Biased Moderators, Bizarre Rules - Previewing Trump vs. Biden, and Memorable Debate Moments, with The Fifth Column | Ep. 824

This episode discusses the presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, focusing on potential challenges and tactics, alongside a broader commentary on media biases and debate moderation.

1. Trump's Debate Style: Trump's confrontational style is effective when playing to an audience but might need adjustment in a more controlled setting.
2. Biden's Performance Concerns: Biden must manage to present himself competently without succumbing to pressures that highlight his age.
3. Moderation and Media Bias: The episode criticizes the media and moderators for potential biases and the impact these can have on public perception of the debate.
4. Impact of Audience: The presence or absence of a live audience significantly affects the dynamics of the debate, particularly for Trump.
5. Historical Context: References to past debates highlight how candidates have used these platforms to solidify their public personas and tackle opponents.

1. Introduction

Megyn Kelly introduces the episode, outlining the stakes of the debate and welcoming her guests from the Fifth Column. Megyn Kelly: "Well, it's happening—debate night in America. Join me tonight for what promises to be a whole lot of fun."

2. Challenges and Tactics

Discussion of the specific challenges facing each candidate and the strategic maneuvers they might employ during the debate. Michael Moynihan: "Donald Trump is very good at playing to the audience, and I've been watching old debates... It's amazingly entertaining."

3. Media and Moderation

Critique of media handling of debates and the influence of moderators' biases on the discussion. Camille Foster: "One of the great challenges for the moderator is to not fall into the 'sir, we're fact checking you now' kind of thing."

4. Historical Debates Analysis

Review of memorable moments from past debates to provide insights into potential outcomes of the current debate. Megyn Kelly: "Watch the second Hillary Clinton debate... it's so good for him, so good."

5. Closing Thoughts

Reflections on the broader implications of the debate and the media's role in shaping presidential races. Megyn Kelly: "There will be a ton of people tuning in for this. It's the most consequential election in recent history."

1. Critical Viewing: Approach debate watching with a critical eye, considering both the content and the context in which statements are made.
2. Media Literacy: Enhance understanding of media biases and learn to identify them in real time during such events.
3. Historical Context: Watch previous debates to understand tactics and styles that may reappear.
4. Engage Critically: Engage with post-debate analysis from various sources to get a rounded view of what occurred.
5. Fact-Checking: Utilize fact-checking resources to verify claims made during debates.

Megyn Kelly is joined by Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch, hosts of The Fifth Column podcast, to discuss the huge stakes in the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, how Donald Trump might act and the strategy he could employ to win, the way Biden might struggle or perform well, CNN’s debate rules that seem to favor Joe Biden, their bizarre TV segment explaining how microphones work, whether Biden speaking freely without interruption will actually hurt him, the bias against Trump from moderators, the disaster Chris Wallace debate, what to expect from Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, J.D. Vance’s odds in the veepstakes, Vance's skills in dealing with the elite media and incredible life story, what VP candidates could help stop a Trump impeachment, and more. Plus, Megyn Kelly previews her interview with Steve Bannon - her first interview with him ever, and she and The Fifth Column discuss Bannon's role in our political environment for the last decade.

People

Megyn Kelly, Michael Moynihan, Matt Welsh, Camille Foster

Companies

SiriusXM, CNN

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Michael Moynihan, Matt Welsh, Camille Foster

Content Warnings:

None

A
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C
Dot welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show. Well, it's happening debate night in America in June. The first and possibly only of the rematch presidential debates takes place tonight between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It happens on CNN. And yes, I've got thoughts. I'm sure you do, too. I'll be watching. And we will be bringing you instant analysis and reaction right after the debate. It's supposed to end at 1040 at YouTube.com forward slash Megyn Kelly. So be sure to tune in and you will get our full analysis on what you just saw and watched. And we'll have some of our favorites to react as well, like Emily Jasinski, Dave Rubin, Eric Bolling, all live with us on SiriusXM Triumph channel 111, as well as on our YouTube channel. Ok, again, that's YouTube.com Megyn Kelly. The debate again starts at 09:00 p.m. eastern, expected to end at 1040 Eastern. That's when we'll go live. And by the way, big day on our YouTube channel. As of this morning, we hit the 2 million subscriber mark. Thank you to all of you for your support. You are what makes the show possible. And it's a privilege to bring in the news each day. Join me tonight for what promises to be a whole lot of fun. Maybe not for the guys inside the CNN building, but for all of us. So let's talk about what's at stake and more. Joining me now are pals from the fifth column, Michael Moynihan, Matt Welsh and Camille Foster. You can find their work at we the fifth dot substack.com.

A
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D
Good morning.

E
Hi, Megan.

C
Great to see you. So, all right, as I see it, the challenges are for Joe Biden not to have a senior moment and for Donald Trump not to be a jerk. All right? To put it nicely, and I don't just mean, like, being tough is fine. Being a douchebag. Okay, I went, not nice is something else entirely. Right? So he needs to not be a douchebag, and the one guy needs to not be a douchebag, and the other guy needs to not die. Those are all kind of succinctly put. The stakes, the challenges of the evening.

How do you guys see it? Moynihan, how about you?

E
The odds of both of those things happening are very, very high. And you said die. I'm thinking maybe stroke on stage, a series of cascading mini strokes in which America cringes their way through it. No. Donald Trump.

C
See, the thing about it is covering his eyes.

E
Being a douchebag is kind of what Donald Trump does. And it's quite effective.

Yeah, it's super power, and it's effective sometimes. And we were talking about this on the show last night, is, it reminded me of that time when the late night shows, including people like Bill Maher, were doing their monologues outside in their house during COVID because they could have no audiences. And then you realized how difficult comedy was when there was no audience, when there's no one to react to. And Donald Trump is very good at playing at the audience. And I've been watching old debates, and it's like you have the moderators saying, no applause, no nothing, and people are laughing, and it just amps him up. You see him doubling down on these jokes, particularly the second Hillary Clinton debate, which I watched this morning, which I recommend people watching, not just losers and nerds like me. It is amazingly entertaining, but the audience is an integral part of that. So Donald Trump is obviously relying upon Joe Biden keeling over on stage, and he just looks over at his slumped body and says, see, he's old and he might even be dead right now. That is his. But, you know, for them, it's like in a silent audience when he is, if Joe Biden is cognizant and Donald Trump is already kind of foreseeing that he might be and saying, you know, he's juiced up on Adderall and the rest of it, which might be true, and there's nothing wrong with that. And the thing is, is that if Donald Trump is doing this and it's to nothing, it might just, to me, it doesn't work as well. That's how he's so good on stage.

He was. I mean, when he walks behind Hillary Clinton in that second debate, like he's stalking her, absolutely brilliant. And then he says, you'd be in jail.

C
We have that here. Let's watch it.

E
It's so good.

C
Let's play it. Here's sat eleven.

F
And after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 emails, and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

C
Everything he just said is absolutely false. But I'm not surprised. You know, it is just awfully good that someone, someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of.

F
The law in our country because you'd be in jail.

C
Secretary Clinton, oh, my God.

G
It's so funny.

E
It's terrible. It's like the response at the Apollo. It's like, oh, no, you didn't. It's great. It's so good. It works as a political moment.

C
And like, you're right, the audience is better for Trump.

E
Take that away.

C
He's going to do it with or without the Apollo.

E
So good for him. So good.

C
He knows the audience at home is going to be listening and enjoying and all of it. Go ahead.

G
And I think that he's taking an interesting gamble by agreeing to all these kind of rules that take away those natural advantages. But part of his gamble, I would imagine, is that he wants this to be unfair against him. One of the things that binds his coalition together, that bound Republicans together long before Donald Trump showed up, but it's really part of it now, is a sense of aggrievedness towards the media, that the media creates unfair rules. And one of things that you do that you notice when you go back and look at other debates in the past, and I was looking a lot at the first debate last time around between Biden and Trump, with Chris Wallace moderating, sometimes it can be pretty loaded against, certainly Donald Trump and also Republicans in a way that screams out as being kind of unfair. There's a lot of, in CNN and Jake Tapper, who I have a ton of respect for, but CNN nonetheless has been spending the last, what, eight years adding the, without evidence. Anytime someone who is either Trump or Trump like, talks, they sometimes boot people off air if they are seen to be, you know, January 6 election denialist or however they might term, term it. And so the, I think one of the great challenges for Tapper in particular is to not fall into the sir, we're fact checking you now. And that's just not so kind of thing. I predict that that's going to happen. And if and when it does, it'll be perceived by the political class as a Trump losing situation. But I think it'll be perceived by the audience, what audience that is there.

And it's not clear that there's going to be a ton of people turn tuning into this, but it's going to be perceived as yet another example of why the deck is stacked against, you know, 46% of the country there.

C
There will be a ton of people tuning in for this. This is like there's nothing going on in the news right now. It's a relatively quiet week, a couple of Supreme Court opinions. There's not a lot of other news outside of it. It's a slow summer period, but we're not peak summer. It's not 4 July. So I, people are going to watch this. It's the presidency. It's the most consequential election in recent history. And this is probably the only time they're going to be together. Certainly only a time that's guaranteed because they may bail before the September 1 with ABC.

The Politico had an article out today saying 70% of american voters say they plan to tune in. These will be ratings unlike CNN has ever seen in its history. If that is true. I mean, they pulled in big ratings when Trump was a participant in GOP primary debates. But to have a general election debate primarily, you know, anchored by CNN and on the other channels as well, to CNN's credit, it allowed everybody to have access to it, to air it on their own feeds. What's normally done when they do a debate through the commission on presidential Debates. But CNN got this thing. It was an exclusive. They didn't have to do that. It's good that they did. Everyone's going to tune in. They are going to want to see these two go head to head for the reasons we kicked it off with. Right, like, can Biden do it? That's one of the questions. Can he do it? Can he make it 90 minutes? And to see Trump, like, what version of him are we going to get? Are we going to get magnanimous Trump? Or are we going to get feisty Trump? Are we going to get the one who took out Jeb Bush and was, you know, low brow and sort of a great way with Hillary Clinton? Or are we going to get the one who sometimes tries to be presidential and charming and smiles a lot is trying to appeal to those women and independent voters that would really help him. CAMILLE, CNN does have a lot at stake tonight, but the truth is, you know, for once, we really do have the two candidates with everything to win or lose. The latest polls show that only 83% of the voters have made up their minds at this point.

