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well, good evening to you once again as we continue now our special live coverage, the extended edition of our broadcast. as we cross the top of the hour here on the east coast, so begins day 1,350 of the trump administration, and it leaves 34 days to go now until the presidential election. tonight president trump and former vice president joe biden came face to face and then some for the first 2020 presidential debate. we have seen our share of norm-busting moments during this trump presidency, during this campaign. but that debate tonight went well beyond what we have ever seen. the topics ranged from the supreme court nominee to the pandemic. the night was chaotic. it was tough to watch on television. it got even ugly at times. it featured razor-sharp exchanges and personal attacks.

>> the 200,000 people that have died on his watch -- >> you were lehere, it wouldn'te 200. it would be 2 million people. >> he has no plan for care. he has none. like almost everything else he talks about, he does not have a plan. he dpuoesn't have a plan. and the fact is this man doesn't know what he's talking about. >> are you willing to tell the american people tonight whether or not you will support either ending the filibuster or packing the court -- >> whatever position i take on that, that will become the issue. >> he doesn't want to answer the question. >> will you shut up, man. >> is it true that you paid $750 in federal income taxes each of those two years? >> i paid millions of dollars in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax. and let me just tell you there was a story in one of the papers -- >> show us your tax returns. you're the worst president america has ever had. >> the mayor of moscow's wife gave your son $3.5 million.

what did he do to deserve it? what did he do with burisma. >> speaking of my son, the way untalk about the military, the way you talk about them being losers and suckers. my son was in iraq. he spent a year there. he got the bronze star. he got the conspicuous service medal. he was not a loser. he was a patriot, and the people left behind there -- >> really? >> were heroes. >> are you talking about hunter? >> i'm talking about my son beau biden. >> i don't know beau. i know hunter. >> are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups. >> sure, i'm willing to do that. >> go ahead, sir. >> give me a name. >> white supremacists and- >> what would you like me to condemn? >> proud boys. >> proud boys, stand back and stand by. but i'll tell you what, i'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left. >> for more, we are joined by my

colleague ari melber, who is obviously the host of the 6:00 p.m. eastern hour on this network. also happens to be our chief legal correspondent. ari's assignment going into tonight was fact-checking this evening. and, ari, i saw daniel dale on twitter, the fact checker par excellence so far in this administration say to his followers, look, i'm going to try to keep up in real time. some of the obvious whoppers are going to have to wait until after after-action report. even fact-checking, ari, is going by norms that were blown up tonight because none of the norms of political behavior and presidential debates can be applied to what we witnessed. but i digress. what do you have? >> well, i appreciate it, brian. i don't think you digress because you're hitting it on the head. i think a lot of people who witnessed that will make up their own minds how much blatant violation of the rules there was. we'll walk through just a couple

because fact checking, as you say, is an important part of this. one brief moment came in an exchange over violent crime. take a look. >> violent crime went down 17% -- 15% in our administration. >> all right. >> it's gone up on his watch. >> it went down much more than ours. >> fact check, joe biden is correct. violent crime went down quite a bit in the obama administration. went down about 16%. that's true in the ballpark of what he said. it did not surge under donald trump, though. in fact, it's been stagnant, about 0.4%. that makes biden's other claim an exageage ration and trump's denial completely false. another one we want to point to is donald trump claimed that prescription drug prices have gone down. brian, you don't need to be a health care expert or a journalist. you might just be any person in america who knows that's false. prescription drug prices have gone way up. you see it here. we're tracking that.

that's a generalized problem but it certainly has not improved under the trump administration. indeed, there's very little evidence they've taken policy measures there. i want to keep moving because i don't want this segment to go as long as the debate that as at times hard to watch. the third and final one is the most interesting as we look towards november. that's something that donald trump said that's different than his past claims. he shaded voting by mail and other things a lot, but tonight he had a different tone. he said, you know what? this might take months. i would say fact check mostly true in that we may not see an election night result that is certified and final on that big night when you and rachel and joy and everyone is anchoring. it could take weeks or longer. i would remind everyone that the famous florida resolution in bush v. gore was well over a month after the vote initially was held on election day. so on that one, both candidates referred to a true thing, which is this could be a very long race indeed. brian. >> as the expression goes, i'm old enough to remember bush v. gore, and i don't want to see

