Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 9/6/24

Tonight, there are just four days until Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump face off in Tuesday's televised debate.

It will be the first time the two have met face-to-face, let alone debated.

And with less than 60 days until Americans cast their vote for president,

the candidates and their running mates are hitting the campaign trail to sway swing state voters.

But will their cross-country rallies and Tuesday's showdown change any minds?

Next.

KU and Patricia Ewan through the Ewan Foundation.

Committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

Sandra and Carl DeLay Magnuson.

Rose Herschel and Andy Shreves.

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm William Brangham and welcome to Washington Week.

Jeffrey Goldberg.

With the much-anticipated first debate between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president just days away,

Vice President Kamala Harris hit the campaign trail this week.

She's trying to strike a delicate balance,

selling her economic plans while distancing herself from President Biden's unpopular economic record.

Former President Donald Trump touted his own plans for the economy this week

to tackle the high cost of child care and inflation.

Trump again accused his opponent of,

And as the candidates hope to sway voters in next week's debate,

the Justice Department accused Russia of interfering in this year's election.

Attorney General Merrick Garland alleged Putin's allies are spreading disinformation

and working to amplify division in the U.S.

Joining me to discuss all of this and more,

Leanne Caldwell is anchor of Washington Post Live and co-author of the Post's early briefs.

Lisa Desjardins is PBS NewsHour's political correspondent and she also covers the Trump campaign.

And Vivian Salama is national politics reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Thank you all so much for being here.

Thanks for joining us on a Friday.

Leanne, to you first.

Trump dodged a bullet, a legal bullet this week,

in that he will not be sentenced in the Stormy Daniels case now

until after the election around Thanksgiving.

So all eyes are going to be on this debate next week.

Given how consequential the last debate was in basically upending the presidential race,

how important is this one?

So I'm of the mindset that it's actually quite important.

The reason is, is that Kamala Harris's campaign,

they acknowledge that she is still introducing herself to voters.

She is a relatively new candidate.

That's why the convention was so important.

And that's why this debate is also going to be really important.

Not only because it's another opportunity for voters to find out who she is

and what she stands for, but also it's going to be, this is a new campaign.

These are two candidates who are going to be standing next to each other for the first time.

And what politics is all about is a contrast between the two candidates

and the country will see that for the first time.

Lisa, I know you've been doing some reporting on how the Trump campaign is trying to prepare for this.

How are they looking at this event?

Well, you know, Donald Trump himself,

likes to portray that he doesn't need to prepare for anything.

He just arrives ready.

But the truth is, I was told by senior Trump campaign officials

that they actually are doing a lot.

We know that they've brought in Tulsi Gabbard to be one of their consultants,

former Democrat, now I think she's technically an independent.

Consultant meaning she's not playing Kamala Harris.

I've been told specifically she's not playing Kamala Harris.

But I was told this.

I was told that, why is she there specifically?

Because in the words of this senior advisor, senior campaign official,

that you can't...

really do debate prep with seven guys when you're facing Kamala Harris.

So they're being open about it, that they want a woman in the room.

They need that kind of energy to go off of.

But they are doing intense policy briefings.

And I was told they're doing a lot.

I mean, Vivian, this, as Leigh-Anne was saying,

there is still this getting to know you phase that Kamala Harris is in.

And on some level, that adds a lot of importance to what she has to do.

But it also gives Trump the opportunity to do his own defining.

Well, if she's trying to, we're trying to get to know her,

well, let me tell you about her.

Do you think he's really going to try and go directly at her on this regard?

Oh, absolutely.

And this is something that the Trump campaign has made a concerted effort toward

for the last couple of weeks, especially because he's out there,

he's doing interviews, and he's holding press conferences or press avails,

as the case was today.

He did not take questions.

And he is basically trying to build a case against her.

She, in the meantime, was doing a lot of rallies

but wasn't doing any interviews until the CNN interview that we saw recently.

And hadn't really taken a lot of questions publicly from the press.