Only 83. That that leaves 17% potentially still up for grabs.

Some have put it as as many as one in four. So it could be up to 25% undecided.

And so this may be their one and only chance to decide which one of these guys they prefer. And, you know, Camille, it's not like they don't understand what's at issue. They have their partisan stripes. These are obviously non hard partisans who are still in the, I don't know, camp, but they're looking at these guys thinking Biden is too old and Trump has terrible temperament and they're wanting to see which problem is worse in these 90 minutes.

D
Yeah. It's hard to know, though, if this debate is actually a great crucible for trying to determine what's going on in this particular contest.

You've got this cavernous studio that both men are going to be standing next to each other in all these bizarre rules. You'll kind of sort of hear Trump trying to butt in, and I expect at some moment you'll see Biden kind of old stammering, trying to get his thoughts together in some distant voice, just kind of whispering horrible expletives, and Biden almost reacting and responding to them and real.

Would you shut up? It's going to be, it could turn out to be completely nuts. And all of that will be CNN's fault in some respect. And rather than getting the, like, excellent television that Moynihan alluded to earlier, where he's kind of, someone is stalking the stage while their opponent talks, you've got this bizarre experience where someone is moving their mouths on camera and you can't actually hear what they're saying and you're straining to take that out while ignoring what the person who actually has the hot mic is saying.

This seems like it could be a complete clastrophy for CNN, but maybe it turns out to be great. I do know that they've, it seems like they've got all sorts of weird terms that the various networks have to obey with respect to how they refer to the debate as, like, the CNN debate. And they won't permit the various election debate coordinators to show up and be in the studio again, a cavernous, like, bubble debate, a la the NBA bubble. Like, there were questions about that forever. There will be questions about this forever in much the same way again, unless someone keels over and dies, which seems to me like a decent probability for this.

C
Let's hope it not. It's not the moderators. It shouldn't be quite that stressful for them. No, but it is bizarre. They're not letting outside media really into the debate room. So if there is, like, a moment that happens during a break, I mean, I've been sitting up there as the moderator. People saw this when we did the news Nation Megyn Kelly debate, where Chris Christie came over and got in my grill, and it made a lot of headlines because there are other reporters and audience members in there who took pictures of it. And it went out and people asked me, they deserve to know that, why did he come over and get my grill? And I spoke to that on my show and explained it.

Trump came over and yelled at me at one of these debates. He was mad about a question. I asked him about Trump University and came over and started arguing with me. That's dramatic and fun for the audience at home to see. And, you know, they want to know what got him upset. Like, all of that is additive. None of that will happen because CNN won't let outside reporters in there. They have a tight lid over this whole thing. And if somebody in the room can hear the, the comments that one candidate is making while his mic is closed, were totally dependent on CNN to be forthright about reporting it. Right? Like, you're not going to have a third party who can say, yep, we all heard it in the press room. It's, no one's going to be in there except for the CNN staffers, which, again, is wrong. So that is my most irritating rule that they've set for this debate. And that is, um, the mics get cut as soon as a candidate's turn is over, because you can, you can get real gold when the candidate comments off, Mike. And I know they're doing it because Trump interrupted a lot during the first debate between Trump and Joe Biden last time. That's a mistake by Joe Biden. He was the one who requested the rule. It's a mistake. Trump made himself look bad. You know what's the old saying? When your opponents, what? Electric. Like trying to kill himself, don't get on the way. Something like that.

So that was a mistake.

But it's a disservice to the audience at home to not be able to hear those off the cuff witty retorts that the candidate can just slip in. Sometimes it takes 2 seconds. It doesn't have to take a full minute where they're stealing time.

And CNN is so psyched up about its rule, which again, was clearly a bend of the knee to Biden that they did a whole segment on how it's gonna work.

Would you look at this ridiculous thing they put together? Watch this.

G
Oh, no.

D
If we go behind the podiums, you can see two green lights. When they're on, they signal to the candidate his microphone is on. When the green lights are off, they signal to the candidate his microphone is off. Now, I want to give you a sense of what it will look like for viewers at home. If a candidate whose microphone is off interrupts a candidate whose microphone is on, he's going to interrupt me as I'm speaking. And this is what it will sound like. My volume remains constant while Phil's interruption can be difficult to understand.

G
Let's try the opposite.

E
My microphone is now on. Victor's microphone is off and he's going to interrupt me.

G
My volume remains constant while Victor's interruption.

D
Can be difficult to understand.

G
As seen as production team has shared.

E
This demonstration with the campaign earlier today.

G
And we're sharing it with you, our viewers.

E
So everyone fully understands how tomorrow night will work?

D
Everyone fully understands.

E
I don't understand. So what you're saying is when you turn the microphone off, you can't hear the microphone. Let's start that again. CNN. I have no idea why you get 40,000 people in the demo at 08:00 you literally have a program of people saying, this is what it sounds like when there's no microphone.

I know this is a video and audio podcast, but I'm mouthing it like they were doing on CNN. Good Lord in heaven. I suspect in some way that CNN thinks that this can actually help them with this sense of bias. I mean, if you look back at the Hillary Clinton debate, as I said, I watched this morning, Donald Trump is constantly saying, you gave her an extra 40 seconds. Why did you do that? You're not giving that to me. And it's like now, okay, we have hard and fast. Everybody has something to prove here, as you said, Megan. I mean, CNN has to prove that they're not going to be like they were in every other network was in 2016, 2020, which was, as Matt pointed out, the fact checking thing. Because when you fact check one person who, yes, he lies all the time, but everybody lies. And it's to different degrees. I mean, remember back in the day, people used to say, you know, you're going to cut Medicare and, well, no, we're actually trying to slow the growth of Medicare. How do you fact check something like that? Is it a cut or are you just slowing the growth? Right. So you get bogged down in these things, in these fact check things. And if CNN was smart about this, they would back up and just allow the people to debate and say, look, we are not thumbing the scale as we've been accused so many times in the past. So as opposed to just going on tv and creating these ludicrous videos about what it sounds like to talk and when a microphone's not working. But I think Trump has a million things.

Yeah.

In Trump, as you said, Megan, I mean, not being, can I say being a dick on the show? Cause I said it, so I can't.

So I kind of set you up there. Not being a dick is, everyone knows who he is. That part of him has been established. Imagine if he is just diplomatic in action. And I know this is a ludicrous idea for a lot of people, but it's actually not. Because if you watched him on the all in podcast in which he gave about an hour and 30 hours and 40 Minutes podcast, he talked, as we discussed in the fifth column. He talked in a substantive way about policy, like pretty serious responses. And it was a friendly audience. But I was like, oh, that's kind of a different trump. If you have Trump on stage, everybody knows that other side of him. Everybody knows the combative one when the audience isn't there to respond to him and play back with him. Just be serious and try to do it in a serious way. And you have those undecideds that, as you said, 80% versus these kind of roughly 17 18% people who are just on the fence about things, maybe they could say, like, look, maybe he did grow up. Maybe he has learned something in this period of time.

C
He can't do it.

He's a fighter by nature.

E
Of course he can't.

C
He's a New Yorker.

He's the celebrity apprentice guy. He's used to being in charge. He doesn't like to be challenged.

E
Yes.

C
Joe Biden's going to be spewing a bunch of lies about his record and him personally. Biden's going to personally insult him by raising the convictions, which will definitely irritate Trump. And so it's going to be a lot. You know, it's going to be like the boiling pot where, you know, the steam is coming up and you can hold it together and then there's just zero. Oh, I didn't say he can't do it.

E
He can't do it.

I'm saying, theoretically, what should be. I mean, but no, like, the second you bring up the convictions, he's going to. He's going to lose it. He's a very, very, very itchy or a hair trigger on his, and his temper on these things.

C
That's right.

G
There's an element of Biden that I think we're forgetting about, which is that what happens when you repeatedly give him two uninterrupted minutes, not great things happen. We've seen a lot of clips, and they're all selectively edited clips. Now we're hearing cheap fakes or whatever the term of non art is from the White House podium these days. But he has a difficult time keeping his track of thoughts. That's one reason why, if you want to play a drinking game, to drink yourself to death tonight. And I think we all kind of do, uh, drink every time Joe Biden makes a numbered list. Right. Number one, we're going to fix Medicare. Number two, Donald Trump is a, is a crook and a rapist. Number three, he's a racist, too. Like, he's just always going to number things even though there's nothing being numbered. And they're completely lists of random ideas that he has in his head. And he's doing that in part because he's. That's just the rhetorical trick that he's done his entire life. But it's a crutch, too. He's trying to order his thoughts in a way, or make it seem that his thoughts are ordered. They're not. He's pretty scatterbrained person in the best of times, back when he had complete control over his faculties, and he just doesn't have complete control over his faculties in the same way. And I know I'm doing the cheap fake now, just saying that you're not supposed to say any of that, but it's just sort of self evidently true. And this format allows us to see that a lot more. Yes, it is.

You won't be able to have does.

C
The unearned after two minutes actually undermine Joe Biden? You know, might he be grateful for an interruption?

Stephen Crowder tweeted this out today as his prediction of what it's going to take to get Joe Biden ready for this 90 minutes.

G
Watch quaaludes ten to 15 times a day for my back pain, Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow. Meowko came to wake me back up again. And morphine. Well, because it's awesome.

E
Yes. I mean, Jordan Belfort made a ton of cash, so there's a lot to be said for that routine. I'm just saying, don't do drugs, kid. But if you're Joe Biden, maybe it's advisable.

D
Tonight, it's a matter of having the right cocktail.

E
That's a good cocktail. He needs a cocktail, like.

