so Isaac we are now three days past the most significant endorsement of the 2024 campaign possibly and Taylor Swift backing kamla Harris for president on Instagram came shortly after maybe the other more significant endorsement which was former Vice President Dick Cheney if you could sum up this situation in a Taylor Swift lyric what would look what he made them do welcome to the campaign moment I'm Aaron Blake senior political reporter at the Washington post and writer of the campaign moment newsletter it's Friday September 13th and today I'm joined by Isaac arnsdorf who covers former president Donald Trump and the Maga movement for the Post hey Isaac hey thanks for having me so Isaac just tell me what you've been up to in the last few days after Tuesday's big debate well uh we've been reporting out the aftermath for Trump despite his claims that he definitively won um the the data the the polling doesn't support that and you know I've talked to a lot of his allies and supporters and advisers who you know it wasn't exactly the performance they were hoping for they'll acknowledge that Harris outperformed the very low expectations that he set for her and so um the question becomes where does that energy and frustration go and we're going to get into the aftermath of Tuesday's debate on this show we're going to devote pretty much the entire episode to that breaking down not just what happened which we went over in our show late Tuesday night but also how the campaigns are reacting what those polls that Isaac talked about show and where this leaves us for the race ahead Isaac you mentioned how this is kind of playing with in Trump World and kind of the acknowledgement at least privately that this didn't go well but what is the level of concern like where is it on the scale between this didn't go very well and like Panic about how much this hurt him well the campaign already put out a memo about its internal polling which they say shows that he improved so supporting the argument that he's making that he won and he doesn't need to do any more debates but more often what you're hearing is an argument that it doesn't matter uh and you know that could be right views of trump are very stuck very hardened for years and years and years you know Harris has a lot as a newer less well-known figure has a lot more room to move but still moving the poles in this election is nudging a boulder up a hill either way yeah I think that's a good point like nothing in this race has moved at several points you know in one Fell Swoop and we shouldn't necessarily expect that to be the case after this debate but I did want to go over some of the poll numbers that we do have so far to get a sense for you know what this could mean moving forward and I wrote about this on Wednesday we've had a couple instant post debate polls CNN poll showed her being judged the winner of the debate by a 63 to 37 margin it's one of the biggest margins that we've seen since 1984 it's not the biggest but it's one of the biggest kind of similar to what the June 27th debate was between Biden and Trump trump was a 6733 winner in that debate so that gives you a sense of how lopsided the views of this were a couple other numbers that stood out to me one was people said 42 to 33 that they thought Harris had a quote better plan for solving the country's problems her favorable rating increased by six points among people who were watching this debate but on the flip side one thing that I was really struck by was the poll also asked who voters preferred on specific issues and Trump led by 20 points on the economy on immigration two of kind of the big issues that have been haunting Democrats throughout this race and it just got me thinking like this is clearly a net positive for her this debate was a good thing for her but like did it actually impact the fundamentals of this race like if these issues are still looking like that and as you mentioned if views of trump are baked in like I guess what's your sense you know whether based on that data or from other things about whether this can move things even on the margins and and what are the data points that you're paying attention to well I just remember talking to Republicans looking at similar data points in the 2022 midterms and expecting that to lead to a red wave and it didn't so I'm not sure that actually when voters tell pollsters that this is my number one issue and here's who I trust more about it that that actually ends up being how they make up their mind in the voting booth um and so I just want to throw out that caution because I remember how many Republicans were looking at that and and kind of at a loss to explain what was happening you know Harris had two objectives in that debate one was to Define herself to introduce herself to voters who wanted to know more about her but what she spent most of the time doing was reminding people what they didn't like about Donald Trump and putting him on defense getting him to talk about things that are standard fair for his rallies but that a majority of the electorate people who aren't frequenting Trump rallies are frankly pretty sick of and not thrilled with and he basically went for that every single time and that made up both most of the time in the debate itself if you were watching but also most of the clips that were circulating after the headlines that came out after it and now we're starting to see the first ads that are being cut using the debate material and and that's really the value of of the Moment Like This is you know it's not just the 67 million people who watched it live but it's the way that it defines the storyline coming out of it and produces this kind of fresh feeling of what's going on in the race that sets news coverage and ads and the conversation for days or maybe even weeks yeah and I think that's a really good point that like the viewership of this debate was huge and I think that we often kind of forget how little people are paying attention to a campaign even in August you know even during the party conventions that usually take place in July and August and a lot of people who hadn't tuned in to the