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I'm Michelle Goldberg. I'm Ross Douthat, and this is the argument. Today, a debate about the first 20 20 presidential debate. Then our colleague Michelle Cottle from the editorial page joins us to talk about Amy CONI Barret's nomination, Trump's taxes and the larger state of the race. Just one more month to go, folks. We're almost there. After what is felt like a decade long campaign, the twenty twenty presidential debates finally kicked off on Tuesday night and it was something just as the left will use.

And who is on your list, Joe?

We're recording this on Wednesday morning. It's only been 12 hours since the debate. So while our reactions are fresh, our bodies and brains maybe a touch exhausted, but with that proviso, let's dive in. Was the debate everything you expected, Michelle Wie?

Not sure exactly what I expected. I mean, to me, the big question was he couldn't you know, I think both because of the gender dynamics and because of covid, he couldn't physically menis Joe Biden the way he did Hillary Clinton, which was to me the sort of dominant take away from the debates in twenty sixteen. I just remember feeling so defiled by watching that. And it's interesting to me that so many more people had that experience watching this right at the end of the debates, you had this kind of shudder go through the cable news pundit ocracy.

It was as if people suddenly saw the Trump that I've been seeing for four years. And to me, it's interesting that they didn't see that when he literally stocked Hillary Clinton with some deranged sociopath across the stage four years ago. I went into it, you know, with my kind of heart in my throat about whether Biden would make some sort of memorable gaffe. I think he made a few gaffes, but they weren't particularly memorable. The question is, always is, does kind of Twitter trump, which I think is the real Trump come to the fore?

And I think it really did. And I think that's why both there was such sort of mainstream revulsion, but also a lot of right wing angst this morning. What did you make of both the stand back and stand by to the proud boys and the calls for his supporters to harass people at polling places and the closing rant about the legitimacy of the election? I mean, how what was your takeaway?

My takeaway was that Trump is unfit for the presidency, I guess, which is in my has been my take all along. And the difference between us, I think, is still there in that a lot of what people are so alarmed by and Trump's rhetoric about the election, is the president sort of raging impotently at an election that he's losing and doesn't have the capacity to sort of turn around? And he's reduced to talking about how all of these ballots are bogus.

He won't accept the election results if it's on the backs of mail in ballots. That's basically the takeaway there, that Trump is not setting himself up to steal the election. He's setting himself up to tell his core supporters that the election was stolen so that he can go on and have that be his narrative and whatever from his perspective, moneymaking post-election world he lives in. But don't you think he's laying the groundwork for post-election or either election or post-election violence?

From well, this is the other thing, right? So from who I mean, the thing about Trump that we've seen now, we've watched him for about four years. Trump is very good at getting people to attend rallies where he himself is speaking. He is capable of getting small numbers of Trump friendly armed militia types to drive through cities where protests are taking place. He's shown no capacity that I've seen to generate large scale marches, protests, public gatherings, anything on his own behalf when he himself isn't present.

And the platform. I'm just I'm worried just about a couple of massacres, you know, not about proud boys flooding the streets like the brownshirts. OK, well, well, good. All right. So I'm glad you're not worried because I feel like that's a couple of massacres.

Yes, I think I think that is I think that if somebody goes in and shoots up a polling place, can I just say we already saw in Virginia polling is barely just started and we already saw kind of Trump come out and try to interrupt people going out and voting in Virginia. I just can't imagine that you're not going to see that magnified.

The big headline takeaways from the debate will be Trump was incredibly aggressive and interrupted and broke the rules and fought with the moderator. Trump again had trouble condemning white supremacists and violence from his supporters. That's not true. No, no. I'm sorry to interrupt and be Trump, but I just want to say quickly that we agree. We agreed to rules, Michel.

I mean, it wasn't that he had trouble condemning because stand back and stand by. They took it as an exhortation. Right. Not sort of an ambivalent I mean, it's their new logo. It's their new slogan. So they took it as a call to arms. To me, that's much more serious than sort of having trouble condemning someone. I just mean, this is exactly what always happens in these situations. He's asked to condemn some extremist supporter.

