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Live from Simi Valley: A Hot Mess of a Debate Peter Savodnik

Published

10 months ago

September 28, 2023

Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy on stage Wednesday night. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library sits on a stately, sun-dappled perch enveloped by green hills and gorgeous vistas. It is a magical place that evokes the fortieth president’s boundless optimism and feels a lot like the movie sets where he made his name.

The knock against the Republican debate that took place here last night is that it was just that: make-believe.

That was the subtext of former President Donald Trump—who enjoys the support of nearly 60 percent of GOP voters versus the 16 percent who back his closest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—skipping the debate.

While Trump was thousands of miles away, in Michigan, the other seven candidates seemed a little like people playing president—debating fentanyl and the southern border and China and mental health care—not running for the presidency.

Trump said as much Wednesday evening during a speech to auto workers near Detroit.

“All over television this speech, you know, we’re competing with the job candidates. They’re all running for a job,” Trump said, not bothering to name any of the Republicans trying to wrest the nomination from him. “Now they’re job candidates.” He added: “They’ll do anything. . . secretary of something, they even say vice president. Has anybody seen a vice president in that group? I don’t think so.”

Trump at Drake Enterprises, an auto parts manufacturer and supplier, in Clinton, Michigan, on September 27, 2023. (Matthew Hatcher / AFP via Getty Images)

The day after President Biden joined striking workers on the picket line, bullhorn in hand, Trump lashed out at the president’s record on labor: “Joe Biden claims to be the most pro-union president in history.” He continued: “His entire career has been an act of economic treason and union destruction. He’s destroyed unions, shipping millions of American jobs overseas while personally taking money from foreign nations hand over fist.”

That Trump’s would-be rivals were debating in the presidential library of the man who crushed the air traffic controllers’ 1981 strike and ushered in the era of supply-side economics—while Trump was vying for the support of auto workers in a key battleground state—only underscored that the real showdown was happening elsewhere.

“This is a sideshow,” California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said Wednesday about the debate. (Apparently, it wasn’t that much of a sideshow. Newsom made time to swing by the Reagan Library for an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who will be moderating a debate between Newsom and DeSantis in November.)

But despite all this—despite Trump having apparently locked up his party’s nomination, despite Biden apparently having locked up his party’s nomination—roughly 60 percent of Americans do not want a 2020 rematch; 67 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters do not want to see Biden on the ballot; nearly 75 percent of voters worry about the president’s mental state; and 65 percent feel “exhausted” when they think of politics.

Voters of all political stripes, and I am one of them, dread watching the two old men—Biden is 80; Trump, 77—battle it out. They dread the polarization, the ugliness, the stale ideas, the stale language. They want to know how America transcends this impasse.

They are waiting, hoping—praying—that someone catches fire, charts a new vision.

Nobody on the debate stage achieved what Reagan did when he said: “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Nobody sounded like a visionary. It seems unlikely that, in forty years, future wannabe presidents will face off in a library dedicated to any of the people onstage.

So what stuck out? A few things.

Vivek Ramaswamy in the spin room after the debate. (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

A Kinder, Gentler Vivek

Before the debate, we spoke to someone close to the Ramaswamy campaign who assured us we’d see a “different” Vivek tonight. What did he mean by different? “Well, a bit less of an asshole.”

“I’m the new guy here, and so I know I have to earn your trust,” a kinder, gentler version of Ramaswamy insisted tonight. “What do you see? You see a young man who’s in a bit of a hurry? Maybe a little ambitious. . . a bit of a know-it-all, it seems, at times? I’m here to tell you, no, I don’t know it all. I will listen. I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me.”

Invoking Reagan, Ramaswamy added: “The divide is not between the Republicans on the stage at the Reagan Library. I want to say these are good people on this stage.”

If we got a fighter in the first debate, last night we got more of the “happy warrior” that Reagan so ably embodied. But if Ramaswamy tried to be Reaganesque in terms of style, he was entirely unlike the Gipper when it came to his economic views.

“I don’t have a lot of patience for the union bosses,” Ramaswamy said, referring to the UAW. “But I have a lot of sympathy for the workers.”

He then pivoted to an attack on Jack Welch, the famed CEO of General Electric and champion of Reaganomics. “My father stared down layoffs at GE under Jack Welch,” Ramaswamy said. He added that his mother had to work overtime in nursing homes in southwest Ohio “to make ends meet and pay off our home loan.”

Later, sounding more like a traditional Republican, Ramaswamy said: “I understand that hardship is not a choice. Victimhood is a choice, and we choose to be victorious.”

It was, to be fair to Ramaswamy and all the other Republicans onstage, an awkward situation—standing in a shrine to free markets while trying to appeal to the working-class voters who tend to favor Trump and clamoring for the breakout moment they all desperately need.

Haley Draws Blood

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.”