C
But is it just me or do you wonder. I do wonder what they're going to give Joe. But there's zero chance he's going out there stone cold sober. There's going to be some sort of drug that helps him get a zip going. Just. I mean, I'm not saying, like, he's going to borrow Hunter's cocaine or whoever had it in the White House, but don't you think there's going to be something. Now, I'm not a cocaine person. I don't do drugs, as my audience knows. I've never even tried a drug. But I think the problem with cocaine is, based on what I've seen in New York City, you got to go into the bathroom every 15 minutes and take another hit. So that's not a good drug of choice.

E
But you can start by doing a lot.

I don't want to give you a lesson on this. You've never done a drug, Mike.

C
I've never done a drug other than alcohol.

D
I feel like you have a journalistic responsibility to at least experience the ecstasy of pure Colombians so you can talk about it.

E
Just so you know what Joe Biden's going through, you clearly have never done drugs, Megan. I'm sure they grow pot in Colombia, but that's not their major export now.

C
Okay? Right. I did watch narco, but on the.

E
Adderall thing, if they producer in her.

G
Ear say, megan, that's cocaine.

E
I mean, how do you think I'm doing this show with Adderall, by the way? And if you know anybody that has dementia or early kind of onset dementia. Adderall's not helping. I'm sorry to tell people who think it. I mean, it just makes you very focused on things you don't understand, because if Adderall could cure dementia, there'd be a lot of people in my life that I'd love to hang out with, still older people that I'd be like, oh, all of a sudden, you're cognizant. I think he has these things. And I've often mentioned somebody in my sort of family who has this, and there are times when you sit at the dinner table and you're like, oh, my God, he was amazing tonight. Incredible. Like, really on it. And then the next day, it'll be totally different. So it's these ups and downs. But, of course, remember the last time we said anything? Well, or we didn't, but people in the media who are desperate to find these moments, to call them cheap fakes when he needs help off the stage or is wandering off in Normandy or something, but, you know, they went back to the state of the union. Everybody was like, aha. That was a slam dunk. You guys look at you now and it's like, yeah, he was reading from a prompter.

If you can't read from a prompter, if that is the bar you've set for the president of the United States, then we are in deep trouble. But now this is the first time you're going to have. I mean. Cause the press, let's be honest, it's not adversarial. He doesn't interact with it very much, and when he does, it's not particularly adversarial. You're going to have the ultimate adversary standing across from you for, like, an hour and a half, peppering you with insults, questions, challenges to your presidency. And that's, of course, why Donald Trump decided to do this, because the presumption is he's not going to be able to handle it. But look, is he going to be having one of those halfway decent nights? I doubt it, but it's possible. It's possible.

D
State of the union is such a different environment. I mean, you've got an audience that's 50 50.

You've got these built in pauses. You're going to get this unbelievably enthusiastic, completely over the top applause for every single one of the lines that you use.

C
A reading test.

D
And when you get the booing, it'll be countered.

E
It's a reading test. It's exactly right. It's a reading test.

C
That's it. But can you read it or not? Like, sometimes my kids will come into my studio. They love to sit down to the chair and we'll roll copy for an ad. And it's a little reading test. Can you read this ad for Genicelle? And they nail it. It's wonderful. But, like, that's a totally different skill from being across from another president and being challenged on the Internet.

E
Jenny Cell mad that your kids are.

C
Reading the ads, Genesel will take all of the support it can get there. Thrilled. The kids love the product.

D
So, Megan, I would totally send my kids to Megyn Kelly broadcast bootcamp. So you tell me, like, when the session starts and you can have Leah and Cohen and just put, I'm actually.

C
Kind of creating that. Kind of creating that. We actually auctioned off something at our school this year. They asked for something and I said, why don't you auction off? They said, do. How about auctioning off, like, time? Like, you'll come and you'll give a speech. I'm like, I'm not auctioning off time with myself, but I'll auction off at our school, like, the chance to be an MK show intern. And somebody bought it and they gave it to their friend's daughter. And she's going to be like a correspondent for a day. But we're going to work together prior to her big report. Yeah, I actually would love to help young people get into journalism the right way and do it the right way. So that actually is a thing of value. Anyway, Megan, I have to get back to you.

G
I have a 13 year old daughter who would really like to hang out at your beach house.

C
She's hired.

She's hired.

G
Was that.

C
She can help me watch my struggle. Who's been a fucking nightmare here? Sorry, just this morning.

E
Is that your son?

C
My dog. There's a turtle. There's a turtle that laid eggs in the pool filter, and the dog found the turtle. And I mean, let me tell you, that turtle had about 2 seconds to live before we were all, like, straddling. No. And he jumped back into the pool. Strawberry got into the pool and they're chasing each other. The turtle's faster when he's swimming. Anyway, we got the dog out of the pool. Then he discovered duck eggs. There are duck eggs over in the daisies. He's like, and the duck flies away and struts like, there's a duck here. Oh, my God. So fun.

The duck is like, do I save my own life or my babies and my eggs? It saved itself. It went into the water. Struddleka's like, yes, let me in. The little eggs were exposed. He starts running over to them. We're like, no, no, no.

Dradwick's a nightmare.

G
I'm not sure.

E
Jack Hannah show. Look at that.

G
I now don't believe your cocaine story, Megan. I think that's a cheap fake.

E
She is out of her mind doing lines and watching her dog eat other.

C
Animals, let's be honest.

Yeah, I may have to go.

I think Strudwick's doing it, that's for sure. All right. Speaking of cocaine, Trump's interruptions.

Trump doesn't do drugs. He's never had any drug or alcohol.

His interruptions were, let's face it, a problem in debate number one. This is going to be the two men's third debate. They're supposed to do three in 2020, but the second one got canceled because Trump got Covid and everybody had a meltdown. This is the third time they've been across from each other this way. The first debate was the interrupting debate. And I'm going to show you like, some highlights of his interruptions and how Biden was too. Watch saw five.

F
Here's the deal. The fact is that everything he's saying so far is simply a lie. I'm not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he's a liar.

E
Sure.

F
You ordered last in your class. First in your class. Oh, God. I want to make Mister president. Can you let him finish, sir? He doesn't know how to do that. No. Individual mandate was the most unpopular aspect of Obamacare. I got rid of it. I'd like to president, I'm the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer your question. Go ahead. People out there need help. But why didn't you do it over 20 the last 25 years? Because you weren't president. Why did you do it over? Because you weren't president. Screwing things up. You were a senator and you're the worst president America has ever had.

You've already fired most of them because they did a good job. Some people don't do good job with you.

Wait a minute. You get the final word? Well, it's hard to get any word in with this clown. Excuse me, this. Let me just say. No, no, I'm Mister president.

C
Okay, so here was Chris Wallace.

G
It's a tough assignment, but that's not great.

C
Here is Chris Wallace speaking about that debate just yesterday on CNN software.

F
In the immediate aftermath of that debate. I certainly like a lot of Americans, was very disappointed with Donald Trump's performance. I actually think Donald Trump lost the presidency in that debate by his performance. He dropped about four or five points. He never regained it. And I've talked to a lot of people in the top echelons of his staff. They say he finally understands how badly he did in the 2020 debate. And the two words that are coming out you don't usually hear from the Trump camp are nice and respectful. He intends to do both. We'll see whether or not it happens. As far as Joe Biden is concerned, I think the key question is, are we going to see the Joe Biden of old or the old Joe Biden?

C
Trump interrupted Biden.

F
He interrupted Biden and me interrupted Biden, 79.

C
It's kind of irritating because Chris Wallace is so biased in that debate, but he's not wrong about the interrupting. Go ahead, Matt.

G
He was. I'm very disappointed in the performance of Chris Wallace, having watched that and looked at that, not just on the whining, mister President, I'm the moderator here, and I grant, I know it's a very tough assignment and few Chris, do it well. Megan, you've done it well, but it's all, you can also, like, get pear shaped really quick. I understand all of that. However, it's the actual substance which kind of blew me away looking at it in hindsight, because part of what Chris Wallace was doing was being really, really snide and hectoring towards Trump about daring to disagree with his scientists about the science on Covid. And he was saying, you know, sir, are you, are you questioning the efficacy of masking? Are you really saying that masking is an. And going to save everybody? And Trump's like, look, I got a problem with masking. I'm not really against it. I got a mask right here. But, you know, you don't have to wear it all the time. And Trump was more right about that than Chris Wallace. Wallace was busting his chops of like, sir, do you really believe that the vaccine is going to be available anytime soon? Your experts say it's not going to happen until next summer. And he's like, no, it's going to happen sooner than that. And they spent like, minutes on this, like, shaking their damn heads that Trump would dare to disagree with the director of the CDC, Redfield, at the time, who was saying crazy stuff. He was saying at that time that masks are just as effective as the vaccine.

That's crazy, right? Like, the history will judge that to be the craziest thing that was echoed when Joe Biden, like said, basically was true at that debate much more than Donald Trump's interruptions. And it's just odd because all we do by we now, I sort of mean the journalistic class, is that we love to score the style points on all of this. And, you know, that's part of it. It's not wrong to pay attention to it. It speaks to temperaments and a bunch of other things. But occasionally there's policy. And what Joe Biden did and Chris Wallace did in that debate was telegraph the policy and the sort of style of discourse that would be popular among Democrats in the media in 2021 and 2022, which was, we are going to pretend we're going to cloak our, like, total fear factor type of policies about COVID where we're just going to mask two year olds late into 2022 in the state of New York and other places. We're going to cloak that in the science. We're going to shake our heads witheringly at Donald Trump at all opportunities, and we're never going to revise later and say, oh, you know what? We were kind of wrong about that. Never. Trump was saying we should open the schools. The political class said, my God, what a monster. He wants to kill kids. No, he was right. You were wrong. And that is all out there for you to see in that debate. And Chris Wallace's performance is incredibly lopsided against Trump in that, too. So, yeah, it was disappointing for Trump, but it was disappointing for him as well.