He says, sure, I'll condemn them, tell me who they are and I'll condemn them. And then he says something that isn't quite a condemnation. And we've seen this play before with which was a David Duke and the KKK.

But again, it's not that it wasn't quite a condemnation. It was an exhortation to me. Those are very different things.

No, it's not a no, it wasn't. It wasn't a condemnation. No, I agree. I agree. It was a, you know, stand back.

And it was a call to arms. It was a call. It was a it was a call to hang out. OK, OK. I'll call to get ready. Right.

And then the next thing he said was somebody has to do something about antifa. I think in certain ways that was Joe Biden's best debate moment because he set Trump up for it. Right. Trump was like, give me a name, rocky them. And Biden says, proud boys. And then you get that line out of Trump, which then becomes a big part of the story. I mean, I will say that watching the debate did not make me feel overwhelmingly positive about the prospect of Joe Biden as president of the United States.

And I know that that's a tough thing to abstract from the fact that you so desperately don't want Donald Trump to be president of the United States. But somebody used the word Wawn to describe Biden. He didn't seem senile, right, to Trump like he's senile. Thing is wrong. He just seemed very old and sort of in a way that made me think that there will be truth to the idea that whoever is sort of in a position of power in a Biden presidency will have a lot more agency and power in that presidency than would have been true if Biden had been elected eight years ago, would have been true in a Hillary Clinton presidency and so on.

It's useful to see that he is a faded version of himself. And the campaign he's running is sort of perfect for beating Trump. But, yeah, it doesn't it doesn't fill me with optimism about the dynamic Biden led the United States of twenty twenty one.

I don't I mean, I don't know that the Biden's leadership will be particularly dynamic. I trust him to hire good people. And, you know, this is me being the technocratic Obama that I basically am, that if you have good, smart people throughout the bureaucracy that you can make things work in your direction. I have a lot of faith in who Biden has hired so far, you know, and I don't think you can kind of separate the effectiveness of his campaign from the choices he's made about who is running that campaign and kind of their refusal to be baited by Twitter, their refusal to be sort of slaves to conventional wisdom.

They've actually shown a lot of wisdom and restraint. Obviously, I think one is right. I think he seems fated. Something I keep going back to is I once interviewed Erica Chenoweth, who is a Harvard professor who studies mass non-violent movements, including mass non-violent movements to unseat dictators and authoritarians. And she said that they typically these movements, when they succeed, they have this figurehead. Old consensus figures, not kind of dynamic new revolutionary figures, but kind of old consensus figures that can peel off members of the existing regime that can get some sort of military Buy-In again, because I think of Trump as, you know, an autocrat as fundamentally anti-democratic figure and see his presidency not in some ways as a continuation of the Republican ethos, because I think the Republicans have been becoming authoritarian for a long time.

I think his persona is more in line with new territory or, you know, a Milosevich or an Auburn or a Putin than with George H.W. Bush. And so the strategies against him should be thought of in the same way. And in that sense, if Erica Chenoweth is right, then Biden actually is the man for the moment. But if you took I mean, I guess to me what's been striking, as you know, about the Trump presidency is in certain ways his weakness, certainly his weakness relative to the figures that he's compared to in this sort of authoritarian analogies, be it or Bond or Erdogan or whomever.

And it struck me that in a world without the coronavirus having the sort of one faded symbol of the establishment as the opponent to Trump would have given him so many openings and opportunities, many of which he wouldn't take because he actually he can't help himself. Right. This is like the fundamental fact about Trump is that if he turned the dial back to normal by like two degrees, he would be a much, much more effective politician. But he can't do it.

He's incapable of doing it.

So one of the things that I thought was interesting, both in the debate and in the kind of post debate spin, was this conviction by Trump and by Trump is that they had baited Biden into alienating the left right. He kept saying, you've lost the left because you've admitted that you're not for a green new deal or you've admitted that you don't want to defund the police. The assumption, I think, was that the left acts like the right. If you had had a.

