The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell, McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School where he wrestled Under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight which effectively ended his college wrestling journey. Darrell Mcclain is an Ordained Pastor under The Universal Life Church and is still in good standing, he's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master At Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean defense medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under six six-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 3rd-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
Trump vs. Harris: Fiery Debate Highlights, Voter Reactions, and Fact-Checking
Is Donald Trump fit to handle another presidential crisis? Today's episode of The Darrell McClain Show takes an unflinching look at the fiery debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, where personal attacks took center stage over policy discussions. Harris's "opportunity economy" plan faces off against Trump’s alarming claims about inflation and housing costs, and his controversial remarks on immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. With sharp criticisms flying from Harris about Trump’s rallies and his track record on national security, we also explore their stances on hot-button issues like abortion, gun control, and the delicate conflict involving Israel.
Pennsylvania voters provide a critical lens on the debate's fallout, expressing dissatisfaction with Harris’s vague responses and critiquing her role alongside Biden. Some former Trump supporters are seeking new leadership, signaling a shift in political allegiance. We dissect Harris’s strategy of turning the debate into a referendum on Trump, her staunch pro-abortion stance, and how Joe Manchin has influenced Democratic policies. The episode also covers shifting support within the Republican Party and the demographic changes reshaping the voter landscape since 2016.
Fact-checking takes a front seat as we scrutinize Trump's numerous false claims about immigration, crime, foreign relations, and the 2020 election. Harris effectively countered Trump, keeping him on the defensive and questioning his ability to handle presidential crises. We explore the stark reality of American society, where violence and injustice seem normalized, challenging listeners to critically assess what they are voting for in this pivotal election season. Tune in for an episode brimming with insightful analysis and thought-provoking discussions.
Welcome to the Darrell McLean Show. I'm your host, Darrell McLean. Today is 9-12-2024, and let's get into this episode. I would love to come to you on today and tell you that since we last met, it seems like things have been getting better, but it seems like it's on to the race for what I used to say was the silliest point in America's timeline. Yesterday there was a debate I'm sorry, on Tuesday so finally between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and I would love to come to you and say that it was a debate where policy positions were put forth and a debate and exchange of ideas were engaged. Unfortunately, it was something like this, Kamala.
Speaker 2:Harris, it's a good debate. Thank you, Welcome to you both. It's wonderful to have you. It's an honor to have you both here tonight.
Speaker 3:I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy. Because here's the thing we know that we have a shortage of homes and housing and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people.
Speaker 4:I had no inflation, virtually no inflation. They had the highest inflation perhaps in the history of our country, because I've never seen a worse period of time. People can't go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else. The people of our country are absolutely dying with what they've done.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies, because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see, during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer, and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.
Speaker 4:So she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That's because people want to take their country back. In Springfield they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame.
Speaker 2:I just want to clarify here. You rigged up Springfield, ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community. Well, I've seen people on television. Let me just say here this is the People on television say my dog was taken and used for food.
Speaker 4:So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager. I'm not taking this from television, I'm taking it from the city manager. But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there Again. The Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that For 52 years they've been trying to get Roe v Wade into the states and through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that.
Speaker 3:When Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.
Speaker 4:They have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who's doing an excellent job, but the governor before. He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we'll execute the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we'll execute the baby.
Speaker 3:That bill would have put more resources to allow us to prosecute transnational criminal organizations for trafficking in guns, drugs and human beings. But you know what happened to that bill? Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he'd prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.
Speaker 4:They allowed terrorists, they allowed common street criminals, they allowed people to come in, drug dealers to come into our country, and they're now in the United States and told by their countries, like Venezuela don't ever come back or we're going to kill you.
Speaker 3:I think this is so rich, coming from someone who has been prosecuted for national security crimes, economic crimes, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault, and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing. What we know is that this war must end. It must end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal and we need the hostages out, and so we will continue to work around the clock on that.
Speaker 4:She hates Israel. She wouldn't even meet with Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech. She refused to be there because she was at a sorority party of hers. She wanted to go to the sorority party.
Speaker 3:Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.
Speaker 2:Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?