that movie again. ari melber, always a pleasure to spend time with you. thank you. i'll be watching your effort 6:00 p.m. eastern time tomorrow evening. with us tonight for our next interview segment, robert gibbs, former obama campaign senior adviser, former white house press secretary under one barack obama. robert costa, national political reporter for "the washington post." he's also moderator of "washington week" on pbs. and alicia menendez. she is host of "american voices" weekends 6:00 p.m. eastern on this very network. she also happens to be the host of the paublth "latina to latina." alicia, i'd like to again with you and your reaction to the moment tonight that several guests have already speculated will be the keeper, will be where the damage was. the president of the united stat states, offered the opportunity on live television to denounce white supremacists, proud boys by name and their collective

ilk. the phrase he used, as david plouffe informed us, has already been converted into a logo that is making the rounds tonight. we have the image off of social media, and it's the president's words. "stand back, stand by." alicia, there's your country in 2020. >> deeply, deeply disturbing, brian. you know, i think the president, given a chance to disavow white supremacists, even if he had, perhaps those remarks would have rung a little hollow given what he has said and done with the protests across this country in favor of racial equality, racial justice, given what he is doing to asylum seekers at our border, given what he is doing to immigrants in detention, if you look at his policies, the answers are there. and yet given the opportunity, rather than put it to bed, he chose to incite. and so that will tell voters a lot of what they need to know.

i mean i also think, though, that the fact that we are talking about this is telling because we know that the thing on top of voters' minds, poll after poll, the economy, health care, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. it's almost as though those topics got glossed over because the president refused to play by the rules, refused to honor the debate moderator, and so the serious policies, whether they be white supremacy in this country and the threat of white nationalists, whether they be the economy, health care, the pandemic, he missed an opportunity to give his condolences to the 200,000-plus americans who have died, their families who are now living without their loved ones. so across the board, no opportunity to talk about policy when if you are running for president, you should have both a vision for the next four years and a track record from the past

four years that you are selling to the american people. in the absence of that, what we heard was a lot of hateful rhetoric. >> mr. gibbs, indeed the president missed more than one opportunity at condolences tonight. not his strong suit. let me ask you for your honest answer. did joe biden, in your view, affirmatively win tonight's contest, or did donald trump soil the presidency over 90 minutes, or some combination thereof? >> well, i think there's no doubt it was an epic disaster for america and for american democracy over 90 minutes. it was embarrassing to watch. it was exhausting to watch. i think biden had his moments, particularly when he looked straight at the camera and tried to talk directly to the american people. i think those moments were more successful than others for him. and i think he probably did as well as he could do given what was on the stage.

brian, i think we have to hear from the presidential commission on debates tomorrow. we -- we can't do two more of these. this wasn't a debate. this was a total debacle. we need to hear from them and what they're going to do to enforce the rules or to change the rules. the election is far too important. this decision in this year is too important to do that two more times. it's a travesty, and it's time for them to step up and do something about it. it just -- it was a terrible, terrible night for democracy. >> well, let me push back and just say, well, i'll complicate things by saying politely, the presidential commission on debates is kind of affectionately known as the hoop skirt of its ilk, not a thoroughly modern organization. what, including but not limited to a kill switch, what can we

expect to hear from that group, which is still going by a rule book and a set of procedures from old timey days? >> well, we should welcome them to 2020, and we should hand them a new calendar. we should certainly threaten to have a kill switch on microphones. and we can't have a freeform talk period where there's no rules. there have to be rules. and this whole notion i heard in a couple of earlier segments, well, everybody's got to agree to a rule change. i mean did anybody watching tonight think that the two people on that stage, particularly the president of the united states, was playing by the rules? i mean this is -- this is more important than that. we have -- they have to do something. if they don't, they need to get out of the way, and the moderators need to take charge. somebody needs to take charge. i have much more faith in what's coming up than i do tonight, but i think the commission has to take control of this.