Say Romney debate, where Romney came out very strongly for not overturning Roe versus Wade, I think it really might have depressed evangelical turnout. I just don't think I mean, there are obviously parts of the left that are disenchanted, but in general, I don't think that the left really works like that. How do you think that sort of wavering Republicans saw what Biden did last night and what, if anything, would have solidified their support? I mean, I you know, again, I don't think I speak for the typical wavering Republican.

I think that the stuff we were talking about before, the fact that Biden partially out of strategy, partially out of the limits of his own capacities, seems worn and not dynamic is a problem. Right, because it creates this sense of like, well, who will actually be president? And, you know, you, Michelle Goldberg, who follow campaign politics and know all the people that Biden has hired, can think to yourself, well, I know these people and I'm not worried about it.

I think a lot of people who look at liberalism in the left from the outside, it becomes easier to sort of get very nervous about the idea that, like, well, we don't know who's going to be running the Biden presidency. It could easily be, you know, people who are much, much more left wing than he is. It would be helpful to Biden to project more fully, not just in not just defensively. Right. Not just in response to Trump beating him, but to project more fully the idea that he was trying to project with his, like I am the Democratic Party line.

Right, to sort of say, look, I'm going to govern from the center. The people I'm going to appoint are going to be people from who are close to the center of America sort of state that actually would upset the left. Yes, that might. Yeah, well, right. And that's that's. Well, you know, that's the risk. My sense is that the left probably came out of last night feeling pretty good because Biden didn't refuse to abolish the filibuster, didn't come out against the court.

So they feel as if the possibility to make progress in a Biden administration has not been foreclosed. Right. Well, and that's yeah. I mean, that's the other thing. Biden could I think there's actually a way for him to reaffirm his commitment to not packing the court and not abolishing the filibuster. That still leaves the option open. And I think his strategy of saying I'm not going to dignify that with a comment only works because Trump is acting so crazy around him.

I think it's another case where in a more normal debate, that would have looked like a really evasive answer, right?

No, I think his answer should be more like I won't do it as long, you know, some sort of ultimatum. He should I should say, I want the Republicans are willing to govern with me. As long as Republicans are willing to work in partnership to govern America the way it should be, then I have no intention of doing this. And then he can do it more in sorrow and anger. When Mitch McConnell inevitably tries to blow up his first term.

Well, and he can do it. He can do it with the Supreme Court, too. And this this, too, would get some people on the left upset. But he could say, look, you know, if we have a new justice on the court, I respect the court as an institution. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. But we have to be allowed to govern and basically set himself up for a world where he could endorse court packing if the court actually struck down Obamacare.

Right. Like sort of lay the groundwork for that. And that would take it off the table as an immediate thing, which, again, would make some people not just on the left, but some sort of mainstream liberals upset. I think that's the macro level problem for him. The the fear that we don't see him. He's gotten really old. He's not running a normal campaign and we just don't know what is actually going to go on in his administration.

And also, I think he could go further in condemning Antifa. I think his line about how Antifa is, you know, it's an idea. It's not an organization that's true.

That plays really well with, you know, center left journalists.

I don't think it plays really well with people who are worried about it, about like I don't think it does either. But I think it's being acknowledged that it's objectively true. I mean, the Republican sort of leaning back and forth between the two of them would be pulled more towards Biden if Biden said not just, you know, I'm not a socialist like this kind of stuff, but said, look, under a Biden presidency, we're going to go after anarchists who burn American cities.

I think that would be a really effective line for the that swing vote. And Biden isn't doing that. Exactly. I mean, what if Biden did that right, if Biden, like, had a spiel at the next debate where he said, I think a couple of mayors picked a couple of mayors and say, you know, they've screwed up. And I think there's a lot of white anarchists who are, you know, who are escalating things and we need to be tough on them.

