[music] This is the other side of midnight with Frank Morano. They're running a strange program, y'all. Now, here's Frank Morano. [music] Well, that debate was certainly something. What do you think? There's a lot to say. But so far, the early reviews have not gone so well for President Biden. This is the earliest general election presidential debate we've ever had. Some people are speculating that it may result in President Biden being replaced. After all, he's not officially the nominee of his party yet, and others are saying, "Look, he had a bad night, but he'll be able to bounce back at the next one, and that doesn't do anything to diminish the fact that Trump has flawed in other ways." Here to help us break this down, we have two seasoned political professionals who have watched and observed quite a few debates in their time. First, let me welcome a former Democratic Congressman from New York and a radio talk show host and podcaster on 77WABC in New York. Former Congressman Anthony Wiener, Congressman, it's great to talk to you. You as well, Frank, thanks. Let me also welcome E. O'Brien Murray, a veteran political consultant and crisis communication strategist and actually the man who ran Congressman Turner's campaign who actually took over for Congressman Wiener's seat. Yeah, just use that knob to raise the volume right there. No, the volume knob, Obie, Obie, good to see you. Good to see you too, Frank. All right, love the hat. You got a Frank Moreno hat, and if other side of midnight T-shirt, that is my kind of debate analyst right there. I got the uniform. That's why you put me back. All right, let's begin with broad strokes. Congressman, what do you think the key takeaways? What were your impressions from the debate? I'm not going to lie. I do my best each week with Dominic on left versus right to defend the company line. It is tough this morning. I mean, I felt almost from the beginning of the debate that Biden looked and sounded physically bad. And I also didn't think when he wasn't sounding bad that the words he said were particularly coherent in terms of what he was trying, I mean, look, usually you can tell in a debate what each guy is trying to accomplish. And I thought for sure early on it would be clear that Joe Biden was trying to accomplish a couple of things to seem vigorous, to be on the attack, to try to get under Donald Trump's skin. Throughout the debate, I kept waiting to see anything resembling a strategy out of Joe Biden. So I found it, I mean, I found it tough to watch, I'm not going to lie. There were moments where I was looking at my watch saying, geez, I hope this thing is ending soon. That was my takeaways. Before I bring Obie in, let me ask you the thing that a lot of people, even on the left of center media outlets have been talking about, which is replacing President Biden as the nominee. The convention hasn't happened yet. Do you think that the Democrats are going to try and replace President Biden at this juncture? And if the answer to that question is yes, is there anybody in your mind that you'd like to see replace him? Well, practically speaking, it's not a thing that's very easy to do. You know, many voters don't realize it. But when they vote in states, you know, New York is not dissimilar from other states. When you go going to vote, what you're really doing is voting for delegates to a particular candidate. So you've got now, you know, thousands of people who have been elected in their states as committed delegates for a particular person. Is it impossible that at the convention, people decide now I'm going to go someplace else? It's not impossible, but it is virtually impossible. It is very difficult to do and I don't, you know, there is this fantasy exercise of, well, if it's not Joe Biden, who would it be or if it's not Donald Trump, who would it be? I know there's a lot of talk this morning, which in and of itself speaks volumes about the debate, but it's a very difficult thing to do. The only person who I can see you can practically argue would be able to do it is Kamala Harris because theoretically, those delegates are committed to the slate of Biden and Harris. But it's a very difficult thing practically to do. We are not in the 1960s and 70s where people wandered in the convention hall and raised their hand. They're going there. And remember, the people that are chosen were chosen by the campaign as the most loyal Biden people there are in their neighborhoods. So that adds another layer that you're not going to have people who are very willing to give up on Joe Biden. Oh, be before I get to the aspect of replacement, which a lot of people are talking about. Give me your initial reactions to the debate. Congressman, going to speak with you again, I think you as well. Last time I saw you was a diner over at Queens about 12 hours ago, when I was with Bob. But that's right. A great to hear you on the radio again, speak with you. The short answer is the expectation game that was all managed on both sides. Everyone thought the bar was so low for President Biden that he could get right over it. The thing that I was saying before, and I said this with Marcia Kramer last week or a couple of weeks ago was I didn't think he was going to be the nominee. And here's why. When you're away for seven days and the bar is set low, even if you get over the bar, the staff and the family have to say, Mr. President, you saw what it took to do this. The American people saw this and we're going to have a tough time for the rest of the selection. He could have left on a very high note how he had exceeded expectations. But tonight, Van Jones on CNN was telling them to get out. So, and the vice president was interviewed by Anderson Cooper after the debate and was asked, is the president like this every day? And she wouldn't answer the question, she didn't say no, and she didn't say yes. But as far as your initial reaction to the debate, it sounds like you're going with the conventional wisdom with Congressman Wiener and others have expressed, which is that this was an incredibly bad night for President Biden. The only way he could have done anything that looks reasonably okay was if you listen on the radio and didn't watch TV or read the transcript. And I said reasonably, because as the