C
Well, the other thing to add to is he missed. Like, sometimes the moderator can fall so in love with his or her own voice and questions that they missed the chance to let the candidates actually debate. I know you've got your two minutes, and Joe Biden is supposed to have them to answer, but when the other candidate is saying, let's mix it up, there's gold there and them thar hills, let him do it. Let Trump interrupt him. Let Biden respond. This is exactly what we're here for. It's not an interview. It's not. It's so much more boring when it's like, oh, gee, I get to really hear what's interesting to Jake Tapper get answered by this. I want to see what does Trump think Biden needs to answer for. What does Biden think Trump needs to answer for? Let the, what we need is the incredibly shrinking moderator. And I really hope these two remember that tonight. No one gives a shit about Dana Bash or Jake Tapper with respect to. But that both, yeah, they don't. They're not showing up to see them. Most Americans have no idea who they are. They want to see the two gorillas go at it. So let them do it stuff f your rules. Let them do the thing they showed up to do.

E
Debate two frail, aging gorillas lumbering to the stage. No, I think that's right. And, you know, it's for us, it's not for you. That's what journalists forgot when they were covering Donald Trump. And as Matt pointed out before, and I've said this for years in calling it the without evidence factor, which went away, by the way, the second Joe Biden became president, which was a key that was put onto every journalist's computer. So Donald Trump would say something and then you'd hit the key without evidence because politicians say things without evidence all the time. But it was something that Donald Trump does, I think I would say more frequently than many. But that became the thing. It became performative. I know you discussed the other day, Megan, on the show, what CNN did to a Trump spokeswoman who came on. And that is performative nonsense, right? It's showing constantly. It's the democracy dies in darkness without evidenced instinct. And it's everyone showboating to say, you know, we're doing our job as journalists. Your job, to your point, Meganeh, is to shut up and to back off if you are. I used to tell people, talk to young people about doing interviews, and I said, here's the thing. Don't have a series of questions because you have your first question to get everything going. Because when you're looking at your card waiting for the next question, you're allowing all these off ramps, which are really, really interesting. You're just letting them go because you're waiting for the person to finish to get to the second question.

And as you point out, the version of that in a debate is this two minute time constraint. Let them go if those two minutes are allowing some fireworks because it's illuminating to us, the voters. That is the purpose. I am not here to say CNN is doing a great job fact checking because again, Twitter is not real life. That has been the instinct in the last eight or so years is like, oh, we're going to get killed by the media class and media critics and people on Twitter if we don't fact check everything. The american people, by the way, stop condescending to them. They're capable of fact checking a lot of things in their own. And the other candidate is the fact checker on stage.

C
Well, it's going to be hard for them to resist that, Camille, because let's face it, they've spent the past, what, four plus years censoring Donald Trump. Remember, like, ever since he started doing the stuff about he didn't lose and all that, they got into a panic about letting him have any portion of their airwaves cutting away from him at pressers while he was still president of the United States. Then his campaign cutting that down, repeatedly bailing on him, MSNBC, the same thing. Like, he can't, we can't allow him to speak without us constantly fact checking him. They've got a whole. What's that guy's name? Daniel. What's his name? Dale? I can't remember. At CNN whose only job is to fact check Trump. He barely ever touches Biden. It's all about Trump. So now what position are they in when Trump gets up there and says the things that they haven't allowed him to say on their airwaves? And, like, do they see it as, I'm gonna let Joe Biden handle this, or do they see it as, like, here I come to save the day, and underdog comes out from the moderator's desk.

D
I mean, look, look at what has happened. We've spent most of our conversation in this, this portion of the, of the show here talking about the media and how it might screw things up. Like, there are so many ways that Donald Trump could essentially win this debate by default.

If CNN's rules just kind of get in the way, if Joe Biden is tripping over himself, if the moderators forget that they're supposed to be facilitating a conversation, not being the stars of the show, like, all of those things not just could happen, but in some respects are likely to happen. And all of those things are points in Donald Trump's favor that we can critically assess previous debates and the degree to which the moderators got things wrong. And Joe Biden perhaps overcorrected, not over corrected, but was a bit too eager to agree with what seemed to be, like, official Covid guidance at the time and not willing to entertain some of the things that Donald Trump happened to be right about, and that time has shown happened to turn out right.

They haven't done any of that critical analysis or assessment. It is all an opportunity for Donald Trump to look better than he might have otherwise. For all of their attempts to kind of safeguard the democracy against Donald Trump, to make certain that no one will take him seriously, they still don't appreciate how much that project has failed. Like, just how profoundly it's failed. And the fact that it's not a strategy for keeping him out of the White House going forward. You can call him a convicted felon, you can call him a sexual someone, and they will been convicted of sexual assault.

C
That'll be in question.

D
One again, those things will not keep him from winning the presidency because many people have a different perspective on just what those convictions actually represent. They see it representing a kind of corruption rather than a clear condemnation of Donald Trump, but a kind of presidential corruption, if you will.

C
He agreed to CNN. Joe Biden would never have agreed, like Trump agreed to sit with tapper and Dana Bash, who, I mean, honestly, it's very clear they don't like him. And 100%, these, both of these moderators are voting for Joe Biden and have been very, very harsh on Trump. Okay. But he agreed to sit down with them because he knew he had to if he wanted to debate Joe Biden. In no world was Joe Biden going to agree to a debate moderated by Fox News or yours truly. He just, he wouldn't, he would never do that. So he's already got the home team advantage. Joe Biden does. Then he gets these rules, which Trump said, I'll agree to anything because he's just trying to get him to debate. I'll agree to, you know, the mics get cut. I'll agree to no studio audience. Both of which would have benefited Trump in some ways, as we discussed, in other ways maybe the mic thing wouldn't have.

So he goes in there with the deck stacked against him, and then what you're going to get, I think, is two moderators who are going to try their level best to sound fair because they know they're under scrutiny. But I think the bias will appear in the story selection, the topic selection in terms of the questions they bring up, they're gonna be, I'm sure we're gonna hear about convicted felon. That's fair game. You should ask them about that. We're gonna go back over January 6, which, all right, we're gonna go over whether we're gonna get pardons. Right. And what kind of questioning are we going to get on the Biden corruption? Scandalous. I. Even a single one. Because what happened last time is Chris Ma, as Chris Wallace says, he lost that debate. He lost the presidency that night. What he didn't refer back to was his own culpability in shutting down Trump's attempt to raise the corruption issues that were already coming to the surface about Joe Biden. Remember this watch?

F
Why is it just out of curiosity, the mayor of Moscow's wife gave your son three and a half million dollars as what did he do with Barista? None of 180 or $3,000 if not. None of that is true.

E
Really?

F
No. Mister President, please. Totally discredited. Totally discredited. And by the way, well, wait, he million dollars. Joe, Mister Vice, you got three and a half million dollars. Shut up, Chris Wallace, really, mister President, it's an open discussion, please, it's a fact. Well, not you have raised an issue. Let's president answer discredited.

183,000 a month with no experience and energy. Mister, my son did nothing wrong at Baris. I think he did. Mister President, let him answer. You get the final word. Well, it's hard to get any word in with this clown. It's a very important no. The answer to the question is no. Ukraine. No, I sir, with a billion dollars of Ukraine that. You know what? You're not true. You're doing it. You're gonna have true, gentlemen.

C
How annoying a Chris Wallace should have. Shut up. Give them 60. Say you got 60 seconds, you got 120, go back. I would have loved to have heard Joe Biden answer those. Like Trump was asking very short, focused questions. I would have loved to have heard answers. The reason we didn't is because Chris Wallace ran cover for Joe Biden and now he's out there like he lost the presidency that night.

D
Yeah, wittingly or not, he did in fact end up running cover. And it would have been interesting to see him answer those questions. I think it's also really interesting to watch that again now. And Joe Biden had to know that that might come up at some point. And the only response, it's been discredited. That is not true.

And some of that was explicitly true, and some of that is a matter of interpretation. But Trump's question is actually really well put in the sense that what did he do to earn that money from Burisma? Well, it's clear what he did to earn it. He was born, he happened to be a Biden, and his father happened to be the vice president of the United States. Those were his qualifications for earning that money.

C
The Bidens have very low standards for success in life.

Born, one has to stay alive.

It's very, very simple tasks. Let me give you one other.

Here is Kristen Welker, who moderated the other of the two debates between the two of them of NBC News, and they discussed the laptop from hell Watch.

F
True about Russia, Ukraine, China, other countries, Iraq. If this is true, then he's a corrupt politician.

C
All right?

F
So don't give me the stuff about how you're this innocent, baby. I chop from hell.

C
President Trump, nobody. I'm talking about race right now, and I do want to stay on the issue of race. President Trump, can I have to respond to that, please? Because, look, very quick.

F
There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this he's accusing me of is a russian plan. They have said that this is, has all the care. Four, five foreign former heads of the CIA, both parties say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage.

Nobody believes it except his and his good friend Rudy Gianni. You mean the laptop is now, you know, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? That's exactly what, is this where you're going? Exactly what this is where he's going.

D
The laptop to come back.

F
Russia.

C
I want to stay on the issue of race.

F
You have to be kidding. Here we go again with Russia.

C
Okay, let me just tell you something.

E
The way he says Russia, this is.

C
How it needs to go down. If I were moderating this debate tonight, that would be my first question. Mister President, four years ago, you sat on this stage and you told the audience members across America that the laptop was disinformation. You cited intelligence analysts who said as much. You said it was exactly right, that the laptop was a product of Russia, Russia, Russia. We now know from your own administration that it was real. They took the stand, the FBI, in your son's criminal trial and testified under oath that at the time, you said that the FBI knew that laptop was real and the information on it was valid. Do you owe the american people an apology tonight for the misleading you did on this stage four years ago? Ago? Boom.

D
That's a fair question. Not only. Yeah, go ahead, moya.

E
No, I was. I wouldn't even go that far into the future. I mean, Joe Biden clearly knew it then.

D
That's what one has to present.

