Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan dissect the Biden-Trump debate disaster: Biden’s rambling ("Antifa as a philosophy") and refusal to commit to election results while Trump’s relentless interruptions ("badgering") drowned out policy. Polls show Biden leading in PA, FL, GA despite Trump’s "blown opportunity" to exploit Hunter Biden scandals or court-packing. Chris Wallace’s uneven moderation—letting Biden evade tough questions while shutting down Trump—fueled the chaos, with both candidates trading insults ("clown," "racist") over substance. The hosts call it a net loss for Trump, whose aggressive style may have alienated undecided voters, leaving the race’s trajectory unchanged. [Automatically generated summary]
You are about to listen to the best show at the Daily Wire, not named the Andrew Clavin Show, and that's Daily Wire Backstage.
Myself, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and Jeremy Boring sit down to discuss politics, religion, the culture, basically everything you've ever wanted to hear about on a show.
Take a listen.
Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage.
Jeremy said this debate wouldn't happen, edition.
I am the Jeremy in question, and we're just 15 minutes away from finding out if I owe everyone of these schmucks $100 each, which is still less than Ben had to pay us for his 2016 election prediction.
But who's counting?
Joining me tonight to take my money are Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and Michael Knowles.
We're glad you're here with us.
We're going to watch this thing so that you also can watch it.
I mean, I was going to say it so that you don't have to, but everybody has to.
Like 65 million people watched the debates in 2016.
It's only going to be more people watching it this time to see the two oldest candidates in the history of the Republic duke it out, with or without breaks, every 30 minutes, depending on who wins the coin toss.
I know that's why you're here.
I'm here to tell you about our pals over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
When the founders crafted the Constitution, the very first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their government.
That is amendment number one.
The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech with their own, with uh, and their own persons with force.
That is amendment number two.
You know how strongly that I believe in these principles, and everyone here uh, every one of us a gun owner.
In fact two, two of the three of you I took the purchase your first, your first firearms.
We are big supporters of firearm and personal responsibility uh, and we are big uh spons fans of Bravo Company Manufacturing.
Uh, owning a gun, an awesome responsibility.
Building rifles, no different.
Bravo Company Manufacturing, or BCM for short, builds a professional grade product which is built to combat standards.
The reason because BCM believes that the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless whether they are a private citizen or a professional.
The people at BCM assume that when a rifle leaves their shop it will be used in a life or death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer or a soldier overseas.
With that in mind, every component of a BCM rifle is hand assembled and tested by Americans.
The people at BCM feel it's their moral responsibility as Americans to provide tools that will not fail the end user when it's not just a paper target but someone coming to do them harm.
BCM also works with leading industry instructors excuse me, of marksmanship from the top levels of America Special Operations Forces, Marine Corps Force, Reconnaissance to U.S ARMY special operations forces, connecting them with other Americans.
The top instructors teach the skills necessary to defend yourself, your family and others.
That's why uh, I love our pals over at Bravo Company Manufacturing Benjamin.
They are indeed the best, and one of the reasons that they are the best is because they make weapons that again, you're going to use in self-defense.
It's not for hunting, it's not for target.
Shooting is because you might need to use a weapon, and when you need a weapon to work, you need to come From Bravo Company Manufacturing.
To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to BravocompanyMFG.com.
You can discover more about their products.
Special offers, upcoming news.
That is BravoCompanyMFG.com.
If you need more convincing than that, I don't know, after that sale from Jeremy, I don't know what more you need, you need to go check out youtube.com slash Bravocompany USA for videos even more amusing than this one.
Opportunities to Go Viral00:07:31
Go check them out.
Youtube.com/slash Bravo Company USA.
They do make better videos than we do.
Well, I mean, they don't have to watch the debate.
They're cheerful, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, how much do you guys want to die?
I got to tell you, I'm very excited.
I am hoping that I'm hoping Trump eats Biden for lunch.
I am a little nervous, though.
There's some pitfalls.
I would like to point out that the first time in now six months that Drew has come to the backstage in person was to take $100 from someone who has great.
I just want to say.
We almost.
It is the first time we've all been together in like nine months.
It's kind of true.
It's been pretty weird.
And the last one for a long time since we're all leaving.
Everybody's leaving you here, Drew.
I'll be sitting here sweeping up the streets.
Well, good luck with that because have you seen what's going on in the streets over here?
Oh, my God.
Not a broom.
You saw they shut down Sunset last night?
I saw that.
Like BLM full-on shut down Sunset last night.
Because why not?
Some men ask why.
Some men see a mountain and they ask why.
Others see a mountain and they ask why not.
Someone see Sunset Boulevard and they ask why not?
Because they already canceled Gone with the Wind, so they were going to cancel Sunset Boulevard, one of the other great films of the era.
How was that?
Was that a groaner?
Okay, okay.
So predictions.
Predictions.
I have a prediction.
My prediction is this.
Everybody's focusing.
You'll love this.
You're going to love this.
Comes at me, hit him.
Everybody's doing Joe Biden.
Will Joe Biden be able to do anything other than stand on his feet and not drool?
But I actually think that Trump is the guy to watch today.
And the reason I think this is because Trump, as we all know, is not exactly a scholar.
He's not somebody who reads things.
What?
I know a shot.
But he is a guy who learns on the job.
He's not the man he was in 2016.
He's a guy who actually now knows what he's talking about.