Congressman said, even his answers weren't eloquent. And if you take the answer about why should you at 80 plus years old be the next, have a second term, that same question was asked to both these candidates and they were talking about the golf handicap. Yeah. By the way, that was one of the more interesting moments of the debate. If people didn't hear the debate, here's a little bit of, it wasn't, it was funny also on the one hand that you have these guys, each calling one another the worst president in American history. And yet neither of them seem to really get offended until they started picking on their golf game. Here's a little bit of what they were talking about. You can see he is six foot five and only 223 pounds or 2035 pounds. Well, you said six, four, two hundred, well, anyway, that's it, you're, anyway, just take a look at what he says he is and take a look at what he is. Look, I'd be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which when I was vice president down to a six, and by the way, I told you before I'm happy to play golf, if you carry your own bag, think you can do it. That's the biggest lie. He's the six handicap of all. I was the eight handicap, but I have, you know, I'm going to go out and let's see this way. I know this one. Congressman, do you have any insight into that? Can you speak to whether President Biden, when he was vice president, was either a six handicap or an eight handicap? Isn't this conversation a little bit beneath your verifying program? I have no idea what anyone's handicap is. I thought it was interesting that, that it was the only time that CNN left the other guys. Mike open was to have a debate about the handicap, but here's the, here's the thing. I mean, what, what I found interesting about that cut, this is the first time I've heard anything that was not the, you know, I frankly turned off the TV as soon as it was done. You can even hear in the timber of Joe Biden's voice, but another thing that, that is telling about that exchange is usually you are waiting in debates for the zingers that the guy had ready to go. All right. So if you want, you got to figure Joe Biden was ready for some kind of a conversation. This is a Brian said, some kind of a conversation about the, the, the, the, the fitness of the two candidates. And that's what the back and forth was about. Now, look, I, let me, let me be, you know, say something that should also be said. Maybe 200, 300 times during the debate, Donald Trump said things that were not true, that are provably not true, that if you just made the whole list, you'd probably have a brand and have a pretty prodigious list. But even that, even the, the absence of truthfulness was not something that Joe Biden had that there you go again, whatever line you were going to use ready for when his opponent said something that was untrue. And, and, and I should say one five thing, you're probably going to get to this, Frank. The moderator showed, you don't need moderators if they're just going to sit there like bump on the locks and never correct and never insist on getting an answer. It was really all the way around a very dispiriting a couple of hours. The thing that struck me on the golf handicap answer for lack of better term is it was a, it was a Kennedy-esque moment when Teddy Kennedy was asked why you're running for president and didn't have the answer. This was a question that everyone knew was going to come up the debate. And it was almost like I'd said to somebody that President Trump was almost back on his heels relaxing because he was like, holy cow, this guy is in terrible state. And he was so relaxed, he forgot to go to his talking point on that because right there he could have flipped it and said, this far as debate, don't get America to tell why you're not ready for this. But here's why I'm ready and showed something about strength. And he just wouldn't get in that back and forth. That was one thing of it. But also he showed strength in those answers. And I think to the Congressman's point that President Biden's answers were not strong. No matter what the words were, whether they were factual, whether they were lies, whether they were mistruths, whether they were a lies of omission, any answer had strength from President Trump. And one of the things that Congressman Wiener always got applause for, no matter where he was and what side of the aisle people were, what a fighter he was. He fought from the floor well in the house of the streets of Queens. He fought everywhere he fought was a fighter. And anybody said, he's not fighting for me on this issue. I don't agree with him, but he'll fight for the issues that mattered to me. That did not come out from President Biden at all tonight. The Congresswoman, we've seen a lot of people have very poor debate performances in a first debate and then bounce back strong and do well in subsequent debates. And we've seen also a lot of people that did poorly in debates. And then it didn't seem to have an impact on the election. One of the things that a lot of the critics of President Trump have pointed to is the John Federman example out of Pennsylvania, I don't think anybody could say that following his stroke, he gave a great performance in that debate, didn't come across as healthy and vigorous, yet he still won the election. How big of a deal do you think this is? Are we in a position where all the people that were still going to vote against Trump are still going to vote against him? Or in your view, is President Biden's poor performance, is this going to really change the outcome of the election potentially? We have a couple of variables. By the way, I thought John Federman won that debate because, as Obi mentioned, where the expectations had been set and there was a certain amount of empathy that said, "Look, here's the challenge here. This is now a much earlier debate. Joe Biden wanted this earlier debate because it was hopefully going to set some kind of a tone. It was going to set a conversation. It was going to happen. It's important for the three of us and for all of your listeners to realize that 99% of people watching the debate are partisans who had made up their mind. That being said, if you just tuning in and you wanted to see the spectacle and you wanted and