we've -- debates are revered in our history, lincoln and douglass. there was a -- you know, it was a long time ago, but we've had nixon/kennedy. we've had big moments that have been meted out in our democracy through debates, and tonight simply soiled all of that. >> robert costa, the president was prepped for tonight's event. the prep apparently consisted of someone saying to him, toss it out there. speak when you feel like it. i want to know everything you've learned since the end of the debate. >> speaking to republicans throughout the night on text message and a few phone calls, during the debate, it's evident that this cacophony in cleveland tonight was also part of president trump's strategy in the sense that he wanted to rouse his base, get them back to 2016 levels tonight. this was not so much about making overtures to independent voters or new voters. it was about consolidating his base, and he did so, but he also

raised serious questions about american democracy. his answer, as alicia said, about proud boys, stand back, stand by, also with an answer about civil unrest, not necessarily directly in any way discouraging it, continuing to talk about the integrity of the election as something that's eroded to the point of no return. we are just days away, weeks away from this election, where the president, the commander in chief, is undermining the system in which this takes place. and one of the institutions that was also undermined tonight was a modern one that really began in 1960, the presidential debate. >> alicia, how about the fact -- and we talked about this with claire mccaskill -- his kind of dissonance, the third-person distance between him and, for example, the city of new york, his home? he talked about it vis-a-vis the pandemic. it may not be able to come back. the way he spoke about cities

and states compared to the way presidents speak about cities and states in the country that they were elected to govern. >> completely dissociated, a lack of empathy. but, brian, we know all of that. we've seen all of that. so in some ways, that was not particularly surprising. i think we've underscored a lot. you know, all of the lies he told about voter fraud, the lies he's been telling for the past several weeks and the ways in which those undermine our democracy, those undermine our election. but what i also heard from a lot of organizers tonight, especially people who organize young voters, people who organize latino voters, is that they felt there were other costs to the way that the president behaved. one, that it took away from joe biden's opportunity to speak about his own record, to speak about his policy vision. given that i know this is hard

for -- you know, we political nerds to remember, but there's a broad swath of the electorate that still feels they don't know enough about joe biden. this would have been his opportunity to fill in some of those gaps. and then the second piece of it, which i think is even more disturbing, which is if you are a voter who for the first time is coming into this election process, if you are someone who feels that you're on the outside or the margins of this process and you tuned in for five, ten minutes tonight and watched that chaos, then you tuned out. and that has a cost to our democracy. it has a cost to this election, and it will be hard to get those people back, to reengage those people if what they did was tune in tonight and say, this doesn't represent who we are. this doesn't represent who we want to be, and i'm not sure i buy into this process. >> mr. gibbs, this calls for another honest answer. did a single vote move as a result of tonight in your view?

>> i can't imagine that many did. i mean keeping in mind, brian, that many people that watched this debate, even those that said they would watch, very few of them said they were undecided. to robert's point about getting his base charged up, i think the challenge that somebody like donald trump has in a debate like this is needing to change the electorate composition for himself to get back some of those disaffected voters that supported him in 2016 but have watched the type of behavior and watched the type of chaos that was just talked about, and that isn't bringing any of those voters back into the fold. that's why when you see the polling at 42 or 43 or 44, it's below what he got in a state or nationally just four years ago. but i think on the whole, no. historically these don't move much in terms of vote in numbers, and i don't think anything moved appreciably at all tonight. >> robert costa, a question i've

asked you before on this broadcast and others about the republicans who are on your speed dial. and as we're now down to 34 days, there's no changing the fact that they have hitched their wagon to this president. they have hitched what we know to be the future of what passes for the modern incarnation, trump's republican party, to this guy and whatever lhappens n election day. >> there are many republicans, brian, who are privately telling me tonight after this performance by president trump that they fear a 1964 barry goldwater-type defeat by president trump in the coming weeks. and some of them privately don't mind that possibility because they think the republican party needs to somehow re-imagine itself in the wake of president trump. but there are many privately and publicly who say that president trump has already transformed a

party, that it cannot go back, that the bonds to conservatism and norms of american democracy have already been severed, and they can't be put back together again, and they're with president trump. and that's going to be the key tension to watch, brian. if president trump can test the result of this election and its integrity, who stands with him? who stands back? >> robert costa, robert gibbs, alicia menendez, thank you for staying up with us. thank you for lending your voices to our coverage. as this special post-debate edition of "the 11th hour" continues, here's just some of the discussion on the topic of the president's decision to aggressively push forward a supreme court nominee this close to the election. >> we won the election. elections have consequences. we have the senate. we have the white house, and we have a phenomenal nominee. we won the election, and therefore we have the right to

choose her, and very few people knowingly would say otherwise. and by the way, the democrats, they wouldn't even think about not doing it. the only difference is they'd try and do it faster. there's no way they would give it up. they had merrick garland, but the problem is they didn't have the election, so they were stopped. >> for more, we welcome to the broadcast susan glasser, staff writer for "the new yorker." probably the most highest quoted journalist on this broadcast who doesn't work with this broadcast. she happens to be with us with the guy she lives with, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times," together as a married couple, they are co-authors of the new book "the man who ran washington: the life and times of james a. baker iii." the book has landed on my front porch. the book also has landed on this debate night where we would usually have time to discuss the book and only the book.