That really left a void for her campaign to be able to then define her

and get out there ahead of the message.

The other issue, and the debate is going to be really key for this,

is to really offer some details as far as what her policy plans are,

whether or not she's going to distance herself from any of President Biden's policies

and kind of break from that, define herself in her own way.

That's something that remains to be seen.

Even with the very limited time,

the limited press engagements that we've seen with her,

she has offered sort of top-line visions

but hasn't gotten into the details of policies.

And so this is an opportunity for her to really let voters know,

this is what I'm going to do for you, and this is how I'm going to do it.

I mean, do you think, though, in the end,

that given the importance of this matchup,

of really viewers getting a good first glimpse at her,

apart from the convention,

that those policy distinctions will rise to be so important?

At this point, I think the dynamics is going to really be

what prevents her from doing that.

to see how much she's able to take Donald Trump on,

to call him out on issues like, you know,

if he says something that's not true

or goes after her in an aggressive way,

how she's going to be able to handle that

and to sort of come back at him.

I think that is something that, you know, with a lot of debates,

a lot of them are very superficial at the end of the day.

I mean, since the advent of television,

we have seen how, you know, just the visuals alone.

Right, it's performative.

Yeah, it's very performative.

Nixon, Kennedy, and whether he shaved or not was critical.

Exactly.

And so that is going to be,

you know, we have seen that a lot of people

view women a little bit more harshly.

You know, are the viewers going to be kind to her

in terms of her gender

and see it as sort of a strength

versus something that might work against her?

You know, we saw that with Hillary Clinton in 2016

where likability came into the picture

when she was going against Donald Trump

or interfacing with voters.

All those things are really going to probably be

what matters to people.

But at the end of the day,

they are talking to,

to a very small sliver of voters

who are undecided at this point.

And a lot of those people want to know,

how can you improve my life?

What are you going to do to make it better?

And so for those people,

I think they will be listening a little bit

to the nuances of the policies as well.

I mean, Leanne, I know you've been doing some reporting

about very specifically what kinds of voters,

these voters that Vivian is talking about

that Trump is going after in particular.

What have you been learning?

So from what I've learned from the Trump campaign

that key to their strategy in these last 60 days

is that they are trying to turn out

these very low propensity voters.

They're spending a lot of time and a lot of money.

Define that term for us.

Trying to find the voters who definitely don't vote

in the midterm elections.

Voters who probably didn't vote in 2020,

maybe probably voted in 2016.

So there's sometimes presidential election voters,

but more often than not, they don't vote.

So the Trump campaign thinks that there are a lot of voters,

especially male voters,

who are likely to vote for him if they vote.

And so that is actually what their focus is

in these next 60 days.

They say that the undecideds, there's just so few of them,

especially when it comes to Trump.

Like most people have an opinion about Donald Trump.

They are flooding those undecided people's mailboxes,

with flyers, and their phones are getting text messages.

But it's really these low propensity voters,

these not often voters,

who the Trump campaign is really going after.

Lisa, I know you've been doing some reporting in Pennsylvania

with some of these Trump teams

that are trying to reach these voters.

What have you been reporting?

This is great.

We're like one reporting team right now,

and this is making me so happy.

Yes, and Trump Force 47 is one way

that the Trump campaign is focusing this whole effort.

Trump Force 47.

Yes.

Yes, and essentially the key things to know

is the Trump campaign says it has thrown out the playbook

that the RNC used in 2020.

They do not believe in the way the GOP canvassed.

They think it was a mistake and horrible decision making.

And a waste of money.

And a waste of money, that's right.

And so instead of doing this mass door-to-door every weekend,

we're going to have these groups going door-to-door,

which is exactly what the Harris campaign is doing, by the way.

They are trying to train key volunteers,

they call them key volunteers,

to target smaller lists of voters themselves,

saying that you will be the one in charge of swaying

this group of low-propensity voters.

Now, in theory, it makes sense.