E
Joe's laptop. Of course, if you have a political scandal engulfing your campaign, you call your idiot son, you know, hopefully when he's not on crack, and say, is that your laptop, dear lad? And he would say, yes, dad, it is. How do we deal with this? Well, we go out and lie about it, and like everything else, we blame it on Russia. I mean, the questions about Ukraine are more kind of salient now than they were then because we have more information. Stuff has come out since then, the sort of Tony Bobulinski stuff, et cetera. But one thing I would say about that is the moderator should have asked that question in 2020, because when people said, well, this is about his son, it's not about him.

Think about that for a second. That was Joe Biden's portfolio. Ukraine after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the little green men in Luhansk and Donetsk, that was his portfolio. So who do they go after to say, like, we need somebody of influence in the capital, in Washington, DC, so we'll get his idiot son, right? At what point does a father, a good father, who says constantly how much he cares and loves his son, why can he not say to him, this is a very bad, look, you're taking $180,000 a month from an energy company without having any experience in the energy sector. Why do you think they're targeting you? You have the power. Obviously, he's over 18, but you should have the power as a father, as a vice president, to say, son, you cannot do this.

C
He enabled it.

E
He wanted it on the fact that he enabled it. And there's, there's dinners and things like that. But that is an important question to ask him.

C
Here's the other point with it. It shows that what Trump is up against when it comes to moderator bias, she got off of that question insistently and quickly, quickly.

Because, quote, I want to talk about race, of course, right? NBC obsessed. No one cares if the former vice president, soon to be president, is corrupt.

Right? That's basically what she's saying. No one gives a shit about corruption in the Biden family. What we care about is skin color. Back to my pet issue. That's going to be a challenge for Trump tonight because the biggest way that the, that that bias shows up in these debates is in story selection, in topic selection, and there's zero chance these moderators are not going to be interested in similar things, whether it comes to race, whether it comes to January 6, how much time will they spend on the trial? Will we hear the name Eugene Carroll, Trump's alleged fraud? Right. Those are all things that this moderator panel will control, and we'll see how, how that waits out. Right. Wait, standby, because I have to do break. And then there's so much more to get to. We're going to go over some past debate moments, too, with others outside of the last few years. It's going to be fun. Don't go away.

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Go to siriusxm.com mkshow to subscribe and.

D
Get three months free. That's siriusxm.com mkshow and get three months free.

C
Offer details apply I want to give you a programming note that's pretty extraordinary for the show it happens to.

We will have full post debate analysis for you. Obviously, we're doing the live show tonight and then tomorrow as well. But we're having someone on the show who I've never spoken to directly before, certainly not on my show.

And it's someone I never, ever thought I would invite on my show.

It's Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon and I have gone round and round for the better part of a decade now, all stemming from speaking of presidential debates. That debate question that I asked President Trump August 6, 2015, about how the Dems were going to hit him on women, as you know, that unleashed a firestorm that went on for the better part of a year. And no one fanned those flames more than Steve Bannon while at Breitbarthe Frontline, which is a PBS program, which is excellent. I must say, as critical as I am of most media, this is an excellent program, covered this in detail in, it was either 2018 or 19, and I participated in the program and so did Steve.

Here's a little bit of how that looked.

G
We run 20 stories on Megyn Kelly. I get Tony Lee and Matt. I boil my two hammers. They go right after Megyn Kelly. We're gonna linsky her, right? We're gonna cut her out from the, call her out from the herd and just hit her nonstop.

That's when all war broke out. That's when Breitbart, that's when you had.

F
To choose sides in taking on Fox.

Bannon and Trump were inciting the kind of conflict Breitbart readers thrived on.

C
She is a low life.

Everyone said we need to chop her off at the knees.

G
Do not look at the comments section. These things are getting ten and 15,000, 20,000 comments.

C
Megan's a type for a quickie in the men's.

G
The whole Trump, all the pepes, all these Trump guys were pounding in here.

C
Ellie needs to be put in her place fast and hard. It was scary at times.

And Breitbart kept lighting the fire over and over.

And, you know, I had and have three young kids, really young young kids. And the security threats were escalating, and we were doing everything in our power to convey to them that they needed to stop. It was, it was one debate question, just one debate question.

And he handled it fine. You know, he did. So get off of it. And they couldn't have cared less.

G
Ailes calls me up and says, you got to knock off these stories. She's crying. She's all upset. She's getting death threats. That guy sounds like a, a personal problem. So we're not backing off.

E
We're gonna.

G
We're gonna put more stories up tomorrow.

C
If Kelly, I am really looking forward to this discussion about everything.

He's about to go to jail.

He's about to go to jail. Now on this absurd contempt of Congress, finding so many other. Merrick Garland's not gonna go to jail.

You only go to jail for contempt of Congress if you're a Republican. Republican apparently named Steve Bannon in particular.

And we've come full circle with one another because I think we're fighting many, if not most of the same fights these days.

And I'm just been really looking forward to actually speaking to him face to face.

So, anyway, tune in. Wanted to mention today that it's happening tomorrow, and we'll get his full reaction on the eve of going to prison and on the day after, after this presidential debate. Joining me again, my pals from the fifth column. Should be pretty extraordinary. No, guys.

G
Wow.

E
I mean, that's incredible. I can't remember when it was. It was 2020, I suppose. That I sat down with Bannon, and it was the first time ever that I had to stop an interview because it went on too long. It went on, we were on 4 hours or something. The man can talk, and he is a brilliant guy who is wrong about so many things. And I say this from a sort of libertarian perspective. And, you know, if you have the moment to ask him about his unmitigated praise for AOC with me, he was, you know, loved AOC because she understood how to play class politics and she was good at it. The right was wrong for calling her a bartender and all these things. And he was very passionate about it, and I was surprised by it. But he's a very good conversationalist.

He's very, very smart. And he is what people think Roger Stone is. Roger Stone's more of a kind of his own media creation. Steve Bannon, if he goes after you, as you showed in that clip and that frontline documentary, is actually very good. And as you point out, Megan, they are, despite being on PBS, consistently good.

He's very effective. And I got a lot of pushback from the people that I worked for at the time about platforming. I mean, I'm sure you've heard that verb as you hate that word, interviewing.

I hate it more than anything. It's like, no, it's interviewing. And, well, you can't platform bad people. How do you know he's a bad person? Well, because other people have interviewed him. And I'm about to revisit that because at the same time, four years prior, he was Trump's campaign manager, and it was a really interesting thing. And he was, you know, he loves the fight and was like, you know, I have the hunter Biden laptop stuff is right around that time. And he's like, you won't publish it. You don't have the balls to publish it. And it wasn't about me. It was the institution I worked for, probably. Right. But, yeah, I mean, I look forward to it, too, because he's not someone who shrinks from a fight.

C
Right.

G
One thing, Megan, that I think that that exchange highlights. And I don't know if it'll be totally worth exploring with him. But it's interesting for the rest of us Americans to try to remember because most people have already forgotten, especially people who are not on the right. They're like, you know, Trump, Murdoch, Fox, it's all the same. Like, no, dude.

From 2015 to 2016, arguably the most interesting media story was Trump and the Bannonites taking on Roger Ailes and Trump and Roger Ailes had a pre existing relationship over the years, and Roger thought that he could. And, Megan, you will correct me my mischaracterizations, but that he could sort of contain it, or at least Rupert Murdoch thought through Roger, he could sort of contain the Trump problem. It was really advantageous and ballsy for Trump, regardless of whether you think about the individual tactics, and I'm not a fan about the way they treated you or other people, but for Trump to say, no, I'm going against the republican media establishment as well. I am such an outsider that I'm going to call Fox out. And it wasn't just you. You're the fulcrum at the beginning of it. But they went against Ailes, they went against Fox, and they won. And Fox ended up kind of being on their side, because Fox has a conservative audience that liked Donald Trump. And so is the first of many instances where Trump took on existing power centers on the right and more or less won that argument. And it was even at the 2016 Republican National Convention, that's when Ailes finally was defenestrated. It was like on the same night that Donald Trump gave his speech, Roger Ailes was impelled to resign. It's a remarkable story and not very well understood by journalists or people who have sort of a simplistic idea about the right.

C
Matt, I will never forget being at the republican convention on that very night. And I knew very well behind the scenes what was happening with Roger Ailes and the accusations against him, because now, as the world knows, I was participating with the lawyers investigation and seeing Howie Kurtz come up on Fox News, my network, that I was about to headline the coverage for that night as Trump accepted the nomination with a report about Roger being pushed out and the me, too allegations against him. And it was all about me, that it had broken without my consent. I had not participated in this leaking at all, nor did I expect it to be happening at all. Never mind that night talking about my allegations and suggesting, you know, from Ailes that they were untrue.

It was the most jaw dropping moment. I was in the midst of, like, this crazy convention where the Republicans were already so mad at me over the Trump debate question and then the ensuing onslaught. And then this breaks that I had, you know, partnered with the investigation. I hadn't really backed ails. And my network has now turned on me openly because Roger was still calling the shots internally, attacking me on the air while about to go out and headline the coverage, and then went on the air. And I, every single colleague I had turned their back on me. I mean, it was the most frosty, icy professional experience of my life. My close friends later apologized once they realized that there actually was a story behind ails. But it was one of the hardest days and professional experiences of my life. So I think back on that, and it is a little like trigger, right? All of it. But now with some distance between those events and today, I see, at least with Bannon's piece, what was going down and how effective he was at fighting. And, you know, if you can. Not everyone is great at this, and I don't know if I'm great at it either. But if you can remove yourself from the story, right, like your personal feelings from the story, then you can see objects effectively, this person's skills and gifts. You could say, I think that's an appropriate word, and ask yourself, how can they be deployed in a way that will help the country forget MEgyn Kelly, who gives a shit whether I had bad coverage and had, yes, there were some threats that were real, which we managed.

Right.

But I just think so much time has passed that all of that is irrelevant, at least to me.

