[Music] she's a Marxist everybody knows she's a Marxist her father's a Marxist professor in economics and he taught her well one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do Donald Trump and kamla Harris trade Jabs on the economy immigration abortion and several other topics in their first debate of the presidential race for Harris it was a chance to show she can handle the pressure of a presidential debate stage for Trump a test of his ability to stay on message and avoid personal attacks White House columnist NY s is joins us to discuss Nile let's start with Harris seems to me she passed a test last night under an incredible amount of pressure what did you think of her performance I I thought she did better than pass a test thought she cleaned his clock I thought that that was a pretty resigning victory for kamla Harris not only because of the things she said about setting out her own case and the sort of poise and focus that she brought to that but more so because she baited Donald Trump repeatedly and successfully about a number of things including crowd sizes including the idea that foreign leaders were laughing at him she really riled Trump up to his own detriment so you know obviously people's responses to this will be somewhat determined by whether they themselves are strongly Republican or strongly Democrat but for anyone vaguely in the middle grind I think this was a strong night for Cyrus yeah let's talk a little bit more about Donald Trump maybe we have a little bit different take here I know a lot of the political commentary has been that he lost the debate but you know I thought he did kind of a decent job of making the points he needed to make to the people that would actually consider voting for him ex tell me a little bit more about what you think the flaws in Trump's performance were last night if if that's how you feel I think some of the flaws were a propensity to engage in the kinds of claims that appeal to his base and no one else and in fact hurt him with other people the most famous example or inFAMOUS example from last night I think was this contention that was rebutted that immigrants or unauthorized immigrants are eating domestic pets in Ohio that was a particularly rable moment for Trump I think by its nature it's the kind of moment that is prone to go viral there were a number of instances like that and they weren't all about sort of bizarre matters like the suggestion about eating domestic animals one very damaging moment I felt for Trump was when he was pressed on his health care plan or whether he had a plan to replace Obamacare and he said I have concepts of a plan that's not a good answer I wonder if you think that both sides maybe had their moments and and to get at that let's do a little game of best and worst here we'll start with Trump when do you think he was actually at his best last night and when do you think he was at his worst So In fairness to him I did think he had some good moments and I thought he was reasonably effective on the economy and of course that's the prime issue for many voters he did defend his own record on the economy and say that the the end of his term was of course marked by the consequences of the covid pandemic the other thing that I maybe think controversially um was was quite good for him was actually Ukraine because I think there is more skepticism about American Aid to Ukraine than one would necessarily get in quote unquote Elite media and I thought that Trump made the argument there effectively enough I I've I've already mentioned some of his bad moments the pets moment the concepts of a plan moment those there were a number of those kinds of things and none of them were good what about Harris I thought she was pretty forceful especially when she talked about abortion where do you think she was her best and were there moments when you thought she didn't perform as well I agree with you on the abortion question I thought that that protracted exchange was really one of the best spells of the debate for her and it came toward the start and she talked and I think you played the clip about the idea that Donald Trump nor the government should be entitled to to tell women what they can do with their own bodies that was very powerful on her best issue and her weakest moment to me remains this question of changing position uh the most pointed example being the fact that she has shifted away from supporting a ban on fracking even at this point she still doesn't have a great answer to that question and I thought she seemed evasive when Lindsay Davis of ABC News tried to press on you talked about this a little bit earlier but I actually want to play the clip it's one of the strangest clips from the debate here's Donald Trump talking about that rumor about Haitian migrants in Ohio take a listen in Springfield they're eating the dogs the people that came in they're eating the cats they're eating they're eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame now those claims are not true according to according to local officials in Springfield Ohio but it's clip like Clips like that that I think are leading to some Republicans voicing concerns over Trump's debate performance I'm just sad this is not good it wasn't a good performance Miss opport unities he's all over the map those are all quotes from House Republicans to the hills Michael Schnell what do you make of the Republican hand ringing post debate I I think that those quotes are telling and it's a very good piece by Michael that I would encourage people to read it to me that speaks to the fact that Republicans do think they have a case to make on policies and they feel that that case is obscured or overshadowed when former president Trump engages in the kind of bizarre commentary that you just played or in retiga in his old grievances about the 2020 election or about Hillary Clinton's emails or whatever so to me the Republican disappointment is twofold obviously they want their nominee to win the battle for the White House and they think he had a setback last night but they also have an eye on their own races and I think they get that this kind of talk from him doesn't help them in that regard at all what did you make of David Muran Lindsay Davis the ABC moderators Trump and other Republicans have been critical they did some factchecking of trump in a way that CNN moderators declined to do during that first debate broadly I thought the fact checking was appropriate now I know other people have different views on this and as you say it has incited a lot of criticism the one um caveat I would put on my own defense of the factchecking is I actually thought Harris could have been fact checked a little bit more for example she cited one mment that Trump made in the past about a bloodbath and that quote in context appears to be more about policies pertaining to the Auto industry into manufacturing jobs than to a promise of sort of widescale violence and civil unrest but I do think it's appropriate to fact check Trump on issues like the the pets question the other one that I thought was a an entirely appropriate fact check was when he claimed that Democrats were in some way supporting what he terms the the execution of babies after birth and lindsy Davis rightly pointed out that such a thing is illegal in every state in the Union after the