of Republicans who did not want to vote for Donald Trump, who do not want to vote for Donald Trump, who are also panicking tonight. I heard from one who said this is scary. That's how it was described to me. I'd second that. There were a lot. There were a lot of those feelings, not just from the base of the party, but other people who really think that there should be an alternative to Trump, who they think is dangerous. And that's the other part of what is unfolding tonight in terms of the panic that is out there as I already have coming into this debate. Support for third party candidates. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Highest and then Jill Stein and Cornell West nowhere near as close. But if you add it all up, you get into the teens in most states when you do that. I think one byproduct out of this is watch and see if those numbers go up a little bit. I'm not saying they're going to go anywhere like a perot standard, but you get to you get to third party candidates getting into double digits, and that's really starts to twist your electoral math state, depending on who they're drawing from state by state. This was already a very complicated race. This is good with it. Number one, the biggest complication right now is conversation with the Democratic Party, but the other complication is going to be if Joe Biden stays put and Kate's right, maybe it'll be another debate. I'm not sure Donald Trump's going to agree to a second debate. Biden's going to need it now. I'm not sure Trump's going to agree to it if the dynamics of the race change bill, and I would also watch the third party. I just want to say one thing, especially the YouTube guys, if for whatever reason there's a change at the top of the ticket, you guys are in trouble with Donald Trump, because the guy who was up there tonight is not a guy who's going to inspire people. He did not show in any way that he has changed from the guy who people have a very positive opinion of for a lot of good reasons. I think Donald Trump won several policy exchanges tonight. I think he did well on immigration. I think he did well on the economy. I think he did well on inflation. I think he went back to Afghanistan as he should have. The thing he did not do was after he realized that he had Biden beaten on policy and on image, he should have turned the page and sounded an optimistic note about what we can become as a people and as a country. He did not do that. He continued to pummel Joe Biden all night. I understand what you're saying. But at the end of the night, very few things about the policy exchanges is going to be remembered. People are going to remember Joe Biden. They're going to remember him shuffling out. They're going to remember him staring blankly into the camera. They're going to remember him looking down, losing his train of thought. And they're going to remember that everything I thought I knew, but the White House told me don't believe my own eyes is actually true. What I said, Scott, was if Joe Biden were not the candidate, if there was another candidate, I think Donald Trump would be in deep. If I made that, that is such a sad state of affairs, something I was consistently hearing is what a bad debate in the sense that Donald Trump lied throughout. He misrepresented. He tried to turn away from key points that he should have given answers on and kept and kept deflecting. With any normal generic Democrat next to him, I don't think he would have won the night. But you put somebody who was suffering from the moment that they got out. It was hard to watch. I had to occasionally look away because it was so uncomfortable. I think America deserves better than the options that are in front of them. It's really devastating. And by the way, our allies are watching. Yeah, look, I mean, the way that I would try to phrase it about a less emotional is Biden stuttered, but he told the truth. You look terrible. Those policies were good. Trump spoke plainly, but he lied the whole time. And he looked good, but his policies were terrible. I mean, he's going to do nothing on climate change. He was hugging the cactus on abortion. I mean, his policies are terrible. So you have somebody who probably shouldn't be president, and you have somebody who cannot be president in terms of what Donald Trump represents. So we have a problem that's a country now, and this might be an opportunity for people to come together and figure this out, because neither one of those people right now are inspiring the confidence that they should inspire, that they can do the job in a way that we could go for the country. But young voters are up for grabs in this election. And I don't know a voter under 30 who would have watched tonight and could say, I have confidence in Joe Biden and casting my vote for four more years of Biden. And this opens the door, by the way, for the conversation about if Joe Biden remains the candidate, you're not voting for Joe Biden. You are voting for President Kamala Harris. Let's be honest. That is where the Trump campaign is going to go with this. They started down this road with a ad they released today. But this conversation about who you're actually casting your vote for, the volume is going to ratchet up, and I got news for you. She's less popular than he is. That is going to be a big problem for the Democrats if this ticket stays the way it is. Yeah, and it's Scott's Democratic friend who maxed out, right? That's the sentiment you're going to hear, I think, from some of my Democratic friends who are texting me saying, I can't believe this is where we are, right? Yeah, I don't forgive. I can't, I'm not gonna be able to forgive the party for putting it in this position. Look, I think about, on Donald Trump's lies, I mean, I spent a lot of time thinking about this throughout the debate because, you know, we in the media, I sit in the chair and I fact check Trump all the time. So, I know these lies by heart at this point. But people watching from home do not. And Biden's job as the other person on the other side of the stage is to be the one to very quickly dispense with the lies and to shut them down. And I don't think that happened enough times in a coherent way to blunt the fact that Trump was taking a universe that was built on a house of lies and building a, building a whole world for the millions of people watching. Particularly on some of the most basic subject matters that President Biden should have been able to just that world that he was able to build. It was not knocked down by the president. That is really at the heart of the problem. He may have won when he was making his discrete policy points. But part of the job on the debate stage is dealing with an opponent like Donald Trump, who goes like a mile a minute on things that are not true. And if you don't deal with that, I don't know if no one at home is doing that. I'm not sure. I don't think you're giving viewers enough credit. I think what they saw was the Trump that they didn't like. And I don't think he did himself a great service. I also think we should let voters absorb this and see what they say. Let's look at where they are next week. We can make our pronouncements. But ultimately, voters have to absorb. They're going to turn your mic off, guys. On the one thing that Biden did fact check him on, on the Charlottesville thing, he was completely wrong. So he's up there talking about Charlottesville and Trump not denouncing the two, you know, two sides and Snopes is out last week, seven months, you know, like seven years too late kind of thing on the deal. And that's the thing Joe Biden's going to fact check him on, something that was proven. We're going to more with the panel out here a lot of notable moments, painful moments from tonight. But as we've been talking about, perhaps a single defining one as well, this one early on. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with if we finally beat Medicare. Thank you, President Biden, President Trump. Well, he's right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death and he's destroying Medicare. That was one notable moment early on. Let's go to Erin in the spin room, Erin. That's right. You know, that was a moment. I'm sure Anderson that you, your panel, me, my panel, and people around the country, that was a painful moment to watch. It was early on in the debate. And Audie Caitlin and Chris are here. It was very early on. Chris, it seemed from that moment. That was it. I think it was even before that moment when he first started speaking, President Biden and the raspiness, the hoarseness and his voice, that was at 9/11. And, you know, there were several minutes when Jake and Dan were setting the rules. So it's got to have been less than 10 minutes into the debate. And he totally lost his train of thought and ended up saying Medicare just out of the blue. You know, we've heard so much from the other panel, their reactions to this. I think ever since, and I've had this conversation so often, that after the midterms, if Joe Biden after a remarkably successful first two years and a remarkably successful midterm for a first term president had said, you know, I'm the transitional president and I'm moving on and sending it to another generation, but he was unwilling to do that. And Joe Biden was unwilling to do that. And ever since then, we have been, I'm just, I'm just, as you're saying that, I'm only interrupting you, Chris, because that is a watch party. That's, that's live right now. Joe Biden, Joe Biden is joining her at the, the watch party she was at in Atlanta. Obviously a response that does not match what seems to be the broader response that they're cheering for him right there. As you can see. Two more years. Do we want to watch that or? No, no, no, we don't have to. Okay, we're not. Anyway, I was just going to say that the two of them decided after November of 2022 that he was going to seek the presidency when there were so many people who thought he should have turned it over to a new generation. And this has been, quite frankly, a car accident in slow motion that we've seen over and building and questioning it. And, you know, as, as has been pointed out, Joe Biden sought this debate at this remarkably early time because he knew he was losing and he needed to change the narrative. And he did change the narrative. He sunk his campaign to that. Well, and we're in the spin room right now. This is where the surrogates and allies of the campaign come to spin their candidates, respective performances, and it is going to be an immense challenge for Biden surrogates. We have Governor Gavin Newsom here and also Georgia Senator Rafael Warnock in the back of the room. There are Trump campaign aides in here as well. No, no reporters are talking to them. Every reporter in here has just swarmed the two Biden surrogates that are inside this room. And I think what I'm most struck by after listening to that entire performance and talking to the Biden campaign officials and covering President Biden myself his first two years in office was part of his closing statement there. He made no mention of abortion or Donald Trump's felony conviction. The two things that they have talked about the most, the fact that that is the biggest contrast between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, obviously the felony conviction, but also what they've done on reproductive rights and the fact that through the justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade will put on the Supreme Court by former President Donald Trump. But on January 6th itself as an issue, Donald Trump lied about January 6th. He downplayed his own role. And he also claimed that police officers were ushering people in that day. They've testified they were actually overwhelmed and outnumber them. That is why people were able to get into the Capitol that day. And President Biden, who delivered an address on the anniversary of January 6 and said that Donald Trump was holding a dagger to the throat of democracy, did not seize on that moment and did not take that. So can I just for a moment? Because we can hear him and this is happening right now. So I just in this moment, he's at a watch party. They're cheering for more years. He's speaking. What I'm curious about, okay, is does he know how bad this was at this moment? He walked out to his aides. Does he know? You can hear him a little bit on the mic. If he doesn't know, that's more alarming than anything. You know, he's not the first president who's had a really... Since we can hear it, why don't we listen to a little bit of it, okay? Head into North Carolina. All right. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I want to go home with you. Thank you. All right. So there he is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The rousing applause, going to that party. Okay. He wasn't a third that vibrant or vigorous inside the debate, Dottie. Yeah. I mean, I think fundamentally, I think a lot of Americans saw Donald Trump they recognized tonight, right? His mannerisms, his quickness and his response. And as you talked about lies and information that was incorrect. Unfortunately, they also saw a Joe Biden. Maybe they don't recognize. This is not the person who was quick on his feet or fast to parry or to respond quickly to misinformation, to respond quickly to lies. He hasn't been that Joe Biden in a long time. Well, I mean, my comment was... This is a culmination of the process. Perhaps, but it also was stark. You know, before I went into this conversation, I thought about the idea of infirm versus unstable. And I think that Joe Biden did not do enough to mitigate the idea that he is infirm. And Donald Trump was able to mitigate looking unstable when I think about how he talked about abortion, for instance, trying to show that he was not extreme in some way. I know people are pointing out his lies tonight. That is also something that Joe Biden was to be doing in a more effective way and did not. And so it's sort of hard to be here now and say, this was said and that was said, like, that's your job on the stage to also jump in quickly. There were also moments where the sentence would end, and there was maybe an attempt to have a back and forth between them, obviously, because the mics, they weren't able to do that. And then there would be another question. It wasn't a fighting committee. You have to use your time effectively. And unfortunately, the president did not do that. I want to pick up on that. I mean, there was a question asked about what are you going to do for blacks and which is a black voters, which is a constituency that Biden isn't terrible, jeopardy of losing. He finishes his statement and the moderator, I forget, which one says, you have 49 seconds left, basically, almost half of the year two minutes. Then he's asked about social security. And I think was, Dennis says, you have 82 seconds left. I mean, he wasn't able to even fill the two minute time he was given with the other guys might go up to talk about black voters and protecting social security. And not to. I don't speak on behalf of black voters, but that was a great example of an issue where both of them sounded just like wild. What is the policy? What is a black job and a black child care? It was like, what is happening? It was very similar to the end when they started going off about golf. Why? I mean, those are those moments where I think as a voter, you're just like, these are the options and it doesn't feel great. One of the number one concerns that you hear from parents in this country, parents have to quit their jobs because it's less expensive for one person to not work instead of having to pay for childcare. Neither of them gave a substantive answer on that. They were both answering questions about very different topics. I mean, Chris and I turned to each other and said, this was a question about childcare costs. A lot of clumsy kind of response. But I'll note that the mics and that was the Biden campaign agreed to that. They wanted that because they were so frustrated by how that first debate in 2020 went on this issue. And you did see Biden not using his time effectively with those times where Trump was not answering the question. I mean, Trump was asked three times if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Obviously, a critical question as we find ourselves in a state where he sought to overturn the election results here and was indicted and had his mugshot taken about three miles from where we're sitting right now. And that was not a moment that became a point of focus. It was like watching a debate with someone who is not a convicted felon and is not also under all of these criminal charges. And I think that is a question of why President Biden himself, who brings it up in other moments, did not use it more effectively. They used it in the one moment where he brought up Stormy Daniels as well. Donald Trump denied having sex with her in another surreal moment in this debate. I don't think that that's ever been uttered on a presidential debate stage. But it was something that you see President Biden talk more about from the White House or in front of donors and close to our heads. To spend January 6, I just thought, oh, here we are in one of the most bizarre moments, right? The idea that actually on January 6, there was a lot of good things happening. And if you just think back to that, it was just so sort of a wild way to spend that. And again, I think it's a pretty effective way to spend that. Well, it would be less if the president could respond to it. Right, yes. But that's a very sick. He goes through six days of preparation at Camp Dave. More than that. And they know the rules. More than a week. Okay. And so more than a week. They know the rules. He practices with the mics. He knows every one of these questions is coming. And yet he couldn't fill the time. Now, I just want to let's see what the White House is saying. Sources close the White House are saying he had a cold, wasn't feeling well. I mean, as you would expect, Matt came out early on in the debate. But what accounts for someone with so much experience doing so much preparation and this big outcome? Honestly, I think the question answers itself. He wasn't capable of doing any better than he did. He had all over the two minutes. He was incapable tonight on the biggest of stages that he saw. He, in effect, dictated. And with all of that preparation, he was incapable of doing better than he was. And you can't come back from that. You can't be in a stage where tens of millions of Americans watched you and come up empty. And that's what he did tonight. He almost seemed a bit nervous at the beginning, Adi. We could read all kinds of things into the facial expressions and, you know, the utterances. But I think at the end of the day, we heard the partisan panel start to wistfully look in the air and talk about what if he wasn't on the ticket. And I think that kind of language and the kinds of things that you're going to see over the next 24 hours is really going to be the important conversation. This debate was early. Is it early enough for there to be some other discussion, more fulsome, taken more seriously? And we'll find that out. And one of the questions I have is, who, if Joe and Joe Biden don't make that decision on their own, is there anybody in the party? Because, you know, the party's system has been so weakened. There were a group of people that came to Richard Nixon in August of 1974 and said, you know what? You got to leave. You don't, you have four votes in the Senate and you either resign or you're going to be removed from office. I'm not sure there's anybody with that kind of authority in the Democratic Party who could go to Joe Biden and say, it's time to say goodbye. And they said that President Biden had a cold and that he was recovering from that. I mean, that came about 50 minutes into the debate after he had been on. Obviously, they're passing that on on background to reporters who are tweeting it. Voters who are watching at home, millions of them who have never even considered having a Twitter account are not going to see that. And it's not really going to help reassure voters because we do live in this moment where President Obama had a really terrible first debate. His own aides will now admit it that he came off and he wasn't prepared and he wasn't ready and Mitt Romney surpassed him in that debate. What's different about this is that voters already had quite high concerns about President Biden's age. And this was a moment where they were hoping it would look more like the State of the Union address and how he came out there and how he dealt with the Republicans who were heckling him. Here in this debate, President Trump would give his answer and President Biden would come out and say that's a lot of malarkey. That's a lot of foolishness. But he didn't have the same demeanor that he did in 2020 where he looked directly at the camera and said, it's not about this. It's about you at home who are having these moments. He wasn't smiling and laughing as much as he was in the first debate. It was a very different demeanor and how he handled Trump. Trump, on the other hand, was not even making eye contact. He wouldn't even look at President Biden or in his direction as he was trying to stick to the messaging or he would redirect a question about a general of his resigning into Biden and Afghanistan. He was taking those moments. These detours. And that is something that the Trump campaign worked with Trump on privately. And I can tell you, obviously, this is the Trump campaign. This is what they're saying. There could not be more thrilled with how tonight went and feel really good about it. And they were nervous going into this debate of how Donald Trump would do. And now they're walking out of it feeling pretty good. Yeah, certainly maybe didn't expect each other. Somebody sent me an emoji from a top person in the Trump campaign, just four flames, four, you know, dumpster fire flames. Another one wrote train wreck. They couldn't feel better about it. And they should feel good about it. All right. It was a very good night. And the one thing I will say for Trump, and there's no question, he lied about a lot of stuff. A lot. But he also showed real discipline. And, you know, one of the big questions you talked about unstable versus unfirm, he was not unstable. And he was very controlled and controlled even in the lives. But he had discipline. He called Biden a Manchurian candidate. He lied about late term abortions and completely misrepresented what happened on January 6th as well. There were many things that were not true. But it was not a repeat of 2020. It's unstable sort of perspective. All right. All stay with me for more reaction. Anderson, I know we've got up here with the White House, has to say now. Yeah, I want to bring in senior White House correspondent MJ Lee who covers the Biden campaign. How they're seeing this tonight. Yeah. What are they saying? Yeah, well, Anderson, obviously a ton of Democrats, voters, elected officials were tuning in tonight, really nervous and really desperate for President Biden to give his a performance. And after his performance, it has really set off panic. There was one Democrat in congressman I was in touch with who was on Capitol Hill at a watch party with a number of other lawmakers. And that moment early on in the debate where President Biden was talking about the national debt and seemed to lose his train of thought, pause for several seconds and then gave a confusing answer. He said that when that happened, the entire room was just completely silent and in shock and that this member's own reaction was that he wanted to jump off of a bridge. And he said that throughout the course of the 90 minutes of the debate, he and the other lawmakers in the room felt like Donald Trump looked young and Joe Biden looked old and that Donald Trump seemed to mostly be on the offensive and that Joe Biden seemed to be mostly on the defense. Democrats, he said, are just panicked right now and don't even know what to do. I mean, these are some really devastating reviews for a Biden campaign that really wanted to use tonight to dispel this notion that President Biden is too old for a second term. You and I was just talking about right before the debate how Biden advisors were hoping that for tonight, a lot of Americans would be tuning in and seeing a President Biden that was more than just the five, 10, 15 second clips that they often see on social media where he does look feeble or older. And now we have another example of the kind of moment that is sure to go viral on social media. The Biden campaign, I should note, is obviously trying to do their best to offer their best spin. You know, they have pointed out moments from the debate that they say, you know, landed better for President Biden on January 6 on the abortion issue. They're also saying that for President Trump, when he was being more vicious and being more personally insulting, that that wasn't a good look for him. One source familiar with the campaign's thinking said, yeah, the president had a slower start, but he did warm up both on substance and on style. But I have to tell you, Anderson, so far, I haven't heard a convincing argument or spin on the president's overall performance, either from the White House or the campaign. MJ, thank you, CNN's Kristen Holmes has some new reporting from the Trump camp. What are you hearing tonight? Yeah, Anderson, I mean, you just heard a lot of what MJ had to say. And because of that, it's no surprise that Donald Trump's team is currently celebrating the outcome of the debate. They believe that Donald Trump won handily. And there's really two reasons for that one. As Kayla noted earlier, they were nervous going to debate. They had done a lot of preparation. They had really encouraged Donald Trump to stay on message. But there's always that chance that Donald Trump is going to go rogue. They don't believe he did. They believe that the former president did exactly what they wanted him to do and what he set out to do, which was to just stay focused on message, to not go overtly with the attacks on Joe Biden and his family to not be too aggressive and to look hinged, to look like somebody who could be the next president of the United States. They believe that he accomplished