you were concerned about Joe Biden's age, you had a lot of confirmation that he was not up to the job with this thing. That's a hard thing to undo. And another thing I would say, I will eat this phone if there's a second debate. I believe that Donald Trump's not going to want a second debate. They're going to be a lot of people at Joe Biden's camp who aren't going to want a second debate now. This might be it. We're fond of saying it about Donald Trump. It doesn't matter what happens with him because it always seems that the polls return to kind of normal. It may happen with Joe Biden as well. I mean, I'm not saying that the election is over, but there are elements of this, the timing that is happening, how long it's going to be. And the fact that this was, they have this notion of confirmation bias. If people came in concerned about his age, which they did, and they saw this performance, which many people are going to either see live or pick up on tape and see them online, they're seeing basically a narrative set in that was going to be hard for Joe Biden to shake anyway. So I do think it's pretty damn it. To your point, Congressman, no, it's not the win. It's the spin and the spin starts before the expectations and afterwards, not the spin room even, but just the press and what the coverage is going to be. But anyone watching CNN, I didn't see MSNBC tonight, but that is a CNN watcher and therefore a Biden voter for all intensive purposes. They were looking for confirmation bias. They were looking to say, hey, we want to go against Trump. That was the confirmation they wanted. And even afterwards, the minute that they went to the panel, everybody, the Democrats, Van Jones, as for example, not even talking about the newspeople, we're all getting like holy cow. And all throughout the debate, if you watch Twitter and if you watch what they talked about afterwards, too, the Democrats behind the scenes were saying, what do we do? The Democratic members of Congress that were viewing together were all in a kerfuffle about what was going on on camera because this is going to impact them in the house and down ticket across controlling state Senate, state assemblies, upper house, low houses across the country. This isn't just about the presidency now. And the party itself is going to have to figure out a way to replace him and Congressman. This becomes a special election. So another debate between these two is not going to happen. I agree with you. But another president's debate, you therefore could have Kennedy back in it. You could have the Frank Farenkoff and his organization out there. The CPD, which has been doing these since 1992, got debates ready to go on schedule. It, whoever it is. Now, the other thing I would say is a special election is so different than anything else in the world. There's, and all the money spent against Joe Biden at this point doesn't work. Also the Biden money being spent against Donald Trump saying that he is the future of the democracies on the line. The voters today in the polling, it's out that we saw today so that the people believe the democracy is better protected by Donald Trump because the AOCs of the world possibly defined democracy, the people that say that are saying, wait, we do not want our country to go in a certain direction. So all those things need silver today saying that there's a 66% chance that Donald Trump wins this thing. That number went up. Trump got a spike when the guilty verdict came in downtown. But now this spike is going the other way and it's going against the president Biden. Obey, it sounded like Anthony gave a very poor grade and correct me if I'm wrong, Congressman, but a very poor grade to the moderators and the format of this debate. There was a lot of concern going into the debate from sort of the right-wing media sphere about, oh, it's going to be three on one, Trump's going to be debating Biden and Tapper and Bash and there's no way they're going to give him a fair shake. I am seeing after the debate, nothing but praise for CNN and the moderators objectively. How do you think CNN handled this? What did you make of the production and what did you make of the job the moderators did? This is going back to Reagan times of who paid for the microphone. These are Joe Biden's rules. The only rule that I believe got changed after the fact was standing versus at a table. Now we know why. And they had all the rules and it was Joe Biden put these rules together and his team. That's that. Yeah. That part isn't true. This is saying that never happened. That was a lie by Donald Trump. One of many of them. Look, this was fine. But remember, these rules were put in place as a reaction what happened to Cleveland 2020. I said on my show, I said debating Dominic. I might have even said to you privately frank, the rules actually were going to and I turned up to be right about this protect Donald Trump from Donald Trump that these rules which were reasonable ones to put into place, I don't I don't have any problem with, I don't have any problem with it not being in front of an audience. What I do have a problem with is that when you're asking questions that clearly I think people want to have answered, you know, are you going to respect it? That was about the whether you're going to respect the election, at least they asked a couple of times at no point was there any fact checking even on basic elements of the conversation. And let me just say one thing about Obi's conversation about like how this is going to be perceived. An important thing to remember here is the people who are going to decide this election are low information, very casual observers of politics. If you are in that camp that hasn't decided between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, you are living under a rock as far as the information is concerned. So who are these people? Are they ones that are on political Twitter? No. Are they ones that listen to W.A.B.C. radio during the day? No. So it is very difficult to predict what you know what the ramifications are going to do. This is right now a very intense insider conversation. I guarantee you most casual younger voters have no idea who Van Jones is or probably who Anthony Wiener is at this point. So that's the one saving grace for