If he said that, would you like parts of the left freak out? I think parts of the left would freak out because I think that the view even among, you know, sort of normy Democrats like myself is that, you know, God knows I hate black black kids who think that smashing Starbucks windows is the first step to the revolution. But I do think that the when I look at what's happening, I think the crackdown has been hugely disproportionate.

I think we've seen massive violations of civil liberties and much more scared of paramilitary forces in unmarked cars, picking up people without warrants than I am, again, of these stupid vandals. Maybe I'm totally wrong. I don't live in the suburbs. I live in Brooklyn. But I do not think that there are that many suburban women who are not already trumpet's, who really fear that the Chadstone is coming to their neighborhood. I think that that is a place where there's a certain number of we'll call them normy Republicans who think that there's an aggressive left within the Democratic Party that is soft on riots.

And I think maybe it would cost Biden too much, but I think he would benefit with those voters specifically by seeming tougher on, you know, the anarchist faction.

All right, let's stop there and we'll be right back. This is Sam Dolnick, I'm an assistant managing editor at The New York Times, our newsroom has been empty since March, but we've been busier than ever before. The pandemic has changed how we work, but it hasn't changed what we do. We are living through history. Every single one of our journalists is trying to match the moment. We have political reporters analyzing every development of this historic election.

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Subscribe and thanks. And we're back. Joining us is Michelle Cottle, our friend over on the editorial board who writes about all things U.S. politics. Welcome back to the argument, Michelle.

Thank you, Ross. I'm just so relieved to see that both of you survived the presidential debate, Thunderdome. Well, I'm just curious what both of you had to take to go to sleep after that.

Who went to sleep? I was up on Twitter for hours. I was completely wired. It was like I'd had six espressos.

This is why I strongly recommend having a five month old baby. Whenever, you know, there are presidential debates around, it allows you to fall asleep at any time. Well, it doesn't. It allows you to fall asleep and wake up and then fall asleep and then wake up. But I did I did manage to go to sleep somehow. But so I want to get into all of the other news of the last week. But first, let's just get your insta reaction.

Do you think the debate mattered? Do you think it moved the needle for either candidate? Will there be more debates? Oh, my God.

We're being punished, I think. I think there's no other explanation.

I don't think it changed anything substantially going into this. This is not an original observation, but Trump really needed to change the trajectory. He went in clearly trying to force Joe Biden into having a senior moment or melting down or, you know, weeping or whatever he had in his brain. That didn't happen. Biden held his own. He was not electrifying, but the entire event was just general freak show.

But that works to Biden's advantage because he did what he had to do, whereas Trump really needed to change things.

All right. Let's lift up a little bit. Our episode last week was about the empty Supreme Court seat and the strategies for both parties as the Republicans try to fill it. Since then, we've gained a nominee in Amy CONI Barrett, whose name came up a few times in the debate. Michelle, can you talk a little bit about the legislative politics here? Your our Congress and Senate whisper, do you think anything dramatic is going on behind the scenes that could change how, I guess, the Democrats especially approach this nomination?

Look, the Democrats are being very cautious with this one. They do not want to overplay their hand or be accused of being excessively, personally destructive. And they are very upfront about the fact that they have few options in terms of shutting things down. They really can't shut this thing down.

They're doing parliamentary maneuvers like invoking rules that will, you know, limit the amount of time the hearings are held or when committees meet.

But Schumer's been pretty clear, the minority leader, that he doesn't have a lot of options at his disposal for this. Now, she has started her tour of Capitol Hill. She has settled herself into the Mansfield Room right off the Senate floor. The senators are coming in to meet her. They are still planning to start the hearings around the 12th and they are hoping to vote her out of committee on the 22nd, which would have a vote on the floor possibly within two weeks of an actual election day, which is going to make Democratic voters mobilize as well as Republican voters.

And the question this time around, not so much with the presidential race as with the Senate races is who's going to benefit most from this? Whereas the presidential race is thought to be pretty stable, there are individual Senate races that this is going to impact.