that. Now, the other part of this, of course, is what we just heard from MJ. We are hearing Democrats both privately and publicly talk about Biden's debate performances. They have been Trump's senior advisors closely monitoring social media, looking at the clips of people saying that Joe Biden looks feeble and weak, talking about the fact that Joe Biden had a number of pauses. They believe that obviously adds to their case that they won the debate earlier tonight. In fact, there had been some rumor and speculation that Donald Trump might show up here in the spin room. I spoke to one senior advisor who said, why would he do that when he just had such a remarkable performance? He doesn't need to go out there and do any spinning. They want him to just get in his car and go home and take the win. That's where they are standing right now. And again, they were nervous going into this. They had done extensive preparation, despite the fact that they said that Donald Trump didn't need to prepare. They'd even been watching old video clips. They are very happy tonight on their way to Virginia, wearing a hold of rally tomorrow. Wilson Holmes, thanks very much back here with the team outside the debate hall. Junking? I mean, what happens now? A couple things happen. Number one, we wait, I would say we should wait. We won't, but we should wait a week and see how this settles out on the polling, particularly in the battleground state polling and particularly among the most important subgroups. What happens right now is, I would just say that if the Trump people are running right saying they won the debate, we'll see if that holds up. Biden lost the debate. I don't know if Trump won the debate. The early indications we're getting, again, from pollsters and party strategies who were talking to people in focus groups and doing dial groups is that Trump actually fared pretty poorly on the issues and his tone was negative. So I don't think we don't have any evidence before us right now in the hour after it ended. The Trump gained a lot of new voters. Put it that way, right? Did he hurt himself with the Trump base? Absolutely not. And so Donald Trump's going to get 40-something. He's going to get 40-something. Did he grow tonight? I'm the most skeptical of that. The main issue, though, is the president of the United States, the incumbent. Again, I don't know that the old rules apply because he's running against the former president, but this is my 10th one of these. And when the incumbent is running, the American people are being asked, keep what you got. Do you like what you got? Stay the course. That was not a stay-the-course performance from a president who, when he walked on stage, knew the fundamentals of this race were already bent against him. They had a 38 percent approval rating, 60-plus percent of the country thinks are on the wrong track. And as Abby noted earlier, there were already significant doubts about, can you do this for four more years? It's the toughest job in the world. And so even in the middle of the debate saying he had a cold, I have a cold. I get it. I get it. That sucks. But he's the president of the United States. When the phone rings at 3 o'clock in the morning, the world doesn't matter if you have a cold or not. And the president did intensive preparation for this debate. I mean, that's the other part of this. And they signaled that repeatedly. They told repeatedly. I mean, he was in camp. David, all of his top advisors were there. They were preparing him as well as they possibly could for this moment. I just became in here saying, sorry, just a moment, but he had to solidify. And it's not just his base. It's who voted for him the last time around, right? Now, who voted for him last time around was enough for him to beat Donald Trump. Donald Trump can say just where he was the last time around. And if Joe Biden erodes so significantly that it's less than what Donald Trump got, Donald Trump wins. Okay, that's how the math works here. So he has to bring back all of those people, whether they're Democrats or not, who cast a ballot for him. Was he able to do that tonight? I don't think there's anybody who thinks that he was. Well, I'll tell you, I am starting to get the push back now from people who are not in agreement with us. I just want to get something. I just want to listen. I just want to watch the debate. No, no, actually, I did. A major black leader just called me and kicked my butt. And so I just wanted to give the other side, which is, which is that Republicans would never throw their guy overboard. Even if they had a guy that had felony convictions, even if they had a guy that led an insurrection, even if they had a guy who was a considerable liar, they would never throw their guy overboard. And there are people who are angry tonight. The Democratic Party leaders are already abandoning Joe Biden. And they're saying that we already know that he's older and slower. But what he stands for matters, if you wrote out what he said, if you didn't listen to it, the substance of what he said is true to the Democratic Party. And there's a pushback beginning to say, the Democratic Party is too scared to stand up for Joe Biden. Other people will. Yeah, but they're going to give in tonight. Can I just respond? Listen, I believe this. I think when we see sort of voter surveys and so on of people who watch the debate and so on, they're going to be a lot different than you might think, because I don't think Donald Trump had a great night. And I think on substance Biden did fine, but that wasn't the big question about Biden. But here's the thing. People can love Joe Biden. Lots of Democrats do. I worked with him. I have deep respect for him. But as you said earlier, the stakes are enormous. You said democracy is on the line. And so it becomes less an issue about loyalty to one person and to the idea of how much are you willing to fight for? I want to give a voice to other folks. Just a bit of a quick follow. Let me jump in on this point the advantage, maybe because one of the reasons I started this voter project is Washington is often wrong about these things. So I'm always skeptical when all the elites in Washington or the people live comfortable lives in Washington. This is this conversation. It's not just Washington. I want to make that clear tonight. This is Democrats across the country who are watching Democrats who live in competitive areas. Democrats who love Joe Biden, they'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But the other question I would just raise is there has to be a conversation with the president after tonight. Some of those conversations away from people who say, "Sir, you should step aside." But if you want to take fans' position out there, the main organizing impetus in the Democratic Party is keep Donald Trump in retirement. Keep him out of the White House. So if you won't step aside, what are the conversations about what to do about tonight? Those will have to happen. So my question for the people who know best and the one who knows the best is sitting right over there, is who can have that conversation with the president? Who's the only person in the party? I mean, Bill Clinton Barack Obama might call him, but I don't know if that would matter. Is it Jill Biden, Ted Kaufman? Who is it? Yes, yes. Jill Biden is the single most important person in terms of sharing criticism, in terms of being direct. But will she? The opinions. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And I imagine that there will be serious conversations within the president's inner circle. People like Mike Donaldin, people like Steve Rachete, people like Anita Dunn, who will have very direct conversations with the president. He is not somebody who shies away. He is absolutely, I think as was said earlier, he's absolutely somebody who is stubborn and resilient. But he's actually not somebody who shies away from having tough conversations and having direct feedback. So yes, absolutely. I have to imagine there will be direct discussions with him about how to adjust the campaign for this. But I also think to this point about waiting to see where actual voters land on this is critically important. Before, you know, before the elites sitting at this table determined that the rest of the country hated the performance, I think we got to see what voters have to say. All right. We're going to take a short break. Will we come back? Vice President Kamala Harris will be joining us. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. What are some of the social service agencies that have supported you and your family growing up? That's Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist, a professor, and a Zen master. What kind of relationships actually help us maintain happiness? And what should we do in those moments where we have setbacks and things that don't work out? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts. The first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign is now history. The fallout from it is just getting started. Joining us now is Vice President Kamala Harris. Madam Vice President, thanks for being with us. Sinan's John King has described a panic inside the Democratic Party right now because of President Biden's performance in tonight's debate. He's been hearing from Democratic lawmakers and others around the country. Some within your own party are wondering if President Biden should even step aside. What do you say to that? Listen, first of all, what we saw tonight is the president making a very clear contrast with Donald Trump on all of the issues that matter to the American people. Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish. And what became very clear through the course of the night is that Joe Biden is fighting on behalf of the American people, on substance, on policy, on performance. Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong. And I'm sorry, on substance and policy and performance tonight. I mean, the president's performance tonight clearly was disappointing for his supporters. Sinan is reporting Democratic lawmakers watching the debate were worried about the president's performance. One said it was a disaster. Another called it a train wreck. Those are Democrats, especially worried that Biden did not punch back on Trump's lies. Listen, people can debate on style points, but ultimately this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance. And the contrast is clear. Look at what happened during the course of the debate. Donald Trump lied over and over and over again as he is want to do. He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results this November. He went back and forth about where he stands on one of the most critical issues of freedom in America, which is the right of a women to make decisions about their own body. He has been completely ambiguous and all over the place about where he stands on that issue, despite the fact that he had selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And that's exactly what they did. And just three years ago, we commemorated the two-year anniversary of Dobs. We're in women across our country have been denied emergency health care, has suffered serious to the point that the president of the United States was not able to put make that case to Donald Trump on the stage tonight. I mean, you debated against then Vice President Biden four years ago, and he was a very different person on the stage four years ago when you debated him. You must, I mean, that that's certainly true. Is it not? Anderson, the point has to be performance in terms of what a president does. A president who incites an insurrection against the Capitol. No, but I got the point that you're making about a one and a half hour debate tonight. I'm talking about three and a half years of performance in work that has been historic. Whether it be the man who we saw on the stage tonight, is that the other guy on the debate stage? The person that you saw on the debate stage that has for that the last three and a half years up until today performed in a way that has been about whether it be in the Oval Office negotiating bipartisan deals so that we have an infrastructure, a real infrastructure plan where we're putting trillions of dollars on the streets of America to upgrade our infrastructure. Whether it be the person I see in the Oval Office who is meeting with heads of the military and the intelligence community and in the situation room, ensuring the safety of America, the person I see in Joe Biden on the world stage, convening world leaders who often ask for his advice most recently just during the G7 conference. So I'm not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I've been watching the last three and a half years of performance. But this was a debate that your campaign wanted. You pushed for this debate at this moment. I mean, you can't honestly say, I mean, can you say that you are not concerned at all having watched the president's performance tonight? It was a slow start. That's obvious to everyone. I'm not going to debate that point. I'm talking about the choice of November. I'm talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime. And