If he can convey that, if he can be articulate enough to convey the fact that he actually now knows that there is a country called Korea, maybe a north, maybe a south, somewhere out there, that he knows how things work.
He could actually make Biden look bad, even if Biden delivered it.
Hold up, wait.
So your theory is, I just want to make sure they're following.
I'll love this.
Your theory is that Donald Trump is going to drop knowledge on Joe Biden.
Not that he's going to drop a kitchen sink on him.
I agree.
He'll drop a kitchen sink.
That's a special thing.
I actually think he now has something he didn't have before, which is knowledge, because this is the way he learns.
He learns by doing stuff.
I actually, I agree with that.
I'd also like to present Exhibit A. I'd like to present some evidence for this.
I don't know if you guys.
Did you watch the Trump town hall?
So he was sitting down, I forget with some left-wing outlet.
Do you remember this?
Good point.
And he handled it incredibly well.
He was measured.
He was prepared walking in there.
There was a setup question that was so easy.
The only reason they let this question come into that town hall was because it seemed like it was pro-Trump, but it wasn't.
It was this woman who talked about how sad it was that her parents had died from COVID and they all really loved Trump.
And so isn't he going to open up the borders and not build the wall and increase immigration?
And what did he do?
He was totally sympathetic.
He talked all about her and what a wonderful daughter she is, and then moved on and he pivoted and he didn't take the bait.
I think that is evidence of learning something.
So I agree that if the Trump who showed up for that town hall shows up tonight, he stands to really gain a lot.
My concern is that instead we'll get the Trump who showed up at that debate a couple of days ago, didn't know where Azerbaijan was, or was it Azerbaijan?
No, it wasn't.
I don't know where he was.
Yeah, you're not the president.
Thank God.
I think that the real fear going into tonight is that Donald Trump thought that he was in a WWF match.
I mean, he's good at WWE, right?
And it's all crap talking beforehand.
But Biden didn't take the bait.
And what you're left with now is that Trump has basically set the bar so low for Joe Biden that it's hard to see how Trump can actually have a victory.
If Joe Biden does stay on his feet for 90 minutes, he all but wins the debate.
It's a very dangerous thing to go into a debate that neither you nor your supporters believe you can lose.
Just ask Hillary 2016.
Well, I think that's fair, but you've got to remember about these debates.
They're not debates, right?
They're not real debates.
They are opportunities to get a viral moment.
And there are two or three viral moments.
And where do the viral moments come from?
They come from the quick wit.
All of Trump's big moments in 2016 came from, I don't want to live in Trump's America.
Yeah, because you'd be in jail.
You know, all of these little quick, quick moments there.
You call women ugly in Turbo, only Rosie O'Donnell, right?
Zig, zig, zig.
And Biden, look, he can be charming.
He's a stand-up comedian, right?
I mean, he's great at going out.
Trump is a stand-up comedian.
Insult comedy is his thing.
The problem is, and I think this really is the difference between 2016 and 2020.
It's not Trump.
It's not that Trump has changed or anything.
It's that Hillary Clinton is not Joe Biden and Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton.
What I mean by that is that people despise Hillary Clinton, and legitimately so.
I don't get the feeling that people viscerally despise Joe Biden.
Like they look at him, they're like, who is this doof?
Why is he here?
They're kind of mildly annoyed by Joe Biden, if anything.
Even if you really dislike him, it's mostly because you think he's a stand-in and kind of a liar and kind of corrupt.
But in the same way, everybody else in Washington, D.C. is a liar and corrupt, not in the unique, horrible way that Hillary was, where just every time people on the right looked at Hillary Clinton, they saw this machine that was designed to go after the presidency in the most ambitious possible way.
I mean, he's a klutz and he's a buffoon, Joe Biden, who somehow found himself in this position.
And so there isn't the same sort of drama to the debate, meaning that going up to the debate against Hillary, and this really pervaded the primaries and the Republican side.
It was who is going to just clock her, right?
Who is going to go in that debate and just throw at her the Clinton Foundation and throw at her corruption and throw at her bill and throw and who's going to do a press conference with the accusers five seconds before, right?
Who's going to do that?
And the only person up here who's going to do that is this crazy reality TV show host.
I think that was worth him in the primaries.
This time around, I just don't get the sense that it's like people are just foaming at the mouth to see somebody clock Joe Biden.
All this I agree with.
Since we don't know what's going to happen, I can agree with everything.
Anything could possibly happen.
But the one thing is, is that Biden has not been hit with a single tough question, not one, since this thing has started.
I mean, he was being asked about the state of Trump's soul.
One of the questions he was asked is, why aren't you more angry at Donald Trump?
Like me, the unbiased journalist.
Exactly.
I mean, they haven't been playing softball with him.
They've been playing like football.
But he did take some blows during the primary, and he held up.
He managed to be victorious.
But those were blows from the left.
Those weren't blows from the right.
Meaning that the blows from the left, his whole candidacy was, I am the moderate bulwark against the Kamala Harris's, against the Bernie Sanders, against the Elizabeth Warrens.
If he takes a blow from the right, like a serious blow from the right, it could theoretically hurt him because his whole campaign is that he's a moderate.
So what that means to me is that the temptation for Trump, I think, tonight and always is going to be go after the fact that he's quasi-senile, go after the fact that he seems like he's in poor health, go after Hunter Biden's cocaine news, right?