Speaker 4:No, I don't acknowledge it at all, but you did that sarcastically. We said, oh, we lost by a whisker. That was said sarcastically.
Speaker 3:Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let's be clear about that and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.
Speaker 1:Here's some Pennsylvania voters reacting to the Trump-Harris debate.
Speaker 3:I wasn't happy with Biden-Trump.
Speaker 5:I didn't feel we had any good choices, and I'm still not sure we do.
Speaker 3:We might, but I still want to see more about Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris won as far as I'm concerned. She was direct, she was concise, she had more talking points ready.
Speaker 6:Trump really didn't and she got under his skin and she knew how to do it and it worked. I didn't like that.
Speaker 5:She didn't answer direct questions about her policies and direct questions about what happened in the last three and a half years that she should have been part of happened in the last three and a half years that she should have been part of, that she talked around it.
Speaker 7:And I want a more direct answer. I watched the debate last night and Carmela really trashed Trump. Good, I did vote for Trump two times, but I've switched my allegiance. I'm just tired of the routine and looking for something new.
Speaker 6:She's been in office this whole time of Biden, so she could have done something for this whole entire four year, or however long. She could do something now too. So she's not doing anything.
Speaker 5:So it just doesn't really make sense to me as to why, if she really wanted to help the country out like why she has the ability to do that right now she's in office the one I keep thinking about is the business of people eating other people's pets, which strikes me as so moronic a thing to say and to repeat that I just can't get it out of my head that somebody would go on national TV and state that. On the other hand, I was really happy with Harris's various policy plans, especially the idea of building from the middle class out, building the economy from the middle class out.
Speaker 1:So, again, those were voters from Pennsylvania and that was their reaction to the debate, to the debate Look. So just my snap analysis, before I get into some other business, of why I think this was the way it was and why it went the way it went. I think that Donald Trump made the mistake of walking into the trap that Kamala Harris had set for him and she made it a referendum on Donald Trump and everything she threw out Donald Trump bit at. If you watched the debate, you would have thought that Donald Trump was currently in office because Kamala Harris turned everything back on Trump. You did this, you did that, you said this, and Trump was always on the defensive and it did not seem that he could land a significant blow on her. The best answer that Donald Trump had on anything would have actually been his clarification on the issue of abortion. Now, as I talked about in the previous episode, about how us in the pro-life community have been losing on that issue, kamala Harris took that issue and kind of dug her heels in further to become what I don't think would be an exaggeration if I said one of the most strident anti-abortion. If I said one of the most strident anti-abortion, I'm sorry, one of the most strident pro-abortion candidates in a very long time. I would go saying a lot, because the positions that Kamala Harris has now when it comes to fracking and abortion, when you really look at this from a deep analysis and I'll do this on the back end that is a credit to Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia and how much he pulled the Democratic Party back from the 2020 Democratic Party that was doing everything they could to chase the flank of Bernie Sanders, who was more authentic than most of the people in the Democratic Party then and who is more authentic than people in the Democratic Party now. So people who were corporate Democrats, moderate Democrats, normie Republicans, did everything they could to somewhat align themselves with populist messages and socialist messages to try to get as close to populism as possible without being called socialist. So everybody was trying to be Bernie Sanders light and Kamala Harris was no different.
Speaker 1:When Joe Biden won the presidency and Joe Manchin started to assert his will on the Senate and Kristen Sinema helped they pulled the Democratic Party back toward the corporate wing of the party and most of the things that people wanted from the Bernie Sanders wing they did not get. They did not get the college student debt relief. They did not get the universal health care by way of a public option. They did not get the fight for 15, the $15 minimum wage. They did not get the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. I can kind of go on and on with everything that the Bernie Sanders wing wanted that they did not get. They kind of acquiesced to the Joe Manchin's and the Kristen Sinema's of the party and it was, and they did gain a lot of never Trump Republicans doing that.