Joe Biden. The thing I would say though, I use a Van Jones example. I think if you watched ABC, NBC, any of the other networks tonight, you couldn't watch anything but this. I know everyone is unplugged and what they are, that's fine. But it's all about the spin afterwards and the press coverage. I don't know anyone that is going to put in print a headline or the first paragraph that said anywhere under the sun this was good for Joe Biden. The intercept might be the only one that does that. Well, the intercept has actually been pretty critical of President Biden because of what he's doing with Israel. They think he's much too tough on the Palestinians. If people have questions for Obie Murray or Anthony Wiener, this is a panel of pros myself excluded that knows how to, knows how to tackle any questions you might have about the political process, the political ramifications of this or the debate itself. Give me a call, give us a call, 646-7200-635, 646-7200-635. Congressman, I've got a question for you in some way. I said to someone tonight that this reminded me of Joe Nameth's days when he was Broadway Joe here in New York. Every guy wanted to be him and every woman wanted to be with him. And tonight, I think what happened was every Democratic politician in this country that thinks about running for president is thinking, God, I wish it was on that stage tonight instead of Joe Biden because they would have had a field day with Donald Trump and walked out of this thing so much stronger and so much better off. What do you make of that, Anthony? I mean, do you think that's true? Well, yeah, I mean, I think there was this, I think probably a lot of people watching this and I heard from a lot of people like, Oh my God, what's going on here? A lot of people on the edge of their seat waiting for signs of preparation, like waiting for the line, waiting for the strategic narrative that went through, waiting to see any evidence that there was a plan here and you never got it. And now, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not typical in that, you know, being on the radio at 77 WBC, I get to practice these debates all the time and have these artists all the time. So I'm, but there was really no sign at any point that there was that there was really any kind of a strategy here. I mean, there you can make the argument that Joe Biden of the four legs that he had to do, one was to talk about his record, two was to talk about what his plan is for the future, three to talk about the idea, hey, I'm not old and four was to get under Donald Trump's skin. That's kind of the four legs of the stool. Maybe he did a little bit of the first talk about his record, but even that wasn't very tight. And so I, Oh, but you're right. I think that a lot of people who are watching it were saying I could do better, but that's not true of politicians. I'm sure it's true of just about anyone watching who, and like I said, most people are partisan. I'm sure there were times that just about every Joe Biden partisan said, boy, why don't you just say A, B or C here? And it didn't really happen at any point during the debate. Six four, six, seven, two, zero, zero, six, three, five, Anthony Wiener is here. EO Brian Murray is here. This is the other side of midnight doing a little post debate analysis. We'll play you some more audio and delve into what the possible ramifications are of this straight ahead. The other side of midnight with Frank Marano. It's the other side of midnight with Frank Marano. The other side of midnight with Frank Marano. Bruce Springsteen singing "Born in the USA" was on this day in 1984 that the "Born in the USA" tour began and the whole world changed. Talking a lot about last night's debate, I think objectively, it's very difficult to say that President Biden's performance was anything but abysmal. It wasn't even just, as I think Anthony Wiener has been saying and EO Brian Murray has been saying, it's not just the things that he said and didn't say, it's the way he sounded saying it. For instance, this was a discussion that the two candidates were having on the issue of healthcare. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID dealing with everything we have to do with if we finally beat Medicare. Thank you, President Biden, President Trump. It was a lot, that was about as bad as it got. Here to help us break it down, former Democratic Congressman Anthony Wiener and longtime political consultant and advisor to many political figures, EO Brian Murray, not exclusively for Republicans, but a good number of Republican candidates. So we've tried to do a good job representing both sides of the aisle. If you want to call in, you can do so, 646-600-635. We'll get to your calls in a moment. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this because I think the next 12 hours of talk radio is going to be the question of Will Biden step out of the race and who will replace Biden? Elaine Carmack, who studies this stuff pretty closely, she was on with Michael Smirkhanish back in February or March and she explained what would happen if you wanted to replace the presumptive nominee before the convention. This is what she had to say. One thing our viewers should understand is that the delegates at the convention actually make the legal decision on who is nominated. So during the primaries, what you're doing is you're allocating delegates to candidates, but you're not choosing the actual people who will be delegates. That process usually takes place after the primaries. And so what would happen, depending on when the candidate dropped out, is their names probably wouldn't be on a primary ballot. They wouldn't be running on a ballot. They'd be all Joe Biden delegates or all Donald Trump delegates. But anybody wishing to jump in the race, if one of those candidates got out, would have to go actually try to get people elected as delegates who were sympathetic to them. And that is a party-run primary, takes place kind of similarly, ironically, in both parties all across the country, according to the states. Obias, Anthony Wiener indicated, the people that are going to make the decision about who the nominee is going to be, is going to be the delegates that are pledged to Biden. They're presumably Biden loyalists. At