Like go after the fact that he has grandchildren that he apparently doesn't know about.
Go after all the things that Trump really is animated by because all the National Inquirer stuff is this, like he won't read the Intel reports, but he'll read the National Inquirer.
And so that's the stuff he's really interested in.
But the stuff he actually needs to hit him on is the radicalism of packing the court.
He needs to force him to answer whether he's going to disassociate from both Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
And he should say why, he should ask him on the stage, Joe Biden, you express sympathy for an alleged rapist in Kenosha while ripping into the police and saying they should be arrested.
Ring Backstage Discussion00:02:48
So what the hell is the deal with that?
That's the stuff where he really needs to hit hard.
And I think my fear is that he won't, that he'll go after all of the kind of red meat.
Sleepy route.
Exactly, the sleepy joe stuff.
I wonder if this is the kind of thing that he has learned because he does.
I hope this is where he's been living for the last four years.
So he does know stuff that he didn't know before.
Well, Jenna Ellis, your friend Jen Ellis and ours got mad at me on Twitter because I said, don't get cocky.
No, that's right.
And she said, well, I think the president has earned a measure of trust that he always knows what he's doing.
The problem is the president has not demonstrated for four years that he always knows what he's doing.
He's demonstrated that he often knows what he's doing.
But there are several blunders that we've all skipped right over.
And the way that he has framed this debate, listen, if he wins, then he did, then he set it up the right way.
Right.
But he's made it harder to win by the way that he set it up.
That's what I'm worried about.
I'm also worried about who's at my front door.
I got this new kid, you know, I adopted this child, this human being.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, I mean, I have nothing to do with it.
That's the only way that could have been.
But her mind is being crafted.
Her mind is being crafted by me and her soul, unfortunately.
I have found this amazing thing, though, that I am so much more defensive and protective now that I have this child in my home.
Before you just had a wife, you know, it's like, whatever.
Now I have a child.
She can take care of herself.
She married me.
But this poor child, I want to know who's at my door.
And that's why I'm happy to work with Ring.
Ring has security products for every corner of your home, inside and out.
Best of all, you can see it all in one simple app.
With Ring, you can keep an eye on your home no matter where you are right from your phone.
If someone stops by or something's going on, Ring lets you know.
It's peace of mind anytime knowing that your home is protected.
I've been traveling a lot, going to our new homeland of Tennessee.
Still taking some getting used to for a Texan and a Los Angeles.
And I've been able to keep an eye on things back at home because of the power of Ring.
You can see and speak to whoever is at your door from anywhere with video doorbells.
Keep an eye on every corner of your house with an easy to install indoor and outdoor cameras.
Protect your whole family with Ring Alarm, a powerful, affordable, whole home security system that you can easily install yourself.
It's so easy that I was able to install it and then go over and help Ben install his.
That is 100% true.
What I'm looking forward to the most is that now when I'm not in LA anymore, somebody is going to ring that doorbell and I'm just going to pick up and say, I'm not in LA.
Ha but you are.
So if you want that same feeling, all you have to do is both move and also get Ring.
Head on over to Ring.com slash backstage.
Get a special offer on the Ring welcome kit at ring.com slash backstage.
It comes with Rings Video Doorbell 3 and Trime Pro.
The perfect way to start your Ring experience plus free two-day shipping.
Go to ring.com slash backstage.
That is ring.com slash backstage.
So here's how this thing's going to work.
We're going to sit here and watch the debate.
All right.
If you are a Daily Wire all access subscribe.
I'm leaving, isn't it?
Yeah, I know.
If you're a Daily Wire all access subscriber, you're going to be able to join us as we watch the debate.
Policy Genius Misstep00:15:05
We'll be in the discussion group.
You can go up there, click on discussion, come on over.
We'll be answering questions as we go and maybe making little comments if I know us.
After that, stick around after the debate, and we will be back here with the live stream episode of Backstage for some instant analysis from, you know, us.
If you're an all-access member, again, head over to the discussion page because that's where we will be taking questions and making, I think, pithy little comments that are sure to delight and also probably piss you off because what I have found is that all of our super fans, they actually are not, like if you're a band and you have some super fans, they're like always excited to hear the new song.
You know, they're always excited to find out like who you're dating now or what you're wearing.
Our super fans come for the dopamine hit of being pissed off at this.
Every time it's like, they don't like soccer.
Officiate my wedding.
They always say that.
They're always saying things like that.
So here we go.
We're going to tune into this debate.
Thanks for joining us and we will see you right after.
Well, holy crap after all of that.
Shut up.
You clown.
I do want to acknowledge after the worst debate that I've seen in my adult life serving politics, I do have to confess that the debate did in fact happen.
So here you go.
All right.
$100.
Thank you, sir.
There you go.
$100.
I basically made that peddling your name.
So the only way fair there is to get some money.
It's not really turned out, actually.
I changed my mind about the debate.
This is no amount of money for what we do.
No, I'm cheap.
That actually was it, actually.
Fair enough.
As a conservative handling over the price now, at this point, claim it.
As a conservative grifter, every now and then it's good to part with some money that I've made.
Well, that was absolutely the worst debate up.
I have to say, I think we're all agreed on that.
It was a disaster.
It was a chaos.
Okay, so who should we start with?
Because it was like a disaster all the way around.
Yes.
So here's the problem.