do we want to look at what November will bring and go on a course for America that is about a destruction of democracy, electing a man who has said he'll be a dictator on day one, or do we want to continue on a course that's about strengthening America's economy, building and creating 15 million American jobs over 800,000 manufacturing jobs. I got that this is the afterplay for the debate, this conversation that I'm in. And I understand why everyone wants to talk about it. But I think it's also important to recognize that the choice in November between these two people that were on the debate stage involves extraordinary stakes. And there's one person on that stage who has the endorsement of their vice president, and that's Joe Biden. Mike Pence is nowhere to be found in supporting Donald Trump. And that's why he has to look for someone else to run with him, who as we know, will embolden and rubber stamp whatever he wants, because they're going to have to make a choice to not be Mike Pence and to put Donald Trump over their country. Neither person on that stage tonight made the argument as coherently as you just did. You mentioned reproductive rights. I'd like to just play that exchange that we saw tonight. Under Roe v. Wade, you have late term abortion. You can do whatever you want, depending on the state. You can do whatever you want. We don't think that's a good thing. We think it's a radical thing. We think the Democrats are the radicals, not the Republicans. For 51 years, that was a law. 51 years, Constance or Scholarship said it was the right way to go. 51 years, and it was taken away because this guy put a very conservative members on the Supreme Court. He takes credit for taking it away. What's he going to do? What's he going to do, in fact, if the -- if the MAGA Republicans -- he gets elected and the MAGA Republicans control the Congress, and they pass on the universal ban on abortion period across the board at six weeks or seven or eight or 10 weeks, something very, very conservative. If you're going to sign that bill, I'll veto it. He'll sign it. To someone who watched this debate tonight and has serious concerns about the President of the United States, what do you say to them about what they just saw? They saw the fact, they witnessed the fact that if Donald Trump were elected to be President of the United States this November, he will sign a national abortion ban. Take him at his word. He said he would when he was President before. He said, if it came to his desk, he'd sign it. There's no reason to believe anything would change. A national abortion ban means that folks in New York, California, Maryland, all these other states that have protected the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do, will be at risk. That's what you should take away from that discussion. And just -- just fine, I know we have to -- Joe Biden was very clear. I know we have to go -- he signed back into law that protections of Roe v. Wade. The person we saw tonight, the President we saw tonight on that stage, is that how he is every day? The Joe Biden that I work with every day is someone who, as I have said, has performed in a way that has been about bringing people into the Oval Office, Republicans and Democrats to compromise in a way that is extraordinary these days because it just doesn't happen, but Joe Biden can make it happen. The Joe Biden I see is someone who goes to allies around the world and strengthens NATO to the point that there are two new members of NATO who, just about four years ago, people said, "Is NATO even have a reason for existing?" The Joe Biden I know is someone who has delivered 800,000 new manufacturing jobs and bringing manufacturing back to the United States, not shipping jobs out like Donald Trump did. So that's the Joe Biden I know. Vice President Kamala Harris, I appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be with you. Back to the panel. Joining us as well is Biden by other for Evan Osnose. Evan Osnose, you have watched President Biden a lot. What did you make of tonight's performance? Yeah, I don't think there's any other way to put it. This was clearly a person who was diminished from where he was on the debate stage four years ago. I think for a lot of Americans who don't follow politics closely, they saw that and they were shocked. I will tell you, Anderson, what I see now, and over the course of the next few hours and days, is that it's going to come down partly to how Joe Biden makes sense of this. Because his self-mythology has always been, "Okay, I'm the guy that gets knocked down and I get back up." That is, in some ways, it could be a real impediment to him if he's not going to be able to listen clearly to what people around him are going to say. There has to be some very hard conversations. And if he is, in some ways, occluded by that story that he tells himself that he can always prevail, that's going to interfere with his ability to be a clear strategic thinker. And the panel here, Duncan. I just want to make an observation about your interview with the vice president. The Republicans are going to probably disagree with me. But I think one of the greatest acts of political malpractice I have seen in my lifetime doing this is that they kept her under wraps for three years. Now she's out on the road. She has great appeals. Does she have weaknesses? Yes. Do Republicans view her as a liability? Yes. Are repoling numbers great? No. But she has appeal with the pieces of the Biden coalition where he is hurting the most. And when you go into inner-sinner Milwaukee, what do black Americans say? Where's the vice president? Where has she been? They want the president, too. But she's right there. Is she feisty communicator? Good on television? And they kept her under wrap for three years. Now she's out there busy on the campaign trail. I know in places, I know in Republican places, you know, you'd beat her up. But in a close competitive race, when you need all hands on deck, that is an asset that should have been working for them from day one. And Joe Biden was vice president for eight years. If there's anyone who should have understood how hard it is to be vice president, how hard it is to establish an identity as vice president, it's him. And again, she's churned through staff. She has issues. There's no question about it. But she also has potential star power. And on issues like reproductive rights and then the Black street community, she is a great asset to this team. And they have kept her under wraps. I would say two things, John. Like she was in charge of the border. She could have that was her job to begin at the beginning of the presidency. I think she was largely absent from that. So you could say what you want. I just want to give a quick plug for our colleagues, so I think not our colleagues, but Andrew's your colleague, Dana and Jake. They did an incredible job tonight. The debate went flawlessly. It was in it. Everybody in the world was watching to see if it was going to be a fair debate. If they were going to be favoring, you know, one side or the other, they played it right down the middle. And America is the better for it. So I just want to say a great, great job. Second that on on Jake and Dan. A lot of Republicans were coming after our colleagues this week and they totally made history tonight. America needed this conversation. They did it. Let me just take the other side of this Kamala Harris debate. It is a fair question to ask right now. What is going on inside the White House every day? Is she currently making more decisions in the White House than we know? Who is making decisions in the White House right now? We're talking about this in terms of can Joe Biden win an election and serve for four years. I want to know. I want to know what's happening on a day-to-day basis. To me, she is the big story tonight because her position in this administration in this campaign has become magnified by a thousand right now. All right. She's always sorry. We got to take a break. Given all the talks tonight about the truth, the laws and the debate stage were joined by the Fact Checker Daniel Dale. Also ahead, Republican Senator Marco Rubio. A lot ahead. Stay with us. From politics to pop culture and everything in between CNN's five things brings you the five essential stories to get you up to speed and on with your day five times a day. Hello from CNN. I'm Joe Beck with the five things you need to know for Tuesday. CNN five things. Listen now. Add free with Amazon music. The candidate's performance and demeanor tonight notwithstanding, there is the crucial question of the truth of what was actually set on stage and our Fact Checker Daniel Dale joins us now. So Daniel, what stands out to you? What stood out was the staggering number of false claims from former President Trump. On first count Aaron, I counted at least 30, 30 false claims. Now President Biden also made false claims at least nine false or misleading statements on first count. I'll give you some of them. He said he's the only president in a while who didn't have any troops dying anywhere in the world. Troops have of course died on his watch. He said he's put in a $15 per shot cap on insulin and Medicare. It's a $35 a month cap. He said it's a $200 cap on overall drug spending in Medicare. It's $2,000 a year. He said the border now has fewer crossings than when Trump was in office. That's generally not true. He said at least strongly suggested unemployment was at 15 percent when he took office. It was actually 6.4. He said Trump wants to get rid of social security. Trump doesn't. He said billionaires pay 8.2 percent in taxes. It's much higher. He said Trump told Americans to inject bleach amid COVID. We know Trump made foolish comments about scientists studying disinfectant injection but didn't frame it as advice to people. And Biden said the border patrol endorsed him. No, it's union supported. The border bill, he'd supported, never endorsed him himself. In fairness, the president did appear to clarify that one. Now the Trump list, it is way, way longer. So deep breath. He said some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after birth and agree just lie that is illegal in every state. He said everybody even Democrats wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Roe was supported by two-thirds of Americans, even more Democrats. He said every legal scholar wanted Roe overturned, abortion returned to the states. Legal scholars have told me directly this is not true. He said the U.S. currently has the biggest budget deficit ever. No, that happened under Trump in 2020. He said the U.S. currently has a record trade deficit with China that also happened under Trump in 2018. He said Biden personally gets a lot of money from China, zero evidence of this. He said there were no terror attacks during his presidency. In fact, there were multiple attacks. He said Iran didn't fund Hamas Hezbollah, other terror groups under his presidency. Iran, in fact, did. He said Biden wants to quadruple people's taxes. That is pure fiction. He said the U.S. has provided way more aid to Ukraine than Europe had. It's actually the opposite. He said the U.S. has provided about 200 billion in Ukraine, aid. It's closer to 110 billion. He said 18 or 19 million people across the border under Biden, that is millions too high. He said many of these migrants are from prisons or mental institutions. His own campaign cannot corroborate this. He said Biden has only created jobs for illegal immigrants, total nonsense. He said Nancy Pelosi turned down his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6. There's no evidence she even got such an offer. It was the president, not Pelosi, who had the power to deploy the D.C. Guard. He said Pelosi now acknowledges she turned down the troops. No, her office tells me this claim is still a lie. He said he deployed the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020. Actually, that was the Democratic governor. He spoke of, quote, ridiculous fraud in the 2020 election. Zero evidence of any widespread fraud. He said NATO was going out of business before he took office, completely clearly absurd. He said the U.S. was paying 100 percent of NATO before he came along. The U.S. made up about 71 percent of NATO, defense spending not 100. He said he, not Biden, is the one who lowered insulin prices in Medicare. He did it for some seniors, but Biden did it for far more. He said Biden indicted him. Again, no evidence. Biden has had a personal role in any of these four prosecutions. He said Europe takes no U.S. cars, just not true. He spoke of food prices quadrupling under Biden. That's a wild exaggeration, though they are up. He said Biden made up the idea he called dead service members, suckers and losers. No, the Atlantic magazine reported that and then former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly corroborated it. He said Biden called black people, quote, super predators for 10 years. Biden never once deployed that phrase, let alone for 10 years, though he did at least one speak of, quote, predators without specifying us about black people. He said his Trump tax cut was the largest in