welcome to you both. susan, we get to talk to your husband all the time. what a thrill to have you on. and i'll begin with this. while i can't wait to dig into the work you've both compiled. what would james a. baker of texas make of what passes for the republican party as we have this conversation right now tonight? >> well, i heard at least on a rival network they were allowed to use the word blank show on television, on live television. but i have a feeling that jim baker, he was known for his colorful expletives, and he'd use a lot of them after watching something like this tonight. honestly, this isn't something like we've ever seen really in american politics. and, you know, baker, although he fought hard and in a partisan sense, this is a man who always wore a tie and a suit and had a sense of decorum, and that obviously has been blown up in a way that probably doesn't serve

anybody very well, at least those of us who had to watch the debate tonight, does it, brian? >> no, that's right. and, peter, i watched the conversation you both had with our friend nicolle wallace this afternoon, and i had not caught up with this and was kind of surprised to learn he is not a never-trumper. in fact, he says -- what's the expression he used to you both? he's going to hold his nose, peter, and vote for donald trump, which may surprise a good many people. >> well, i think it will surprise a number of people, but it's interesting because jim baker in so many ways is the un-trump, right? the thing that he stands for both philosophically and temperamentally and constitutionally are so different than donald trump. he's a internationalist. he's a free trader. he believes in seriousness of purpose. he's a very tough partisan. we saw that again and again during his career. ask michael dukakis or al gore. they wouldn't tell you that jim baker is any softy.

but when the election was over, jim baker believed in doing business. jim baker believed in getting things done. they would never have gone months without a coronavirus relief package the way we're seeing today. he never would have put a candidate out onstage to behave the way that the president did tonight. that would have been anathema to him. so while he was not broken with his party, he finds trump to be very, very disturbing. he's used words like "crazy" and "nuts" with us when we've talked with him about it. i think that would be something he would watch tonight, and not feel that he was wrong about. >> susan, i'm really curious to hear your answer to this again because you're the most quoted journalist not on this broadcast. we follow every word you write for "the new yorker." lyndon johnson used to deride the state department types in foggy bottom as the striped pants set. he had a healthy amount of disdain for the ivy league types who populated foggy bottom.

baker is not that. is he as good as he was lucky in his choice of relationships with 41, and do you define him as every inch a statesperson? >> well, those are good questions, brian. he was a person of his era. i don't know how he would have fared in the trump era. but, you know, the truth is that from the end of watergate to the end of the cold war, there really wasn't a significant matter of domestic politics or international politics that didn't have jim baker involved in it in some way. and generally speaking, his background as a lawyer, his obsession with discipline and preparation, but his instincts were generally to seek a deal. he wasn't into zero sum politics. that made him, i think, an effective diplomat because he wanted the other guy not to be buried but to come out with something that he or she could live with. and i think that right now,

that's what's missing in our politics. you know, when reagan had a supreme court appointment to make, it was jim baker who pushed him to nominate sandra day o'connor, the first woman to the high court. and actually the conservatives in reagan world were very against this. baker literally refused to let them into the oval office for a meeting, you know, but he was looking for something that would get reagan points with the broad center of the american people. and of course trump has chosen the exact opposite course with this current supreme court appointment and really with most of his choices as president. and so i do think that, you know, individuals matter. and in that sense, baker has a pretty accomplished record as a deal maker with all sorts of people. right now you can't imagine that happening. >> full transparency, our guests are in the same home, separated by mere feet from living room to kitchen. we are thrilled to have them as

a couple and in this case, in this context, as co-authors of an exciting new biography of a huge figure of the last few decades in american public life. "the man who ran washington: the life and times of james a. baker iii" out just today. to susan glasser and the guy she lives with, peter baker, thank you both, friends, for coming on tonight. we greatly appreciate it. that's going to do it for this extended bit of our coverage tonight. thank you for staying with us for our extended edition of "the 11th hour." our post-debate live coverage continues with our friend ari melber right after the next break. election... (fisherman vo) how do i register to vote? hmm!.. hmm!.. hmm!.. (woman on porch vo) can we vote by mail here? (grandma vo) you'll be safe, right? (daughter vo) yes!