this point, let's say President Biden decides for himself that he does not want to be the nominee. One, do you think that's likely to happen? And two, who actually gets to make the pick? Will it be President Biden? Will it be DNC insiders? What will happen? I think the short answer is I don't see how he can run this election without being a Reagan landslide. No matter what Donald Trump says or does, the world does not think that President Biden can handle the job after what they saw tonight. I think that's going to be the message. If you look at the New York Times front page right now, Frank, I just showed you a minute ago, the headlines for the New York Times, called the Biden Times, and everyone will call it some point or not. But I mean, it is Biden struggles as Trump blusters. Everyone expects Trump blusters because that's just the word of, they're using instead of lies in their mind or whatever you want to say. In contention debate, Biden struggles is the headline in New York Times. And, you know, Congressman, I know that you said this is going to be a very unlikely thing to happen at this point, but let's say President Biden makes the decision that someone else is better positioned to be Trump than him who materials materially gets to make that decision about who the Democratic nominee will be. It's, it's, it's the delegates, but there isn't, look, the, this, this isn't going to happen. He's going to be the nominee. Remember, just, you know, there, there are a lot of people who are who, who have been now chosen, who are loyal to Joe Biden, Joe Biden is not going to suddenly step, step aside. He's going to say, I can do better and whatever. So, so it's going to be the, the delegates. We have many fewer super delegates than we used to have as part of this effort to reform the process of an election ago. So it's going to be these delegates, it's rank and file members of unions, members of community, of political organizations. It's a balance of men and women. There's a lot of people who are disabled, members of the gay kid like there, we, we have, there's a, a, a, an overt quota system to how they're all chosen and they're going to be in a room and it would have to be the kind of thing that Joe Biden gets up and says to all of them, it's Kamala Harris and it has to be Kamala Harris. I mean, there's no other person, but this is an exercise that's great for talk radio, but it's not going to happen. No, but you don't see a scenario in which President Biden decides he doesn't want to go forward at this point. No. Like the human beings who were president don't suddenly decide they don't want to, they want to stop running. Well, but isn't that what President Johnson did in 1968? That's, that's, that's, that's almost what we call in the business, the exception that, that proved the rule, but, but that's before, that's when you think you're not going to win a primary. Yes. But that happens. I mean, it hasn't happened in a generation. It does happen if you think you're going to lose a primary. That's what that was about. I was wondering if you didn't think it was going to win a general. I thought it was going to lose a primary. But the other thing here, don't forget is we've got his son going on trial and the wear and tear that's going to do to the father. I just think it's going to be insurmountable too. You take that, follow the convention. So you disagree. I, I think what's going to happen here is during the Republican convention, Joe Biden's going to announce he's not going to run some way, shape, or form. So he goes through the whole DNC, you think, but no, no, the Republican thing. Oh, I see got you. And then what I see happening is that then takes over the whole messaging and the whole world of what's going on. And then it's the Republicans get no coverage and it won't matter. And this is where the special election kicks in because of early voting and so forth that window is so tight. And what they will see is that you cannot look at the numbers today. If you look at those numbers today, before today's debate, President Biden was going to lose. And I'm just talking about what Nate Silver said. I'm talking about what other people are saying. The national vote right now is so tight that the Democrats have to win by more than two or three points nationally on the polling to be able to win the electoral vote. He has to win. First of all, that's, that's actually not true. The industrial, the industrial states that the three industrial states, Biden is either leading or within the margin of error. Congressmen, the national vote has gone to the Democratic Party even when the Republicans win historically. The national polling that shows a dead heat is not good for the Democratic Party. I'm not even being a partisan on this. We're having, listen, there's no doubt that we're in a close election, but the three industrial states of the swing states, we talked about this at the top of the program. It doesn't matter what the national vote is. It doesn't matter what the cheddar in class says. It comes down to a handful of votes in a handful of states right now. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin are all either led by Biden or Biden is within the margin of error. But I agree with the national vote, when you look at the lopsided vote in New York and California, show, for example, the millions of votes that are going to be necessary for Joe Biden to be able to carry, when you look at the national, I agree with the national polls are worthless in the sense of who wins, who loses by specifics, without weighing in those numbers. When you look at those states, yes, it's going to be 20,000 to 45,000, 50,000 people making a decision in the swing states of what's going to matter. I think they paid attention tonight. And I think that what you have right now is the Joe Biden problem of how to proceed. And it goes back to what you know very well with Clinton's in '96 against Bob Dole. Senator Dole had a major problem near the end of that race about what to do about losing the Senate and so forth and down down ticket. And he stepped up and said, "I'm running the campaign now to make sure we don't lose seats and I don't want to go down beyond losing the president." Let me ask you both, assuming Congressman Wiener is right