U.S. history. Not true, though, in fairness, Biden also said this. Trump said China and others stopped buying from Iran under him. China never stopped. He revived his pet lie. I don't know how many times I've done it, that he signed the Veterans Choice Program into law. Barack Obama did that in 2014. Trump signed an expanded version in 2018. And finally, Trump said Biden got rid of that veterans program. Biden has not done that. All right. Well, Daniel Dale, thank you very much going through every single one of those, clearly, long list. And I'm joined now in the spin room by someone on the shortlist of candidates who could be selected as Donald Trump's running mate, the Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Senator, I appreciate your time. All right. Well, you know, I want to talk about the appearance of everything as we've been talking about. But what Daniel Dale just just finished when he went through every single one of those points, does that give you pause? Well, first of all, some of those things. The last one he talked about was the V.H. Royce. The V.H. Royce Program has actually not been fully implemented. It's been undermined in its implementation. So I think what Donald Trump is saying is that basically this was in place. It was expanded. The Biden administration has actually slowed it down and impeded its implementation. I don't remember all 30. When we went through it, obviously, we don't have to go through the Biden ones either. Suffice it to say that, I think at tonight, we all are in politics. I'm in office. You guys cover it. But there are millions of people watching who basically want to ask themselves, were we better off under Trump or were we better off under Biden? Did I have more money in my pocket? Was the world safer and more secure? Was the country safer and more secure? And I just think more and more Americans are concluding that they were better off in the four years Trump was president than in the four years, three and a half years that Biden has been president. And I think that's the core issue of this campaign that's going to decide it. Even with COVID? I mean, it was bad. Yeah, COVID was bad, but Trump didn't create COVID. COVID impacted the entire planet. That was how people felt. That was what they lived through. Sure. But I mean, what does Trump have to do with COVID? On a contrary, they vividly recall, when he implemented the travel ban from China, one, say, January, maybe February of that year, it was Nancy Pelosi and people like that. They were criticizing. I think Biden called them a xenophobe for the China ban. And we wish we would have done it earlier in hindsight. So he invested a massive amount of money, which we had to do in operational war speed, that came up with not one but three vaccines. So if you think about our efforts and the patient protection program, which is bipartisan, but the administration was a key part of, saved, but saved Main Street America when everything was being shut down, including states that were shut down for a year. So even those things he doesn't get enough credit for, but obviously, COVID was an anomaly in human history, something that happens once every 100 years and never, hopefully never happens again. But overall, people have recollections of those years in which they had more money in their pocket. That's a fact. So I want to ask you about something that you said here is his surrogate that he said tonight that are important to you. And I want to start with NATO. The issue of NATO came up and what he thinks about NATO. I want to play that for you, Senator. Okay. This is a guy who wants to get out of NATO. Are you going to stay in NATO? Are you okay with that? He's shut. Well, I think this is the negotiator in him. I was in the Senate when he was the president and he would talk to these guys, not like a politician would normally, but he basically is trying to negotiate so that our partners do more. Interestingly enough, the Eastern European countries, all punch above their weight in terms of how much they contribute. Poland is an example. The Western European countries have been slower to come to the table and do more. Now, Germany's got going after the Ukraine and others have gotten going a little bit more. But the truth of the matter is that NATO has been an unbalanced alliance for a substantial period of time. And we tolerated it during the Cold War, but now I think that has to be reexamined. So it's not so much about getting out of NATO, but you have to use some sort of leverage and negotiating tactic to force countries that have these massive social safety nets to spend a little bit more money on their own defense. So you see it as negotiating? I mean, I know you led legislation that would have required an act of Congress before President of the United States could withdraw the country from NATO. Sure. But did you do that because you were worried about Trump? No, I think that Congress has an important role to play in an alliance, which is basically a treaty. But by the same token, I would tell you, and I think, by the way, Biden, I mean, Trump is not the first president American history. Virtually every president in American history has complained about the Europeans not spending more. And why would they? They have these massive social safety net programs that they don't want to take money out of that and put more into their defense. Some of these countries are highly capable of doing more. You look at the attrition of French military capability and other military capabilities from multiple European countries. But they're offering to put troops on the ground if necessary. Well, but you need to invest 10 or 15 years. They can't even get their troops there. We would have to transport them as like we had to do when we sent them to North Africa or help them by getting their troops to North Africa. These are legitimate points. If we want to have a strong NATO, every country has to do their part. And that's what he's saying. And I think he should have as much leverage as possible to get that done. So you're sitting here. You're a surrogate for the former president. This is the most important event at this campaign so far. They're supposed to be another debate. We don't know if there will be. This might be it. Are you the VP? Oh, I don't know the answer to that. No one's told me I am. I haven't have any reason to think they've even been thinking about it this week. But we'll know who it is at some point in the next two weeks. And the good news for Republicans and I'm sure you've had others on the air tell you the same thing. But it's the truth. We have eight or nine people I think could do a great job. It really comes down to who the president thinks would do a good job. And either way, whether I'm in the Senate or I get a chance to serve in the executive branch, I want to be a part of these issues that we're facing at this moment in our nation's history because they're that important. But that's his decision to make. So can I ask you because there's one thing I want to get you in the president, former president, both live in Florida. Yeah. Now, according to the Constitution, state electors have to vote for a president and a vice president, one of whom shall not be in the habit of the same state with themselves. Oh, that's still in there. That's still in there. So, you can't get the 30 Electoral College votes in Florida if you've got two people from Florida on the ticket. So, would you move? Would you establish a presidency somewhere else? Listen, that would be presumptuous of me to talk about that. No, the job has not been offered to me. I am not the vice presidential choice. No one is right now. And we'll cross bridges when we get to them. Tonight is about the debate. I'm not trying to evade you. I honestly don't know who he's going to pick. And those are things that you have to make a decision on. And then we'll figure out whoever it is that they pick, what it is they need to do to make their candidacy possible. But ultimately, I think, and I'm not trying to get back to doing it because I do think it's an important night. Maybe this is the last debate. I don't know. I hope it's not. But if it is, I think there's an element here that, look, I don't take glee in it in saying this, but clearly the president struggled tonight. And I do worry about the impact that that has in Beijing in Tehran, in places where Adam and Moscow, where adversaries see that and perhaps feel emboldened to be more adventurous in their attitudes towards the United States because they feel our president is somehow struggling. And that's not a good thing for our country. And I think that was painfully obvious tonight. And I haven't watched what people are saying on the shows, but we saw that tonight. And I do think that's a factor here. I really do. All right. Well, Senator Rubio, I appreciate your time. And thank you very much. And coming up, the results of our flash poll, the voters' opinions of tonight's debate. Our David Chalene is going to join us with all of the numbers, the details, the analysis after this. It is midnight here in Atlanta, the start already of a new day, a long night, long days ahead of Seoul's searching coming for the Democratic Party. The questions began just moments into the debate, first about President Biden's performance, and now within the party about his candidacy. Now, that said, there is a lot we don't know about the impact of tonight. And John King earlier tonight said Joe Biden lost the debate, but I don't know if Donald Trump won the debate. And it takes a little bit of time and perspective to start to look at that other side of the equation. But we do have a first and very early first read. Things can change first read of history. Shannon Political Director David Chalene joins us now with the results of the flash polling tonight. So, walk us through it. Yeah, so Aaron, I first want to just stress everyone. This is a poll of debate watchers. So this is not necessarily representative of the electoral overall, although I will say as a partisan makeup, these debate watchers do pretty much look like registered voters, maybe about four or five percentage points more Republican than the usual universal registered voters. So just keep that in mind as you see these results, that little bit of shift won't make a difference here. Look at the big question of the night, who won the debate we asked debate watchers in our instant poll. And the answer is a resounding Donald Trump did 67% of debate watchers in our poll say Donald Trump won the debate tonight. Joe Biden 33% say he won the debate tonight. Now, this group of debate watchers, they told us who they thought would win the debate going into it before the debate and take a look at how that changed over time. 55% thought before the debate that Donald Trump would win the debate, 45% thought Joe Biden would win the debate. Look at what the debate did to those expectations. That's when Donald Trump did much better than expected. Joe Biden did worse than expected among this group. And compare this to these two men debating four years ago. That's not always a comparison we have, obviously. The rematch is pretty unique. And so take a look at the complete reversal. Again, that top line there is the debate tonight. 67% say Trump won 33% said Biden. The next line is the second debate in 2020, where Biden won there by about 14 percentage points 53 39 in our instant poll that night. This looks a little bit more like the first debate. Chris Wallace moderated 66% Joe Biden won that debate that night. 28% said Donald Trump won the debate that night. You can see how this night sort of is a complete reversal of that one. And then take a look at this question we ask. Do you have confidence in the candidate's ability to lead the country? Confidence in ability to lead the country. 14% said they have a lot of confidence in Biden. 36% of debate watchers say they have a lot of confidence in Trump. Neither of those numbers are stellar, by the way. You see, 29% say some for Biden, 20% Trump. But here, a majority of debate watchers, 57% say no confidence in Joe Biden's ability to lead the country. 