debate a question arose will there be another the Harris campaign put out a statement calling for a second debate in October but Trump seemed to hint that he would not do another debate do you think we'll see them on stage together again I that's a really difficult call very honestly I mean Trump did seem very hesitant about it when it was raised to him and there is a separate question of which TV network both candidates would find acceptable you know I I think there are obvious networks that we both can think of that one or other of them would refuse to debate on so it will be interesting to see firstly whether the polls move in the wake of this debate and secondly whether that changes the calculus particularly for Trump in terms of doing a second debate with Harris yeah I guess the question is would there be room for a debate on a network like Fox and would the Harris Camp agree to that if if Trump agreed to it as well uh after the debate I want to talk about this endorsement that came out Taylor Swift wrote a post on social media where she said she would be voting for Harris because she fights for the rights and causes that Swift says need a warrior Swift signed the post childless cat lady a dig at Trump's running mate JD Vance now my inclination is that celebrity endorsements don't really matter people don't want to be told what to do by a wealthy musician but I was think thinking about it if Swift chose to stay quiet that would leave her Army of fans wondering why so I guess if you look at it that way the endorsement is kind of important yeah I have mixed feelings about this one on one hand like the level of Fame that Taylor Swift has isn't really like any other person certainly in the music world right now and you know I didn't really think it was possible anymore in this very atomized culture we live in for someone to be quite as famous on a mass level as she is I think the endorsement could potentially boost turnout and in that Instagram post she talked about the importance of people registering to vote the one thing I would say is it's the one moment where I think Taylor Swift's timing deserted her a little bit because now everyone including us is talking about her endorsement does it matter does it not matter and to a degree that I think dilutes the focus on a debate night that i' as I've just said was very strong for CA Harris and very weak for Donald so and you talked about turnout her constituency is especially strong with young voters who traditionally don't always turn out as as well as older voters so it' be interesting to see how hard she pushes that moving forward and if that can have an impact I want to talk a little bit about Florida this is the second day in a row I'm asking the question could Florida flip blue some recent polls show tight contests in the presidential and Senate races in the state the wild card is these abortion and marijuana questions that are also on the ballot the Democrat rats are pouring some resources into the Sunshine State Republicans say they're not really worried what do you make of what's happening in Florida so the bottom line is I'm skeptical of Democrats chances of winning Florida which is a state that has become increasingly red in recent years that being said you're right to point out two recent polls through that suggest a very close race one for Senate and one for president in terms of the polling and those are interesting for sure now it could be the Democrats are engaging in a little bit of strategic fakery here trying to get the Trump campaign and Republicans more broadly to spend money in Florida that they don't really need to spend my skepticism about Democratic chances in Florida is based around that General move toward Republicans in the state and the fact that you know Governor Ronda Santos won his re-election bid by a very wide margin a couple of years back Marco Rubio won his Senate re-election R raced by a similarly large margin to me that indicates it's a tough clim for Democrats and Republicans with a huge registration advantage in the in the Sunshine State now let's talk about this fight over Government funding so far house Speaker Mike Johnson hasn't been able to Wrangle support for a six-month funding plan that includes new voting laws opposed by democrats different factions of the Republican party also oppos the bill for various reasons Trump is actually urging Republicans to shut down the government if they can't get what they want where are we we with these negoti ations well we seem to be in a little bit of a mess frankly I mean the difficulty in short is Speaker Johnson has a very difficult job just in terms of political calculus keeping his conference on board now this suggestion that there could be a measure including um prohibitions on non-citizens voting is um is something that isn't going to go anywhere in a democratic controlled Senate and Democrats in the Senate and for that matter in the White House point out that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote so that measure doesn't seem like it's going anywhere fast and so the question is can the speaker Corral his conference around something else that avoids a government shutdown Mr Trump can say what he likes Republicans in Capitol Hill are not eager for a shutdown to say the very least as the election looms all right that's all I got now always great Insight thanks so much for coming on thank you Vice president k Harris and former president Donald Trump reunited just hours after debating on ABC News to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the 911 attacks Harris and Trump shook hands at Ground Zero in New York City where they attended a ceremony honoring the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center Harris and President Biden stood on one side of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with Trump and his running mate JD Vance on the other both Biden and Harris are set to attend an observance at the flight 93 three Memorial in Shanksville Pennsylvania with Biden later on honoring the lives lost at the Pentagon Senate Republican whip John th is donating $4 million from his campaign to the National Republican senatorial committee the South Dakota Senators donation will help level the field against the large fundraising numbers Senate Democrats have received the gift aims to boost thun's reputation ahead of a type leadership election in November to replace Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell th's rival in the election Texas Senator John Corin has also raised a substantial amount of money for GOP Senate candidates the transfer marks the largest ever by a senate Republican with the previous record also held by F who donated $2 million in 2016 new Consumer Price Index data shows inflation is continuing to cool it's up just 0.2% in August the new numbers reveal the annual inflation rate sits at 2.5% in August down from 2.9% in July those inflation numbers are lower than they've been in 3 and 1/2 years as prices for foods and goods fell more than expected the new data shows signs that the inflation crisis could be nearing an end as the Federal Reserve looks to cut interest rates soon that's today's daily debrief I'm Drew Peto be sure to like share and subscribe to the hills YouTube channel and come back here soon for the intersection between politics and policy