And I can't wait to have that, like, a hard heart to heart about how it went down. I've heard Bannon, I've listened to his show a few times, and I know his theories about why I asked the question I asked and who may have been pulling those strings. And I've got very strong opinions on where he's wrong, and I'm happy to tell him.

And so that's going to be part of the discussion, right? For once, we're going to come clean and I'll tell him the answers to all of his questions about that moment and that whole saga, and hopefully he'll tell. Tell me the answers to mine. So, anyway, for me, it's like a big thing, and I love that it's happening the day after the debate, right. Because, like, I'm really going to want to hear from Steve Bannon about what he thinks happened tonight. I really do. I'm not just saying that. I don't, I'm not going to get ratings from people watching. I don't care, like, the debate on my YouTube, what I'm saying, genuinely, I think it could be the most important debate we've ever had. I genuinely believe that. I, I just think this contest is neck and neck. It truly could go either way. You know, Trump's winning in the swing states, but Hillary Clinton was up 5.6% at this point in the 2016 election. And she lost. The polls tell us a little, but they don't tell us much, to be perfectly honest. This thing could go either way. And tonight is probably going to be the only time these guys face off against another. And the last chance, I think, to really stop President Kamala Harris. I mean, that's, that's truly how I see it. I think. And honestly, I heard another thing that I want to ask you guys about, and it was on the question of the Trump Veep stakes, who he's going to pick.

And it was Don Junior who got me thinking about this. I marked it. It was on whether Trump would ever pick Nikki Haley. And he said, Nikki Haley, who served as the puppet of Democrat billionaires and war mongers, would be a wonderful choice. If my dad wants to get impeached within about 7 seconds of being sworn in, she's their last hope.

Now, what's so fascinating about that to me, you guys, is that's what he's thinking about. What vice presidential candidate for Trump is going to lead to Trump's impeachment.

And it's a good question, isn't it? Because if you pick the one that the establishment loves, that the media is okay with, that the lefties would tolerate, and he's right. Nikki Haley, is that, does it increase your father's chances if he gets in, of getting impeached a third time? They're obsessed with the Trump impeachments. And if that's what the Trump campaign is thinking, I feel like JD Vance's stock just went way up, right? It went way. I don't. What do you make of it?

E
100%?

Yeah, I think it's 100% true. I don't think there's anything that's going to diminish the desire of Democrats if he wins another term to impeach him. I think that that's just. But also, I think it's funny that I just said about Steve Bannon talking about how much he loves AOC.

If you take that Don Junior quote and you gave it to somebody, I don't know, 1015 years ago, and you said, who is the person talking about corporate billionaires and warmongers? You would assume it was Noam Chomsky. You would assume it was somebody on the left. I mean, this is why people like Bannon and why people like John Junior kind of, you know, respect people on the populist left because it's become such an overlap. But somebody like JD Vance, who I really strongly disagree with on a lot of issues. The one thing you can't take away from him if you see him. I've seen him dealing with, there was one recent interview he gave to CNN in which they were, thought they were going to dunk on him. Because what happens with journalists when it comes to MAGA types is that you always assume because you are right and they are wrong, this is from the perspective of the journalist that it'll be, be easy, right. They just lie and they make things up. JD Vance is no dummy. I mean he's very, very skilled at this. And it was the first person I saw in kind of MAGA universe so skillfully and artfully you can win by, as Steve Bannon says in that clip, having a hammer like Matt Boyle, a hammer is usually the tool that they use.

That would be Vance's great advantage. I mean, Ron Howard directed a movie based on his book, right? I mean he's changed since then, but he has the ability to live in a lot of different worlds and that's a really, really valuable asset for a vice president.

C
JD Vance, hopefully he's going to be on the show very soon. But I've said to the audience from the day we launched, it was literally one of, if not the most favorite interview I've ever done. It was while I was NBC. It was one of the few very good things that came out of that year, that year plus there, and I encourage you to go back and look at the YouTube of it. It's truly worth your eleven minutes or however long the piece was. And I don't say this in a sycophantic way. I don't have a girl crush on JD Vance. I love only one man and that's my husband. But JD Vance is a beautiful person. That's my biggest takeaway was this is a beautiful man. He has been through a lot and has overcome and has managed to like stay within his own soul, solid, spiritual, connected to his family, very aware of his own family and the dangers to him given his upbringing, loves his wife, his family, all of his family, his nuclear family and the children he has, of course, with Usha. And I'm rooting for that guy to succeed. I don't really care if it says vice president or senator or just as a human. He just, the more you learn about him, I think the more you like him. Now, I don't know, he's certainly more qualified to be vice president than Kamala Harris. Harris, right.

And I do think if you think, if you're worried about, you know, the, the impeachment thing, Doug Bergam, that's who Rupert Murdoch is supposedly pushing. Now, that's not a safe choice that everybody would prefer Doug Bergam, that Trump haters to Trump.

Marco Rubio, same. I think the lefties would much rather have Rubio than Trump.

And the only other person being mentioned currently, though, we did go back and check the news reports. All the people who are being mentioned as Trump's possible vp back in 16, no one. Mike Pence wasn't a name on the list. So take all this. A huge grain of salt, right? It could be a surprise. But anyway, Tim Scott's the only other one.

And I think, yeah, same. He doesn't, he won't reassure Trump, Trump that Trump faces no impeachment threat with him as the number two. Like you need a maga, disciple in that position if you want to stave off those. And there, he's absolutely right. There will be a third impeachment if he gets it. Anyway, all of this is fascinating to me, but we're getting the cart before the horse because he didn't win yet. He still has a debate to go through tonight and a contest. All right, let me, let me shift now.

I want to go back through his other debate moments because it's always so fun. This is my favorite part of debate day, is to see who's done it great, who's done it poorly and where the lessons are. And I really think, like for me, the greatest debate moment you could, you could take your pick, but the greatest debate moment ever, speaking of CNN, was when Newt Gingrich got up in the grill of John King, who opened the debate with a question about Gingrich's marriage and whether they had an open marriage or he proposed it with his first wife.

Let's watch it.

F
Would you like to take some time to respond to that? No, but I will.

I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.

E
And I am appalled that you would.

F
Begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.

G
Yep.

C
Standing ovation. No one's done it better. Camille. Am I wrong?

F
Yeah.

No.

D
I mean, that was a sophisticated response. It's also a legitimate question. I mean, people, voters do have concerns about these things and interests. Whether or not it's the first question one ought to ask, it's certainly not an illegitimate question to raise. That is precisely the way to respond to it. And interestingly, I think there's some crossover with what we were just talking about with respect to JD Vance. Newt Gingrich similarly has a kind of clear sophistication and ability to deal with media elites who disagree with them, who have this presumption about their superiority.

And it's not like having Marjorie Taylor Greene responding to someone who is just, who only has at her disposal kind of bravado and perhaps a profanity laced rebuttal, just quietly dismissing some and confidently dismissing someone's question, insisting that it is in fact, out of line, allowing it to sort of settle, and then having a really well rehearsed and practiced response, which he clearly did in that moment, is what you want to see out of a candidate. It's what JD Vance could give you if he ended up getting tapped. And he and Kamala Harris are opposite one another on some debate stage later. It's probably not great odds for the.

C
Biden administration and to do it without anger, right? He's like a tinge of irritation, but not opening.

E
Yeah, yeah.

The important word in that response, the most important word is no.

Do you want to respond to that? No, but I'm going to because you're an asshole and you're making me do this, going after the media and saying, you guys are clowns and you debase the political debate by doing stuff like this. And by the way, Newt Gingrich has a lot of reason to do that. And absolutely not a man without flaws.

But I mean, remember, it was at Connie Chung who was talking to Newt Gingrich's mother and said, you know, what did he call Hillary Clinton? And then she said, just whisper it to me, just between me and you, and said he called her a bitch. And it was on camera. And it's like, good Lord, the exploitation here is outrageous. Lot of things that make Newt Gingrich very angry. His was a very pure anger. I don't think it was just a manipulation. Like, let's turn it on the media. That always works. And by the way, just for your listeners, that there is an amazing podcast about Newt Gingrich's rise that was made by none other than MSNBC's Steve Kornacki, which was so fair that they added a separate episode because Newt said no. And then he listened to it and he said, good Lord, this is right down the middle. Absolutely fair journalism. And he came on. And Steve Kornacki is a brilliant down the middle guy. And it's a great podcast about in the media factor and how the media interacted with Newt as part of it. So it's worth listening to.

C
Wow.

D
In fairness, like that coin that Connie Chung move, I could see you pulling some shit like that.

E
Oh, yeah, I would absolutely do that. Yes, I would absolutely do that. I would do it with Joe Biden because he's a little older and he loves, more likely to fall for it.

C
Yeah. Loves the wisdom.

D
Get some eyes.

C
As great as that moment was, I can see that probably the most effective line. Effective, like the thing that will change their trajectory of the race line ever belongs to Ronald Reagan, who asked the smartest question that we've ever heard at a debate, and the most relevant question so good was it that it became the question that would be asked in every debate thereafter and in every campaign.

And here it is from the 1980 debate against Jimmy Carter. SAP 14.

F
Next Tuesday, all of you will go to the polls who stand there in the polling place and make a decision.

I think when you make that decision, it might be, well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?

Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?

Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?

Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?

And if you answer all of those questions, yes, why then I think your choice is very obvious as to who you'll vote for.

If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.

C
So good. Humble.

G
I'm glad that you played the whole clip, Megan, which I haven't seen in a long time, because we boiled it down to, are you better off than you were four years ago? And that's how it is rehearsed and talked about and invoked these days. But that just wasn't it. He was talking about our standing in the world. This is against the backdrop of the hostages being taken in Iran by the revolutionary kids that became the mullahs that did all kinds of terrible things. To this day. It was a generalized feeling that America was slipping in addition to, yes, the unemployment that Carter, at his first debate in 1976 against Gerald Ford, had said that he was going to whip inflation and unemployment, and that just didn't really work out. So it was skilled on a lot of levels. And it's also, as you were saying, and sorry to interrupt you, Megan. It was sort of humble. It was in that classic kind of understated Reagan way of like, hey, sure, you have your choice. If you really think that's like that, you can vote for this guy over here. But I might suggest something different. Pretty classic Reagan.