44%. Again, that is not a great number. That is a healthy plurality there in terms of Trump's numbers say no ability to lead the country. No confidence in his ability to lead the coverage. But again, look at that. A majority say, Joe Biden, they're not confident he can be the company. I will say when you look at the initial screen that David just shared with us, Trump won 67% Biden won 33%. That's not what we're hearing out there. It's not what we're seeing on social media. I mean, that's a resounding loss, but it's not 100 to zero, which is what. But remember, we were hearing a hundred thinking about a high bar. We went in thinking about low bars and in terms of like meeting expectations, exceeding expectations in that scenario, the former president certainly earned a win. Yeah, I mean, we came into this debate where President Biden and the White House knew this. This is why he was at Camp David with his aides for the last week preparing for this. They knew he needed to be able to quiet concerns about his age and his ability to lead another four years. It's not just that he's president right now. It's that he's asking voters for another term. And that was how Dana phrased the question tonight that he would be 86 at the end of a second term if he were reelected. And instead, they're walking out of this with those questions only raised and being raised at the top levels of the Democratic Party and the vice president defending his performance to Anderson, acknowledging that yes, it was a slow start, though it was also a pretty difficult end as well. If you watched his closing statement compared to his closing statement that he delivered during the Chris Wallace debate, which I watched truly this morning, it was a very strong closing statement. And this one, he didn't even mention the word abortion. And it makes all the talk of Republicans this week, including President Trump saying that Biden was going to be on cocaine and other Republicans claiming that he was going to be on performance enhancing drugs seem quite quaint when you look at what the conversation is now. I also don't think that you can make too much of the fact that 33% said Biden won the debate. There's a certain number of people who just either like Biden or hate Trump, and they're never going to say the Trump one that obeyed. So I think that's a kind of just I don't think that's a reflection of the way they viewed the debate. It's a reflection of how they feel about the two candidates. Okay, what about the other the other point, though, to what David just laid out? So when you look at the first debate in 2020, that it literally is exactly what we saw, but different in terms of who was on top. So 60% say Biden won, 28% said Trump. So this time it's 67% Trump, 33% Biden. Okay, so those numbers do look the same. So then there's some Democrats who may seize on that Chris and say, well, another debate could turn this around. But this is a different situation, right? Because it's about age. Age and competence and acuity and the ability to do the job and the ability to do the job for four and a half more years. I mean, this speaks to the biggest question that people have about Joe Biden and all of the Republicans are together. Chris, you bring up a second debate. The second debate's not until the end of September, and it's not even guaranteed that it'll happen. I think obviously the Biden team will certainly want another crack at this. As you heard Kate Bettingfield earlier in the vice president saying it was a one-time performance, talking about, you know, what every single day looks like, I think it's an open question for the Trump campaign. And also, it's three months away. I mean, this is going to be the lasting impression in voters' minds or at least the next 30 months. So David, how does this play into the decision of a next debate? What I thought was interesting, just talking to Senator Rubio, you would have thought it would have been in his interest to say, okay, we're done. We don't need more debates, certainly in Trump. It's not what he said. He actually said he wants there to be another debate. There is scheduled to be another debate. Yeah. So I think we should. It is already accepted. It's an accepted invitation. So for President Biden to pull out of that debate, and again, he's got a summer to get through Trump could pull out of it. So I don't need it. Well, I highly doubt that. I think Trump will walk away thinking tonight served him well. He wanted more debates than the two that they agreed to. So I don't see any necessarily any change from Trump coming. He enjoys the ability to get that kind, command that kind of attention. I do. I do think though, the notion that Joe Biden may not want to participate in a second debate tonight becomes trickier and a part of this larger conversation of the path forward for the Biden candidacy from here. They have a summer to get through. They're not going to have weeks of Democratic hand-wringing and concern that we've been talking about and hearing about. Then they're going to have to get through the convention. Should he stay indeed as the nominee? And there's no reason at this moment to think that he's not. We'll see what happens there. And then on the other side, so yet another test for him, his convention speech and the like that this will be a conversation piece. And then head into that debate to kick off the voting season. Remember that debate on September 10th, that is right up against when people are doing early voting. And so that would be a big, big move if he's going to remain the nominee to pull out of a debate. All right, all stay with us next. We're going to go to the battleground state of Michigan where a focus group of voters watch the debate is standing by with our Laura Coates. They started the night undecided. So let's see what they're telling Laura about how they feel now. Over this election plays out like the last one. It will be decided in just a handful of swing states. Right now, quick look at what undecided voters in one of those states, Michigan, thought of what they saw on her tonight, seen as Laura Coates watched the debate with them, joins us now from Warren, Michigan. Laura, how was it? Anderson, we are right outside of Detroit in Maccove County at Maccove Community College. It's a really important moment because as you well know, this is a very important swing state. It went for Trump, then it went for Biden. But here in Maccove County, the votes actually went for Trump. And we were sitting with undecided voters to figure out what they were thinking. We got the reactions in real time and there were some very consequential moments. Here, I want to begin though with everyone by giving a show of hands. I want to ask the people who are with me here today. Many of you came in undecided. In fact, most of you, by watching this debate, a show of hands, how many of you have now made up your mind? This is unbelievable to think about how impactful and influential this very moment was. I want to get a sense from all of you. We were all watching the appearance of the two candidates. What did you make of how they both performed and the way that they were appearing in the camera and beyond? Who had a strong reaction, especially to the age component? I would have to say after watching the debate and watching how Biden had himself and answering the questions, it reassured me of my his own assurance, be able to lead our country. I'm concerned he was hesitant, very not cognitive, seemed like his data. He was missing his numbers, so very concerning. That's somebody I don't think that needs to lead our country. Does anyone share that same opinion? A couple of you do? Who does not? Let me ask you. One of the big things that a lot of people forget, when we are typically speaking in day to day life, we tend to stutter as well. Sometimes it will take time to be able to think about what you're going to say, but regardless, when it comes to a strong leader and what we're looking for in a leader, I'm looking for somebody that I trust to be able to uphold policies that will protect me and are more concerned for the general well-being of everybody in the United States, which I got more from Biden, considering he did a lot more talking about policies, what he's done and what he plans to do. Whereas on the other side from Trump, all I really heard was, "I've done this and it was the best ever, but I never heard what it was." Or, "I heard that Biden was the worst ever, but I never heard why." So there was a lot that was left unclear for me, so while he may have appeared like a stronger candidate, on paper, there was a lot missing in terms of actual debate. You're not in a long picture. What do you say, Sam? I would agree with that. And the rules of the debate where you could not bring notes or any written material, so I'd defy anybody to try to speak for 90 minutes and not forget some facts. And the fact that he struggled with that, he's always had a stuttering problem. But like she said, I think the leadership qualities are there. There was a very big moment as well in terms of a conversation about the felony convictions. As you know, there are 34 accounts out of Manhattan for the former president of the United States. That was actually addressed today. I want to play for you all again and remind you of that moment. He could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office. Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he's done. He's done horrible things. All of the death caused at the border, telling the Ukrainian people that we're going to want a billion dollars or you change the prosecutor. Otherwise, you're not getting a billion dollars. If I ever said that, that's quid pro quo. How many of you heard that conversation between Trump and, of course, the debateers talking about the so-called weaponization of the government? Who believes and agrees with Trump here that he was only targeted because he was a political opponent of Biden, Joe Lance. Wendy, you kind of grimace for a second as to that agreement. Why? I definitely think that was a political move with the timing of how the charges were brought forward and even the charges themselves. I'm sure there's many corporations who employ, have employees who take care of the financial documents that write down legal expense and you just pay the bill. I mean, I don't, I wouldn't question every legal expense on a report, but that's a felony. Let me ask you, Steve, as well, on this point, you seem to be nodding along. What's your reaction? I think that the, it's not so much the crime. It's the process or the process leading up. They're trying to use up his time so he can't campaign, use his money, his resources to pay for legal fees so he can't compete with Biden. I think that his mental acuity is a lot better than Biden's. Biden seems to be very tired. Actually, I'm tired of both of them because they just keep going back and forth, back and forth. We just indicate some younger people in there that have clean records that start over. Well, there was a moment I want to get to talking about sort of clean records or the tit for tats you're talking about. There was an exchange happening. This time mentioning the convicted felonies. Also, the accusations of the allegations of having sex with a person who was a porn star, the allegations we've heard time and time again, there was a moment that our audience here, our focus group of people and undecided voters had some pretty strong reactions to and you're going to see on the bottom of the screen how they were reacting, how they were divided in different moments and reacting in real time. Listen to that moment. The crimes that you are still charged with and think of all the civil penalties you have. How many billions of dollars do you own, civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a home range of things, of having sex with a porn star on the night while your wife was pregnant. I mean, what, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat. Give me a minute, sir. I didn't have sex with a porn star. I mean, talking about the morals of an alley cat, for many of you, that was a visceral moment. What was your reaction? The entire time I'm thinking of the fact that I have three teenage boys that are sitting back and they're watching this presidential debate. And when I was growing up, we would have never been talking about molestation, rape, and having sex with porn stars. But here we are. So what kind of example am I setting for these three teenage boys who are watching both of these guys squabble on in this this way? Which one of you or any of you were satisfied by the debate in terms of their performance to make a decision tonight if you had to vote? Would you know who you vote for tonight? Can I ask you who you thought won, Biden, or Trump? Biden, show of hands? If you think he won the debate, who thinks that Trump won that debate? Who's undecided? It's a really telling time, particularly in an area just like this where those candidates are focused on an audience just like this. Could they persuade them? Could they make them decide tonight? Many have already made up their mind as a result of what we saw. Anderson? Laura Coates, thanks. And thanks to all your group. I really appreciate them watching it with us back with the panel here in Atlanta. I'm sure we're to go tonight. But you had a great point about Kamala Harris right after she she talked. I just wanted to make sure people got a chance to hear from you on it because I thought it was really well put. Well, look, I think it's worth debriefing on that as well because the conversation right now is also about her. Yes. And I thought her interview with you Anderson was one of the best times I've seen her in an interview with anyone. And she clearly understood the moment, the challenge she needed to defend the president, but she needed to defend herself as well. And I think that the one of the things that people always want to see more from her is her personality, a little bit more fire, a little bit more more quickness in responding even to things that are challenging. And she showed that tonight. And there's probably no more time in the three years that she has been vice president that that has been more important