The idea is that a neighbor will talk to a neighbor

and keep talking to them.

But the reality of it when you see it on the ground is

some of these folks have never really done campaign work before.

Are they really going to follow up every time?

It's a bit of a risk the Trump campaign is taking,

but like much else, they're doing something different.

It's not traditional.

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, actually,

is to compare it with the Harris campaign.

You know, you hear they have over 2,000 staff

in these battleground states.

They have hundreds of offices that are open,

and they always criticize the Trump campaign

for not having very many staff, not having very many offices.

And for so long, that has been a quantitative number

that has always been important in presidential campaigns.

How many people are you employing to get out these votes?

And like you said, Lisa, the Trump campaign

is turning the whole thing on its head

and not going down that route.

They just roll their eyes.

When they hear those numbers from the Biden campaign,

the Trump campaign just like rolls their eyes

and thinks that the Biden campaign is ridiculous.

And it's making a lot of traditional Republican

National Committee members nervous in the states

because they'd like to see them ramping things up

in the final stretch.

But at the end of the day, the Trump campaign says

our candidate is different from any other candidate,

so we're not going to do things the old way.

And just to clarify one thing,

they are relying on some of these outside groups

to do the more traditional,

more knocking,

but the Trump campaign is not really engaged in that.

I mean, we have seen all the swing state polls.

You guys have all seen them as well.

We can put up the graphic of the latest CNN polling number.

I mean, it is still a very, very snug race

in a lot of states.

I mean, within the margin of error

in a lot of these states,

Wisconsin maybe has the biggest gap there,

but a lot of those other states,

not a very big gap there.

Donald Trump received some criticism today

from, I mean,

when we're talking about the Trump campaign,

we're talking about what's going to move voters in the end.

I'm curious what your take on this is.

Dick Cheney, who no one could accuse

of being a quote-unquote rhino,

Republican in name only.

I'm sure he is being accused of that.

Well, maybe, but he came out today

and gave this excoriating statement about Donald Trump.

Let me read a little bit of what he said.

Dick Cheney said,

there has never been an individual

who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.

He tried to steal the last election

using lies,

lies and violence

to keep himself in power

after the voters had rejected him.

He can never be trusted with power again.

Vivian, in the end,

does a man like Dick Cheney,

a Republican stalwart,

but albeit a man of a different generation

and maybe even a different era,

does that move the needle in any meaningful way?

I mean, first of all,

Dick Cheney has his own baggage.

So let's just remember that as well,

that he was a controversial figure in his time.

The short answer is no.

We have seen,

countless statesmen,

former statesmen and women,

come out after having served some of them

under the Trump administration

to say he is not fit for office.

He's a danger to national security

or a danger to the United States.

And a number of these people even saying

that they would not vote for him.

At the end of the day,

does Donald Trump's base care what Dick Cheney

or any of these people have to say?

The answer is no.

Now, would more moderate Republicans listen to it?

They may consider it.

I don't know if Dick Cheney personally

would move the needle,

but there are some other people

like General John Kelly,

who served as Trump's chief of staff,

who's highly respected

in the national security world, certainly.

Jim Mattis.

Jim Mattis, another one,

his former secretary of defense.

You know, when these people come out and they speak,

they definitely get the attention of a lot of people,

especially in that orbit.

But at the end of the day,

a lot of them are choosing Republican policies

over Democratic policies

and not necessarily voting for the man himself.

And so whether or not it moves,

I don't think very much, no.

It's just emblematic of the shift of the Republican Party

and what Donald Trump is,

a very different Republican Party

than the Dick Cheney, George Bush Republican Party.

And so this is just another instance

of that divide of the party.

And there's Republicans like Dick Cheney and others

who want Trump to go away

because then they want the old Republican Party

to come back.

We'll see if that will even happen.

Right.

For Trump supporters,

Republican Trump supporters,

there is a discomfort.

Like, Vivian and I were both in Pennsylvania this week.