and that President Biden is staying in this race. You both have been involved in more campaigns than most people have voted in. If you were advising President Biden as to how you bounce back from this, so that the narrative for the next five months is present Biden cognitively diminished. What would you say? And what would you do? Congressman, I'll begin with you. How would you bounce back if you're Joe Biden at this point? Well, I, listen, I've given this a lot of thought and I did a little bit, a few episodes of my podcast about this for a question. My view that Joe Biden's problem is a hard one to fix because it's a physical thing. And I have come down to this place that I believe that Joe Biden's problem is the literal way that he talks, not what he's saying, not how he's saying. It's the physical way that he says it. So my advice to his campaign was to put him in situations like he was in the State of the Union where he's speaking to audiences in loud rooms where he has to literally yell in order to be heard. I mean, that's a style thing, but remember something else and it gets back to this whole, and if we take a giant step back, Joe Biden has the benefit of running against the most unpopular political figure in maybe our nation's history. People hate Donald Trump. He has about a 30, about 30% of the vote. Everyone else basically is either going to vote for him, but does like him or is never going to vote for him in a thousand years. So one of the things that he frankly should have been focused on yesterday and was kind of raising questions about Donald Trump at the same time, he confirmed that he was okay to do the job. But that's a physical thing. As far as what, you know, I just want to return to this whole idea about like, oh, my God, is this is the end of the world. Oh, it was terrible. It was terrible and it's going to stick with Joe Biden, which means the next poll is going to come out. It's going to be 4745 Donald Trump. It's basically going to be the same thing that it was when we, that's what it's going to return to because that's what the country is, it's a 4545 country with the 10% in the middle, doing a certain amount of swinging back and forth. Last time they swung to Joe Biden, we are, you know, a bad thing happened for my candidate last night, but does it fundamentally change the election? I don't kind of think that it does. Joe Biden had an age and appearance problem going in. He didn't fix it. He made it worse, but it's still the same basic four corners of this election are going to exist now for the next few months. I beg to differ because flat out, he had a chance to beat expectations and he didn't even get close. And I think that's the challenge. The issue, the elephant in the room, you know, the unsaid was said and now it is backed up in living proof. I think the way you've got to do it, to your point about speaking, speaking vigorously, yes, but he's got to be out and be visible. It can't be hidden for seven days at camp David, not even the White House. He was a camp David that is isolation city and he walked on to the stage tonight. I guarantee you one of the things they did is we would have done, Anthony, if you were in a different time zone running for office, you'd go and get acclimated. That's what you do all the time. It makes perfect sense. Even the youngest and brightest have to get used to being on at nine o'clock in California versus nine o'clock in New York that didn't happen. He was not on at nine o'clock. Maybe he would have been good at seven o'clock. I didn't see the reports. I heard the reports earlier when he was in the land and he made a stop and he was out in public. Was he vigorous then? I don't know. Did he look good? I don't know. But get him on a bicycle, get him to go for a walk at the beach, get him to go somewhere and be out there also without even having to speak with people, just show he can physically do things. The other thing I would go is almost go the other extreme and you don't want to go to the hospital. But you go to a point where you can say, wait a second, I am physically in capacity with my legs, whatever it might be. Who knows? You can almost put him in a wheelchair if that's going to get him a better mental state. He has to be much more alert, much better able to speak and the Democrats are often in the Democratic party it seems in its talking points are hiding behind and the Congressman didn't do it. But other ones behind the stutter and saying the stutters, no, it's not a stutter. My father died this past year but one of the problems he had was early on the dimension he said. I had conversations with him. I said, call the doc and tell him he's wrong. My dad with that kicking in sounded more alert over the phone speaking with him than the President did tonight. All right. A lot of people eager to chat with both of you 6, 4, 6, 7, 2, 0, 0, 6, 3, 5. Let me begin with Jamie and Westchester. Hi, Jamie. Hey, Frank. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I have a question for you. But before I ask you, I just want to say to whoever it was that just said people hate Donald Trump. Trump raised $53 million in one night after he was labeled a convicted felon by the Democratic Party. So there's just that. My question is, my opinion is that the media had this narrative of, oh no, this is an emergency. What are we going to do? Locked and loaded before the debate even started because you'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind to have not expected exactly what happened to have happened. Well, the one thing you say, Jamie, and I don't want to cut you off and I'll let you ask your question or make your comment. But the one thing I would add is a lot of people were saying the same thing going into the state of the union and President Biden, regardless of what you think of the merits of what he was saying, he gave a very energetic, spirited performance. And I think with seven days of preparation for this, a lot of people were thinking that maybe he could give a state of the union like performance here, especially when the candidates aren't able to interrupt one another and the microphones are muted. So I don't necessarily accept your premise that everybody was expecting what they saw last night. I thought he would exceed