President here, 25 days or so out from the election, is in dire straits, will have to mount an almost unprecedented comeback. Explain. Well, the first debate was a debacle and then he got with covid which puts you covid back in the middle of the campaign, dominated the news for the last seven days and as a result hes fallen behind from about 6 in the real clear politics poll back to about 10 . And this is a point at which he needs to have Forward Movement and not be falling back. Paul all right. So whats the comeback strategy here. Well, first of all, generally throughout every day theyve got to do three things, find a way to say heres what ive done, a little bit of that, more on what it is i want to do in the future. You cannot get reelected without saying i have a second act in me. I know what i want to do and it sounds good to you what i want to do in the next four years. He needs to turn it into being a contrast with joe biden and frankly we saw in the Vice President ial debate a very effective job by mike pence in doing exactly that. And he needs to be able to say the emphasis is on the economy. Were doing the best we can on fighting covid. But you know and i know that im the better guy to reignite the American Economy as we start to put this behind us but weve got a lot of work to do to get it behind us. I know that because heres what im doing. But im the guy with the second term agenda that will get the economy roaring like it was until february of this year. Paul it is too late, given the magnitude of the gap between the candidates, though . I mean, a lot of people say in the trump camp, look, this is exactly the date at which the tape came out access hollywood tape. Paul access hollywood tape, billy bush and all that and that was Hillary Clintons biggest lead in the polls and yet the president won. Hes the incumbent now, which makes it harder to close that gap. I think thats right. But i also think compensating for that is biden is not welldefined. We would have he secured his partys nomination m march. In a normal campaign we would have had march, april, may, june, july, august, september with him being defined by the fact that he was out on the campaign trail a lot, being asked questions by the press, having to deal with all the hinges of being an active campaigner. Instead hes been quiet and out of sight. Thats helped him because it put the focus on trump. It hurt him because we dont have a welldefined sense of who he is. Missteps on his part or surprises by President Trump if trump were able to show empathy and make a complex with questioners, didnt treat them as antagonist, but they were people trying to get him to help them understand something so he could make a decision, if he pulled off that surprise that could be a benefit to him because biden is not locking in people. People are primarily for him because theyre not for trump and they want to have change but if it suddenly becomes the wrong kind of change or trumps presence in the office becomes more palatable to them, bidens doesnt have deep allegiances among his voters. Paul briefly, karl, Supreme Court hearings next week likely to change much . I guess it would help the president just by changing the conversation. Thats it, change the subject, the subject becomes the Supreme Court. It will highlight the unwillingness for reasons that are inexplicable to me for joe biden to answer the question are you going to pack the court and are you going to get rid of the 60 vote rule in the senate. This will help trump but he has to do more. Paul still ahead, the Vice President ial candidates squaring off in salt lake city. Our panel takes a closer look at their lines of attack and what it says about each tickets strategy for the closing weeks of the campaign. When you speak about the Supreme Court, though, i think the American People really deserve an answer, senator harris. Are you and joe biden going to pack the court . They knew you what was happening and they didnt tell you. Can you imagine if you knew on january 28th as owe pose opposeo march 13th what they knew what you might have done to prepare . They knew and covered it up. The president said it was a hoax. They minimized the seriousness of it. Joe biden and Kamala Harris want to raise taxes, want to bury our economy under a 2 trillion Green New Deal which you were one of the original cosponsors of in the United States senate. They want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking which would cost hundreds of thousands of american jobs all across the heartland. Paul the Vice President ial nominees squaring off this week in their first and only debate. Senator Kamala Harris attacking the trump administrations response to the coronavirus pandemic and Vice President mike pence accusing the democratic ticket of pushing a far left policy agenda. Lets bring in our panel, wall street journal columnist, dan henninger, columnist kim strassel and Editorial Board member, kyle peterson. Dan, seems to me this debate showed, again, what has been the democratic strategy all along. Boils down to me to two words, could individual and Donald Trumps character and thats pretty much it. You throw in healthcare but thats about it. But its working for them. How do you see it going . Yeah, id say that was the strategy going in and not only that, but Kamala Harris proved that their strategy is to say pretty much anything they want about donald trump. I mean, they blame him for more than 200,000 personally for more than 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus. She claimed that his trade deal with china has cost the United States 300,000 