That is the biggest prize of all of the swing states

with 19 electoral votes.

We were on different sides of the state, pretty much.

I was in Northampton County,

which is a big swing county.

You're going to hear a lot about it.

It's a fun county.

Look into it.

But I talked to, you know,

one suburban Republican woman, mom.

You know, she's all about her Christian faith.

She says, yes, I don't like everything Trump says.

Kind of a classic Trump voter,

but he's a strong leader.

I support him.

I spoke to another Trump supporter woman

who really spouted a series of conspiracy theories.

She was someone being trained for this Trump Force 47,

potentially.

She was in that meeting.

She's going to be one of those people

trying to persuade others.

She was in that meeting.

I didn't stay for the actual training,

but she was there for that event.

And she told me, you know,

I believe Joe Biden died three years ago.

You know, I told her,

you know, that sounds like a conspiracy theory.

You know, that's a stereotype against Trump voters.

And she said, I know that, but this is true.

So I talked to her.

I talked to the first woman, suburban woman,

a Trump voter.

I said, you know,

these are the other supporters of Donald Trump.

These are the same people in your party supporting him.

And she said, you know, I think that's just crazy.

You know, so they're really on different pages.

They're both behind Donald Trump,

but neither one are quite seeing the full picture

of his support and what he stands for

to everyone who supports him.

And into that vacuum,

you have a candidate like Donald Trump,

who, if you're trying to run his campaign,

he's an incredibly difficult person to manage.

I mean,

given that this is the window

through which he's supposed to be defining Kamala Harris,

every time he tries to go to the microphone and say,

I'm going to lay out X policy,

he seemingly cannot stop himself

from meandering all over the place.

I mean, today when he was in New York,

supposedly talking about other issues,

he was maligning women

who had accused him of sexual assault from years ago,

people who are not being paid attention to by voters.

And it just seems like it's incredibly hard

for him to stay on message.

And this is more of a liability now

than it was a few months ago, right?

I mean, before, when he was ahead in the polls by enough,

the campaign was able to sort of let Trump be Trump.

Right, when you're competing against Joe Biden.

When he was competing against Joe Biden.

But the race changed, and suddenly, you know,

if viewers will remember,

he spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists

a few weeks ago,

and he questioned Kamala Harris's race

and made a couple of comments around that regard,

and that really sent shockwaves through his campaign,

where they said, okay, he could really go off message

and derail this entire effort

that we've worked so hard to get here toward.

And so more and more, they've tried to rein him in.

He's even joked about it publicly,

where he says, I'm going to fire my advisors

because they want me to stay on message,

and you guys don't like me to stay on message,

talking to his supporters at the rallies,

and he's joked about it.

Sometimes he does stay on message,

but oftentimes he goes off script.

And I'll talk to the campaign after, you know,

he delivers a rally speech, and I'll ask him, you know,

he said something about the Taliban leader

in his conversation.

What was that about?

And he was like, yeah, that wasn't in the script, you know?

A lot of times it's stuff like that,

where, you know, some of it is harmless,

and he does it for jokes,

but a lot of times he can, like today,

where he starts going after women,

or he talks about race,

and things like that really do possibly move the needle,

because one of the big groups that they're trying to target

at the end of the day is women.

You know, abortion is a huge issue in this election,

and it is a contentious issue,

but also talking about women in sexist terminology

is something that I think is really important.

It's something that can really affect voters.

And it happened again today.

And so these are the things where his campaign

kind of starts pulling their hair,

where they made it this far, you know,

somewhat of a disciplined campaign,

and now, you know, the potential for this race heating up

is making him clearly nervous,

and he's going off script more and more.

There is a real opportunity for the Trump campaign.

I mean, this election, it's still really close.

Right.

You know, but the fact of the matter is,

what we're talking about, and honestly,

voters of all stripes I talk to in Pennsylvania,

they're talking about Trump.

They're not talking about Kamala Harris.