Yeah, and I'm I mean, I'm wondering particularly maybe about South Carolina, because Lindsey Graham is such a prominent figure in Supreme Court battles and he's having a much, much closer race than he's ever had before. And my assumption has been that a Supreme Court nomination fight helps Graham because South Carolina is fundamentally a conservative leaning state. And it's a way to sort of remind South Carolinian voters why they usually vote for Republicans and so on. Do you think that's right or do you think it plays?

Do you think it's actually a mobilizer for his Democratic challenger?

I mean, I think it's both. Now, I would that's that's. Come on.

Give me one or the other. You can't know. You can't use both doors.

I think Lindsey Graham is likely to pull it out, in part because he will do what he does. He will grandstand and do his pro trump outrageous maneuvers for the cameras during the hearings. And his challenger, Jamie Harrison, had been running basically neck and neck with him and completely overwhelming him with money. I mean, we've seen recently Graham on Fox News almost crying, begging people to send in money because he's being overwhelmed, as you say, is an incredibly red state.

And this sort of battle tends to harden partisan lines. So this could ultimately work to his advantage. And I think the kind of. Over under on this is that it will help him a little bit, it will destroy Susan Collins in Maine, most likely it will destroy Cory Gardner in Colorado. It's a toss up with Thom Tillis in North Carolina.

So there's there's at least a half dozen states where this is going to play and have an impact. But nobody can tell you for the most part which way it'll come down in terms of mobilization.

I want to go back to the other Michelle, of what do you think of the Democratic strategy so far? Like, do you think there's a percentage for them in doing hearings as normal? Do you think the party should be skipping hearings to sort of, you know, lean into the argument that this is illegitimate?

I think they should be leaning into the argument that this is illegitimate. I mean, I'm pleasantly surprised that you're seeing some procedural maneuvers on the part of Chuck Schumer and some other Democrats. You know, I don't think I think they know they can't stop the process. I think they have to at least show that they're making an effort to slow it down to exact a price and again, to highlight its fundamental illegitimacy. They're not going to go after her the way they went after cabinet.

They're basically by not meeting her. They're saying it doesn't matter who she is. The arguments that I think they should be making, both the obvious arguments of hypocrisy, which, you know, thankfully there's a lot of video to make that argument for them. And then they should be telling everyone this is a person who's going to overturn Roe versus Wade, overturn the Affordable Care Act and is being shoved through in this rust and illegitimate process to uphold Donald Trump's attempts to cheat in the election.

You know, and so none of those kind of depend on an evaluation of Amy CONI Barrett's judicial philosophy of her temperament. I mean, it seems like you're making a case against the people who don't want to have hearings at all, because if you don't have hearings, you don't have the opportunity to ask Barrett about her comments about the Affordable Care Act, to ask Barrett about Roe v. Wade and to ask Barrett, you know, I can see the Democrats.

There are sort of best hearing moment potentially is them saying you're being appointed by a president who is questioning the legitimacy of the election.

You know, do you promise you won't commit yourself to recusal? I mean, to me, that's a big thing, that in her Senate questionnaire, she won't commit herself to recusal. I mean, that to me gives the game away. Well, they'd all have to recuse, right? I mean, if if the logic is you can't you have to recuse. If Trump appointed you, then no, it's not. If Trump appointed you if Trump appointed you because he said that your role on the court is to uphold his ballot challenges, I don't know.

I heard an argument for recusal for Barrett. I would have to have Gorsuch and Cavnar recusing, too.

I don't I think it's very different. I actually think whatever people say about her Sterling character, her willingness to take a nomination under these circumstances makes me seriously doubt that. So, look, I think that there are benefits to holding hearings and ultimately I think there will be hearings. Right. But I don't think they should be meeting with her. I think that when the actual vote comes down, they shouldn't be there. They should they shouldn't give them a quorum.

They should just let them push it through on their own. But they should they're going to show up to question her. And that's probably a good thing. Michelle S. does that sound like Michelle G is describing the Democrats strategy, or do you think there are any other complexities or wrinkles to what they're going to try and do?