Speaker 1:I mean, you look at the state of the Republican Party and I think I've stated this before but I'll restate it that the former Republican candidate was not endorsed by the living past Republican presidents. Donald Trump did not get the endorsement from George Herbert Walker Bush when he was alive. He did not get the endorsement from George W Bush. He did not get the endorsement from the Republican nominee, john McCain. He did not get the endorsement from the Republican nominee at John McCain. He did not get the endorsement from the Republican nominee, mitt Romney. He did not get the endorsement of some of the vice presidential picks on those tickets either, but he did get, you know, some others. Sarah Palin went along with it for a while, and so did Paul Ryan, who was Mitt Romney's pick.
Speaker 5:But what did?
Speaker 1:happen is a lot of the neoconservatives started to vociferously come out in support of Joe Biden. So I'm talking about the Bill Crystals of the world, the Nicole Wallaces of the world, the, the Meghan McCain's, the, you know, even, even you know, the husband of Kristen Conway, kristen Conway, george Conway, of the world, you know, came out the Lincoln Project and all this type of stuff, and the former head of the Republican National Committee, michael Steele, you know, being a never Trumper, and etc and that is something that Republicans are going to have to deal with.
Speaker 1:Along with that, something else that is going to be very interesting is the baby boomer effect. So I looked it up and you can go check the numbers. But since the 2016 election, since Donald Trump has been president and since Joe Biden has won, so from 2016, all the way to where we sit now, what is going to have a big impact on this? What is going to have a big impact on this is over 5 million baby boomers have passed away from 2016 to 2024. Over 5 million there is 3 million or so that have passed away just in the last three years, so since 2020, that was a very significant portion of the Trump voter block, that baby boomer uh vote, and that is what I'm going to be looking out for when you deal with the fact that, um, this election is going to be like every other election. It's going to come down to a couple of thousand votes in Michigan, pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When you have that many of people from one generation starting to pass away, it is going to change the trajectory of how this whole thing runs.
Speaker 1:There was a case to be made to a very small sliver of the American electorate last night, our Tuesday at the debate, our Tuesday at the debate, and what ended up happening is Kamala Harris has been playing this very specific game where she and I want to I believe she got this from Obama when she does not do what Hillary Clinton does, where Hillary Clinton leaned into the I am a woman thing and that turned off a lot of people. Kamala Harris lets the fact that she is a woman just sit there but never says it herself. People who play identity politics will lean into their race, their religion, their sex, their this. Kamala Harris lets other people talk about the fact that she is black and Indian. She does not herself bring it up. Even in the ABC interview, when they brought up her race, she said same old tire playbook.
Speaker 1:Next question and that is how she is going to, if she does carve out a path to victory, that is how she's going to make that certain suburban voter Comfortable, acting as if the race, the sex, the religion is not a big deal.
Speaker 1:Wow, having it up for everybody to see and then juxtaposing yourself from somebody who is a aggressively anxious to highlight all the things that they are and all the things that you are not like one, donald J Trump. The thing that I took away from the debate most of all, besides what was said and what was not said, was the optics, and if you watch the debate in its entirety, you will see that within four minutes, kamala Harris made Donald Trump scowl, and once that angry face appeared, it stayed that way and I think that was purposeful. She always did everything to be smiling and be laughing, having her hand on her chin, almost looking like she pitied him, you know, at some times, and she wanted to juxtapose that, this joy campaign that they're supposed to be running on, to the angry old grandfather type of person and I think that Trump took the bait.
Speaker 1:And I know that Trump felt like he did a bad job because practically right after the debate he went to the spin room and tried to do a bit of cleanup and I think there was a lot of missed opportunities from the Republican standpoint. But I don't think that debates in and of themselves predict elections. It was forecasted that Hillary Clinton won all three debates and she still lost the election. The biggest difference between Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton is thus Hillary Clinton had a very long track record being the former first lady, being a New York representative and being the Secretary of State, that there was a long history of targeting and feathering Hillary Clinton, whether fair or unfair. So when she ran for president, there was a lot there to you know, wrap her around, tie her down with, and Hillary Clinton was seen as somebody who was cerebral, calculating policy walk, who was looked down upon many people, and a lot of things that people were saying in the polling were things like she reminds you of your mother-in-law and not the one that you like, and so she got a lot of baggage for that, whether it was a good deal or not whatever. And then, of course, the james call me stuff coming out a few days before the election did not help. But kamala harris has been very trained in not being hillary clinton and taking the barack ob Obama path of being basically racially agnostic. You know almost this racial Gnosticism that she is playing at, and she has successfully studied her talking points, studied them to a T and knew how to evade.
