Washington Week with The Atlantic

Where tonight we will not make a single joke about cats or dogs, because we are a serious show about the once serious business of a serious city.

I'm so old that I can remember a time when you can get through an entire presidential campaign without once hearing about immigrant cat-eating or the relative death-dealing qualities of sharks and boat batteries or windmills and their relationship to bacon shortages.

I'm not complaining, I'm just observing.

Tonight, we'll talk about Tuesday's debate and how Kamala Harris exceeded expectations and how Donald Trump ended the week by saying, essentially, not going to do that again.

We're 53 days out from the election and I'll discuss the state of the race with Ashley Parker, the senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post, Eugene Daniels, a White House correspondent for Politico and co-author of Playbook, Jerusalem Demsas, my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of the new book, On the Housing Crisis, and Asma Khalid, NPR's White House correspondent and an ABC News political contributor.

Thank you for joining me.

Eventful week, no cats, no dogs.

I'm serious about it.

I'm trying to - - and I'm saying that to myself, obviously.

Jerusalem, let me start with you.

This is a fact insufficiently known in Washington, as far as I'm concerned, but you were voted Speaker of the Year for the American Parliamentary Debate Association as a college debater, which meant that you were the best college debater in America.

So you're the expert.

You have the floor.

Tell us what we saw Tuesday night.

Tell us what we -- not just what we heard, but tell us what we saw.

JERUSALEM DEMSAS, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Well, you definitely didn't see a college debate on Tuesday night.

So -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You mean the level was too low?

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: Exactly.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, all right.

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: You know, it's funny.

I mean, when you're in college debate, you like to think that most of what's happening is, are your arguments winning, but there's this, you know, element that you realize, especially as you start getting good later in, you know, college career, that a lot of it also has to do with how people are perceiving you.

And you can see that, you know, Vice President Kamala Harris really knew that.

She was really trying to get under his skin.

She's using her facial expressions to inspire a level of ridicule in the audience from, you know, the metaphorical judges, the voters, that there was something ridiculous about him without having to respond to specific arguments.

She was able to inspire a sense that, you know, you don't have to respond to the cats and dogs.

All you can say is, what is there to say to this, other than, we're going to move on.

Now, how important that is in the long-term?

Who knows?

Obviously, it's the case that both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign felt like they won that night.

And in the long-term, what will matter is the fact that he wasn't able to answer whether or not he would veto a national abortion ban, what he said about Ukraine, but at the same time, it's clear that when it comes to how people feel about that night and the days after, they really feel like she did a good job.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Ashley, does Donald Trump and does Donald Trump's team actually think that he won?

ASHLEY PARKER, Senior Political Correspondent, The Washington Post: Donald Trump's team absolutely does not think that he won.

Donald Trump has insisted that he believes that he won, and he has that ability to convince himself of certain untruths, so that's more of an open question.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But from your reporting, there's no doubt that the Trump people know that was not a great -- ASHLEY PARKER: No, and that's what you saw midway through the debate, them starting to attack the moderators, them starting to attack ABC, them saying, look, it's him debating three other people.

That's not the messaging or the spin of a dominant candidate out there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Eugene, does it matter?

EUGENE DANIELS, White House Correspondent, Politico: I mean, yes and no, right?

At the end of the day, Vice President Harris had to perform.

Her team knew that there was more pressure on her than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has done the most presidential debates of any presidential candidate in history, both primary and seven general election debates.

And so she had to kind of step up, one, and show people that she had a command of the issues.

She had to and poke and prod him, I think, better than any of the people he's ever debated, right, getting under his skin, I think, from the very first moment when she like walked over behind his lectern to shake his hand, making very clear, as we called it and said in Playbook this week, like the alpha female, right, like, making it very clear.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It wasn't expected.

EUGENE DANIELS: He wasn't expecting that.

I don't think he liked it either.

And so whether voters actually care how they did on the debate stage, it was about making sure that she got up there and did better than people wanted and thought she was going to do.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Asma, I want you to comment on something that I want to play for you all.

It's a moment from the debate that really gets at the heart of the challenge that Kamala Harris poses to Donald Trump.

Let's listen.

KAMALA HARRIS: It's important to remind the former president you're not running against Joe Biden you're running against me.

I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up.

And that's not who we are as Americans.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The thing that he hasn't been able to do in the last month or so is adjust his view or become accustomed to the reality that he's running against this 60-year-old, very sharp African-American/South Asian woman, not ancient Joe Biden, which was the target in the long lead up to this moment.

Why is he not showing a learning curve here.

ASMA KHALID, White House Correspondent, NPR: I would say a couple of reasons.

One is that he had not anticipated this change to happen, right?

You heard for weeks after it happened, all of this sort of nostalgia for Biden, he was cheated out of the race.

It's the kindest messages I think we heard from Trump about Biden in many years.

But also I would say, I mean, the reality is that what we saw in the debate stage to me was that, you know, Trump's central message for much of this campaign cycle was one major thesis, and that was that Joe Biden, his opponent, was too old.

That argument has gone out the window now that he's running against a woman who is nearly 20 years younger than him.

She has suddenly become sort of physically the change candidate.

I mean, her campaign talks about a new way forward.

I would make the argument that not very many of her policies are actually different than Biden, right?

I mean, Republicans have tried -- I would say Trump didn't do it that well during the debate because he was rambling, but they have tried to tether her to Biden.