expectations, by the way, Jamie. No, you make a fair point, Frank. That is true. I'm just personally, I wasn't surprised to see what I saw tonight and I suppose I'm seeing it through my lens. But I was just wondering if you had a thought that perhaps the media had this narrative ready to go. Jamie, where were you? And that this was a plan. Where in Westchester are you, Jamie? I'm in Scarsdale, actually. Is that the Latimer? What's your address? No, no, no, no, no. Is that the Latimer? Is that the Latimer's district right there in the address? It is. The Latimer's district. Yes, that's correct. So did you watch the Latimer debates compared to this debate? I did and I voted for Latimer and I'm certainly not voting for Trump. I just think that it's insane to think that Biden is going to be the guy. So you're a Democratic primary voter? Yes. And who would you like to see just out of curiosity if you were picking? I know Congressman Wiener said that it's unlikely, but if you were picking, who would you like to see be the nominee now? Well, I got to be honest. I think the guy with the rock star potential, the good looks, you know, and not that that should matter, but it does, you know, with the unfortunate record of how his state is being run, unfortunately, I think Gavin Newsom is really the guy to go with. Yeah. He's got the charisma, the stamina, the punch back power against Trump. I think he's really the only guy that I could see actually being a formidable opponent. What about the governor of Michigan? Yeah. Governor. I don't know. I don't know much. Yeah. I don't know much. Because Michigan is a tough state. I mean, that's the other part there. Jamie, thank you. Appreciate that. Anthony, understanding that you think it's unlikely that President Biden is going to drop out at this point or at any point before the election, if just humor us here, if that were to happen, what do you make of Gavin Newsom as a candidate, as a replacement candidate for the for the Democrats? I, the, the, before you begin this exercise, it has to start with, what is the rationale for jumping over Kamala Harris? I mean, you know what, an African American woman, she's vice president now, et cetera. I guess you'll lose, well, it's electability, I guess, is what he's saying. Right. Yeah. Look, whoever, we live in a partisan country that is, I keep trying to stress this, that people are in their lanes already. Who's going to appeal to that 10% of an African American woman with an aspirational story? Whoever gets, whoever gets, becomes a nominee of a major party goes immediately to a 50% you know, a negative rating and whatever it is. That's the other thing that people need to recognize. You start head to head polling any of these people and it's all going to be the same type of thing. I mean, what are you going to say with the, with the, the, the same vulnerability? Congress, what do you think Lee at water would be thinking right now? It used to be what 20, if you got your opponents negatives up above 25%, you can win. And now look at these numbers now. I mean, if you go back to the Clinton Trump election in 16, you go back to 20, 20, I mean, these are incredibly high negatives for any candidate on both sides to your point immediately whoever the nominee is, is negative at 50%. And, and, and Donald Trump, I mean, you know, I, I appreciate the views of the color, but, but the Donald Trump right now basically is considered favorably by about 30% of the country. But that was a democratic percent, that's, that's 70% well, that's, that's 70% of the country that does not like the Republican candidate. So Joe Biden, the moment someone walks into his office and says, Hey, boss, you did a lousy job yesterday that we're in danger of losing this election, they say, Well, can we're in just any breathing body has a puncher's chance of beating of, of, of, of beating Donald Trump. He's, he's, he's manifesting a popular he's, he lies like a rug. He is, he's a convicted felon, I mean, who, and the polls and the polls are trending against it, not for him. Look, I, I get the exercise and I get why it's fun to do in the context of talk for you. Leop water was my, you know, was 40 years ago, maybe even more. Right now the situation is these are our two candidates. They're both old. They're both have mental issues going on. Yeah. I understand, but you know, the, the reason we're talking about a replacement scenario, it's not like we're playing fantasy baseball or doing what a lot of talk show hosts have done for the last eight months, uh, hanging the specter of Michelle Obama over people. It's because this is what everybody is talking about even on the left. I mean, and you have a Nicholas, Nicholas Christoff, you have, uh, Ezra Klein, you have a lot of the liberal punditocracy saying the same thing that, that others have been saying. But let me, let me pause real quick and we'll continue with your, your comments, your questions, six, four, six, seven, two, zero, zero, six, three, five, Anthony Wiener is here. E.O. Brian Murray is here. I'm Frank Moreno. This is the other side of midnight straight ahead. Hey, everyone, it's Ted from Consumer Cellular, the guy in the orange sweater. This is your wake up call. If you're paying too much for wireless service, you don't have to keep having that nightmare. Consumer Cellular has the same fast reliable coverage as the leading carriers for up to half the cost. So why keep spending more than you have to? Seriously, wake up and call 1-888-Freedom or visit consumercellular.com. Savings based on cost of consumer cellular single line one, five and 10 gig data plans with unlimited talk and text compared to lowest cost single line post paid unlimited talk tips and data plans offered by T-Mobile and Verizon January 2024. Are you ready for the unexpected? Even when disaster strikes and you're left with nothing, will you be caught empty-handed? A great company called ReadyWise offers affordable, nutritious emergency food with up to a 25-year shelf life. Explore the wide range of long-lasting, easy-to-prepare meals at ReadyWise.com. Use promo code BE READY for 20% off at checkout. Don't wait for the worst to happen. Back now and be ready for anything shopreadywise.com. It's the other side of midnight with Frank Morano. Obviously, Guns