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hello. i'm ari melber, anchoring more of our live special coverage after this first presidential debate. 9:30 p.m. out west. 12:30 a.m. out east. reaction already rolling in around the nation to this first debate of 2020, which honestly often felt a lot like 2020, chaotic and messy, loud, hard to sit through at times with petty clashes and recriminations that were not just, let's be clear, the random results of the system or another political squabble, but quite specifically the direct and intentional result of donald trump and trumpism at war with the rules, the facts, and anyone and anything that

represents those rules and facts. >> jobs, good-paying jobs. >> let him finish, sir. >> he doesn't know how to do that. >> you just lost the left. you agreed with bernie sanders on a plan -- >> how -- folks -- >> you absolutely agreed to. >> do you have any idea what this clown is doing. >> the question is -- >> will you shut up, man. that was really a productive segment, wasn't it? keep yapping, man. it's hard to get any word in with this clown -- excuse me -- this person. >> mr. president, your campaign agreed both sides would get two-minute answers uninterrupted. well, your side agreed to it, and why don't you observe what your campaign agreed to as a ground rule, okay, sir? >> he never keeps his word. >> no, i'm not -- that was a rhetorical question. >> was it a rhetorical question? well, over the next 90 minutes, we're going to bring you special coverage that aims to push beyond those loudest clashes of

the debate. perhaps it may even be, if we're any good at it, a journalistic antidote to the sound, fury, and endless trump interruptions and overtalking. we've got special guests, some fact checks, and how this debate is playing in key states with a lot of people paying attention. we begin right now with insights from our "a" list guests on a big name. jason johnson, alicia mills, and longtime republican strategist, steve schmidt. jason johnson, i ask you what was that? >> in the immortal words of lil wayne, what the blank, yo? it was a mess. it was an absolute mess. and i cannot impress upon people enough to understand if you haven't been listening for the last four or five months, i've said it, other people have said it. donald trump is not running for

president. he is not running a presidential campaign. he is just trying to consolidate power. joe biden is trying to run for president. chris wallace is basically reenacting a floor mat. but donald trump is just trying to consolidate power. and anytime you have a sitting president of the united states basically call upon a terrorist organization like the proud boys to go out and intimidate people at the polls, that should have been the end of the debate. i thought -- >> well, let's go -- >> -- tonight was an embarrassment. i don't think there should be any more debates. >> let's go into that. you say there should be no more debates. americans will exercise their own choice of their time. they may not watch any more debates. yet that was such an important historic low point. i want to go to you and then ayesha on what it means to have this president, who has sown so much racial discord, who refused to condemn that white supremacy on that stage tonight. >> well, yeah. ari, here's the thing. it's not just that he refused --

>> i'm sorry. i'll go jason and then ayesha. >> oh, i'm sorry. yeah, it's not that he just refused. he basically told them, you know, be ready. get your guns cocked. if you looked on instagram, the proud boys are putting out logos that say, stand back, stand by. the president has called upon white nationalists to intimidate and disrupt the election. that is what makes it dangerous. by the third debate, he will literally just stand there and say, get your guns ready and shoot democrats. he was half a step from saying that today. that's why there shouldn't be any more debates. >> since we talked so much about moderating this evening, i will say as a moderator, he didn't quite literally say that, but i take your point about the direction. ayesha, as jason points out, this was not stand down. this was stand by. >> exactly. and here's the thing. the president has told us who he is. he has shown us who he is. again tonight, he has shown and

told us that what he's trying to do is to stoke a race war in this country. this is not brand-new. donald trump has been doing this his entire career. he's been creating racial animus. he's been perpetuating racial animus. he has been advancing himself through racial animus and by siding with white supremacists and bigots. the thing, though, that makes this so appalling is how many times does this guy have to show us who he is and tell us who he is. if it's not charlottesville where he's saying there's good people on both sides, the tape is going to play a billion times of him refusing to denounce white supremacy. he can't even utter the language out of his mouth to even say white supremacists. he calls on the proud boys as if they're going to stand up with him and that's what they're doing. but the thing about this, ari, and all the discourse we're going to have for weeks after this is this is not new. we need to remember that donald trump has always shown us who he is. and at what point is the american public going to believe

