- Hey, everybody. Welcome to the McCree podcast. Exclusive coverage of the first and hopefully only debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. I'm Jerry D. H. Sexton. I'm here with Nick Houseman. Nick, to go ahead and start this thing off. Man, I thought there was an opportunity for this thing to be bad. It was exponentially worse than I imagined it would be. I am very troubled by it. The Democratic Party should be ashamed of itself. I assume we're going to watch weeks, if not months, of speculation about whether or not Joe Biden can be replaced at the Democratic National Convention, which is a debate that we should have at this point and move forward. Yeah, I guess that's my opening statement. How are you doing, Nick? - Can I go now? I think you said it. It only took 12 minutes for him to lose. I'm not even sure it's the debate. I don't know what he lost. It could be the race in and of itself. I don't want to be that negative at this point it's so early in the year, but when he, I wrote it down and you don't have to help them remind me 'cause I'm like so shell-shocked at this point that I don't even know what to make of it, but I wrote it down when he said we finally beat Medicare. That wasn't the question, right? Medicare comes out of nowhere. I don't know anyhow, let's see, what was he talking about? Oh, is it my taxes? I'm like, at that point, everyone, aside from the fact that he opens with his speech, his voice was so meek to begin with. He needed water, he needed the clearest throat, he needed all these different things. It was unbelievable. I don't know what else to say. - I texted it to you immediately after I wrote it in my notes, Joe Biden sounds and looks like death. And what happened immediately when he opened his mouth? And Nick, before we get into the blow-by-blow of this and the ramifications of it, I just want to say, I went back, when we talked on Monday, I had gone back and watched all of these previous debates, the Trump-Biden debates, I watched the 2016 debates, I watched the primary debates, I went back and watched the first Trump-Biden debate. And let me tell you something, I went into tonight realizing that Joe Biden in 2020 looked so much younger and was a little bit spry. And I don't know if you remember this, Nick, but Trump just went after him and went after him and Biden parried him and had a lot of energy in doing so. I knew tonight that he was going to at least have to match that. That made me worried about what was going to happen tonight. The moment he opened his mouth, actually, you know what, that's not even fair. The moment he walked on stage, I knew that he didn't have it. And then he started talking. And I want to make this clear, we have a lot of stuff to talk about. Donald Trump was Donald Trump. We don't have to talk very much about Donald Trump tonight. Donald Trump was Donald Trump. We have to talk about Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, and CNN, which absolutely and utterly failed on this debate in a way that I've been a critic of presidential debates for a while. This is one of the worst that I have ever seen. Joe Biden's performance was piss poor for a variety of reasons. And the fact that we have to now sit down and talk about this, facing the threat of authoritarianism, losing rights, people's safety being put on the line on this thing. The fact that this performance is what happened, and now this is the conversation that we have to have, is utterly horrifying and offensive. That this is what is happening right now. - I mean, it's funny because we're always thinking, what is the incumbent or the president in power have to gain by having a debate at all, right? And within 10 minutes, I was like, they never should have had these debates. I don't know why they agreed to do it. - He challenged him to this debate. - Yeah, like there was nothing for him to gain anyway in the best case scenario at this point. So knowing what he was like, and knowing, it was almost like, I have a feeling at some point during the prep over the last week, they all realized we wish we didn't do this, right? But like, that should have been known way ahead of time and months ago, and not even, you know, decided to do this. I mean, even the fact that like, they picked, they had a choice of whether they wanted him to finish with the last word, or what side stage he wanted to be on, and they picked the side of the stage. Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, unless they figured that Trump would be so bad that when he finishes, that'll be the last thing we all remember. But other than that, like, they should have had the debate. Like, honestly, it's all I can come away with this, because you needed, right, what you said is that he needed someone that could push back on all the lies, so it was a constant lie, constant projection fest. I mean, really. - Absolutely. - You know, I don't even know why we, they're not gonna have another one, right? - I, if we have another Biden-Trump debate, we have truly failed as a country. I mean that, I, let's remind people, because this stuff gets lost. Joe Biden challenged Donald Trump to this debate. It wasn't planned for July. This isn't when debates happen. He made this challenge. He went beyond the Presidential Debate Commission. He wanted to do this. We talked about the only reason why he made this, was to go ahead and try and set the terms from what happened going into convention season, which is coming up very, very soon. So it was meant to be a gamble. And let me tell you what, if this is Blackjack, he busted out. This was a terrible decision, a terrible, terrible decision. And what happened, Nick? Watching this thing, first of all, Joe Biden is