Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 2020 Washington Post Discussi

Washington post, this is one half hour. Good morning. I am jonathan capehart. Welcome to first look. The onestop shop for news and analysis all about the Democratic Convention. Join me each morning for uptodate information from Washington Post reporters, followed by commentary from prominent Washington Post columnists and contributors. We are starting this morning after the Democratic Convention with the man we started with. Glenn kessler, good morning and welcome. Dan, i will start with you. Give me your initial reaction to the speech last night by former Vice President and now democratic president ial nominee, joe biden. Dan i thought it was a very strong speech, probably one of the best speeches of a former Vice President and now democratic nominee has given his long career. This has been a pretty successful convention up to last night. But all conventions eventually depend on the performance of the nominee. There are questions about whether biden was going to rise to that moment. I think he did. I thought it was thematically strong. I thought the delivery was quite forceful it it answered questions i think the Trump Campaign has tried to put out there that joe biden is not up to the moment. I thought last night he was up to the moment. One other, this convention has reinvented what conventions will be in the future. They have shown a new way to do it. One of the things that this convention showed is there is a value in short speeches. This was probably one of the shortest acceptance speeches in modern times. I thought biden benefited from that. He was able to keep it on a level and on a plane that i thought was more effective than if he had gone into a lengthy laundry list of the kind of thing we have seen when speeches go one for 30 minutes or 40 minutes, or in the case of bill clinton, 50 minutes. I want to get you to look ahead to the Republican National convention. After having seen the four nights of the Democratic Convention, what are you expecting to see from the republicans next week . Dan my guess is it will be quite a different convention. For one, they have not done the kind of production work that the democrats spent months putting together. This will be next week, a much more of a live event and without some of the packaging and entertainment value of it. The other thing we know is that although it is called the Republican National convention, it will be the Trump National convention. Trump will be the centerpiece throughout. They will probably have tricks up their sleeve to top what the democrats did. The other aspect we should anticipate is there will be a relentless attack against joe biden and Kamala Harris, and the democrats in general. There will be a lot of negativity. I suspect the tone of it is likely to be different than what we saw this week. As dan just said, joe bidens speech had policy, not too much and not too little. What did you pick up on from bidens speech . Glenn as a factcheck are this week, i was frustrated. The short speeches meant less facts we could explore. I was looking back four years ago, about every night of the Democratic Convention we could have about 12 items that we could pick apart. But because of this convention, they spoke much more in generalities so instead of saying 500,000 people a year go bankrupt because of medical bills, which is a problematic claim, they just said many people face financial problems because of health care. That was a problem for us. In bidens speech last night, there was one case where he used a raw figure, that number of deaths that the United States has, to say the u. S. Is the worst the world. But if you look at it the way many Public People look at it, the u. S. Is the fourth nation most affected by the coronavirus. ,therwise it was picking apart the Vice President brought up charlottesville. You can debate whether not President Trump forcefully denounced White Supremacists and nazis, which he did at one point and seemed to take it back. It is much more subtle. It just was not great for us t checkers this jonathan checkers this week. Jonathan i can hear and see the frustration on your face and in your voice. That you have a job to do and it is frustrating when someone makes it difficult for you to do your job. I will have you do what dan did, to look into the future for what you anticipate your job will be during the Republican Convention. Do you think you will have more work to do . Glenn i would think so. Definitely. Every action and politics results in a reaction. Of course, we have been documenting the many misleading statements the president has made during his presidency. I will make a pitch, we wrote a whole book, called donald trump and his assault on truth. I think democrats have tried very hard in this collection to say, we are up against a guy who misleads all the time, so we are not going to do that. They adjust their language to make it more difficult for us to call them out. In the case of the republicans and trump, i imagine that the president , in his acceptance speech, it will not be much different than the many other speeches we have fact checked, and generally, there are 50 to 60 misleading or false claims that he makes per speech. I have no doubt he will not disappoint me and living up to that reputation. Jonathan i have my notes from your column today. You have a disclaimer at the top about the reason for not giving pinocchios during conventions. Do i have that right . Glenn right. We have these roundups. We have pinocchios in a standalone condom were we dig deep into a particular statement, which also allows for the person being factcheck to make their case. In the instance of a convention situation, it is often hard to do that, so we are just doing quick little takes, two or three paragraphs. Just be fair to everyone, we dont award pinocchios at the convention. 