him becomes the question. we've got just over 30 days to make some real tough decisions in our lives, and we all need to go out and vote our conscience. >> yeah, and steve schmidt. as someone who has prepped for these high-profile debates, your view of the very deliberate way, as everyone saw, that donald trump broke the rules they agreed on, and really tried to make himself the over arching theme. if you don't like donald trump, you may not have had a negative reaction to that. on the other hand, it certainly blunted what would have been a conversation that involved more of joe biden and more of the moderator discussing things like facts about the covid death rate or facts about civil rights in america. steve. >> well, i think that this debate was a debacle for donald trump, and i think it's the beginning of the end of the presidency. what you'll see in the next couple of days is movement by at least a couple of points, probably outside the margin of

error, and you'll really see the gravel start to slip and all of this start to go down. one thing you won't see tomorrow is any united states senators out there talking about what a great job donald trump did tonight. so let's just back up for a second. what this was tonight was a disgrace beyond any ability of any of the three of us to articulate. it was a national humiliation. you saw a president who was unhinged, lying, sweaty, disheveled, angry, petulant, and most important of all, completely incapable of making any type of argument about why he should have four more years. he appeared to be crazy for most of the debate. and so biden had some great moments on covid, on the economy, on the military that

trump called suckers and losers. and the reality of 2016 is this. whomever that race was about was the person who was losing the campaign. and donald trump was losing that campaign for 98% of the race until the last week when james comey made it about hillary clinton just enough that donald trump won by 78,000 votes. and one thing that -- >> steve, let me jump in, and then i'm going to give you the mic back since we have been talking about moderator rules around here, i will give you a chance to respond. but to be a little millennial about it, when he say he was losing that whole 2016 race, one millennial rebuttal would be, was he, or was there an undercounting of the support including the racial animus that jason johnson mentioned, and how does that filter into tonight, where i take your point. i imagine people listening to

you, many objective people would agree with the core of your argument about what donald trump sounded and looked like, and yet, and yet is there still this support network for him as long as he can disrupt these debates so they don't become a further exposition of his failures in office? steve. >> well, what i would say to that is there is a mythology about the 2016 race that the polling was wrong. the polling was not wrong in 2016. the polling showed that hillary clinton would win the popular vote by about 2.5%. now, she should have been in michigan. she should have been in these other states. the hillary clinton campaign shouldn't have stopped their polling operation in september. that's all water under the bridge. here's the point. 2020 and 2016 are different elections. everybody in the media is understating biden's strength

right now and overstating trump's because no one wants to be wrong again. joe biden has the biggest lead of any presidential candidate in the modern era. it's the biggest, the broadest, the most durable lead that you've seen in the modern presidential era, and that lead is going to get bigger, not smaller after this debate. what we saw tonight was -- no pun intended -- the real donald trump. he's completely unhinged. you saw tonight the first american in four years to stand on a stage with hthis lying, blustering buffoon and try to hold him to account. joe biden didn't do anything to disgrace himself tonight. and when you have somebody who's up there breaking the rules, has no compunction whatsoever about doing anything at any time so long as it benefits him, that's what you get. but this debate was about one thing in the end tonight.

one thing that matters happened in this debate tonight. donald trump intimated and threatened violence against this country if he loses the election. make no mistake about it. it's exactly what he did, exactly what he meant. and these proud boys are a white supremacist neo-nazi group. and before we got one hour after this debate, they have a new shoulder patch for their camouflage outfits. >> let me bring in aisha. go ahead. >> yeah. so if you think about the entirety of the debate, the only group that donald trump shouted out with some sense of -- i'll just call it affection for at least that's how they're taking it, right? so he may not claim that he's a racist, but the racists think he is. every other line in it was all just about donald trump and his

bluster, talking about how great he is, and then supposedly knowing the strategy of how what biden should or shouldn't do. he said a couple of times, oh, you've lost the progressives. he also said several times, you couldn't do this. you couldn't do that. if you had the chance, you wouldn't. donald trump only empathized with,praised, and appreciated himself throughout. and i think this is really important and is going to matter because people often -- you know, monday morning quarterback 2016 and say, well, donald trump related to so many folks. he actually was the populist candidate that talked to the little guy and reflected their values, and people felt connected to him whether you like it or not. well, we now have had several years of donald trump and leadership, and i think what people are tiring of and just exhausted by is the fact that all donald trump does is talk about himself, and especially talk to himself. the politics are personal and it's all about the people.