January 6th committee hearings or Trump's criminal cases or you know even consuming precisely what's happening at the border or with inflation they're kind of tuning in and this was maybe the introduction for a lot of people I mentioned some of the poll numbers from that instant CNN poll the other one that really struck me was it asked voters whether the debate changed their minds or caused them to reconsider and the number of trump supporters who said this caused them to reconsider their vote at the very least was twice the number for Harris it was near one quarter of trump supporters Isaac since you are so in tune with what the Trump campaign is doing I also wanted to get into this controversy about right-wing activist and influencer Laura lumer being around Trump in the last few days you know she got off the plane before Tuesday's debate she's been traveling with him to a 9/11 event even though she once suggested 9/11 was an inside job this is somebody who's called herself a proud islamophobe she's hailed the deaths of 2,000 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and said that she wished there were 2,000 more just this last week she talked about how Kamala Harris who's indian-american would make the White House quote smell like Curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center like this is stuff that is out there even by the standards of the Republican party today and I wondered how much people inside the Trump campaign are concerned about this well the opinion that matters is Trump's and he likes lumer he likes that she's out there fighting for him he likes that she's either broken or Amplified a lot of stories that he's latched on to and have become talking points for him himself and he also doesn't mind that there are people on his staff who might disagree um who think that she's not the best influence on him for the voters who are going to decide the election so that's sort of a a a embodiment of the the tension that you saw on the debate stage between you know what the pole tested messages on the issues that favor Republicans that his professional advisers were hoping that he would discuss and the things that Trump really cares about and can't help but emphasize when he's given the opportunity and that's what Laura lomer kind of reinforces you know it's one thing to be traveling around with people like that and the appearance that it creates the potential political liabilities that it creates to just be seen with somebody like that but also I've seen reported over the years that like the people that are around him matter when it comes to what comes out of his mouth like everybody wants to be the last person in the room with him before he does something because the things that he winds up doing reflect their priorities and that's why we saw a whole lot of internal jousting within his White House over access to him in the Oval Office and I wondered you know from your reporting how much of a factor is that how much of a factor is the fact that Laura ler was on that plane leading to the things that we saw at the debate yeah that's very true in the sense of you know you can often and it's sometimes it's like a fun reporting exercise to to draw that direct line between what went up on some Fringe website to then how that ended up getting Amplified by Trump into speech or a rally you know I just think it's important that Trump is a is a grown former president and shouldn't be a diffusion of responsibility to people around him you know like he wants this he is responsible for the things that he's consuming and repeating and those people have access to him because he wants that information affirms the world as he would like it to be and you know he seeks it out and he rewards it that you know that's why it happens right after the break we are going to get into that a little bit more specifically when it comes to how misinformation from certain corners of the internet works its way into the mouth of the former most powerful person in the world we'll be right back [Music] so Isaac before we get into the story that everyone is talking and meing about let's talk about the debates and whether there will be any future debates the news on Thursday in a long post on Truth social Donald Trump concluded by saying in all caps there there will be no third debate this comes after a lot of back and forth between the two campaigns about when that debate might be held who wants the debate Trump's campaign had previously said they wanted to do a September 25th debate with NBC and then Trump kind of threw cold water on it the Harris campaign was pushing for an October debate we've seen CBS News propose a debate for October but it sounds like at least for now Trump says there won't be future debates the two questions I have Isaac are should we take that at face value and why wouldn't his campaign want another debate well we can take it as face value as in that was the answer on Thursday um there and as of Thursday but subject to change to the extent that he sees it in his interest you know he did say no to primary debates and stuck with it the whole time and he could do that because he was winning you know it becomes harder to refuse when you're losing and you need something to shake up the race it also if your Trump becomes harder to refuse when the Democrats are specifically trying to go you and provoke you and calling you a chicken and saying that he's afraid and we we'll see I mean if the conditions change his position could change it's a I think it's a bargaining position for now yeah for sure and I think we we even saw before this debate that it can be a bargaining position he said at one point after kamla Harris got into the race that he would do a Fox News debate or he would do nothing and then just a few days later he was proposing a bunch of debates as it became clear that Harris had gained a lot on him in the polls Isaac let's now get into that story that is on the tongues of everybody on social media it seems there are memes everywhere and this is of course the story that Donald Trump broached at Tuesday's debate about Haitian migrants in Springfield Ohio