65 to 75 of the statements donald trump has said have earned four pinocchios, the worst rating. We will not that, but we will not have them at the bottom. Jonathan we have a couple of minutes remaining. What is the biggest whopper told by the president that he keeps repeating, if you have a top of mind . Glenn the one he has said more than 350 times, he created the greatest economy in the history of the world, before the coronavirus. That is just absurd on its face. Many recent president s, dwight eisenhower, lyndon johnson, bill clinton, on just about every metric, had better economies than what President Trump had in his first few years as president. And actually, before the coronavirus, the u. S. Was headed into a manufacturing recession. That is something he says constantly, and it is simply false. More specifically, in the campaign, he keeps saying joe biden wants to defund the police. Oft is the exact opposite bidens policy. Jonathan i will give you the last word. What is the watchword we should be looking for when it comes to the Republican Convention . Dan i think the key to the Republican Convention and the key to the Term Campaign Going Forward is whether they can find a consistency in their message. Whether it is a consistency in their line of attack against joe biden, which they have not yet been able to settle on, or a consistency in a discipline on the part of the president. A lot of democrats are mindful of the fact that in 2016 in the final stages of the campaign, donald trump became a more disciplined candidate was never going to be entirely disciplined, but compared to what he had been earlier on in the cycle, they regard him as somebody who found some discipline and stuck with it. Thats been missing in this election year. That is the key that hes got to figure out and settle on in order to bring himself back into the thick of this race. Balz, glennn kessler, thank you very much for being here this morning. Next, my colleagues on that side, ton post opinion hewitt, and donna edwards. Good morning. Hugh, starting with you. Last night, joe bidens acceptance speech, what was the highlight for you . Hugh i think he did really well. I just finished three hours of radio. Everyone i had on agreed he gave a very solid speech. Chris combs was the start of introduction the president needed, emphasizing what a good guy he is. My experiences with him are the same. If anyone had a doubt about joe biden being a good guy, thats gone. I also think it was a little bit carb when it comes to policy. The highlight is that he got out of it without a mistake but the best thing for a republican would be, he took away that low bar of expectation. He delivered a good performance. Therefore, that low bar of expectation is gone. I am looking forward to the debate. Am looking for the rnc i hope they learn from what the democrats did. I will tell you one thing, i played four times this week aocs entire speech. Four times on my conservative center right radio show, i played her entire speech. I love the speech. I would play it for a Republican Convention, because that is the Democratic Party. Donna seriously, hugh . Yes. I played it four times because she represents the Democratic Party. Jonathan im arguing with your notion that she is the entirety of the Democratic Party. You are a democratic congresswoman from maryland. What was your reaction to the speech . Donna joe biden really did deliver the speech for the moment. I thought that he struck at the ideals of the country and i think everybody wants to feel that inside. He struck that cord. He talks about that without actually saying i have integrity. He talked about his life in a way that we understood his integrity, his sincerity, and his competence to get the job done. I thought it was a terrific speech. I have thought a lot about this. I think some of these speeches were totally ideal and appropriate for the kind of convention that was conducted online in almost an empty room. I think that joe bidens speech went over so well in living rooms and dens and kitchens, that it may not have come across that way in a crowded arena. I thought it was great. Look, i am a progressive. I completely can embrace joe biden and Kamala Harris. And i think that if you look over the course of the four days, you really did see the depth and the breadth of the Democratic Party, the diversity of the party, not just in race and ethnicity but in gender and age across the board. I think that is reflective of who the Democratic Party is. Add to that the sprinkle of republicans who are also supporting this candidacy, it shows the breadth and depth of the United States of america. Last night, our colleague, joy reed, had an interesting take on who joe biden was talking to in his acceptance speech. She said he thought he was talking directly to white workingclass voters. Talking to them about why he is ok, why he is a viable option for them to either come home to or to turn away from President Trump. What do you make of that . Who do you think joe biden was talking to . Perceptive. Always there was a today show interview with greg melvin this week where he talked to an unemployed steelworker. I am from northeastern ohio which borders on pennsylvania. There is no chance of ohio flipping to joe biden. I think western pennsylvania is still deep blue. I think joy is expressing her hope as opposed to reality. The reality is, we are replaying the 2016 election. It will be a turnout