They don't want to be culture warring over this in kind of a general space. So this is why they have committed to the ACA is digging in on the health care piece even more than Roe versus Wade.

They don't want to have questions come up in the hearings that are a replay of what happened in her appeals court hearings where they have the issue of her religious faith become a hot button issue.

So we don't want another the dogma lives loudly within you, quote, to come up because which was what just for for listeners, it was what Dianne Feinstein was bringing up her her Catholic beliefs, which appeals and concerns a certain segment of voters, but also, you know, had a fair amount of backlash and was not received well by others. So they are being extremely careful in certain ways with her as they're stressing that they believe this is a completely illegitimate process that is certainly being rushed.

I mean, even if you hold to the position that whenever a seat becomes vacant, that it should be filled, at that moment, they will be rushing these hearings. They will be rushing a lot of the usual steps. It will be truncated. Now, the Democrats, as far as like their questioning and how to approach this, I do think that they are not going to miss an opportunity to raise these issues in a hearing. So I do think that that is their opportunity to to draw attention to a lot of their concerns.

But it's. It's a no win situation for them at this point. Yeah, I mean, I've been struck by the mix of people on the Internet saying what I would consider to be somewhat offensive things about Amy Koney, Barrett versus the attempt at stringent discipline among elected Democrats to not talk about her Catholicism on social media for these sorts of things.

Well, but but it's striking because there really was I mean, Feinstein's line of questioning for Barrett, right. Is now hated by liberals because it's seen as having created Barrett as a kind of cult heroine for religious conservatives. But there was like this period where this was sort of taken up as a quasi strategy by Democrats to sort of go after Trump's nominees for being religious conservatives and specifically weirdo Catholic conservatives. And I think it's interesting that that was both a thing briefly and now is seen as having been a failure.

The Democrats don't don't want to repeat.

Look, I think I think it probably is substantively a failure and it is just like an extra little twist of the knife for people who have seen The Handmaid's Tale as a cultural touchstone during our current nightmare that the person that Donald Trump has chosen to eviscerate Ruth Bader Ginsburg legacy belongs to an organization that refers to certain women members as Handmaids. You know, that said, I think it's failed substantively in these previous confirmation fights and it's particularly hard to use against a woman.

Right? I mean, it's one thing to knock a man for belonging to a misogynist organization that either excludes women or has as its dogma, female subservience. It's that's a harder case to make against a woman at the pinnacle of professional success. Contrary, Ross, I don't see a huge difference between what Amy Barrett represents and what Phyllis Schlafly represents. I think the right has always elevated certain women to kind of deliver the coup de grace to feminism. Right.

That gives it an extra sort of savior to be like, look, ladies, isn't this what you wanted? A woman doing it? But it is true, right? I mean, the one thing that the right understands as much as they rail against it is identity politics. Yeah. I mean, I'll speak up for right wing identity politics. I don't want any country buried on the court because it gives me a special favor to have her disagreeing with Ruth Bader Ginsburg on abortion.

I want her on the court because I'm a religious conservative who has three daughters and wants them to believe that they can be professionally successful and also have big families. And so it means a lot to me personally or it will mean a lot to me personally to be able to say to my daughters that this is an example of what a Catholic woman can do and be, and that is identity politics in a sense. And I don't think all identity politics is about identity politics.

I think the left is fundamentally right about the idea that representation matters in that way. Before before I pivot us away from this, Michelle S. is there anything that you could imagine happening? Let's say it's a you know, a huge Berridge scandal in people's praise or something. Makone, Barret's charismatic group that she's part of or something. Is there anything you can imagine derailing this nomination?

It would have to be extremely special. I think Democrats kind of are skittish after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings where that whole thing caused such an uproar. I don't think they want that happening this close to an election. And I think, you know, she's already been through the appeals court hearings and they've vetted her heavily. They've looking at her before for this. So you can never say never in these times. I mean, who knows? There could be human heads in her freezer for all we know.