From a 30,000-foot level, if you think Trump already is winning, then you're real happy because nothing changed.
If you think Trump is losing, like the polls say, then you're happy because nothing changed.
Meaning that what the debate really did more than anything else was just underscore all of the personality foibles and flaws of both of the candidates.
Biden is not completely there.
He is irritable.
He is irascible.
He can get under his skin.
He says nasty things.
And Trump is a badger.
And there is a theory out there that one of the reasons that Trump has not been able to pick up support, despite the fact that Biden is an incredibly weak candidate, is because people are just tired.
If you are of the mind that people are so tired of all of this, this has been an exhausting year from beginning to end.
It's been exhausting.
And really, it's been exhausting since before the election, 2015, but it's been exhausting for four years because the news cycle has been nonstop for four years.
If you abide by the theory that the least exhausting candidate wins, Trump was absolutely exhausting tonight.
Now, if you are somebody who thinks, okay, well, he took it to Biden and he was punching him and he was rabbit punching him and it was just punch, all night.
That's okay.
I mean, that's fine.
But if you're thinking of this outside of the vacuum of the debate alone.
It has always been Biden's biggest strength.
The reason he's, and you and I talked about this in the West Wing three years ago, the reason that Biden is the greatest threat to Trump is because he is the alternative to all the chaos of the last three years.
Whereas a Bernie would have represented a new kind of chaos.
That's right.
A Warren would have represented.
Biden, despite all of his flaws, I think benefits from tonight for the simple fact that I wasn't exhausted when I watched it.
This is the issue though.
I take issue with this.
I half agree with you then that it was a chaotic, horrible debate.
Yes.
I thought it was a chaotic, horrible debate.
It's worse for Trump because if the polls are right, he's trailing in the polls.
Right.
And I think it moved the needle, not at all.
I think that Biden, it confirmed everything we thought about each candidate.
Biden was a bore.
He didn't know what he was talking about.
He was a blithering idiot.
He said some pretty horrible things, by the way.
He said Antifa's only a philosophy.
It's not a group.
Trump's a racist.
Systemic racism infuses every single element.
There's a two-part, a two-tier system in America, in every single part of America, right?
He said not just about the justice system, but in the economy everywhere.
I mean, that's an evil thing to say because it is not true.
And Trump benefited from the fact that Chris Wallace was the worst thing in the debate.
He benefited from that, but his constant interruptions, A, were bad strategy.
Let Biden talk because he makes a full move.
That's right.
It's just bad strategy.
And B, it's just annoying.
It's annoying to not be able to do that.
I want to hear the other guy talk about.
Donald Trump and Chris Wallace had the same strategy.
Yes, you're right.
Which was just Hector and Badger and interrupt.
The best thing that the president had going for him tonight was Chris Wallace.
Totally.
I do want to say this because a lot of the people watching.
It's by default, by the way, that Biden wins.
That's right.
Meaning that if Trump and Wallace were the losers of the evening, with all the badgering, then Biden is what he has always been.
He's the guy who's still standing after the giant NASCAR wreck.
Yeah, but I want to say trailing the field.
I want to say out of the gate before we talk anymore about this, the vast majority of the people watching us are going to vote for Donald Trump.
We're all going to vote for Donald Trump.
The vast majority of the people watching us want the president to win.
That's right.
And when you watch tonight, it may be frustrating to you that we say that the president had a bad night.
A lot of media outlets take the position that what we're supposed to be doing right now is basically image building for the president, that we're supposed to basically fly, no matter what he did tonight, our job is to come out and tell you how great he did, how successful he was, how undefeatable he is, and give you some kind of talking points so that tomorrow, when you're at the water cooler, you can defend the president's performance.
That's just really not what we're about.
I think if you want that, go tune into Fox News.
If you start getting mad because we say the president didn't do great tonight, be mad at the president for not doing great tonight.
He's got two more debates.
I'm not paying on every debate.
I think this was like, hey, the debates happen.
You got your money.
The president has time to make up some ground.
But if he gives that performance at each of the two subsequent debates, I don't see how he can.
I agree that the badgering was frustrating and he shouldn't have done it.
I agree with that.
He shouldn't have done it as much as he did.
He should have done it a little bit.
But the issue is Ronald Reagan said it.
The only way you can have peace, you can have it in the next minute.
The only guarantee you're going to have peace is surrender.
And this is the issue, and this is why Trump's got to pester and badger.
Because when you actually threaten the left, I'm not talking about just cutting taxes or something.
I mean, actually threaten what the left is about.
They come at you relentlessly, like Chris Wallace did tonight.
Chris Wallace, I think, is a Democrat, but he's on ostensibly the right-wing network.
And he was awful.
He was terrible tonight.
And think about it, it's only going to get worse, right?
He's the most conservative guy.
I will say that Wallace did morph over the course of the night.
So for the first 45 minutes, he wasn't terrible.
And then he started to get very, very terrible.
On climate change, he interrupted the president.
That was the worst times.
That was debated.
The white supremacy question was absolutely awful.
Because the premise of the critical race theory thing was completely awful, where he suggested that it was just, you know, racial sensitivity trading.
We're all supposed to be nice to each other.
And that's also Trump's fault for not being able to explicate it.
But it is Wallace's fault for asking a garbage question.
But you got the impression with Wallace that he came in with a game plan and Trump completely threw over the table.
