Hey there Lemon Heads! Tonight is the Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Don will be taking your questions about the debate LIVE. Tune in for this special Q&A Lemon Live at 5!
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. . . Hi everyone welcome to the down limit show back at home because you requested it I'm so happy to see you guys today it is debate night are you excited about the debate night. What do you want to know I'm here today to answer your questions and don't forget tonight at we're going to you can stream the debate right here on our on our channel. I'm hearing myself on our channel and then you can we're going to have post debate coverage as we had last time and you remember last time. It was a shocker of a debate because that's when the former president Joe Biden dropped out. And so we're going to see what happens who's going to win I think it's going to be Kamala Harris the vice president or do you think it is going to be the former president. Donald Trump. I don't think that you should ever underestimate Donald Trump. I don't think that you should because he will try to steamroll Kamala Harris he's not going to tell the truth. And she doesn't need to spend all of her time trying to debunk conspiracy theories and lies about him. She actually needs to get the American people to know her. But there's all kinds of crazy things I don't know if you saw the show this morning right. We talked about all the crazy conspiracy theories that Republicans even JD Vance they're coming out instead of talking about policy during the debate they're talking about all of this crazy stuff okay. So I just want to play to you something I told you about this cat theory right. Where Donald Trump has been smearing immigrants for his entire time that he was that he was campaigning for office back in 2016. And while he was in office and even now there is this whole conspiracy theory going around that Haitian immigrants are somehow and I think just immigrants in general. Haitians, Venezuela and so what have you that they are eating people's pets, especially their cats and maybe they're ducks and all of those things. And in Ohio and elsewhere and the police department there said there is nothing to this. I want to play Eric Swalwell today. Talking about the craziness coming from the right here it is. But in the hell is this the chairman tweets protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio because he goes some down goes down some crazy rabbit hole completely debunked that aliens are eating pets. My God are you okay Mr. Chairman because last year for a very long time you tweeted and promoted Kanye West as he was calling for genocide against the Jews and you kept it up. And now when we have victims coming here you're tweeting this nonsense. But I don't know why you would do this. I hope you're okay. I don't know if the aliens who are eating your ducks are in the room with us right now. But Mr. Chairman this is a serious issue. These people have loved ones who have been lost and you tweeted this. So here's the thing this this started on Monday social media they started getting flooded if you go through social media especially if you go on Twitter social media has been flooded with posts. Prominent conservative lawmakers and commentators claiming that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield Ohio that they were brutalizing and consuming local cats dogs and even ducks okay so I want to just be clear about this. These allegations are basis that's why you have Eric Swalwell Congressman Eric Swalwell speaking out. The Springfield Police Division told the Springfield News Sun on Monday that they have received zero, no reports, zero reports of pets being stolen and eaten. Republicans have completely made this up. And again this started all on Monday with this in wokeness when they posted a screenshot on a private Facebook page from a private Facebook group of Springfield residents. They're saying that one woman said she came home from work and then she looked over to her neighbor's yard and she saw her cat hanging up the way that you would you know maybe roast an animal or whatever you're cooking animal like a pig or something if it's outside. But by yesterday this claim started spreading like wildfire all across social media. And again it is nothing even Ted Cruz posted two kittens an image of two kittens with superimposed captions please read this please vote for Trump. So Haitian immigrants don't eat us. Vice presidential candidate and Senator Ohio Senator JD Vance also spreading this because he testified or test at least he said he told the Senate that this was happening. And he said months ago I raise the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social media, draining social services excuse me, and generally causing chaos all over Springfield Ohio. Reports now show that. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Okay, looks like we dropped off for a while, sorry about that, I'm not sure what happened so I hope it did not interrupt or disturb you too much. So I'm not sure where we left off, but I wanted to share an ad that the Harris campaign bought to run during the debate tonight and it's going to drive Donald Trump crazy, here it is. >> The 78 year old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems. >> She had a big crowd order crowd. >> This weird obsession with crowd sizes. >> [APPLAUSE] >> [LAUGH] >> America's ready for a new chapter, we are ready for President Kamala Harris. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Okay, so that's going to run during the debate on Fox News, as a matter of fact. So I think that- [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Okay, I think we're back, I'm not exactly sure what's going on today guys. This is highly, highly unusual, and let me just apologize for it again, I'm not exactly sure what's going on. So someone asked, what do I think about the mics being turned off during the debate? I think that was a bad decision for even the Biden campaign when he was in there because it actually ended up working against him. And I think it's a bad decision for Kamala Harris as well. Again, I don't know why they're doing it, why they did it, but it was a bad decision. >> Thank you, Maureen, Mark Bell for that, Maureen, Mark Bell for asking that. Also, Lyle says a big fan here, I was wondering what you think Kamala Harris needs to do to get under Donald Trump's skin tonight and make him scramble. Well, I think what she really needs to do is just tell the truth about everything. She needs to tell the truth about what he is doing, who he is. And I think she needs to punch him right in the face, I don't mean that physically punch him in the face, but he's a bully. And I think she needs to go at him immediately starting with her first answer so that people can see that she's strong. Now, I know that she's between this rock and a hard place because she doesn't want to come up as an angry black woman, but she's going to have to do that. And I know it's a tough place for her to be in, but she's got to do it. Why are they setting the bar so high for Vice President Harris in this debate tonight and so low for Donald Trump? Basically, all Donald Trump has to do is get through this debate and not come off as an ass. And if he does that, then people are going to say that he won. She is going to have to really knock it out of the park in order for people to believe that she won this. That's what she's going to have to do. Now, I want to show you this new ad that's coming from the Lincoln Project. This new ad comes from the Lincoln Project and I absolutely think, again, that this is going to be tough for the former President to swallow. Here it is. In 2020, they met in a historic debate. Please welcome California Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence. For 90 minutes, they disagreed on many issues. The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And here are the facts. 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Kamala Harris, Senator Harris, I mean, I'm sorry. It's fine, I'm Kamala. They debated issues from COVID to foreign policy, reproductive rights to the economy. But today, for the first time in history, the two participants of a vice presidential debate agree on one basic fact. I cannot, in good conscience, endorse Donald Trump in this campaign. Mike Pence joins another Republican vice president, Dick Cheney, in saying he cannot support Donald Trump. It's more than policy or ideology. Donald Trump is a bad man who tried to end American democracy. His own vice president knows it. It's time to put country first, America or Trump. That is what she's going to have to do exactly what she did in that Lincoln project at. State the facts. But she cannot let him bully her. She cannot let him get the best of her. She cannot let him speak over her. She has to correct his lies quickly and then move on and pivot to what she is going to do. And there should be fact checking on the stage. A lot of you asked some questions, but Stuart Stevens, who is a former Republican. And he is a Republican still, but he is a never trumper. He actually agrees with the strategy that I have been saying for days now, I think everyone is on the same page about what she's going to have to do. This will answer some of your questions. Watch Stuart Stevens from the Lincoln project. Listen, I think that's a really important point that you make sure you should go into it with the attitude that you're going to win. My feeling is you should go into these debates with the attitude that one of us is going to walk off the stage alive and it's going to be me. I think what she ought to do is prosecute Donald Trump. That's a strength of hers. She does it comfortably to part. She's a vice president and probably going to be president because of her ability to question witnesses and hearings. And I think you should play your strength. Now, don't just prosecute him for being a criminal. Well, that's already been done in New York by jury of his peers prosecuting from being a failed president who attempted to overthrow the government in the United States. Don't allow him to appear like a normal candidate. This isn't like a Romney Obama race. They're going to get there and argue about policy. I mean, one guy is an existential threat to the United States and American experiment. And you should hold him to that standard. 100%. He's saying exactly the same thing that I said. He should get up there and say that he is a terror and a threat to democracy. And a convicted criminal. Winter came says, do you think Trump will try to insert the pet eating lie into the debate? I think he will try to insert it. If he's smart, he won't because I think she'll debunk it right away. It'll make him seem small and petty, but it's such a large audience. She will get that he will get that out there and people will believe it. Remember, one of his goals is to demonize immigrants and he has been demonizing immigrants. Now, folks on the right and on the conspiracy theory networks and on Fox News, they have been giving the former president some advice and they have been warning their viewers because you know Donald Trump lies, right? So they're trying to take the strategy that Democrats use to say that Donald and never Trumpers use to say that he lies a lot and they're trying to use it now. They're trying to use it now on the vice president. Here's Laura Ingraham through the Looking Glass. Watch this. Because Kamala cannot showcase her abysmal record tomorrow night, she will resort to trafficking in the usual smears that didn't work for Biden. Now, she's going to lie that Trump encouraged violence on January 6 when he said, in fact, go in peace. She's going to lie about Charlottesville and what he said about veterans despite repeated fact checks. She's going to lie about how the illegal cases against Donald Trump are fair and they show that he's untrustworthy when we know that they never would have gone after him if he had retired from politics. She's going to lie, of course, about her record on the economy and claim that she's created all these jobs when most of course have bounced back jobs from COVID or, of course, they