And whether it was on, you know, Ukraine -- support for Ukraine, whether it was on the war in the Middle East, whether it was on the economy immigration, pretty much to a tee, most of her policies echo President Biden's, but she is physically manifesting change and a new way forward.

EUGENE DANIELS: And her, and Trump's campaign wanted him to do that on stage, but instead he said that Joe Biden hates her, he can't stand her.

So, he was supposed to tie Kamala Harris and Joe Biden together, and what he did was draw even further for voters a line between the two.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's so interesting, I mean, as I'm watching it, and I'm familiar with some of Trump's trigger words.

It seems as if -- it almost is like somebody asked ChatGPT, give us a list of 20 words that always trigger Donald, and you had, I mean, from crowd size to the words that he cannot stand to hear, John McCain.

ASHLEY PARKER: With the thumbs down hand gesture, and also more subtly mentioning Wharton, that he has a lot of pride in to rebut his economic argument.

I mean, those Easter eggs were both subtle and very blatant.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, the goal was to psychologically undo him.

And I'm fascinated by the internal Trump campaign dynamic, where they obviously had to anticipate the people advising him that she would try this.

And they probably told him, but it doesn't seem, Jerusalem, that it matters.

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: It's also clear, though, like at the end, you know, when he was doing his closing remarks, it's almost like he came back to himself and he remembered the message he was supposed to be getting.

It's the first time you really hear him make the claim, you know, that she's going to be a continuation of Biden, that, you know, if she'd want to do all these great things she's talking about, that why didn't she do it in the last three and a half years.

And it was almost like you saw him re entering his body after being pushed to, you know, his trigger points on all these different topics.

So, you know, I do think that it was a situation where he was not expecting to be rattled by her and was clearly underestimating her.

ASMA KHALID: But one thing that was also striking to me is if you listen to Trump rallies, he's not been shy about saying Kamala Harris' name.

I would argue he often mispronounces it, calls her Kamala, I mean he mispronounced it a whole host of ways.

But during the debate, I don't believe we ever heard him once utter her name, which was just striking to me because Harris repeatedly did, you know, talk about -- talk to Trump by name.

He just never spoke to her name, and she or her, yes.

ASHLEY PARKER: Something about the way he speaks about her publicly and has been reported privately is he's very dismissive of her.

He has said he doesn't believe she is smart.

And so there's something also about someone who he views as somehow other and beneath him.

I mean, he's made that very clear.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I wonder if he feels that way anymore.

ASHLEY PARKER: Then going up against him toe to toe and getting under his skin.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, he underestimated the adversary, is what you think?

I mean, it's -- ASHLEY PARKER: He underestimated -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's kind of an Occam's razor thing, that's the most obvious conclusion we could draw, that he just went in there thinking that, well, what is this woman?

ASHLEY PARKER: And then could not maintain the self-discipline that his aides had tried to prep him for 90 minutes, because he was so frustrated that this woman who he did not believe is on the level of him was getting the better of him time and time again.

EUGENE DANIELS: If you ever wonder how -- the way that he's interacted with women, whether they be women politicians or women reporters, the ones that kind of catch the worst from him are often black women and women of color who are reporters, especially, when you think about people like April Ryan, people -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: My predecessors, Yamiche.

EUGENE DANIELS: Yamiche, right?

Like the way that he spoke to them was different than the way that he definitely how he spoke to men, and also how he spoke to white women.

And you saw that on stage.

He often does not think that black women or women of color, it seems, can rise to the same level as him.

And if you think that way, watching someone do that and actually get under your skin and have a strategy in poking at little things that bother you, that is going to come out.

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: And there's an irony to it too, because he thinks he's such a populist, right?

And there's a level, like you said, he's so proud of at Wharton, this Ivy League school.

And Kamala Harris is someone who did not attend an Ivy League school.

She feels she doesn't have the academic credentials, the intellectual credentials to stand up next to him.

And then when she's able to get under his skin, and I think it's even more shocking to his senses.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, no, is this -- that's an interesting point.

I'm trying to understand the reason that he didn't look at her during the -- I wonder if it goes to something that Eugene is talking about or if it goes to a strategy.

I mean, she was directly right at me and it can be interpreted as fear.

It can be interpreted as contempt.

It could be interpreted as just I'm going to look at the audience the whole time and I don't care about her.

I don't know what.

EUGENE DANIELS: Or I'm not going to look at her because I might get too pissed off and make a face that might return off the white suburban women.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But that assumes a level of discipline.

No, yes, discipline in his approach.

And, obviously, you know, I'm just imagining, and there's a little reporting around, but I'm just imagining that there is -- you know, she's going to try to get under your skin, she's going to try to get under your skin.

And, you know, obviously, for Kamala Harris, they did endless prep.

EUGENE DANIELS: And real debate prep, because he does not do that, right?

He talks about it as like going out and talking to the people and doing his rallies is the way that he does debate prep.

That did not work.

She did actual debate prep where a former Hillary Clinton aide, Philippe Reines, who played Donald Trump for Hillary Clinton, did the exact same thing for her, where they sat across -- sat, you know, near each other and had an actual debate.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And Philippe, those we know him from years of covering, Philippe is a person, I'll put this diplomatically, he doesn't mind getting under your skin when it's appropriate to the moment, from his perspective.

ASHLEY PARKER: He could be a method Trump.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, probably.

He didn't leave character, actually, as they say.