And Wallace didn't know what to do.
And so he just became another one of the debaters.
It was like a three-person debate again.
And we saw this a lot in 2012 with Romney and Obama, where the moderator trying to save Obama would insert themselves into the debate and become part of the story.
I thought you saw that with Wallace a lot tonight.
But to me, the bottom line is that when it comes to Trump's hectoring and badgering, listen, I'm good at debate, right?
I do it professionally.
There are times where this is good.
When you ask somebody a question and they refuse to answer the question and you follow up with the same question and they refuse to answer the question.
And so you follow up again and you ask them the same question.
And so he could have done that a series of times.
He did a little bit on packing the court.
And then he did it a little bit again later when he said, you know, can you name a single police organization across the country that supports you?
The problem is when you do it on every single thing all night, there is no point of contrast.
Even I want to hear what Joe Biden has to say.
And it's not just I want to hear what Joe Biden has to say.
It's that you really have to pick your spot.
If all you're doing is throwing haymakers all night long, and some are hitting and some are not, it's very difficult at that point to even tell which ones are hitting and which ones are not.
All you get is the general sense that he's punching.
So we're going to keep talking about it.
First, I want to talk about our friends over at Policy Genius.
If you have loved ones, depending on your income, you got to do the right thing and get some life insurance.
You know that I've sort of outlined for you guys my personal journey of getting life insurance through Policy Genius.
I didn't think I would still be here because once I said it aloud and my wife was like, wait, we have life insurance.
I pretty much thought the jig was up.
But it is your responsibility.
People depend on you and you need to provide for them in the event that something terrible happens.
Right now, you could save $1,500 or more a year by using Policy Genius to compare life insurance policies.
When you're shopping for a policy that could last for a decade or more, those savings really start to add up.
What is Policy Genius?
Excellent question, Drew.
PolicyGenius is an insurance marketplace built by and backed by a team of industry experts.
The way it works, you go online to policygenius.com in minutes.
You can work out how much coverage you need and compare quotes from top insurers to find your best price.
Step two, you apply for the low.
I wish I had said step one and then step one.
And you could have said 99.
Step two, you apply for your lowest price.
Step three, the policy genius team will handle all the paperwork and red tape.
Policy genius works for you, not for the insurance company.
So if you hit any speed bumps during the application process, they take care of everything.
I think I told you guys I ran into problems.
My problems were related to COVID.
I couldn't get the health checkup that I needed.
When I did get it, The person came out and there was a problem and they weren't actually able to conduct it.
I didn't have to chase it down.
I didn't have to go try to solve the problem.
I just called my rep over at Policy Genius.
They took care of everything.
They rescheduled it, sent someone back out to me even during these trying times so that I could get life insurance to provide for my new growing family.
That kind of service has earned Policy Genius five-star ratings across over 1,600 reviews on TrustPilot and Google.
Generally speaking, life insurance policies do not cover suicide.
So they're of no use to you during that particular debate.
But for many other circumstances, life insurance is an absolute must.
And you should head over to policygenius.com to get started.
You could say $1,500 or more a year by comparing quotes on their marketplace.
Policy genius, when it comes to insurance, it's nice and quite important to get it right.
Okay, guys, you got anything to say about this shit?
I do.
I do.
I actually do have a thing to say, which is- All of my inhibitions are gone.
It's totally, I agree.
I totally agree with your point that Trump was throwing way too many haymakers.
He was badgering too much.
But the thing I think we're overlooking here is here's what I think we're overlooking.
In a normal presidential year.
Yes.
No, in a normal presidential year, you want the president to seem stately and in control and to, right, and he's just debating the Democrat.
But that doesn't work for Trump.
It's not how he got elected.
That's not how he's ever thought about running for office.
He is this different thing, which is he's got to be the outsider.
I think one-on-one does not work as well for Trump as two-on-one.
I think he actually, it benefits Trump to have Chris Wallace jumping in there.
Jeremy just said at the top of it.
And the crazy thing about Trump is he is this billionaire who is outside the establishment.
How has he worked to that image?
I don't know, but he sure has.
He talks like a truck driver from Queens is part of it.
And what's even crazier is he's a billionaire for 40 years or whatever.
He's now the president and he somehow presents as outside of the establishment.
The only way that works is when you're fighting Joe Biden, very establishment Democrat, and Chris Wallace, who's been part of the D.C. establishment forever.
I'm not saying it was a great night for him.
I'm just saying that framework is the only thing I think about this is I just think it was a wash.
The media is going to come out tomorrow.
Their whole story is going to be that he didn't denounce white supremacy clearly enough.
You know, that when they said white supremacy, he said, proud boys stand back, but somebody has to deal with these people.
That sounded like he was saying, you know, wait, hold your water and then go into an attack.
That's what they're going to run.
So that's what they've been doing to him for the whole time.
If everything else is a wash and he's behind in the polls, that means he remains behind.
It's a blown opportunity.
It's a blown opportunity.
Yeah, right.
And by the way, that's typical for a first debate for the incumbent.
Well, that is the typical.
I mean, we will see.
I mean, I may be on Jeremy said.
I'm not sure there will be a second debate.
I'm not out of that.
I mean, like, especially after that one, I could easily see Joe Biden saying that was completely, that was a complete waste of time.
He wouldn't let me talk.
I'm just not doing it anymore.