went to foreign workers. And she's going to lie that Trump's policies will cause more inflation when we know that he's going to bring down the cost of energy, which will bring down inflation. She's going to lie that she's tough on crime when we know that the migrant crime explosion is destroying our neighborhoods. She'll lie that the immigration bill that was engineered by Schumer and Jim Langford would have fixed the border crisis and that Trump killed it for political reasons. And she's going to lie that she's the candidate for change when she's just another puppet of the failed establishment. Now that's a nice little list that she reeled off there, but she didn't show to give any evidence of how any of this is a lie. Do you see their strategy? To sell as Sean Hannity has been doing to sell the debate moderators and, and, and so doubt in their abilities, especially if they in some way try to fact check him, or if they try to corral him or keep him honest in some way, they'll say that they're already saying that the debate moderators are biased. The debate hasn't even happened yet. And now they're saying Kamala Harris is going to lie when she doesn't have a history of lying like Donald Trump. So yes, the rules are different for her. It's going to be difficult for her this evening to actually win this debate, just by being a normal person she's going to knock it out of the park. Here's a good news for her. This election will be decided by a number of different demographics and sort of constituencies. And one of those is undecided of course voters right now at this moment. My friend and former colleague on CNN, Dana Bash speaking now to undecided voters who she has to meaning Kamala Harris. She's got to win them over tonight. Here's what they said. A dozen focus groups with swing and persuadable voters and says the more they see Harris, the more they like her. She is definitely like way more energetic than Biden. That doesn't take a lot. Yeah, it was definitely like a relief to have somebody that I mean in respect to Biden is young. She's willing to like fight Trump. You know, I think she will really like call him on his crap. And so that's good. Okay, so look, that's all well and good. But those people are going to have to obviously show up on election day. They are still undecided. I don't know how anybody can be undecided at this point. I really don't know how that is actually a thing at this point. So they're undecided. She's going to have to win them over. She's also going to have to win over more young people. Right, because she is not tracking well when it comes to the youth vote. She should be at 60%. She's not quite there. And she's going to have to win over white women and white men. It's going to be tough to win over white men in general, but she may win. She just might win white women. This time around. We shall see. So there's good news that undecided voters will be tuning in tonight tonight is going to be the biggest crowd that she's going to get. And people are going to be judging her performance to see if she is, in fact, presidential. I don't know why the folks on the right are saying, oh, we want to see if she's presidential when Donald Trump has been anything but presidential. So that's what's going to happen tonight. A couple of quick questions that I've noticed that you guys are asking Will butte says, Don Lemon, where do you top three things VP Harris should focus on? I think she should focus on how well the economy is doing because he's going to pretend that it isn't. And when he talks about the economy, he's going to say, oh, the, you know, things cost a lot and blah, blah, blah. And what she should say, things cost a lot because you screwed up the economy. But here's what's different. At least there are things on the grocery, there are products on the grocery store shelves for people to be able to buy when the grocery store shelves were empty when you were in office. And because of the supply chain, which was part of a pandemic that you handled poorly, people couldn't even get products if they wanted to. So don't stand here and tell me about the economy and about products and how much things cost. At least people have access to buy them at least are on the shelves and the prices are coming down as far as gas gas is low now gas prices are low and we're pumping out more fuel than we have ever. We have the highest production rate in this country ever. And then she should talk. Yes, she should lean into immigration. He should talk about Republicans and Donald Trump blocking a bipartisan immigration bill. He should say they could have gotten more done on the border sooner if Republicans had helped. They didn't want to. That the President had to do an executive order. And since he has done, he didn't want to go over Congress, the Senate said. And since he's done that, things at the border are better illegal crossings are down. So don't come here and tell me about that. And she should also talk about abortion, about a woman's right to choose about women's reproductive rights. Those are the things that she should lean into, and the lies that they tell about what they're trying to do project 2025. She needs to connect him to that. But more than anything, honestly, she needs to be a boss. She needs to get on that stage and act like a boss. She needs to get on that stage and act like she owns it and act like she is the President of the United States right now. That's what she needs to do. Okay. So I want you guys to join us tonight. You can tune in on this channel for the entire debate. You can watch it here. You can stream it, whether you're at work or your car or wherever you are, you can stream it right here on this channel. And then post debate around 10 30 or so we're going to have a great group of people to discuss everything that happened. And I want to hear from you. Who do you think won? I'm going to be depending on your questions and for you to tune in tonight. So get your nap in now. And tune back in tonight to the Don Lemon Show right here on this channel. All right, I'll see you then. Have a good one, guys. [ Silence ]