>> since we're deep in this, i want to play -- i think we have the sound of that moment, we were discussing this proud boys moment in the debate. many people watching this probably watched it. because we're putting it under this warranted scrutiny, let's take a brief look at that. >> are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups -- >> sure. >> -- and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in kenosha and as we've seen in portland. >> sure, i'm willing to do that. >> do it. >> go ahead, sir. >> i would say almost everything i see is from the left wing, not from the right wing. >> so what are you saying -- >> i'm willing to do anything. i want to see peace. >> then do it, sir. >> say it. do it. say it. >> you want to call them -- what do you want to call them? give me a name. >> white supremacists and -- >> proud boys. >> proud boys, stand back and stand by. but i'll tell you what, i'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and

the left because this is not a right-wing problem. >> that's the moment. people can adjudicate it for themselves. my panel stays. i want to -- with the minute i have left, a closing thought from aisha and jason. aisha first. >> black people know what dog whistles sound like. white people know what dog whistles sound like. donald trump has used them repeatedly. the republican party has used them throughout history. our country is founded upon them. this is not, in my mind, open to interpretation. we're not confused about this. i don't see a debate about what those words are. now, you can choose to accept them for what they are or not, but the reality is that we need to debate nothing. we literally should just keep playing the tape of donald trump in his own words saying the things that donald trump says and believe him when he shows us who he is. >> yeah. this isn't a dog whistle. this is an air horn. this is a didgeridoo.

this say claxen. the president said if i don't win in a way that i like, white terrorists, i want you to go out and kill people. that's what i said. i want to make that clear. i also have a real problem with how chris wallace put the question because he happened to mention kenosha, and he happened to mention portland. he didn't talk about louisville. he didn't talk about the white nationalist who's were trying to intimidate voters down in virginia. even the framing of it suggests that white nationalists only magically appear where there's antifa. no. they have been operating around this country hand in hand with cops all throughout these protests through the course of the summer, and the president of the united states has consistently encouraged their behavior and encouraged them to become more aggressive and violent. >> yeah. i think it's deadly serious in that regard. the three of you have spoken with moral clarity, and this goes to why even i think after a night as chaotic as it was, because donald trump wanted to make it so, it still is scrutiny. and as steve said, it's still the first time in years we've seen him up there with anyone, and people can assess his mentality, his acuity, whether

he seems like someone who can even hold on a conversation that is fact-based, let alone the moral dimension we discussed. the entire panel stays. i'm excited to come back to you with some other points. we're going to fit in a quick break, and our special coverage continues. still fresh unstopables in-wash scent booster downy unstopables

that's the end of the -- we're moving on. >> he didn't take them. >> can i be honest? it's a very important question. >> try to be honest. >> the answer to the question is no. >> i think that the country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions. i'm appealing to you, sir, to do that. >> well, and him too. >> well, frankly, you've been doing more interrupting. >> that's all right. but he -- >> mr. president, your campaign agreed both sides would get two-minute answers uninterrupted. well, your side agreed to it, and why don't you observe what your campaign agreed to as a ground rule. okay, sir? >> okay, sir?

but it wasn't okay. the debate commission and both campaigns did agree to a long set of precise rules for tonight's debate. and donald trump broke them constantly with honestly very few consequences within the debate. fox news' chris wallace drew lots of criticism for

just as allegedly flexed during the election. what's the rebuttal? >> the rebuttal to that is it doesn't end up actually helping you with voters, and that's ultimately what ends up mattering. if you think about it, heading into this debate, right, what was donald trump's team talking about? they're like, oh, joe biden, we need to inspect his microphone. we need to have him take a drug test. we need to see who's the highest in the room. they wanted us discussing all this nonsense beforehand. that doesn't make you look tough. it doesn't make you look tough if you're complaining about the ground rules before you get in. then when you actually scream and yell the whole time.