And I'm calling a lid on the rest of the campaign, basically.
Really, I could absolutely see him doing that.
The last answer that he gave about voting and the Supreme Court and not accepting the results of an election is a complete fail.
Honestly, it's extraordinarily counterproductive.
It's discouraging his own voters from voting by mail, which is idiotic because all the Democrats are going to go vote by mail.
And it's legitimizing all of the Democratic complaints that he's not going to hand over power because he's going to try and go through the Supreme Court, which now puts Coney Barrett on the hook for whatever dumb crap he says about ballot counting or whatever.
Do I think it's a major mistake?
No.
But do I think that he can afford any mistakes at this point?
No.
And that's the bottom line.
If you want him to win, the whole thing is he has to do better than this.
It can't just be a wash.
Okay, when you're behind nine points in the polls in two separate polls in Pennsylvania, when you are running dead even in Florida and you're running within three in Georgia, right?
And there's a poll today that had Biden up in Georgia.
Okay, these are not the numbers you need in order to be this sanguine about these opportunities.
I completely agree.
I think if the- Honestly, I'm angry at him.
I'm angry at him that he didn't do better.
I'm angry at him that he didn't do better.
I'm not angry at him because I want him to lose.
I'm angry at him because I want him to win.
I'm angry at him the same way I'm angry at my six-year-old and my four-year-old when they're having a fight with each other.
I'm like, just don't do this.
Just don't do it.
And honestly, maybe that's part of my problem is that I go home and I deal with my six-year-old and four-year-old slapping the crap out of each other every day.
And then I figure, okay, well, you got a couple of people who are 70.
They probably won't do that.
And then I realize that the most rational part of my day was my six-year-old calling my four-year-old a poop head and my four-year-old smacking her in the grill.
You know, if you take your six-year-old saying, I think I deserve it.
He made a statement.
I would like to respond to this statement.
I think if you take the debate out of context and you just look at it as a debate, it was a wash.
But I think if you put it in the context of what the polls are saying, if the polls are right, and always with the proviso.
It is bad.
By the way, I mean, you want him to have won.
And in the moments, in the moments when he did what you say, in the moments when he punched properly into Biden's talk, then he was winning.
I actually disagree with this.
Because in the moments where he was doing what he should do, Chris Wallace would interrupt him and stop him from being able to do it.
Well, he did do that.
And what the president didn't do a good job with tonight.
So I don't think he did a good job debating Biden, but I also don't think he did a good job debating Chris Wallace.
I agree.
And if he had handled Wallace more like Newt Gingrich handled the press in 2012, or even as Trump handled Anderson Cooper and whoever it was during the debate with Hillary right after the Access Hollywood tape broke, the president did a great job of handling an oppositional debate moderator in that particular debate.
Tonight he didn't.
And so you can't really come up with a single time when the president won in exchange because he either did a poor job with Biden or he did a poor job with Wallace.
That's what Ben said, though.
Tragic Debate Moments00:11:21
The reason is that it crept up on him.
This is right.
Wallace was not that.
And I also think that part of that is because Wallace, so to people who are watching closely, I think you can see Wallace change over the course of the debate from a guy who wants to ask the question, then let them talk and let it go.
Because the beginning, he is letting it go a fair bit.
They're really talking over each other for the first 15 minutes of the debate.
I mean, solid 15 minutes where Wallace really does not interject.
And then Wallace starts to realize, I need to actually get in control of this debate.
I'm the moderator.
It's time for me to moderate.
And the problem is that because Trump has talked over Biden so much at that point, that when Wallace steps in and says, Mr. President, you need to show etiquette, then everybody kind of goes, well, somebody needs to reestablish some sort of control here.
But the problem is, of course, that Wallace didn't reestablish some level of neutral control.
He then proceeded to, instead of saying, listen, the time limit has run.
Stop talking.
The time limit has run.
Instead of doing that, he went to, I'm now going to badger the crap out of you on a bunch of questions where I would not badger Joe Biden.
He was 100% running cover for Joe Biden.
Yeah, of course.
That's running cover for Joe Biden.
The last 45 minutes, I totally agree.
In the first 45 minutes, I'm not sure I agree with that.
But even beyond that, you know, he keeps attacking the president for his lack of etiquette.
Joe Biden called the president of the United States a clown twice, told the president of the United States to shut up two or three times, called him a racist, directly called him a racist twice.
Have we ever had a presidential debate in the last hundred years?
Have we had a presidential debate that contentious?
No, but again, like, I don't mean to be, I feel like a parent here, but when my kids are fighting, like, it is rarely one of them who is being a jerk.
Usually both of them are being a jerk.
I mean, the president did say that Joe Biden was mentally inept, right?
He said, you know, you couldn't even spout these sentences or he called them stupid.
Like, forget the truth of whatever these insults are to each other.
And my general view of insult fights is that generally everybody's correct.
But the reality is that who is the target audience is the question that we should all have in mind.
The target audience is not us.
The target audience is really not really supposed to be the base.
I mean, the debates are really for the people who are in the middle.
Is there anybody in the middle who changed their mind in any significant way on this?
If they did, I think suburban moms were like, uh.
If I hadn't thought that Jeremy was going to give me $100 after this debate, I would have tuned out after the first 15 minutes.
This is exactly right.
I think after the first 15 minutes, the sucker was over.
After the first 15 minutes, I tuned out.