But unless it comes to that level of creepiness, I. I doubt this is going to get derailed.

Why won't Joe Biden condemn New York Times writer Michelle Cottle, speculation about human heads in a Makone Barrett's freezer? That that is my question for you. So we've done a whole segment and we've barely touched on what in a normal political moment would be huge news. Right. Which is the fact that in between the Barrett nomination, in the first debate, our newspaper published a big story on years of Donald Trump's tax returns, which were leaked to the newspaper after Trump, of course, famously refused to release them for many years.

And no, no, no.

He's just waiting on the audits. He's waiting on the audience. But I want I want to ask you both about the politics of this. But first, a general. Question, which is reflected in sort of divergent reads on what we've learned about Trump's taxes and one read is that they show that he's a huge failure in business, was able to pay no taxes because he's losing tons of money. And the other is that he is a savage success. Who's able to avoid paying taxes because he's basically cheating?

None of us are tax experts, but that won't stop me from asking both. Michels, is Trump a failure or a cheat?

Do we have to pick? Can I go with both or both? I think it's all of the above. I don't like to limit myself. I think he's he's he's he's a failure in a lot of ways and a cheat. He might have more money than the one. What was it, negative. Forty seven million dollars that he said to have earned one year. I trust the reporters who broke this story, you know, who've seen these documents, who've talked to tons of people.

Their interpretation is that he's a man. I think the word was in a tightening financial vise. So I'm sort of willing to defer to their analysis. Michelle, see, I'm both curious where you come down on the cheat or failure question, but also if you see this long awaited revelation as having any political impact whatsoever.

Well, much like Michelle, I find him in this as in all things, to be both a loser and a cheat. Now, as far as will this move the needle?

No, this is just one of those stories that is awesome and will be a big a big issue on social media. And reporters will talk about it. And the people who pay a lot of attention to politics will talk about it is incredibly complicated and incredibly obscure.

And can I can I can I interrupt that? I'm sorry, but I agree with the main thrust of what you're saying. But I mean, I actually think, you know, the number seven hundred fifty is is not complicated and not obscure. And I think we all have this kind of nothing matters mentality because nothing matters enough to make Senate Republicans constrain Trump in their sort of the only force capable of doing it. But there was an AP story recently about ex Trump voters, right.

You know, Trump voters who had turned on him. And for a lot of them, the breaking point was covid. But for others, the breaking point was, you know, things you wouldn't expect, like, you know, the treatment of the Kurds or Trump's general approach to Syria. And so, you know, I don't know that it will matter in a way that will show up in polls.

Well, that's what we're talking about here, is is it going to be a pivotal moment or change that or move the needle enough to be a pivotal moment? It just has to. Right. You peel off a couple people, you peel off point one percent, you make point one percent of people who were already on the fence less likely to vote for him cumulatively when it comes to people going out to vote, that's where we've seen things quite a bit.

But we're talking about his taxes.

And for years and years and years, all we've heard is show us the taxes, show us the taxes that's going to blow this whole thing wide open. At this point, we have to come to the conclusion that nothing is going to blow anything wide open. Yes, it is accretion of issues and the seven hundred and fifty is what has made the rounds.

And it is appalling that you can be as ostentatiously wealthy as he is and pay that little money. But in terms of was this the earth shattering stories that people who spent years demanding his taxes seem to think it was going to be?

No, but I mean, also, that's because in twenty sixteen, he already made the case that, you know, he was just a savvy businessman and, you know, without having his taxes out there, he made a version of the case for why avoiding paying taxes makes him a super genius.

When I was doing that in the debate debate last night, he was asked about this and he's like, I was a businessman. And like everyone else, I used the tools at my disposal to pay as little taxes as possible.

And he's like tried to turn it around and blame it on Biden for having passed whatever tax bills that which is, which actually, I think I think it's clear that the Obama stimulus turned down maneuvers actually help Trump.