i've made a lot of attention to this. i've looked at the online streaming about undecided voters or weak partisan voters one way or another. that level of screaming and conflict only makes you look good to people who already like you. to people who are generally turned off by american politics, for people who are deciding do i want to bother to vote, donald trump didn't gain any voters tonight. so being hyper aggressive and looking like you're the toughest guy in the room, great. that's going to keep you the people you already have. but that also inspires the people who like joe biden because he seemed more sane. it makes people who didn't know if they wanted to vote turned off. so i don't think it's smart long-term strategy, but it's the only thing donald trump knows how to do. >> very careful listeners will note professor johnson opened our coverage with a lil wayne quote and i believe just slightly referenced travis scott, highest in the room. >> yes. >> you know, steve, the professor is in. it's a big night in american politics, and he's ready. steve, would you speak to both your rating of both chris

wallace, which is a question about tonight, and whether donald trump, like a kind of a hacker who comes in and you say, well, we have a commission system here. we don't have any vulnerabilities, and he hacks his way into the files and shows you the holes in the system, does that, steve, in your view raise questions about the upcoming debates, how they should be run, et cetera? >> well, i mean, i think that whether it was controllable or not, i think, is an open question, is a fair question. but chris wallace lost control of the debate three to four minutes in. he should have turned off his microphone. and any of the coming moderators who go into that debate as the moderator without a kill switch on his microphone, i think, are certifiable. and the debate commission should insist on it. there should be a penalty for the flouting of the rules. and if trump doesn't want to agree to that, then we don't have to have any more debates

because the country has seen enough. now, we are in a no-lose situation because i do believe the race is about trump. the debate was about trump. ergo, trump lost the debate, and the debate helped trump on his way to losing the election. so the more we see of trump's unhinged behavior, i think the more repellent it is to normal people in this country. and i think we get confused sometimes between a political problem and a sociological problem. the politics are pretty clear right now. there are more people and a substantial majority that are just opposed to this in this country, don't like it. we have a sociological problem in that we have 30% of the country that's a member of a cult of personality and looks at trump's unhinged performance and says, wow, our sweaty, angry tyrant did a great job. he can do no wrong. so whether it's his tax avoidance and paying $750 a year

or cheating on anything else that he's done all of his life, there's nothing you can say to these people that does anything to their loyalty towards him. and so we have a problem as a society when we have fully 30% of us in a cult of personality. but politically there's not enough of them to continue ruling over the rest of this, and there will be less of them would are inclined to vote for him after his unhinged performance tonight. >> aisha. >> yeah. i just want to pick up on who the people are that he's trying to appeal to, and frankly who are the people that biden's trying to appeal to. i have been quite the naysayer. i've office pooh-poohed the idea that there's a substantial moveable middle in america. i just don't see the data bearing out to be that massive. as a democratic strategist, i have always said we need to focus on riling up our base and having them turn out. donald trump's base is smaller than the democratic base, so if it's a battle of the bases, the

democrats are going to win. the interesting thing, though, about this, and i was just watching my twitter feed kind of fly off, is that there are people who gave trump a chance, who said, you know, he is belligerent, and he's a bit of a jerk, but in contrast to hillary clinton, who they had a lot of bad things to say about, well, maybe he's going to talk tough and actually do something different, and we're okay with the tough talk. well, he has soiled those people. at this point you cannot make a justification for why you would want your child to go to school tomorrow and behave the way that donald trump did tonight. there are over 200,000 families in america who have lost loved ones to covid. a lot of these people are in red states. a lot of these families voted for donald trump. not one word of compassion around them. and i'm actually on the committee that is holding a remembrance on sunday, a national covid remembrance, so i'm really kind of this the thick of talking to families right now. and it does not matter if they are red state, blue state, whatever. people are hurting, and the fact

that you have a guy who you entrusted, who you said, i'm going to try something different with you, i'm going to go ahead and vote for you because this might matter economically to my family. >> right. >> doesn't have any empathy at all? i think he is blowing people up right now with this. so hopefully it will pan out for the democrats at the end of the day. >> really important points here from our special panel, aisha mills, jason johnson, steve schmidt. our post debate coverage continues live. i've got a bunch more special guests to fact-check and results and reaction pouring in around the country when we come back in just three minutes. wow. that e me lots of money. this game's boring. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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call or go online today. comcast business. more dangerous and corrupt president than trump. he's harming our basic values, giving rise to hate, and he's selling out america to big corporations. i'm working to protect immigrants, women, communities of color, and lgbtq people. and i'm making corporations like pg&e and insurance companies play by our rules. we need experienced leadership to wipe away trump's stain on america for good. ♪ it's 1:00 a.m. on the east coast. 10:00 p.m. on the west. continuing live coverage of the first presidentible