Speaker 1:You know, I even remember there was a period in the debate where Donald Trump brings up what I think is the strongest point Republicans have in this election, which is immigration. And Donald Trump brings up immigration, crime, and Kamala Harris latches on the word criminal or crime and says, oh, speaking of crimes, and starts to name all of the litany of crimes Donald Trump has been found guilty of. And that is a masterful political maneuver to constantly bring up the flaws of the person standing there. And we all know, if we're calling a spade a spade, that Donald Trump comes with a lot of net negatives when it came to the fact checking. The after analysis was Donald Trump told 36 lies, according to the fact-checkers, and Kamala Harris told one lie. So take that for what it's worth, and we're going to give you a bit of what that sounds like, just so we can see how this is playing out in the mainstream media.
Speaker 9:I didn't think I was ever going to witness a debate as devastating as the one that you and Dana moderated back in June, where Joe Biden basically tanked his reelection campaign. I think tonight was just as devastating. I think that Kamala Harris pitched a shutout on almost every subject I can think of. She shut Trump down on abortion. She shut Trump down on January 6th on democracy. She shut him down on national security and turned to the former president and said the military leaders who served with you think that you're a disgrace. The military leaders who served with you think that you're a disgrace. And then, as Dana mentioned very powerfully at the end, made the point that she is the candidate of change. We need to turn the page from a decade of division and polarization. On substance, I think she pitched a shot and I think she did on style as well.
Speaker 10:Make no mistake about it, trump had a bad night. He rose to the debate repeatedly when she baited him, something I'm sure his advisors had begged him not to do. You know, in the first debate, when Biden attacked him, he just kept his cool and kept going In this debate. He rose to a debate and we heard so many of the old grievances that we'd long thought that Trump had learned were not winners politically, and now they all were, you know, talking about how he didn't lose the election and all that I mean. So my sense is that she came out of this in pretty good shape. How long this will last is anybody's guess, but for tonight at least, this was pretty much her night. I'm saying she certainly. The fact check story of the night was the staggering dishonesty of former President Trump.
Speaker 11:I counted at least 33 false claims from him, and I think that might be a generous count versus one, maybe two false claims from Vice President Harris, though she did also add a smattering of misleading or lacking in context claims. Let's go through this wild list of false Trump claims, john. Some of them are just egregious lies. On the economy, he said tariffs do not raise prices on Americans they do, he said. As tariffs raked in hundreds of billions of dollars from China, americans paid those billions. He said all the jobs created under Biden and Harris are merely bounce-back jobs from his administration. No, today's number is millions higher than back then. He said we have the worst inflation ever. No, the US record is 23.7%. It is 2.9% today, down froma Biden-Harris era peak of 9.1%. He said there was no inflation when he was president. Prices actually rose a cumulative 8% when he was president.
Speaker 11:Then on immigration, he said migrants in an Ohio city, you heard, are eating people's cats and dogs. That is a baseless, debunked Facebook rumor, just nonsense. He said Harris's borders are. No, she never was. She had a more limited immigration related diplomatic assignment. He said 21 million migrants have crossed the border under Harris. That is many millions too high. He said millions of people are entering monthly. There has not been a single month in the millions. He said many of the migrants are from foreign prisons or mental institutions. Even his own campaign has not been able to corroborate that.
Speaker 11:On abortion, he said every Democrat wanted Roe v Wade overturned. That is just untethered to reality. Roe was supported by more than 80 percent of Democrats. Then he said every legal scholar wanted Roe overturned. A bunch of legal scholars have personally told me that they did not. He said Governor Tim Walz says it's fine to execute babies after birth. Walz never said that and that is illegal in every single state.
Speaker 11:On foreign relations, he said $85 billion in US equipment was left to the Taliban. That is a massive exaggeration. The Pentagon says the number is $7 billion. He said Iran didn't fund terror groups under him. Iran did, though its funding level did decline. He said he ended Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline. No, he did authorize sanctions, but after it was more than 90% complete and Russia resumed construction during his own presidency.