diminished. There is no other way to put it. I have a problem, I'll be honest with you, with him being President of the United States right now. We watched the President of the United States of America's Night not only mail in a piss-poor performance. It was bad enough that he wasn't able to communicate, not only a vision for the future, but the danger of Donald Trump and the Republican Party and the authoritarian building movement in this world. He couldn't even do that. Nick, he froze multiple times. There were times in the middle of questions where Biden went from one topic to another. And let me tell you something, Donald Trump is not a master debater. Even Donald Trump was able to recognize the openings that Biden gave him. This man is in charge of the country. He's in charge of our nuclear arsenal. Russia is on the march, China is on the rise. Who even knows what else is going on in this world that you and I aren't privy to? We have multiple crises in this world. This is not a person who should be running for re-election. And I have questions about his ability to be the president of the United States right now. I agree. That was definitely clear. If he can't keep it straight in a 90-minute debate and literally just non-sequitur in the rejections like he's got information and it's swimming around in his head that he's like kind of grasping at certain things and then like another one comes in head and it's not even anything to do what they're talking about. The freezing was the thing, the voice, 'cause the bar wasn't necessarily very high, right? The bar was supposed to be, have a voice. Don't have a thing where it's so many, even from thank you, like I don't think he was supposed to say thank you right when he walked out and like the mic probably, I thought maybe the mic levels were down. You know, they weren't ready yet or something because I'm like, oh no, I think it turned out that he just didn't have his voice. Someone in the comments might've been saying like he had a cold or trying to say he had a cold or something like that, but you're gonna have to keep, you know, your eye on a lot of these other, you know, like I haven't knew some types because I wonder whether it's gonna happen on that or what's gonna leak like you said in our texts because there's no question that, yes, anybody watching that would not even be concerned about, this isn't like Nixon and sweating a lot in debate. This is, how can he run the country without being able to keep these ideas straight his head? That's where we're at. - And there's multiple things happening here. I cannot tell you the number of Democratic strategists that I heard from tonight who were utterly dejected, pissed off at the party. I cannot tell you how many of them are absolutely out of their minds today. Also, Nick, besides the fact that the president of the United States of America and Democratic nominee for president during one of the most pivotal elections that we will see in our lifetimes isn't up to the challenge, we have to point out his debate strategy, terrible. Like the people who cooked this up, they spent the entire first half of the debate, which, by the way, CNN, thanks a lot for making the entire first half of the debate, a criticism of Joe Biden's presidency, fantastic planning. He spent the entirety of the first half of the debate talking about his record, which people don't support, never ever going after Donald Trump for January 6th, his convictions, any of that stuff. Meanwhile, he was so overprepared, and we're talking about a president who's incredibly busy, you age in dog years as president, to see him in 2020, to watch those old debates and look at him now, it's incredible what has happened to him. But to give him all of those facts and figures, and Nick, we just talked about this the other day with that terrible MSNBC segment, do facts and figures do anything in these forums? - There's only been a one guy I've ever seen who's been able to do that. - There's one man, go ahead and name him. - Bill Clinton. - That is William Jefferson Clinton is the only politician who has ever been able to effectively use an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and figures to his advantage. That is it, you nailed it. - Yeah. - You can't give this guy the strategy to do that. It doesn't work, and on top of that, you have to come out and make a case for yourself, and you have to turn the tables on this demagogue. The strategy was terrible. They overprepared him that only added to the point and let's go ahead and say what everybody else is thinking. Joe Biden is diminished. We've heard rumors, we've heard reports, we've seen articles, he is diminished. And that is the takeaway from tonight, and if you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you, and that should concern you, which is why we have to have a larger conversation tonight. - I got a hot take. I think that Trump was too nice. I honestly think-- - Are you agreeing? - He kind of did it, but he easily could have been like, look at what he just said. He just started talking about something else when we were talking about taxes. He didn't really show the outrage. He was a little bit, I mean, obviously the projection of lies, he was saying that we knew that was gonna happen, but they're gonna probably get at him, his people, to tell him, you need to be even more forceful with that, and it would have been, if by the way, if that happened, then Biden had to resign. It would have been so bad because we all would have been like, you know what, he's kind of right. Like, this guy shouldn't be leaning anything. - You, I'm so glad you said that. That is actually written on this other sheet that I was gonna bring up. Donald Trump lied, he