than right now. Whether or not that all this chatter about what happens with Joe Biden means anything or not, voters need to understand who she is and whether she has what it takes to be second in line to the president. The reason I think it's so important is because I think if people had seen that Kamala Harris and and the kind of confidence I think that she brought out in a lot. Last night, I mean, tonight, a lot of Democrats took heart in Kamala Harris. She was on our air in other places and their people are feeling confident in her. Had that level of confidence existed in a broader way earlier, people have less concern about Joe Biden. Part of the concern about Joe Biden's age has been people not having that confidence in Kamala. So it's just kind of double thing. So I just I do think I'm just trying to track what's going on here. I do think Kamala Harris did herself some good tonight, which ultimately may help. Listen again, where has she been? No one's kept on the wrap. That's not my job. I'm just locked her in the club. I'm just saying she did good tonight. She's the vice president. She's the vice president. Hubert Humphrey once said the two biggest clubs in the world are the wood of club and the should of club and neither are worth belonging to. It really doesn't matter now. Well, what does matter is what application does it have now? And I'll say one thing. She has been doing a lot better lately. And she did I think tonight, if there's a vice, you know, for all of the caricaturing of her, if I would not want to be the person sitting across from her in a vice presidential debate, and they're supposed to be one, but we'll see if it happens. Yeah, listen, they're very real concerns tonight in conversations that are being had handering about what is going to happen. What the Biden team is obviously going to do is wait the next couple of weeks see if the polls shift. But I expect that you're going to see not just the vice president out more. You're going to see Gretchen Whitmore out more. You're going to see Gavin Newsom, and they're going to be campaigned for Biden, but they're also showing the chops that they have, because there is a nonzero chance after the performance tonight that a change has to be made if the president were to step aside. And there is a bench. Don's actually have a very strong bench, but not the strongest person at the top of the tech. Guys, this conversation about hair. I mean, listen, first of all, this was not a good interview. She couldn't answer a simple question about what Joe Biden like on a day to day basis, because the honest answer is not acceptable. That's number one. Number two, listen to what you're saying. The pre the sitting president of the United States is so out of it and infirm that you're now turning to the vice president of the United States to carry your ticket and your party when they are currently in office supposedly running the country. Yeah, this is this is a scandal. The White House press secretary this last few days have been telling us, Oh, the videos you've seen of Joe Biden aren't real. They're fakes. The US government right now has a president and none of us are quite sure what goes on on a day to day basis. And you're putting all your hopes and dreams into the VP. Okay, that is not that is not true. Somebody who left that White House about a year and a half ago. I can tell you I can tell you that he is he is somebody who is very direct in meetings. He's great. Well, you know, he had a bad night tonight on the debate stage. I'm not disputing that. But I can tell you he is he drives the drives the ship in the White House. He's the person who makes the decisions. He sit in meetings with him. He's asking you for details. He's always asking you for the dang thing you don't have, but not for nothing. And and and so so I understand I understand what folks are saying, but to say that Kamala Harris was lying about Joe Biden. She did. But she did though. But by the way, world leaders. What Scott is doing right now is what the he's doing the Republican Party line there. This is what Republicans are going to be saying. And off of this debate that, you know, now it's clear that Biden is functioning as president. He's not a great communicator. That's pretty obvious. They're coming to get you. Yeah. How is it? How is it? How is it clear that he's functioning as pro? How is it clear? Well, the fact is that he he's talking to foreign leaders all the time. He just came back, came back overseas. Okay, but world leaders are racing for a Trump presidency. The European allies are bracing for Trump to win. The Arab state leaders are all bracing and paying for Trump to win. All I'm saying is when you honestly, look, Scott, maybe maybe it is a bit overstating it that Joe Biden is not not there at all in the White House. But but when you talk to regular people, most people they just take a glance a passing glance at what happened tonight. And they roll their eyes and they they say, huh, why are we? Why is this our choice? And it confirms to them their view that this is basically something they don't need to pay attention to because they have nothing but bad choices. That is a very, very bad thing for Democrats. I don't think a lot of people are sitting here analyzing it to the degree that we are. But for most regular people, they're just saying it confirms what they have already believed about Joe Biden about whether he can do four more years about whether he is doing a great job today in the presidency. I mean, let's not forget his approval rating right now is partially because a lot of Americans don't believe that right now he is doing a job that they like. And if you just think about 2020 all over again, Joe Biden cannot afford to lose much. So the third party candidates matter more at the moment. The president has a motivational energy issue, enthusiasm issue with his base. He did not help himself tonight. He likely heard himself tonight. It's June. So maybe this all passes. The conversation among Democrats is going to try to figure that out. But remember, Georgia, where we are, 11,779 votes, right? You know, Wisconsin, 25,000 votes, Pennsylvania, 40,000 votes. Arizona, what 10,000 votes? I don't have all the math in my head. He can't afford to lose much. Trump voters are going to come out. We know that. So the question is, he was already struggling. Biden came into this debate, not a ton behind, but enough behind for it to cause worry among Democrats. The reason the worry among Democrats has turned from worry into, I would say, panic, or at least lowercase, panic, is because they were worried coming in. They were already worried coming in that, look, he's vastly outspent Trump on television in the battleground states. And it hasn't moved the numbers much. Now you could also argue, if you want to do the half glass, half full or half empty argument, he's at 38% approval rating. And he's still very close to Donald Trump. That tells you America doesn't want Trump either. Right. America does not want Trump either. And so, but the president heard himself tonight. There's no question about that. But the question is, do the Democrats vent tonight and get over it? Or is this somewhat, is there a more? I got to take a break. Everyone stay here just ahead. We have more new numbers from our scene and flash poll on tonight's debate. We'll have that in a moment. You know, go away, John. President Biden just moments ago at a waffle house on the way to the airport here in Atlanta, talking to people there, picking up food for the flight home. And he said, according to reporters there, that I think we did well in terms of the performance tonight. Our political director, David Challey in his series got more results from our post debate flash polls. So what do you have now? Yes. And just a reminder again, this is a poll of debate watchers. It's not necessarily representative of the overall registered voter population, perhaps just a touch more Republican. This poll of debate watchers, though, we asked people their favorable opinions of Joe Biden and Donald Trump prior to debate. So before the debate, Biden was at 37% favorable. Trump was at 40% favorable about the same. You see, there isn't a ton of movement there for Trump. Well, within the margin of error, he's at 43% favorable after the debate. And Biden is just a tick down at 31%. It's about a five and a half percent margin of error. So he definitely some movement there, a less favorable view of Biden after the debate, this slightly more favorable view of Trump after the debate, but not a huge movement there. We asked who better address concerns about ability to handle the presidency. 48% said Donald Trump better addressed those concerns of his ability to handle the job. Only 23% of debate watchers said that of Joe Biden and 22% said neither of them better address the ability to do the job. Here's a critical question. Did the debate affect your presidential choice in this election? Among these debate watchers, only 5% say that their mind is changed. 14% say they are reconsidering their presidential choice. But the overwhelming majority of these debate watchers, eight in 10, said the debate had no effect whatsoever on their presidential choice. And the final question here that we asked is after the debate, would you consider voting for Trump or Biden or neither? 48% of debate watchers said after the debate, they would only consider voting for Donald Trump. Slightly less, only 40% of debate watchers said that they would only consider voting for Joe Biden. Only 2% would consider voting for both of them and 11% after the debate said they would not consider voting for either one. Um, I guess you see that the dissatisfaction with the choice is interesting, Caitlin, when you look at this, though, no, no impact at all, 81%. But 5% of people being willing to reconsider their voter or to change their vote, I'm sorry, or 14% reconsidering. But the margins we're looking at now, those are significant numbers. The margins are everything. That's what's going to be what decides the election come November. And so that is, you're not going, even if you don't see a rapid amount of movement, it's the small margins here that are going to make the big difference come November. And what Donald Trump was able to do tonight, largely because President Biden was not, you know, recorrecting him or, you know, pushing back on his lies, was to make his case to voters. And they've also had four years of distance from a Donald Trump presidency. And so that is how they're approaching this, as they're looking at this. I think one of the most stunning things that happened in that debate tonight that has kind of gone unnoticed is that Trump did not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. He didn't in the town hall with us last year. And he was asked by Dana three times tonight about that. And finally at the end, he said he would if it was a free and fair election. And that may sound different coming from anyone else. But for Donald Trump, it was a free and fair election in 2020. And he still did not accept the results from that. We should just note, this is the third time that Donald Trump has been the Republican nominee, the presumptive Republican nominee. And this is the third election in a row that he's been asked this question and said he wouldn't accept the results of the election. He said in a debate with Hillary Clinton, he made it clear in 2020 that he wasn't ruling out and just saying flatly yes. And tonight, again, you're totally right to note, I was the one who asked him the question in 2020. You know, in a way, it's almost impossible for him to say, yes, I will accept it because to do that would be to, in effect, say all of the concerns that I expressed in 2016, and especially over the last four years, weren't serious. I have to say, one of the joys of having done this for a long time, and I have, is that I remember this reminds me of the 1984 debate, the first debate between Reagan and Mondale. And age was not a big concern with Reagan, but he had an extremely bad debate against Mondale. And suddenly, age became an issue. I'll never forget Richard Throat, called the ABC, began his piece the next day talking about the motorcade leaving Reagan's motorcade, leaving Louisville and saying with voters now questioning, is he okay? And that's, actually, I think it's more than that. I think people have serious doubts now about the competence, more than questions. And it took, there was really quite a firestorm until the second debate when Reagan did much better, and of course, had that great line about, "I'm not going to exploit my opponent's youth in an experience for political purposes." Age is a big issue, and Reagan was a lot younger than Biden is now. Margin, favorability in that flash pull went from a three-point margin to a 13-point margin. It's a huge swing, but yet the drop provided as David just pointed out within the margin of error. It just seems, Artie, when we look at this, we don't yet know how this is going to settle on people. Yeah, I would probably defer to David because a flash pull is a flash flood. It's a moment in time, and I think the thing I'm going to be looking