Speaker 11:He said the US has provided far more aid to Ukraine than Europe has. It's the reverse Europe has provided far more aid than the US. He said President Biden took millions of dollars from China. He did not. He added a false claim about Biden getting money from Russia Again nonsense. And he said Harris was sent to negotiate peace with Putin right before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Not only did that just not happen. The Kremlin says Harris has never once even spoken with Putin.
Speaker 11:Trump said he rebuilt the entire military. He did not. And then, attacking Vice President Harris, he said Harris was the first candidate to drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary. There were actually 13 others who dropped out before her. He said Harris previously said she wasn't black Total fiction. He said people don't attend Harris rallies Thousands do, indeed. He said people don't leave his own rallies early. Some do.
Speaker 11:And when it came to the 2020 election and its own legal troubles, he said there's so much proof the 2020 election was stolen. There is not. It was not. He said Nancy Pelosi turned down his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6th. There's no evidence she even got such an offer. It was Trump, not the speaker, who had the power to deploy the Guard.
Speaker 11:He said no judge even looked at the merits of his allegations about the 2020 election. Some judges actually did, and his side still lost those cases. He said the Justice Department was behind a variety of legal cases it had actually nothing to do with, and then a whole bunch of other lies on a variety of topics. He said crime is skyrocketing is actually declining sharply. He said the Central Park Five pleaded guilty. They did not. They were wrongly convicted. He said those men killed someone. It was not even a murder case. He said he saved Obamacare when actually he tried to kill it and then weakened it. And he said Harris has a plan to confiscate quote everybody's gun. She does not In 2019,. She supported a mandatory buyback of assault weapons in particular, and her campaign says she doesn't even support that now weapons in particular, and her campaign says she doesn't even support that.
Speaker 8:Now I think to understand what happened at the debate, it's worth going back to a criticism of Trump. You could maybe say an observation about Trump that Harris and other Democrats made repeatedly in their speeches at the Democratic National Convention. Here's Harris.
Speaker 3:I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump. Who are rooting for Trump Because you know, they know, they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors.
Speaker 8:That isn't just an attack line Democrats use on Donald Trump At the high levels of power. Among the people in the Democratic Party who have governing and particularly who have presidential experience. This is what they believe about him that Donald Trump is easily manipulated, that he is distractible, he's undisciplined, he's egotistical, he's interested above all in one topic, and that topic is himself. It's why it was such a big theme in the speeches of the former presidents over that couple of days. Here's Barack Obama from the DNC.
Speaker 12:Here's a 78 year old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that's actually been getting worse now that he's afraid of losing the cobble. There's the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.
Speaker 8:It just goes on and on and on. Here's Bill Clinton from the DNC.
Speaker 7:I mean, look, what does your opponent do with his voice? He mostly talks about himself, right? So the next time you hear him, don't count the lies, count the eyes, count the eyes, his vendettas, his vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies. He's like one of those tenors opening up before he walks out on stage, like I did, trying to get his lungs open by singing me, me, me, me, me, me.
Speaker 8:What Comerhurst did at the debate on Tuesday night was to turn this attack line into a debate strategy to show that Trump is like this rather than just say Trump is like this. The key moment, the key turn in the debate, came in the section on immigration. David Meir, one of the moderators, asked Harris a good and a tough question. David Meir, one of the moderators, asked Harris a good and a tough question.
Speaker 2:We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration this past June President Biden imposed tough new asylum restrictions. We know the numbers since then have dropped significantly. But my question to you tonight is why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act?
Speaker 8:And would you have done anything differently for President Biden on this? Harris doesn't quite answer that question. She talks instead about the bipartisan border bill that was negotiated in the fall of 2023, and it's scuttled by Trump. So that does move the clock backwards a bit and it moves the blame onto Trump a bit, but it leaves open the underlying question and criticism you hear of the Biden administration here why did they wait until the fall of 2023 to do something substantial on the border? But Harris doesn't even try to explain that. Instead, she uncorks a line that was clearly prepared. Clearly she walked in with this one, and when I first heard her say it it felt like it had been dropped into the wrong section of the debate.