And there's an opportunity to define her.

There is a real...

There are some moderate voters who are nervous

that Democrats will go too far.

You know, there is a question about that,

but that's not what we're talking about.

The Trump campaign, they're not using this opportunity

in the way I think some of the campaign advisors would like.

And it's also interesting on how Kamala Harris

is dealing with it.

She's almost acting as if Trump doesn't exist.

Mm-hmm.

She's running her campaign.

She is not responding to any tit-for-tat.

She is just moving forward as if he is just this, like,

entity out here.

And it's a really fascinating strategy that...

I guess we'll see if it works.

On that strategy, Leanne,

one of the other things that I know you've reported

a bit about is why Kamala Harris,

potentially the first woman, first black,

first South Indian candidate,

to make it to the White House.

Why we haven't been hearing more about that.

She seems to be actively stepping up.

She seems to be stepping back from saying,

hey, everybody,

potentially history in the making here.

Yeah, she does not talk about the historic nature

of her candidacy.

Even the Democratic Convention, she didn't bring it up.

Most of the speakers didn't bring it up.

I talked to a lot of people about this.

And there's a couple reasons.

First, one of her longtime former chiefs of staff

told me that every single thing she has run for

in her entire life, she has been a first.

It has been a record, a history-making candidate.

First.

First DA, first female AG, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, first black woman senator from California,

first woman vice president, list goes on.

She has never talked about it in any of her races

for the past more than 20 years.

She thinks it's a distraction.

She thinks it's obvious when you look at her,

so she doesn't need to bring it up.

And it's just not part of what she thinks is important.

She thinks what's important is what matters

to people.

What she's going to do for them,

not the historic nature of her candidacy.

So that's personally.

There's also a strategic element, too.

Her campaign and people around her know,

many Democrats know, that it did not work for Hillary Clinton.

She really leaned into the historic nature of her candidacy.

I'm with her, if we all remember that.

Yes.

I'm going to break the highest glass ceiling.

And it didn't work.

And Democratic strategists know that it was a mistake.

Now.

In hindsight, looking back.

So there's two elements.

The first element is it's not part of who Kamala Harris is

in the sense of how she wants to run her campaigns.

And the other part is there's a real losing strategy.

They think that voters, that's not why they vote for people.

This comes back to the debate a little bit, though,

because one thing that I heard in Pennsylvania,

this goes back to you saying about Trump talking about women harshly,

is there are voters that are not quite decided,

male voters I talked to who said,

quite a few of them,

they're not sure that she can stand up on the world stage to other world leaders.

It's a classic misogynistic trope about female candidates.

So it's an important moment for her to stand up to someone

who touts himself as a strong leader and to show how she does that.

Lastly, in just the minute or so we have left,

I wanted to just touch on this news that came out of the DOJ this week

where Merrick Garland again accused the Russians of trying to actively

sow dissent within American politics through a series of online funding

different groups to sort of sow division.

Do you think that in the end that that will matter in this election?

Or do you think we are just good enough at sowing division on our own

and we don't need any foreign assistance?

Oh, I mean, this has been a concern now for multiple election cycles,

and it continues to grow.

The type of attacks get more sophisticated.

The number of countries that are getting involved and getting on board with these attacks,

we know that there's a lot going on.

We know that there's a lot going on.

The Trump and Harris campaigns both were victimized by Iranian hacks.

And so we see that there is an effort to get involved,

to try to sway our elections.

And obviously it's a powerful thing that the government is very worried about.

I'm really glad you brought it up because we need to be aware of it.

But I think to answer your question, I think we may not know.

Right, until it's maybe too late.

Thank you all so much.

Really appreciate you joining us.

Unfortunately, we have to leave it there for this evening.

Thanks to our panelists for sharing your reporting.

And to our viewers at home, thank you so much for joining us.

For more on Russia's attempt to sow division and interfere with November's election,

visit TheAtlantic.com.

I'm William Brangham.

Good night from Washington.

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