E
Reagan.

When you said Reagan debate moment, the incredible thing about Reagan, I said, you know, which of the five that I can think of you're gonna chase.

One of them is the Walter Mondale. A very famous line. I'm not gonna let my opponent's youth and inexperience when the question was about his age. Because, by the way, people on the democratic side used to talk about the candidate's age quite frequently with Reagan, who is much younger than Joe Biden is now. And they used to talk about him having dementia, too. Or Reagan saying, I paid for this microphone phone. A very famous moment. And it's also, you realize when you think about these things, not so much in isolation, that these debates can be very consequential and can give us incredible moments. And hopefully, something like that will happen tonight. I mean, Matt mentioned the Ford Carter debates, and people often think that Gerald Ford lost a lot of ground when he said there is no soviet control of eastern Europe to a completely baffled panel of moderators. They're like, what do you mean? There are occupied countries. But those moments when you're unprepared, like that, really hurt Gerald Ford in some significant ways. And Reagan, I mean, there's so many of these great moments. Those were obviously very, very tightly scripted. The good thing about Donald Trump, and I will say this just from the perspective of somebody watching his debate performances, is that you'd be in jail, was not scripted. He is very quick off the block. The idea that they're both old and they're both infirm and they're both slipping, will see it tonight. But the idea that that's happening to Donald Trump, you see in that all in interview, that hour and a half interview, you didn't see any of that.

He was sharp as attack. Even if you disagree with him, this is not a political analysis, just a sort of analysis of, is the guy capable of being a good candidate? And you'll see tonight that he's not a guy that goes out with scripted lines. That's probably a bad thing sometimes, but it can also land some pretty, pretty good punches and say, oh, this guy's really on his game. And when you're facing up against Joe Biden, that's a huge advantage.

C
That comment you just made of Ford getting caught reminded me of Gary Johnson, who didn't know what Aleppo was. Remember, he was on MSNBC.

E
What is Aleppo?

Yeah, he thought it was a former girlfriend. He's like, aleppo. Do I, did I know her?

C
Are you familiar at all with Syria? Because it's kind of in the news a lot at the time. It was a lot. And that was a career ender. I mean, that was a campaign killer. That's the end of that. Right? It's not like people understood fully what was happening in Syria or every day they're like, well, give me the latest on Syria. But when someone comes across as uninformed about major issues, they can embarrass themselves. And you're definitely looking to avoid that. Not for nothing, but Trump. We know Trump's got at least two ads queued up that he's going to be releasing right during or after the debate. And take a listen to the messaging in this one because it sounds kind of familiar. Sat 21.

F
No matter what Joe Biden promised in the debate, ask yourself, are you financially better off since he became president?

Are you and your family safer since he became president? Is our country more secure since he became president? After four years of failure under Joe Biden, it's time to make America prosperous and strong again.

Donald Trump for president again.

I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

C
Look at that.

E
Image. That's great tie.

D
You could almost imagine he's got a six pack under there.

C
Yeah. For the listening audience, it has shots of the Afghanistan situation and the plane when the people were trying to get on that board that plane and then wound up hanging off of it and they and all the immigrants coming into the country. And then it ends with a close up shot of Trump with his helicopter in the back and his big red tie blowing, like, almost horizontally off of his neck, off to the side, I'm.

D
Not sure what that's supposed to symbolize with the Photoshop.

E
Yeah.

C
Yeah. Well, I like it, I have to say. Cause it's tapping right into that Reagan message. And it's such a rare situation where you got a guy who was president four years ago against a person who's been president for the last four.

G
And it's also like, let's not sleep on the 1978 typewriter typeface, too. Like, you're really supposed to remember kind of absence of malice in 1978 and Reagan and everything else. It's an interesting nostalgia that people are kind of talking about in that. Like, Trump is associated with everything that happened until February of 2020. And somehow, and, like, really, when you go back and look at the 2020 debates and the campaign and everything like that, the worst part of it is that you remember 2020. It was such an awful year. It was such a deranging year with COVID with George Floyd, with protests, with arguing over protests with Portland, which just, like, burned in human excrement for about 183 consecutive days. Crazy. Like so much happened. That was crazy. And I think Trump is playing for nostalgia of the pre Covid times. Although he was there during COVID he managed it and his management is, is up for debate and consideration. And a lot of, not most of, but just some percentage of the things that we don't like about the Biden era definitely happened in Trump. Trump added to inflation, too. I think Biden added more to inflation. But they both threw a ton of money out there in the world. They both had no interest in reforming entitlement, the fiscal cliffs that we're facing sometime soon.

It isn't, it's an interesting thing. I think that what you're going to see both at the debate and I presume in some ads afterwards, and if you don't see this, it's a terrible missed opportunity.

I think Trump is going to say the word, the words, the name Kamala Harris a thousand times.

C
Okay.

G
That's what you have to do.

C
Let me interrupt you. And then you take your, take your point up on the back end because here's the second Trump ad that's about to come out.

E
Watch.

F
When you think about the Joe Biden you saw in the debate. Ask yourself a question.

Do you think the guy who was defeated on the stairs, got taken down by his bike, lost a fight with his jacket and regularly gets lost, makes.

G
It four more years on the White House.

C
Oh, my God.

F
And you know who's waiting behind him, right?

G
Vote Joe Biden today, hit Kamala Harris tomorrow.

I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.

E
Great idea.

I would object slightly to the execution just because a long time ago I said if Donald Trump wanted to create an effective ad against Joe Biden, rather than hoping there's some stumbles and everything in the debate is that all you have to do is string together some of these kind of weird non sequiturs that are barely English and at the end, just put Trump at the end of it. The Harris thing is also true. You could do the vocal stylings in the speech stylings of Kamala Harris when she's talking about buses and how the wheels go around and she seems to be having a young person stroke during.

D
I like when she talks about time personally.

E
Yeah, no time. It's there. But who knows? Who knows what it could be. You know what it could be. It's like, what's great is this woman talking about Ukraine. Everyone is having a stroke.

F
Yes.

E
Yeah, it's a country and it's full of Ukrainians. But that stuff, all you need to do is like Joe Biden, you could just say, do an ad that says last week in Joe Biden, just a week, put together stuff from things that he's like, if Trump could have so.

C
Much fun, get up there and be like, just start naming people like, you know, Deon Warwick, dead or alive.

G
I mean, that's hard for a lot of us.

E
I might actually fail that one. She was great as a host of solid core. Hold them.

D
She's definitely alive.

C
Corn pop. Explain.

E
Yeah, yeah.

C
Quick break.

Much more to discuss. Hold that thought, Matt. Back to you in 1 second. All right, the fifth column stays with us. And remember, folks, you can find the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM Triumph channel 111 every weekday at noon east. The full video show and clips by subscribing to your YouTube channel. That's YouTube.com Megan Kelly, now at 2 million following. Really prefer, really happy to have all of you there. And if you prefer to take your news in by audio, you can check out our podcast, follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast for free. Go over there and you can find our archives with more than 800 shows, credit card rewards like cashback can empower families with extra savings while they deal with the rising price of groceries and gas. But our sponsor, the electronic Payments Coalition, says some DC politicians are partnering with corporate mega stores to take the cash back rewards away from families during skyrocketing inflation. Specifically, they say the Durbin Marshall credit card bill would take billions from American Families lining corporate pockets instead. Learn more@electronicpaymentscoalition.org and see for yourself if you want to protect credit card rewards. And tell DC politicians to oppose the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. That's electronicpaymentscoalition.org dot.

Here's what both candidates and I speak to, Joe Biden in particular, need to avoid. I take you back to 2000 and Al Gore. Watch.

F
I've had a record of appointing judges in the state of Texas. That's what a governor gets to do. There's differences.

I've had a record of appointing judges in the state of Texas. That's what a governor gets to do. There's differences.

C
And here's part two, okay, because let's not forget he stalked George Bush.

Hillary Clinton says that Donald Trump stalked her.

Al Gore stalked George W. Bush. And it led to a wonderful moment for GWB. Watch side 17.

F
That's what the question in this campaign is about. It's not only what's your philosophy and what's your position on issues, but can you get things done?

And I believe I can.

C
Listening audience George W. Bush. Bush was speaking. Algar left his lectern, walked over to GWB in the middle of his remarks, and George W. Bush just looks at him and nods his head like, hey, how you doing? And then keeps going, so, well, hey, how's it going?

E
Good to see you.

C
But you can't. The eye rolls, the snippiness and the harrumphing undermine you, not your opponent. Am I wrong?

E
Yeah. Yeah.

G
It also telegraphs their personality. You know, sometimes it's sort of weird unspoken things that give you a sense. I mean, at that actual debate, George W. Bush was in favor of nation against nation building. And, like, we got too many troops abroad, we need to stop doing foreign wars. So on the substance, it wasn't necessarily all that accurate. But, like, as dudes, that's who they are. Because you can also hear, see in the back of Gore's ear, like, somebody named Naomi told him, you need to walk around like a confident animal on stage and bush.

E
And wear brown suits.

G
Wear brown suits.

C
And Bush, was that a brown suit?

G
Everything we say about him?

E
No, but that was Naomi Wolf, who's now a wild. I keep going there.

G
Yeah, yeah. She had said the wear earth tones to make you more relatable and Al Gore relatable.

George W. Bush, say what you will. Aside from the fact that he's a great painter, the dude was born comfortable in his own skin.

E
Yeah, he was.

G
And, like, famously so. And that exchange absolutely proves it. The other thing I would point people to, it's very difficult to find. Find the 2000 World Series program, pre World Series program, because they ask both of those guys the same questions, like, what do you think about the DH? Or what's your favorite park? And the answers, I can't rehearse them all here are just so classes, one word answers from Bush saying, like, I don't like Astroturf. And Al Gore's like, well, with the miracle of Astroturf, you know, I can see the problem both ways. Fantastic.