forward in the next five days is what are the mitigation plans? The Waffle House is not the big mitigation plan. I think we saw a glimmer of it, and the vice president's response being very aggressive with Anderson and diving right into some of the more difficult questions he was asking. It's not just about surrogates. Putting out her particularly is supposed to, in our minds, help us understand that there is someone there that you trust, and this has been a question the whole time. I'm mostly interested now in how does the party reckon with this moment? In the country, what the polls have also shown consistently, not just flash pulls after debate, is that voters don't want either of these candidates. They're not thrilled with either choice. I'm not sure either when you look at the big takeaway of tonight, had voters walking away saying, "I really learned a lot about policy, or about what that second term here..." But I'm here because they have two... That second term, the president is boarding Air Force One first lady. I mean, people have had been in their experiences with both bare records, and voters have months and months before they really have to pull the lever, but the parties, whatever they're doing in the next couple of months, they have got to move. So can I ask you, David, to this point about polling and trying to understand what voters think? I understand the freaking out and the naval gazing going on among leadership in the Democratic Party right now. But what are they looking at to determine how serious this is, how severe it is, what makes a decision here? Well, tonight, those leaders were just watching the debate. Right, so that was there. It was like we were watching, in real time, a live text chain of what was going on with a lot of Democrats tonight. What they will be watching are real polls now, not just focus groups of watching a debate or a poll of debate watchers, but in the couple of weeks ahead of us, what has been a very stable race? Do we start seeing the next round of polls come out in a week or two weeks that shows the race has fundamentally changed because of this debate? That will inform conversations about that. Okay, so then let me ask you a question. So let's just play something out. People at home may want this. So let's say in two weeks looks bad, really bad. So then what? When we talk about the time left, time to switch, time to figure this out, what happened? Well, the first question is whether Joe Biden is going to drop out. That makes it much easier for the party if Joe Biden is convinced either he and and Jill together or with pressure from either close allies, big donors, that's the first question because it's a lot easier to transition from here to a new candidate if he just drops out of the race. I honestly don't know because this is all just happening. How hard it would be for the Democratic Party and all these pledge delegates, maybe David, you know, how hard would it be for delegates who were elected in primaries to represent Joe Biden? I mean, the convention itself could this could happen at the convention itself because the pledge delegates, it's not clear like how pledged they really are. You are right, though, Chris. I think if we are talking about Joe Biden not being the nominee of the party, I don't think it's because it's going to be ripped away from the convention. It would have to be him stepping down as the nominee and leaving the race. And the idea of that, I just think we we are so not there. Yeah, I know there's a conversation, but I really want to just take a breath here. Like Joe Biden, who has spent his entire life seeking to get this moment, who's fortified by his family, even with this conversation, and there will be pressure. This will be a real conversation. It really will happen. I just think before we take the leap that yes, he's just going to step down and not be the nominee. And that's going to be the path out of here. That is just such an enormous place to get to from where we are. And also when you when you look at when you know President Biden and how he makes decisions, there is no Gretchen Whitmer pressure. There is no Gavin Newsom pressure. There is no Pete Buttigieg pressure. The only two people on this planet who could potentially convince him to do something that serious. And I agree with David, we're not near there yet, despite some panic from people as they were reading Twitter tonight and watching this is Jill Biden, the first lady who just walked up those shares with him and his sister Valerie. Those are the only two people who could and any chance counsel him and to do that. And I agree with David that conversation out of where it was before, which is, oh, maybe this pundits kind of disgruntled or maybe this person's just trying to get attention. There was a lot of sort of shooing and dismissing of those concerns. And tonight was just a moment sort of laying it bare that maybe that conversation at least needs to be taken seriously in a way that it wasn't before. All right. Thank you all. And coming up, Anderson's panel has some final thoughts on this momentous night. And a look ahead of where we actually go from here before getting some final thoughts from the group here. I just wanted to take another quick look at some of the highlights from our post debate scene and flash poll, the top line by a wide margin, more than two to one. People thought the former president won the debate. That said, a full 81% said that watching this debate had no effect none on their choice for president back here with the team in New York in the any more thoughts? I was just texting with a democratic operative who is just now hearing from the Biden campaign. They convened their outside surrogates and no discussion of what we've been talking about, what the whole world's talking about all night, which is whether or not he's going to be the nominee. You know, they're focusing on the policy, what they consider the policy wins. They're focusing on the idea that Trump lied his way through the debate. They're focusing on the idea that, you know, what the vice president told you, which is that he was off to a slow start. But the thing is, the reaction to that from this operative who was on the call was like, that is not helpful. Yeah. And I think that tomorrow, it would be interesting to see if that is how they address this. They're going to have to calm the waters among their own surrogates. These are people who have to go out and defend the president. And they are, they don't have enough ammunition. And that is what I'm hearing. People were looking for this debate to calm nerves to reassure people, as the state of the union did earlier in the year, he did not do that. I think that I said before, I'll say it again. I think Trump had a great night either. And that's sort of reflected in the numbers and the fact that very little moved. I suspect you're going to see that in polling. But if it's still where it was before this thing began, that's still a problem for Biden. And this was an opportunity to try and move something. So I believe, you know, knowing him as I do and Kate knows him much better, I think the idea that he would walk away from this is pretty remote. But I think his job became just a little bit harder than they did. The big question over the next week is, look, the Democrats are going to panic tonight. You have all these conversations going on. This, how does it sink in? I think the reaction of the president himself and his team is question number one. But what's going to happen over the next few weeks is, you know, does this subside at all? Well, how we know the answer to that question? The Democrats who are running either in very tough Senate races in red states, if you're John Tester or Sherrod Brown tonight, you are having a whole issue with Bob Casey. I'm sorry. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania is another one. If you are the current thinking was, you know, who knows who's going to want to compare to presidential race, Republicans are favored to win the Senate and Democrats will probably eat got to get the house back tonight. There's a lot of Democrats saying, well, wait a minute about that. And so all those Democrats who are in tough districts or tough states are going to get their pollsters and get their teams together. And they're going to see, did this hurt me? Did this hurt me? And that's the conversation that's going to trick along for the next week or so. So when we're having, when we're sitting at a table like this a week from now, we'll have a much better sense of what it means for whether the whether the in your face to the Biden White House will continue, or will Democrats say that was horrible, but there's nothing we can do about it. We got to try to find a way to fix it. I have a prediction tomorrow the Trump fundraising numbers will break the record of the post conviction fundraising numbers. It's going to be a huge day. Well, listen, the theme of this cycle is unprecedented. And I think we have to view things from this vantage point because it sounds crazy to be saying, Oh, maybe there'll be a change at the convention. It would never happen. But if Democrats truly believe what they've been running on, which is that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, he'd fundamentally undermine our country as we know it, then they need to wake up to what happened today because what the history books are going to look back and it's going to be one of two things happen after this. They swapped him out and had a fighting chance against Trump or this was the glide path to his victory. I am. I think one thing Republicans and all Americans should think about what we saw tonight is if you're a partisan Republican, this is not a time for glee. There's no gloating tonight. What we learned in 90 minutes on television is that the president of the United States at least appeared somewhat unwell. And I know we're out here analyzing the politics of it and the machinations of all of it. But he did not look good. He did not sound good. He did not acquit himself well politically or as the leader of the most important country on the face of the planet. We have seven months to go in his term. We have a shorter period left in this election. I do think he walked into this thing tonight up to about right here in the quicksand and now he's up to here. And I don't know how you get out of it. When it's this high and your job approval is 38 percent and you already, as Abby pointed out correctly earlier, having trouble with your own base. And now they're in a total panic. But how do you get out of this morass with so little time to go? I don't have a good answer. I don't think you're overstating it much though a little bit. But there is a fight back that's begun and it's coming from very interesting places. You have people whose feel like their butt is on the line when it comes to women's right to choose. Their butt is on the line when it comes to the fundamental ability of them to go. And there's no other bust for them. There's no other both for them. And you're seeing a fight back online, frankly against us saying, well, you guys quit freaking out because we're going to have to fight this thing out. We're sending them a lifeline. You know the old joke about the two guys who come up to the bear and they meet a bear in the woods? One guy gets frozen and the other guy throws down his backpack and takes out some gym shoes and puts them on. The first guy says, what are you doing? You can't outrun that bear. And the guy says, I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you. The Donald Trump that was on that stage does not appear to me. And I think if you look at these focus groups like a world beater there. That's important too. I mean, look at the way the focus groups absorbed the night. They didn't absorb it in quite as stark terms as we did. And so I think we've got to see how people absorb it. They have a lot of misgivings about Trump. He put a lot of those on display. He couldn't definitively say he would accept the results of the election. He didn't criticize. He'd really criticize January 6th. I mean, he said a lot of things that are going to continue to be problematic for the voters. He has to win over in order to win. So I think let's let's see. Urban yellow appreciate this. The other comparison that that I'm hearing from people is with John Federman when he had that disastrous debate after revealing a major health issue, and then he went on to to win that campaign. So I think a lot of Democrats are looking at that and saying now you guys are you guys are peeing the bed a little too. I want to thank everyone. We got to take a break up next and on court presentation of tonight's unprecedented CNN debate. I'm Oprah Winfrey and I am delighted to introduce you to my podcast Super Soul Conversations. You can listen to some of the most universal, powerful life lessons. I hope these conversations will help illuminate your path to all that you've been meaning to be and all that you were meant to be. You want to feel better about your life? Wear your headed? Subscribe to my Super Soul conversations on Apple Podcasts and begin the journey to your best self.