election. The minnesota poll has got to scare people. I heard Glenn Kessler hedge because Fact Checking is a very subjective business. Biden toldlieve joe the truth about that last night. We will see how long this indoors. It is the blue bubble for both parties or the red bubble for the republicans. You have to make sure you are doing a factcheck against reality and last night joy was in the blue bubble jonathan . Hugh, charlottesville canard . What is the canard . Hugh the canard is that he did not say there were good people among the neonazis. He denounced neonazis in the same press conference. I believe any fair presentation of those remarks would point out the president explicitly that neonazis. Jonathan i would go to glenns factcheck, he writes about that in the point of the president s remarks is that there were very fine people within the new nazis and glenn points out that actually, there were none. That dark hugh that is not what he said, but we can put that aside for another time. Jonathan i telling you what am glenn wrote in his Fact Checking column in the Washington Post today. What do you make of joys analysis that Vice President biden was aiming his message directly at white workingclass voters . Donna i think there were a lot of messages in there. To the extent he was doing that, he did it without alienating the base of his party, without alienating black women, without alienating young people, without alienating progressives. He spoke to the hopes and dreams and aspirations of people that are shared across these lines. Is going tolection be on the margins. I know coming out of 2016, i dont pay that much attention to public polling, but the fact is, the 2016 election was won or lost on the margins in a couple of states. I suspect that this election is going to be about how joe biden and Kamala Harris can inspire am turn out their voters, lakeshore make sure that people vote in whatever way makes them comfortable, that they can cast their vote. I am convinced that because of who joe biden is, who Kamala Harris is, this is going to have a deep impact on voters who turnout. Be willing to figure out a way to cast their ballots in 2020. When you look at joe bidens speech last night, i think he spoke on a higher plane. He was not in the dirty details. He was saying, who are we as americans . How do we own our democracy . I think people are going to respond to that. Jonathan lets look ahead to the Republican National Convention Next week. Hugh, you talked about democrats being in the blue bubble. What is the red bubble next week going to look like . Hugh a lot of china talk. The fact is, they need to do better than the democrats did in terms of putting more people on the set. Theres a reason we have three people on the set right now because broadcast requires more than direct camera messaging. My suggestion is to put the president in a room with combat veterans of the air force, the army, the marine corps, the rebuild talk about that that had to be done after president obamas tenure as commander in chief. I would have them in conversation a lot more than they use joe biden. When it comes down to it, it is a choice between the Vice President and the president. I would highlight a lot more minutes in the primetime with the president then the democrats chose to highlight joe biden. So different from Kamala Harris, i cannot wait for that debate. Kamala harris has been my choice for this ticket for 2. 5 years. I am so glad she finally redeemed most of my predictions. She gave a very fine speech. That is going to be a lit debate. [laughter] jonathan it frightens me, actually, that you are rooting for Kamala Harris to be a part of the ticket. And not in a good way. Hugh in a good way. I think she was the strongest candidate by far. I have watched her for 10 years in california. She is much better than the campaign she ran. Much better than the campaign she ran. Jonathan we found a nugget of something to agree on. I absolutely agree with you. I am sorry to interrupt. I will turn it over to donna. Think one of the challenges for republicans, if withontrast that democrats, there were so many kind of real people telling their stories, they were uplifting, they were hopeful. We got to see them and we got to see them as they defined who joe biden is. Im not really sure the names have come out on some of the characters that are going to be in the Republican Convention, whether they have that contrast that really tried to uplift his character to the extent that anyone can do that. So i think for republicans, i dont agree with you at all. This is not a choice election. This is a referendum on a president who has been described by any number of the speakers last week as a failure and described by Vice President biden as a failure. He is going to have to explain to the American People and defend his handling of the covid response, his handling of the economic recovery. He is going to have to explain caging children. All of these things, i think, are displaying that there is going to be a referendum on donald trump. And i think the beauty of the Democratic Convention was not just highlighting the downside of the donald trump administration, but uplifting the voice that joe biden and the leadership that he is going to bring and competence to government again. I think all of those things are going to be in stark on trust with the Republican Convention. And it is going to be noisy. Jonathan im going to have you pick up on something donna just talked about, real people telling their stories. It made me immediately think about the couple in st. Louis who had their guns on their lawn at the black lives matter protest. What kind of story is