Okay, I was watching it, but like.
It's not just a debate, though, about the people right now.
It's also a debate to establish what's happening on election day and after the election.
And this is why I'll push back a little bit on the mail-in answer.
I agree, I don't think he handled it great, but I do think he had to address the issue of the widespread mail-in voting.
He made this distinction, maybe too many times, but he made it importantly, between a solicited mail-in ballot, absentee ballots, ballots for the military, which are great.
They've worked for a long time, and unsolicited mail-in ballots.
Now we are told, by the way, if you criticize, if you suggest there could be fraud with the unsolicited widespread mail-in ballots, even though you can point to it, right?
The James O'Keefe story about Ilhan Omoris district or the box found on the side of the road or the box found mislabeled.
You can even point to discrete examples.
They'll say, mail-in ballots have never had any problem in America.
And you say, sure, widespread unsolicited mail-in ballots have never occurred.
They are totally unprecedented.
First, Chris Wallace wouldn't actually let him make that answer about solicited versus unsolicited.
Because by that point, Wallace was fully a third debater in the contest.
So I think that that's the bigger problem is this.
What is the typical end?
He's gone south on Fox News as well.
I've never liked this technique.
I've never liked the technique for repeatedly interrupting people who aren't.
If you aren't filibustering, you shouldn't interrupt an answer.
And he does it all the time.
But now he's got a little bit of Trump derangement syndrome.
I think he really thinks there's something about Trump that is specifically offensive to him that he goes after.
And after all, listen, we all know Trump has his big flaws and he can be incredibly offensive and all this.
But Joe Biden also has his huge flaws and is incredibly offensive.
Biden got away with nearly everything tonight.
I mean, really, nearly everything.
To me, the one that stuck out when it came to Wallace is Wallace specifically, I believe, said before the debate that he was really going to follow up with Biden on the packing the court thing.
He really didn't.
He asked Biden about it, and Biden elided it again.
And instead of him just terriering him the way he did with Trump on global warming, instead he just sort of let it go.
And that was the first, I thought, indicator of the night.
Because that happened about 20 minutes in.
That was the first indicator of the night where I was like, oh, this is going to go south on Wallace real fast here.
But as far as the mail-in ballot thing, here's the problem.
Again, this runs to the exhaustion syndrome.
Yep.
Biden was saying, listen, his answer at the end was, whatever the answer is, all the ballots will be counted, and then you'll have a president.
And Trump's answer was, well, there could be widespread mail-in voting.
They could be corrupt ballots.
They could be fraudulent ballots.
And so people go, wait a second, there may not be an end to this ever.
That's right.
Ever.
It's actually Trump's worst answer because even if he plans on contesting it, the right answer tonight was, I'm going to make sure that we have a fair election.
But if I lose a fair election, I will, of course, concede the election.
What's so funny about this is we know Biden plans on contesting.
Exactly.
Of course we do.
He's already hired 600 lawyers.
He's already bragged about this.
And this is part of the issue, though, on the mail-in, encouraging the mail-in versus in-person, is I think I'd be willing to put money down right now that Trump wins on election night.
If they even count the votes on election night, they might not even do that.
But the votes counted on election night.
I suspect he wins.
The Democrats are already admitting this.
They're saying he'll win, but it'll be a red mirage.
And then they're going to find some boxes of ballots on a truck somewhere in Jersey or whatever.
And then somehow Biden.
And by the way, to be fair, that did happen in 2018.
I mean, we were here when we said this is not a blue wave.
And then over the course of the next three weeks, it became a blue wave.
There were a bunch of seats that we thought were going to go red that would end up going purple, particularly in Orange County.
Yeah, I love those mail-ins.
Yep.
Love them.
Yeah, for the first time.
Orange County has these mail-in ballots.
It's the first time that they've gone Democratic.
The ballot harvesting.
The ballot harvest.
Ballot harvesting.
Ballot harvesting is not the real problem.
It's a real problem.
He's not wrong to point that out, but he is wrong to go on for five minutes about how the election might be fraudulent.
Yeah, no, that wasn't.
It's exhausting.
And are you tired?
And it is dark.
I'm tired, okay.
Like, really, I'm tired.
And I'm not just tired because I got up at 5.30 this morning, right?
I'm tired because this was exhausting.
And who was more exhausting?
I mean, let's just be raw about this.
Who was more exhausting on the stage, Trump or Biden?
You know, I got to, that's where I challenge you.
I thought the whole thing was exhausting.
I thought that they were, it was, I think it was Jonah Goldberg who tweeted that it was like a remake of Grumpy Old Men.
And that's what I really thought it was.
I did not think that Trump was more exhausting than Biden.
I thought Biden was really awful.
I didn't think, I thought it was a wash.
I think both of them.
Again, taking the debate out of context, out of the polls, out of everything, if you just showed me that debate and I didn't know the context, I would just think this was a disaster.
It was chaos.
I don't know who won't.
But Biden didn't contribute to the chaos.
This is right.
Biden gave a bad performance, but he did not contribute to.
Clown, shut up.
No, no, no.
But that's not the, the chaos is Donald Trump didn't allow Joe Biden to get a word in Edgewise.
And Chris Wallace didn't let Donald Trump get a word in Edgewise in the second half.
That's fair.
In fact, that is the one thing that Biden has been very consistent about throughout these debates.
He strategically withdraws from the debates.