jobs. Theres no real Fact Checking going on there. So yeah, theyre getting away with it. But i think mike pence showed that the problem on the other side is that joe biden has essentially been running for president as casper the friendly ghost. You can barely make out who hes is or where he is. As mike pence made clear, there is a set of policies relating to climate, the Green New Deal, abortion, taxes, that align this cacandidacy with the far left of the policy with Bernie Sanders and aoc. That has not been lines have not been clearly drawn and i think mike pence did a good job of trying to make some distinctions that need to be made by the trump campaign. Paul kim, on that point, it astonishes me that the you have a major party candidate. Hes not running on any policies that i can tell other than hes not donald trump, wants to return to normalcy, and he has a better plan on covid19, although the plan that i see looks a lot like Donald Trumps plan for covid19, other than a National Mask mandate. Thats the difference that i can detect. But hes going to have a mandate for doing something about covid and for not being donald trump. But what else is he running on . Everything else is, well, lets not talk about that. Well, he doesnt want to talk about it and that gets back to the overriding story of the last years which has been the split in the Democratic Party and his you agenda is a problem for him. It was essentially defined in large part by the man he defeated in the primary, Bernie Sanders, who helped come up with the ultimate biden agenda to make peace in the party and the problem biden has is that that agenda is radical. It threatens to scare average americans. But if he doesnt talk about it or if he disavows it he turns off progressives who he needs to come out and vote for him. And so he just doesnt talk about it at all. What was important about the debates was mike pence teased it out, on energy, on taxes, on the Supreme Court, those kind of far left positions and they didnt have much of an answer for him. For Many Americans that might have been one of the first time they were hearing about joe bidens agenda. Paul where else do you think, kyle, did pence open up some of potential debate Going Forward in the last three andahalf weeks of the campaign . Lets start with the Supreme Court court packing. Kamala harris avoided answering that question just like joe biden had. How big an opening is that for the republicans . I think it gets to be a bigger opening, the more times they refuse to answer that question. Joe biden after the debate said youll know my opinion on this after the election and the more he says that, the more i think people are going to wonder what hes hiding. As far as pences performance, the thing i think he did of of so well was being specific on things, giving people at home something they can google later, like when he said he went after the obamas administrations response to the h1n1 flu and quoted bidens former chief of staff, saying that they didnt do a very good i donjob. And when he said according to newsweek, Kamala Harris is the left ward most senator in the United States senate, to the left of Bernie Sanders. And maybe you can quibble with that ranking. I bet a lot of people wondered i wonder if thats true and a typed that into their internet search bar. Paul they wouldnt have heard of that from any of the news reporting. Pences discipline and specificity as kyle pointed out seems to me i think hes exactly right, pence was excellent. But the president just doesnt have a consistent message. I know a lot of listeners may not want to hear it. Hes tweeting for example on friday about Gretchen Whitmer the governor of michigan who you attacked him again, but people dont care about that. What they want to know is what car rove said, what are karl rove said, what are you going to do for a second term and what are the differences from biden. That brings up the issue of whether donald trump should or should not participate in the townhall next week, whether its virtual or real. I happen to think that President Trump does very well in the townhalls ive seen him perform in. Hes relaxed. He relates to people. He talks a little bit more in a kind of extended way about the subjects that are brought up. I think its kind of a mistake on their part not to do that because i think its an opportunity for the president to do exactly what youre saying. Empathize with people, talk about these things in a way that they can understand. Paul all right. Thank you. When we come back, President Trumps critics accusing him of not taking covid19 seriously even after contracting the virus himself. So has the president s response to his own diagnosis fit the public mood . Our panel debates, next. vo businesses are always making choices. Heres a choice you dont have to make the largest 5g network. Awardwinning customer satisfaction. Or insanely great value. Now, with tmobile for business, theres no compromise. Network. Support. Value. Choose. All. Three. Tmobile for business. Ready when you are. Paul President Trump under fire this week for not taking covid19 seriously enough even as he recovers from the virus himself. The president urging americans in a tweet monday not to be afraid of covid and not to let it dominate their lives. Critics say that message downplays the threat that it poses but supporters insist the president is simply trying to project optimism as americans learn to live with the virus. So does his message fit the public mood . Kim, obviously covid dominating the news since the president s diagnosis. How well do you think hes responding . Well, i mean, im