If there was a line of the night, that might have been it, and it was delivered by Nikki Haley to Ramaswamy in an exchange about whether the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok should be banned. Ramaswamy defended being on the platform (“I have a radical idea for the Republican Party: we need to win elections. Part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.”) Haley called bullshit: “TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media assets that we can have.”

Our favorite part of this campaign so far is the Haley-Ramaswamy rivalry. We’d love a roadshow. Or a reality show.

Hat tip to Carlos Lozada, longtime book critic for The Washington Post and now The New York Times, for spotting this delicious tidbit: Haley blurbed Ramaswamy’s 2021 book, Woke, Inc., praising him for “speak[ing] the truth without fear.” Perfect.

Chris Christie—Still Shadowboxing

The former New Jersey governor’s entire campaign is about prosecuting the former president. But it’s hard to do that—and win over Trump’s voters. Which may be why he’s polling at just shy of 3 percent.

Anyway, tonight, in the absence of boxing Trump, he tried shadowboxing him.

“I know you’re watching,” Christie said, looking into the camera and apparently speaking directly to Trump (who was busy giving his speech at the time). “You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. . . you’re ducking these things,” Christie said. “You keep doing that, no one here’s going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck.”

The line, clearly carefully rehearsed, dropped like a lead balloon even in the press room—not exactly a group of people who are inclined toward the former president.

Cringe from Mike Pence

This was a cringe-y night, but we have to give the award for the most skin-crawling line to former Vice President Mike Pence who, in an attempted riposte to Chris Christie, who tried to knock Biden for “sleeping with a teacher,” said: “I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. . . full disclosure”—before pivoting to “the aged and the unborn.” (Recall that this is a man who calls his wife “Mother.”)

Mr. Pence faces a nearly impossible task: distancing himself from Trump while not distancing himself too much while also playing the part of social conservative in a country (if not a party) that seems much less taken with social conservatives these days. All of this explains why he’s polling at just below 5 percent. And he’s the former vice president.

DeSantis Gets Better

Having failed to deliver on sky-high expectations for his campaign, Ron DeSantis has been the most disappointing candidate of the primary so far. The Florida governor’s showing last night was certainly an improvement on his bloodless and stilted appearance in the first debate.

For one thing, he was more self-assured. Instead of resorting to the verbal pyrotechnics of the Christie campaign, DeSantis said simply of Trump: “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record,” accusing the former president of being “missing in action.”

But DeSantis needed more than a modest improvement on his last outing if he was to reclaim his status as the only viable alternative to Trump. (And he still needs to do something about that awkward smile.)

A Trump supporter outside the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Did Last Night’s Slugfest Change Anything?

“The question is, what did they do to cut into Donald Trump’s lead?” asked Republican pollster and former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway in an interview with The Free Press after the debate. “He’s like a hologram hovering over the whole place, and he doesn’t even need to be here. . . . I think they’re all trying to make a moment. They’re trying to be funny. Reach for the rafters, get a big headline. But that’s not the way you overtake a 40-point lead.”

Senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita tweeted, predictably enough, “Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest being dominated by President Trump.”

All of that may be true—after the two-hour debate ended, there did not appear to be much consensus about any of the candidates onstage soaring ahead of the pack. But that doesn’t do anything to mitigate the fear and anger of countless Americans who want to know how their country moves forward. Those Americans who have watched opiates and automation and economic stratification and cultural upheaval and fears of election tampering and disinformation (and disinformation about the disinformation) tear apart the body politic and want to know if, how, and when America can return to some semblance of normalcy.

In a moment that seemed to capture that yearning—after a moderator asked the debaters who among them should be “voted off the island” to avoid another Trump administration—DeSantis replied: “I’ll decline to do that, with all due respect. I mean, we’re here—we are happy to debate. I think that is disrespectful to my fellow competitors. Let’s talk about the future of the country.”

Stay tuned: We’ll have an episode of Honestly up later today, which we recorded in the spin room after the debate and at the Trump rally in Michigan.

And a reminder: your support allows us to do our work. It allows us to show up in person, to speak to candidates, to hear from voters—to do real journalism. To those of you who already pay $8 a month: thank you. To those of you who love what we do but haven’t yet become paid subscribers? Today’s a great day to join The Free Press:

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Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

7 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Substacks

TGIF: The Week Unburdened by the Week That Has Been Suzy Weiss

Published

14 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Union Station to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)

Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.

→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”

→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.

That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.

And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.

Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”

→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.

Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

18 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

https://marchforourlives.org/in-a-first-ever-endorsement-march-for-our-lives-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-economic-growth-regains-steam-second-quarter-inflation-slows-2024-07-25/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/biden-economy-employment-inflation.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/entertainment/jennifer-aniston-jd-vance/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/jd-vance-wrote-foreword-book-project-2025-architect-kevin-roberts-and-proceeds

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-might-not-shot-1930037

https://people.com/was-trump-struck-by-bullet-or-shrapnel-fbi-director-testifies-8683340

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-fbi-director-resign-immediately-chris-wray-rcna163641