Speaker 3:And I'll tell you something he's going to talk about immigration a lot tonight, even when it's not the subject that is being raised. And I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies, because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see, during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer, and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you what Harris is?
Speaker 8:doing here is unleashing a test of these Democratic theories about Donald Trump.
Speaker 8:She says Donald Trump is easily manipulated and she is here on national television at the debate, manipulating him in an obvious and even clunky way. Obama says Trump is obsessed with conspiracy theories and crowd size. And so here's Harris baiting him on crowd size and conspiracy theories. Clinton says Trump can't resist talking about himself, and so Harris is turning a question about immigration into a question about Donald Trump whether he's interesting enough to keep people compelled during his rallies. So Harris dangles this bait in front of Trump. She does it in the section of the debate that should be Trump's strongest, the section where her record is hardest to defend, the section where Trump is most personally interested in the underlying issue. And Trump could easily have just ignored the debate, ignored the jab about his board crowds, told Americans that Harris is trying to distract them from a failed record on the border by using some pre-cooked debate line about crowd sizes. If Trump had the presence of mind, the discipline, to do that, I think that would have gone quite badly for Harris.
Speaker 4:Instead, he does this First let me respond to the rallies. She said people started leaving. People don't go to her rallies, there's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there and then showing them in a different light. So she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That's because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost, we're a failing nation, and it happened three and a half years ago.
Speaker 4:And what's going on here? You're going to end up in World War III. Just to go into another subject what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States, and a lot of towns don't want to talk. It's not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. Laura or Springfield, a lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame. And after that, trump never really recovers the whole rest of the debate and after that Trump never really recovers.
Speaker 8:The whole rest of the debate. He's red-faced, pissed off, free-associating, conspiratorial. Not the guy you'd want sitting behind the resolute desk in a crisis. Not the guy. Is an actual point about Donald Trump, about the way he thinks and acts and governs. He is easy to manipulate. He is unfocused. He is obsessed with grievance and flattery and criticism and, yeah, crowd size. He couldn't hold it together for 90 minutes 90 minutes in a debate he had weeks to prepare for on the issue he is best prepped to handle. So why should anyone watching that think he can handle a presidential crisis? You think Putin doesn't know how to flatter him, or that oil company executives can't get a briefing on how to butter him up, or that he'll have reserves of focus and perspective and groundedness on day three of little to no sleep, when everyone is yelling at him, when people aren't being relentlessly polite to him, when the stakes are high, when he has antagonists with real power. You think he will then have this focus and perspective and groundedness that he could not summon here?
Speaker 8:This was not, in my view, a perfect debate for Harris. She was much stronger at disqualifying Donald Trump than making the case for her own candidacy. If your theory of the election is an Americans needed reminding of Trump's chaotic, conspiratorial, childish temperament, then she did the job and then so. If you think the problem is they don't know enough about her, that they're unhappy with what the country feels like under Joe Biden and they want something different, and they don't know or don't trust that Joe Biden's vice president will offer that. I'm not sure she did all that much to reassure them.
Speaker 8:Her canned answers seem canned. She's not the kind of light-footed debater who can sidestep a tricky question while appearing to answer it. When she got questions she didn't like, she just didn't answer them, Obviously didn't answer them. But that leaves those questions like why the Biden administration didn't lift the Trump tariffs on China or whether she would have done anything different in the Afghanistan withdrawal. That leaves them lingering in voters' minds.
Speaker 8:Given a number of opportunities to distance herself from Biden, to say the way she would actually be different or have done something different, she took none of them. That might be respectful towards Joe Biden. It may not be good political strategy, but, as Joe Biden used to say, you don't compare candidates to the almighty, you compare them to the alternative, and what Harris did last night was create a contrast, create an alternative. She turned Trump into his worst self, you might say his true self, reminding Americans who haven't seen that guy for a while what he looks and feels like, how he thinks, how he acts under pressure to do the very thing Donald Trump could not do, which is prepare a strategy, execute it when it mattered, and remain focused and consistent under pressure. Those aren't just skills you need to win a debate. Those are skills you need to be president.