C
Oh, I want to see that.

No, that sounds amazing.

E
It's great.

C
Well, I mean, it's all been done before.

I mean, I would say, like, they've got cautionary tales to look back at and try to do better than, and so do these moderators. I mean, there's no bigger faux pas or a low moment for debate moderator than what happened with Candy Crowley. It was terrible. She did interject herself and try to, quote, fact check Mitten Romney, who is claiming that Barack Obama had yet to call the Benghazi terrorist attack a terrorist attack. And Obama was saying it's not true. And she tried to fact check it on the spot, siding with Obama. She was wrong.

And it really, it led to the end of her career. Here's that moment.

F
The president, 14 days before he called.

C
The attack in Benghazi an act of. Get the transcript. He did, in fact, sir, so let me, let me call it an act of terror.

E
Can you say that a little louder?

C
He did call it an act of terror. It did as well take, it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being.

G
A riot out there about this tape to come out.

C
You're correct about that.

Bad. She seems like a nice lady, but.

D
Not a about you.

C
Right. And there are real risks to the moderators siding with one of the candidates and resolving a dispute between the two of them on the stage. She's not the jury.

G
Yeah.

C
Right. That's going to be a temptation tonight for these two.

E
Yep. Megan, you know this very well, doing this over the years. I've done it for a number of years, too. On a couple of tv shows. You sit down with people and you interview them, or you have a couple of people that maybe they're debating. I've done debate shows, too. And, you know, everyone has their own built in bias. I know when I sit down with somebody I disagree with and I disagree with them and I love them and agree with them. And that is very easy. I don't know why people have a hard time with this. It's very easy to play the other side with them. And it's also better television if you sit there and it's an Amen chorus. Who wants to watch that? That's why these things can be really boring. But when it's a presidential debate, you want to get up against every candidate and get the best answers out, because your job is not to obviously be an advocate. And I've said this at the beginning of the podcast, your job is to entertain and inform the american people. And the american people want adversarial questions to both of the people that might run the country. Why is this so difficult for people to understand?

The simple answer is, after so many years of this, journalism is a political game. And there are political actors in it. And unfortunately, it's become sort of more serious these days than it was when Brent Bozell was complaining about it. The 1980s.

C
What, what's going to happen with respect to January 6 and the convictions? Both topics are guaranteed to come up January 6, particularly the pardons. We know that because Maggie Haverman in the New York Times, who's a CNN contributor, is saying those are going to be the two most tricky issues for Trump. There's no question she's been consulting with them in my mind behind the scenes about how to do this and where to go. And I'm sure that she's right. Those are Democrats favorite topics. So if you were advising Trump on in particular January 6, I know the republican MAGA base wants to hear, yeah, pardon political prisoners, and Trump has said that at his rallies. But this is a very, very different audience that feels very differently about January 6. What, what do you do?

D
Trump is, is so used to kind of having particular lines, I think it would actually be challenging and incredibly surprising for me to not hear him refer to them as kind of victims of political persecution.

I don't even know that it's out of a sense of kind of loyalty. I suspect it's just a matter of habit. I think he'll probably try to be careful, and I read the needle. But I also just cannot imagine a well rehearsed response to this that has him doing what politicians have traditionally done in the general, which is tacked to the middle completely, and try, and try to make certain you're scooping up those middle of the road people rather than catering to your base's interests. That said, with respect to the criminal prosecutions, my mother is actually my bellwether for this sort of thing. She's not very sophisticated political analyst, and there are, in fact, plenty of interesting stories I could tell that would make that very clear.

And she is a kind of conventional born Democrat who refuses to even consider Republicans. But when she talks about the criminal prosecutions with respect to Trump, she regards them as generally unfair and she doesn't know the specifics. But that is the conclusion that she's reached, and I don't think she's alone in that.

So I suspect there'll probably be a little bit more grace for that than there might be with respect to January 6.

E
What I would advise him to do, and I think that this is a pretty straightforward one, is rather than responding from the gut, which is what he does in so many of the rallies, is that we've talked about this endlessly on our show is that I personally think many of these people should be prosecuted. Some of them should go to jail, not all of them, but that the jail terminal seem wildly outsized to me. And so what I would do if I were Donald Trump is say, look, this was a bad day. This should not have happened. People did some very bad things. But on the prosecutions, I will just say this, get somebody. This is what you would do if you're Donald Trump. Get somebody who got 15 years for some heinous crime. And that happens quite freely and say so and so got 15 years. You have a guy, you know this Enrique Torrio, who gets 23 years. And he was in Baltimore, they said stay out of the city. He stayed out of the city. Does that, ladies and gentlemen, feel fair to you? Does that feel like there's not some sort of political influence in these prosecutions? It's not. There shouldn't have been prosecutions, but that political influence cannot stand. That is something way you can threaten further, I think, instead, and, you know, attack them. And yeah, you're going to hear Nancy Pelosi.

C
That's what you're going to hear. Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi. And it's a fair point. Nancy Pelosi did get caught on camera, was just released saying, it's on me. I should have had more security. That's on us. It was a failing. So I predict that's what Trump does is he says the problems of the Capitol that day are on her.

G
It's a good to excellent chance that this is exactly where CNN, Jake Tapper and Donna Bash will not help themselves. They will not get out of their way because they've been marketing this, the big lie, for a really, really long time, right, saying that you don't accept the results of the 2020 election.

And so, and let's not forget also that Caitlin Collins led to like a, something like a week long media discussion, political media discussion after she had the temerity to host a town hall with Donald Trump last year, like earlier this year, I forget what exactly when my brain is starting to be scrubbed. But people were outraged that you had platform this, I don't know, former president and interview him. And like CNN had huge freakouts about this. Like there's people who lost their jobs, there were town halls, there was this, there's that internal dissensions. People went nuts. And so all of that pressure is going to be put to bear on Jake Tapper and Dana Bash about how they ask January 6 and whether and just the election results writ large and whether it's, they're tough enough. So what are they going to do under that pressure? Because if and when they overstep their bounds and they think it's a pretty safe prediction. Prediction, just like by never letting go of the question and doing a lot of sir sir type of interruptions at that moment, Donald Trump gets his wings, I think, because he'll just sort of say, you can't let this go.

You're basing your abysmal ratings on this. Maybe you should get over it. He'll be able to look more like a victim on something that he's not a victim of. I mean, his behavior after the election was abysmal. His behavior on January 6 was abysmal. It should be a loss for him. But the media and Democrats have found a way to try to not, by overemphasizing it and blotting out the sun with it, they find a way to not make that as much of a disadvantage for him as it should be.

C
Totally agree with that here. Speaking of the consternation about platforming Trump, take a listen to Joy Reid on MSNBC the other night.

E
Do I have to?

C
You do.

Are y'all as offended as I am about the fact that it's possible for this person, who is a felon and an adjudicated sexual assaulter, to stand, stand next to the actual president and give, and we're supposed to take him seriously like that? There's something deeply offensive about that.

And I think that was Rick Wilson. I'm sure the answer is yes, very. Just as offended as you are. But that's the reason I find that interesting is because that is a bit of a window into, I guarantee you, how virtually everyone in the CNN news work, newsroom feels about Donald Trump and the pressure that's going to be on the two moderators about who you're dealing with. A Hitler esque figure made a reference along those lines in the past. And so think about, like, it's a very tricky position for them because I think they actually believe he's a very dangerous figure.

And they also probably agree with what Joe Joy Reid just said. And yet they, they understand what the duty of a journalist is. They're not lunatics like, you know, Jorge Ramos, who's like, abandon all objectivity. Like, they still understand what the core mission is. So it's going to be fun to kind of watch them deal with that, right? Like it's convicted felon, sexual assaulter. It's basically, you know, Charles Manson up there, you know, repeat felon because of his 34 documents case convictions. So I don't, I mean, they're, they're in a tough position.

Okay, so last question. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, go, go.

E
No. And I'm just saying there's one, there's one thing that's a through line to all the media coverage, probably since 2016, is we don't trust the american people. We have to do it either through lawfare. We have to constantly be banging this drum saying that he's wrong. But if he's lying about this, et cetera, the public cannot adjudicate this stuff on its own. And so why is he even up there in the, I mean, Joy Reid knows that he has a very good chance of winning, and that is what offends her, not the fact that he's standing next to the president.

C
All right, so here's very good chance.

D
Of winning is picking up demographics he shouldn't be.

C
Yeah.

Does what does a win look like tonight for Joe Biden? Camille, I'll start with you on that one.

D
Not completely ruining this for himself. I mean, he and his team have done everything that they can to minimize his appearance in the spotlight. Without a phalanx of supporters surrounding him, without some sort of cheering crowd, this is perhaps the most vulnerable moment of the campaign for Joe Biden. So if he falters here, it could be profoundly devastating for him. So I think the goal for him has to just be to survive this. I don't know that you can hope to wound Donald Trump. You can perhaps bait him and he perhaps wounds himself.

But Joe Biden has been faltering for a while. And I don't know that there is going to be an appearance or a performance that's so impressive that the doubts and concerns about his age, et cetera, are going to disappear as a, of the debate.

G
Matt, you can make a calm case against Donald Trump that is not histrionic. You can, I think Jonah Goldberg did one about two or three weeks ago where he just, like, issued a paragraph about things related even to the stormy Daniels trial, which is a trial that I think not a lot of people have a lot of respect for. But you can just list his behavior in a calm way, and it can be really damning. The more you work yourself in a lather, the less effective it is and the more likely you're going to start stumbling on yourself. So if he's calm and doesn't seem like an incredibly old and confused man and just lists the things that are actually against Donald Trump, that's a win. I don't think he can.

E
All right.

C
We're going to leave it at that for now. But we'll be back tonight right after the debate. Guys, thank you. Thank you all. And we'll be back tomorrow as well with, oh, Steve Bannon. Don't miss that.

Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No b's, no agenda, and no fear.

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