stealing people's pet cats and pet dogs and eating them this is a city that has seen a huge influx of Haitians in recent years I should emphasize that these Haitians are not undocumented immigrants despite how Republicans have been talking about this JD Vance and Elon Musk really got this ball rolling by pointing to very thinly sourced reports on social media about this happening in Springfield Ohio but there's no actual evidence of this and the city manager of Springfield Ohio has said that there is no credible report of this happening so what we're talking about here is misinformation and I think it's also worth emphasizing that you know a lot of people are having fun with this and are putting out memes there you know we're seeing both sides do memes about this like they they're both playing this up at this point but it is worth noting that the underlying claim here is a very dehumanizing one about these Haitian immigrants in Spring field there was also reportedly a bomb threat at City Hall on Thursday several schools were evacuated and one was closed on Friday due to the threats people were already reportedly keeping their kids home from school in response to this and we've also seen the parents of a child who was killed in an accident with a Haitian driver who has pled with Republicans to stop using his son as something of a political Pawn in his view so there are very serious undercurrents here and I think we shouldn't lose sight of that but the thing I keep thinking about Isaac and I hope you can provide some insight on this is how much is this Trump hearing something and then going with it and how much of this is actually a strategy of using this misinformation like do they think they're going to get something out of this even before bringing the dogs and cats into it one of the first things that Trump brought up at the debate was the equally unsubstantiated claim that he's been using for a long time to vilify and dehumanize immigrants and portray them as dangerous this claim that they're being directly emptied out from uh you know he says prisons and insane asylums the through line here is this dehumanizing language about immigrants which you know started the day that Trump launched his 2016 campaign and that's the well he constantly goes back to and it's both something that Trump is doing to win the election but also to establish a foundation for actions that he's promising to take if he does win as president instead of talking about building a wall now he's much more often talking about a mass militarized deportation operation of millions of people in this country I think it's pretty clear that this is a deliberate strategy you know whether it's a smart strategy or not is to be determined but I do think that we have seen in the past that however much Trump focuses on this topic whether it's you know what he said when he launched his 2016 campaign or all the talk about migrant Caravans flooding into the country ahead of elections in recent years like this hasn't been a silver bullet for the Republican party they thought it might be in the 2022 election especially because illegal immigration across the border was hitting new highs and that didn't turn out to be the case it was actually a a historically good election for Democrats given they held the White House and so I'm not sure that it's necessarily a smart strategy from the Trump campaign because we haven't necessarily seen the dividends of this strategy Isaac I want to touch on one last subject which is the thing we talked about at the top of the show these endorsements of Harris that are making news the Taylor Swift endorsement Dick Cheney and now former George W bush attorney general Alberto Gonzalez I've spoken about how I think these things could matter and I think this can give people the permission structure you know who are conservative to maybe come around to Harris or maybe even sit out the election if they're not comfortable with Trump as far as Taylor Swift goes there is evidence that this has led to a flood of voter registrations or at least people interested in registering to vote and that could certainly help the Harris campaign but what is your take on like how much this matters and is the Trump campaign concerned about these kinds of things I remember where I was when I found out about the Taylor Swift endorsement I was in the spin room in Philadelphia right after the presidential debate on Tuesday uh and one of the other reporters had her Instagram post on her phone and we were in a scrum with one of Trump's spokesmen and asked him about the endorsement and he brushed it off saying I don't know anything about it I'm not a Tey bopper um and actually that you know that actually is exactly the kind of response that is compounding the effect so the Trump campaign is is intentionally strategically focusing on men under 50 that's why you're seeing Trump go on a lot of these podcasts that are different from this one and the gender gap which is something that we've seen consistently between Democrats and Republicans but is depending on the poll seems to be growing with women supporting the Democrats more and Men supporting the Republicans more right yeah you know there's sort of like a there's a strong cultural aesthetic component of this also and I know a lot of Republican allies of trump are concerned about what he and the campaign are doing that's making their life harder with women you know Nikki Haley in particular has kind of been on TV waving her arms saying you know you know hi I'm a prominent Republican woman surrogate put me in coach yeah and that's certainly something that we're going to be focused on a lot on this podcast over the next two months I would imagine but we're going to have to leave it there for today thank you so much for joining us Isaac always happy to do it Isaac arnsdorf covers former president Trump and the magga movement for the Washington Post and I'm Aaron Blake senior political reporter also write the campaign moment newsletter of course which you can find a link to And subscribe to in our show notes and at postrecovery Perkins and Mary Joe Murphy have a great weekend [Music]