Speaker 1:So I'll repeat what I said in the beginning. What Kamala Harris did is she. Instead of making it a get to know me which is a lot of the things that people have been saying in a lot of the polls they do not know her, they do not know her policies she made it a referendum on Donald Trump. Instead of a get to know me, she made it a remember who he is and remember we don't like him. That is why she leaned into making Donald Trump the worst variation of himself, something that I have noticed that has caused me to take a pause in the way the campaign has been run the populist politics that got him to the dance the first time around, and he is now focused almost solely on just some of the hits. It is obvious that immigration is a big deal, and I don't know if it's a big deal to Donald Trump because he thinks it's a big deal, or is it a big deal because he had at one time his finger on the pulse of the issue and he knows it's an issue to galvanize the public. But even when it comes to that issue, that could be a sticking point. We don't really know if the policy that he has on the issue is something that is a temporary stopgap or something to try to fix the problem. The singular thing that anybody could say about the former president is what I think that the Harris campaign unserious allows her not to say the weird word. The word unserious leaves her out of saying the word racism, the word racism, the word unserious takes away her having to say sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobe, which is all the words that the Democrats had tied themselves to for about 40 years. Instead, she can look at Donald Trump and say things like unserious. She can look at him and say, like she said in the debate confused. She could look at him and say disgrace. And she can look at him and say we're not going to go back. And that is the conversation that the Kamala Harris campaign, at this point, has tried to wrap Donald Trump in Somebody who is looking at the past versus somebody who is looking at the future. And because they are skillfully weaving out this type of rhetoric, it has not. And at this point, when there's 43 days left for the election, at this time, I don't know if they will have to actually say what we plan to do if we are in charge. That's a question that you will have to ask yourself. You will have to, as they say, vote in your conscience.
Speaker 1:This is not a campaign that is run primarily on the issues. It's not a campaign that's run on anything more than vibes style, etc. It's all about do you feel that the country is going in the right direction? Do you feel that either of these candidates could push it in the right direction, or do you think that we are slowly marching down a path where America is just going to be what I think? It is what I've always been worried about, which I'll just say this America has become the country that does not solve problems and does not do big things anymore.
Speaker 1:America has become the place where we can talk about, one side of the aisle, the killing of a baby in this womb, and we can say it's murder, and then, about three years later you know, I'll be generous here three to five years later, we can watch somebody go into elementary school and murder children and we have no answer for that. We're the country where one part of the population wants the first tragedy to be a normal part of life, a normal part of life, and the other part of the country, a large swath of the part of the country have conceded that the second action is a normal part of life. That cannot be fixed. You cannot stop the killing of a child in the womb and you cannot stop the killing of children in their classrooms. And you cannot stop the rage that is ripping through the heart of the country to have senseless killing on the streets. And you cannot stop the many, many, many unjustified examples of the killing of citizens at the hand of agents of the state. And you cannot stop the military being, at times, the police of the world and killing innocent people in the process. And you cannot stop your allies from dropping 5,000 pound bombs and decimating children who did not vote for anyone and yes, I'm talking about the Israel and Palestinian conflict. And you cannot stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine and you cannot stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine and you cannot have that. We have become and I mean we as a country have become a death cult, and it's literally a march to the grave of helplessness about issues that we have no power to control.
Speaker 1:63% of us agree with this and 63% agree with that, and we know that. That does not mean you're going to get what you think you deserve, what the populace wants. We even have fancy language to say why the people who want it the most and has the largest numbers can't get it. We are not a democracy. We are not a direct democracy. We are a republic. We don't believe in direct democracy. So that means that the people who have the most money and the most means to pay politicians they get what they want. They're a small population called the 1%, and everybody else you get to have the crumbs from the table. You can't have safe classrooms, you can't have good hospitals. You can't have good hospitals, you can't have good schools and you can't stop the wars. So the question you have to ask yourself when you go to these voting booths to decide who's going to be your representative Is what are they actually going to give you and is it worth fighting for?
Speaker 4:They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats in Springfield.