was disgusting, he was an embarrassment. Everybody, every American should feel ashamed that he was on stage tonight as a representative of a major party, he was reserved. Like the very fact that he didn't go after Biden's cognitive abilities is shocking to me. Like, it really, really could have gone to a whole 'nother level. And by the way, it's the old, it's the old idiom, right? Like, if your opponent is shooting himself in your foot, you don't take the gun away from him, right? You let him do what he's doing. It was, it was so much worse than I even think that we're able to actually communicate, it's that bad. - Yeah, and I mean, and I kept writing, why isn't he doing this, why isn't he doing that? And then I had to stop writing that because it was like, whatever prep they had, there were better lines or better ways to attack the responses. And I say, by the way, and I even pointed that out like a couple of, someone pointed out to me, I'm not gonna say the phrase, by the way, anymore, because if he said it one more time tonight, I was going to lose my shit, Jared, because it's a filler, it's a whatever, pretty kept saying. And by the way, in the middle of everything, it was driving me insane. And that's something that they should have cleaned up right away as well. It just makes him sound like he's not with it. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know what he's saying, he's grasping for words. I wish, do we have to be that negative on to me? I don't think there's any choice. - Yes, we do, and we've said it before, Nick. The reason that we do this show is because we see a problem that is happening in this country. We've seen a threat for years now, and we wanted to talk about it. We didn't wanna be sick of fans, we didn't wanna be acolytes, we call balls and strikes when we see them. We have to call this like it is. And I wanna make it very clear, because this needs set. I wanna talk more about this debate. I wanna go through it. I wanna talk about the implications for the Democratic Party and what's going to happen over the next few weeks, 'cause it's important. I wanna say something definitively before we move a step forward, because it could be lost. Women have lost the reproductive rights in this country. There are women who have to leave their states and bleed as they go into other states in order to get like reproductive care that should be their rights. There are people who are living a second and third class citizens. We're talking about millions of people being hunted down in their homes. I have gay trans friends who have been hunted in this country who have been harassed and scapegoated. We've seen officials, scientists, teachers, just absolutely vilified and attacked. I mean, like we are on the brink of so many different crises that are coming together. It makes me ashamed that those people who deserve better are getting this. That's the point of why we need to talk about this, the way that we need to talk about it. We need to be honest about this. We can't frost this, we can't dress this up. We can't put lipstick on it. This thing was such an abject failure that it goes beyond talking about winners and losers. And Nick, by the way, just what we're talking about, this might have been the worst debate performance I've ever seen. And I'm including Sarah Palin on that. I mean, I'm including the admiral who asked, who am I? Why am I here? Like, this is maybe the worst debate performance I have ever seen. And the people who are in danger in this country, they deserve better than this. They have been failed. - I'm not sure what else I should say because again, the machin and the machinations to have to deal with this don't exist. We don't know what you're supposed to do as far as, you're gonna really have a constitutional or a convention, whatever and broker that with somebody else taking his place. You know, I mean, listen, if Biden looked at this debate, he would have to have a serious conversation with himself, right? And understand that this is all the biggest fear we had. And I was kind of hoping, you know, he'd come out save the union, he seems better, right? He had more force on his voice. He seemed like-- - He had a grip. - Okay, that's true. - He had a grip. - Yeah. - You know, maybe if you wanna, I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about like Trump's strategy, right? Where he would just continue to pivot back to the border, right? And it was fascinating to watch how he was trying to, you know, take left turns on whatever stuff they were talking about, somehow bring it back to the border and stoke the fear and anger and racism that he, you know, capitalizes on. You know, I suppose we're gonna have to rely on this notion of like, you know, the people who would vote for Biden take a long shower like you and me, everybody, is simply going to continue to have to do that and recognize where we are. Because I don't think, I don't think Biden has any ability to really point out the differences and be able to attack Trump on the threats of democracy. Like he should, he did it like sort of, but it's not convincing. Is this some weird thing where he's now set the bar solo, he's gonna come in the next one and be like, so much better. And we're gonna all be like, whoa, that's a good sleight of hand, like Willie Wonka coming out of the factory. You've been listening to the free part of this episode. If you'd like to hear the rest of this great conversation, head over to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and subscribe for lots more additional content, including Discord server and live shows. We'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try. 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