N' Roses, welcome to the Jungle. This is a birthday bumper music request from Leanne Pizano. Leanne, happy birthday to you. Hopefully it is a great one. Talking a little bit about last night's debate with Anthony Wiener and E. O. Brian Murray, it's easy to forget because we're speaking so much about the style of what happened that debates are supposed to present voters with a contrast about how the different candidates view policy and the world in general. That's something we've spent almost no time talking about. I'll take some responsibility for that. Anthony, in terms of the actual issue comparisons between the two candidates, what did you think about were the starkest policy differences that we heard last night between the two of them? I don't know if we had too many of them. The problem that we have with Donald Trump is he just makes stuff up so furiously at such a rapid pace. It's hard to think of a question where he didn't say something that was untrue. I saw just during the break, I went to see if Joe Biden had said anything and he said, "Yeah, it's hard to debate a liar." There was a lot of stuff going on there. I guess to some extent the January 6th conversation was probably the starkest thing, this idea of treating these people as heroes. But even that didn't really get fleshed out very much because Joe Biden's response wasn't very tight. I'm just all kinds of, look, clearly Donald Trump is in there comfortable with talking about immigration. It's a big issue, but if he's saying stuff, social security, the migrants are going to ruin social security. No, they're actually adding to the life of social security, according to the actuaries, because they're paying in and they're never going to get anything out, but as well as emptying their jails and prisons, Donald Trump's own campaign says he has no idea where that came from. There's so much of that stuff that I don't even know if we came away with that much of a policy distribution. My staff just told me, we had the cleanest water, I mean, had even responded to stuff like that. H2O, Donald Trump said, "So even if you take and just read the words that were said, you don't see anything that resembles a policy back and forth. I might be forgetting something that got washed away in all of the atmospherics about how each candidate looked and sounded, but I didn't hear a lot of things that were the kind of things that regular voters would say, okay, he's talking to me now and here's an issue that I understand." The abortion debate, I would say, was something that came up too. I think that's where the difference was, but at the same time, I think as Vice Bob Turner, whose pro-choice, pro-life who won Anthony Seat in 2011, in New York City, a pro-life candidate got elected. Why? Because we didn't talk about it. He was asked the same question, "I'm pro-life," and he gave his exceptions, and that was it. He moved on. He would have the conversation, and wept and tried to attack him on it. But tonight, President Trump, I think when you hear that whole exchange, talked about the fact that there shouldn't be abortions in the third trimester, after the second trimester. And Joe Biden said, "There wasn't any, but Joe, Congressman, cut me off, and I'm not offended at all whatsoever. We're not in the same room, so it's going to happen." But the issue in New York State, where you can have an abortion up until birth by non-doctors, is it's a medical personnel, not a DR medically trained doctor that can do the abortion in New York State, that's one of those things that Joe Biden fell apart on to a point when it was so easy to do for policy differences, and the vote he would take and the bill he would sign. Congressman, go ahead. Sorry. No, no, forgive me. But even that was an example of what I'm talking about. Donald Trump kept leaning into this idea. Everybody agrees that they wanted Roe v. Wade to be thrown out. That sounds manifestly nuts to anyone who's even a casual observer or a pilot. No one believes that Roe v. Wade being thrown out was something that everyone agreed on. Now, you might say that there was a legal reason to say that there's no Fourth Amendment underpinning to it or whatever it is. But to say that over and over again, the way Donald Trump frequently does, as if he's trying to convince the country that they agree, sounds crazy, and so he kept saying it over and over again. But that's not even a policy thing. That's a weird kind of like everyone agrees, no, they don't, everyone agrees. And then the part about that sometimes Donald Trump laughs into, even after the birth, some former governor Virginia said, that kind of stuff, I don't even know how a good moderator or how a good debate, there were several times during that debate that if Joe Biden again, I hate to keep getting back to style, not substance, we're trying to have a substance, would have turned to Donald Trump and said, you know, Donald Trump, you sound nuts, basically to say, no, what's killing babies after they're born? That's homicide. You don't get to do it, but it is the choice thing does raise an interesting question to the way I think we need to keep in mind again. And that is for many, many voters, they're going to be coming out in referendum around the country on that issue and they're going to be coming out at the same time they vote on these choice referenda, they're going to be voting for Joe Biden. And that's irrespective of whether Joe Biden is raspy in his voice or not. Congressman Anthony Wiener, EO Brian Murray, unfortunately, we are out of time. This is an hour that flew by. Thank you both for coming in and for being a part of this. Hope we can do it again soon. Thank you both. Thank you. All right. A lot to get to. You can bet you're going to be hearing a lot about this everywhere else. If you want to hear more from Anthony Wiener, you can go to redapplepodcastnetwork.com, search Anthony Wiener. All the podcasts he does comes up. If you want to learn more about EO Brian Murray, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, just search that. And a whole world opens up, believe me. And for everybody else in the words of the great Bob Barker, help control the pet population, get your dog or cat spayed or neutered. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