In the primaries, he would withdraw for 20 minutes in the debates.
He would just disappear.
And then he would duck back in and say, my time has elapsed.
It is another word elapsed.
My time has expired.
And then he would stop himself, literally dead in the middle of the answer.
We'd all be like, what was that?
Like, why didn't he just continue his answer?
Like, it was the difference between somebody saying jerky things, which he did.
He said a bunch of terrible jerky things tonight, horrible things.
In fact, I think he said a couple things that are actually outright evil, including the idea that America is racist in all of its iterations.
I thought that was an evil thing to say.
I think it's an evil thing to say.
But it is the difference between a person occasionally saying nasty things you don't like and a person in your ear going, and that's, and that's what it was.
I have children.
I'm in the car with them.
Jeremy can attest that when we are on the phone and children are screaming in the car, your first reaction is to hang up the phone.
I doubt there are four of us in this room.
I doubt five people made it all the way through the end of that debate.
Oh, I agree.
I agree.
I agree.
But again, I just think that they were both awful in different ways.
What a referendum on America.
Yeah, everybody's awful.
Are you kidding me?
Everyone in his or her own way.
I think when you're watching a debate like this and you think back to what debates used to be, even at their most zingy, you know, even like your most captured moment, I zinged you and now I'm on TV.
Even then, this was a disaster.
Remember, okay, so the zingers used to be, you know, John F. Kennedy.
You know Jay.
And he had to set it up.
He had moments to set that joke up.
Right.
Or, you know, Agent Inexperience.
Right.
The agent inexperience won.
I mean, when Reagan says, I will not make age an issue of the campaign.
And Mondale laughed.
Right.
It was that respectful that Mondale laughed at the joke.
Honestly, it just shows the degradation of the American intellect.
I got to say, because our insults used to be good insults.
Like, these were crap third grade level insults.
You're a racist.
You're a moron.
You're stupid.
Your son's a drug addict.
We get what we deserve good and hard in this country.
That's what's hurt me about Trump from the very beginning, the very beginning, is that I think that Trump is necessary to do what he has done, which has been great.
Some of the stuff he's done has been great.
I think he's necessary, but I think it's tragic that it's necessary.
I think it is tragic that in order to do the kinds of things that Trump has done, you have to be a bull and you have to be a bully.
And I think that that's too bad.
Again, I would be okay with all of those things.
If on a pure Machiavellian political level, I would be okay with all of those things if I thought that they were drawing him closer to victory.
I just don't think that drew him closer to victory now.
Because I wouldn't even be, I mean, I would be happier.
I said on a Machiavellian level, on a virtuous level, I wouldn't.
On a virtuous level, I'd prefer this as Lincoln Douglas.
But it ain't Lincoln Douglas.
This is the world we live in.
I get it, right?
I get it.
As I've said before, I don't think that Trump is the murderer.
I think he's the coroner.
I think he came across the body of American politics.
And he said, okay, this body is cold.
And then people are like, oh, you're standing above it with a knife.
He's like, no, I took the knife out of the body.
I didn't murder the body.
I've been saying that for a long time.
No, I think that's absolutely right.
But perfect description.
With that said, like on a pure just Machiavellian, you want to see, you like the guy's policies.
What you want the tragedy to be is not a tragic flaw, right?
I mean, normally the tragedy ends with like an actual tragedy where he does all the good things.
And then it turns out that his tragic flaw eats him alive.
Yeah.
I mean, then that's that's the narrative that's being drawn right here is that he's a man who I think that's right too because Donald Trump, the one thing we know about Trump more than any other human being, living or dead, is that the man loves the spotlight.
He cannot evade the spotlight.
He's like a moth to it.
And in a time when people do not like you, the best move you have is to leave the spotlight.
The best thing that happened to him in 2016, I heard Chris Steyerwald, I thought, had an excellent analysis of this.
He does a good podcast with Dana Perino, and they were talking about 2016.
He said the best thing that happened to Trump was the Access Hollywood tape.
Why?
Not because of the Access Hollywood tape, but because of two factors.
One, Democrats thought he'd lost the election and they stayed home.
And two, Donald Trump was so put off by the Access Hollywood tape, he went into hiding for three weeks.
And because he went to hiding for three weeks, the center of the election went and it suddenly focused on Hillary.
And when Comey hit her with that letter near the end of the election cycle, the only thing people were talking about in the week leading up to the election was Hillary Clinton.
Do you think anyone is coming away from this debate talking about Joe Biden?
No.
Yeah, no, I see.
I think that that's why it was a strategic error, leaving everything else aside.
It was a strategic error to keep interrupting him because if you let Biden talk, he makes a fool of himself.
He should have done that.
He should have robotoped him a little bit more.
I agree.
Bringing Normal Back00:00:50
We want to thank you guys for joining us.
We're going to be back for whatever debates might ensue.
I'm not going to make any bets about whether or not they will or will not.
But if they do, we will be here.
Until then, you can hear from these guys on the morrow as they bring you their normal podcast.
And you can hear from me, hopefully never again.
We'll see you guys next time.
Daily Wire Backstage is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer is me, Jeremy Warren.
Our supervising producer is Matt Viscaluck.
Our assistant director is Papa Wadowski.
And our technical producer, Austin Stevens.
Editing is by Jim Nicol.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina, and our audio assistant is Robin Fenderson.