neither critic nor supporter. I think all of this is just incredibly overwrought. The president got out, he said i am doing better. He thanked the Healthcare Professionals around the world that are doing all the work that they are and those at walter reed who treated him. He celebrated american ingentlemen new at this with all of the ingenuity with all of the therapeutics we have. He said look, yes, be careful but dont let this dominate your life. I think a lot of americans would be more appreciative of a leader who is celebrating americas ability to get through things rather than tell them to cower in fear. Paul kyle, whats your view . I want to point out what Kamala Harris said in the previous block, in the debate, about trump saying that covid was a hoax. He never said that. Thats a distortion of what he said. But what do you think about the last week, because this has put covid front and center and as you know, there are millions of american seniors out there in particular who feel particularly vulnerable to covid. Well, i think the critics have two reasonable points. One is that trump was treated with an antibody cocktail that is not available to the general public and hopefully it will be soon. But the second is, i agree with the message, dont let it dominate your life. But that sort of implies also taking prudent measures to protect yourself and your family and your workplace. And theres a renale recen reces twothirds of americans think the president did not act responsibly and the result of that has been a flurry of headlines about who is positive, trump is positive, melania is positive, the body man is positive, the Campaign Manager is positive, other aides whose names people know, and i think people think to themselves the president of the United States, hes the president , hes the most powerful man in the world but hes also a 74yearold grandfather and he should have taken more precautions than he did. Paul kim, what do you think of that . Well, you know, look, were treading into the mask territory here. Were talking about if anyone can prove that if everybody had been wearing a mask, nobody would have got this, you know, and thats the dominant theme you see in the media. The one thing thats still a problem out there is any kind of hard research, random Clinical Trials that explain just how quality that actual assertion is. Look, this is a white house. It does the peoples business. A lot of people are running in and out of it all of the time. Is there some sort of moral failure that somebody got a disease . That is one of the weird places we have gone with this. Instead of i think talking about the fact that the president got this and has recovered, he has a better experience of what it means now, instead were talking about pointing fingers and blame and im just not sure weve ever done that before in a question of infectious disease. Paul before i get to dan to adjudicate this, kyle, you get another shot here. Kim makes obviously reasonable points, i guess what i one point i would some point the people have made is that rose garden ceremony for the Supreme Court, there was no social distancing for sure and very little mask wearing. Right. And i dont think its a matter of casting moral blame on anybody but you didnt have to have a rose garden ceremony with 200 or so people there. You could have had a smaller ceremony and its interesting, so Mitch Mcconnell this week made news when he says he hasnt been of to the white house since august. Hes four years older than trump. He said it was his perception that the white house had a different approach to coronavirus precautions than he was taking in his life. Paul dan, where do you come out on this . Well, the president s numbers on the coronavirus arent good. So theres that reality. Paul, i think maybe were at a Tipping Point on this. The key thing the president said is dont let it dominate your life. Here in new york city, weve had the Positivity Rate rise above 3 in nine or 10 neighborhoods. Governor cuomo ordered shutdowns of schools and churches. We have revolts in the streets going on, parents, Public School parents, lawsuits have been filed against andrew cuomo. Similar protests are taking place in colorado, in los angeles. I think the American People are at a breaking point on the shutdowns and theres an opportunity for the president if he explains it properly to make an argument on behalf of learning to live with the coronavirus. Paul yeah. I mean, the democrats have a contradiction. They blame trump for the job losses caused by the lockdowns that the democrats support. I mean, that ought to be a Pretty Simple argument for trump to make. All right. When we come back, its full speed ahead as Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin for judge Amy Coney Barrett. So what should we expect as the Senate Judiciary committee begins its work on monday amid the coronavirus concerns. If its not safe for the senate to meet in session, its not safe for the hearings to go forward. A virtual hearing is virtually no hearing at all. Is that net carbs or total . Eh, not enough fiber. Chocolate would be good. Snacking should be sweet and simple. The delicious taste of glucerna gives you the sweetness you crave while helping you manage your blood sugar. With nutrients to help support immune health. Mitch mcconnell seems to be jamming through the hearings on Amy Coney Barrett even though three senators have covid, even though he has said its not safe for the senate to meet in session, but its okay to have the hearings. It makes no sense. If its not safe for the senate to meet in session, its not safe for th