And he blames he blames the system. But what he always, I guess, is the system. It's a broken system. I mean, to me, what's striking is that I think he could have released his taxes on his own years ago and just made that argument. And I think at some level, it suggests there's some part of Trump that agrees with you, Michelle, that it's actually like, you know, that that seven hundred and fifty dollar figure, it's humiliating.

Cruz right. There's his. You guys don't want to be seen as a bad businessman. I do think that if the tax returns had come out and showed, as some progressives imagined they would, that he had been receiving a hundred million dollar payments from secret Russian corporations, that that would have had more of an effect. Right. And, you know, there were things that people on the left imagined or predicted would be in these returns that don't seem to be in the returns.

Well, let's be clear. I mean, the reporters made clear that the returns lacked the specificity to sort of show that even if those payments were there, the returns wouldn't show it. And so it's not that. So there's people pretending that he was somehow exonerated by these charges. All right. The dream of the dream will never die. Fine. But I do think Michelle is absolutely right that this is all about his ego.

One of the things that struck me in the debate is how bonkers he went when Biden suggested he wasn't smart. He basically had a meltdown and then launches into some kind of, you know, comparative CV.

And I went to this school and you went to that. He is incredibly insecure and can't stand anyone knowing that he's basically a loser.

I mean, I think there's definitely a an element of the 20/20 campaign that maybe is slightly underappreciated, which is that, you know, there was this famous Saturday Night Live sketch in 1988 where Jon Lovitz playing Dukakis. Listen to Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush rambling and said, I can't believe I'm losing to this guy. And there's clearly a big part of Trump that cannot believe that he's losing to Joe Biden, which I think came out in that moment.

All right. Let's wrap things up there. And now we're going to do our recommendation for the week. And Michele, gee, I think you have something for us.

OK, so I'm recommending this in some sense out of pure selfishness because I just wanted to keep going as long as possible. There's an outdoor spin studio called Baekeland Yard in Brooklyn. That is one of the few things keeping me together. I mean, in as much as my sanity is being held together with, like duct tape and paper clips, it is going there two or three times a week that is kind of making sure that the whole thing doesn't fall apart.

It's one of the few things in my life that feels normal. One of the few parts of my day where I can stop thinking about how absolutely awful everything is. Every day that I go, there is a better day. And it's obviously going to shut down eventually because it's going to get cold. And I want them to stay in business as long as possible. I want this to be a profitable endeavor for them.

I don't even live in New York and I express my complete sympathies in agreement on this. I am dreading winter with, you know, just kind of Game of Thrones.

The white walkers are coming for me levels of terror because I don't want to be shut up inside. I don't want to you know, we're doing you can do outdoor yoga class.

You can still do biking, you can do hiking. I have not going to overlook hotel shining on my family yet. But when winter comes and this is no longer feasible, I fear for everyone's safety.

Yes, it is. And I'm a winter person. I usually am fine with winter because I'm basically an indoor person. You know, I like going to the movies. I like going to bars and restaurants and like going to the theater, none of which you'll be able to do this winter. Right. I don't like I've never understood why a person would voluntarily say go camping. This ordeal has forced me. I also wasn't a spin person, but this ordeal has forced me into to kind of pursue new endeavors.

And so I'm willing to work out outside, you know, as long as it is physically possible. But the question is how many other people are as well?

Yeah, I mean, that's my question, right? I mean, I totally agree. I've been I think I've talked about this before during the worst of covid. But we you know, we've been taking our kids to state parks around Connecticut. And I don't go to spin classes, but I do ride my bike around the, you know, the mean streets of New Haven a little bit. So what you're actually recommending in addition to this spin class is like a sort of polar bear approach to winter exercise.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we can all agree on that. So, Michelle Cottle, thank you again so much for joining us. It was a pleasure. Oh, the pleasure was mine.

Thanks, Michelle. And that's our show for the week. Thank you so much for listening. If you have an election question, you want to hear us debate, you can share it with us in a voicemail by calling three four seven nine one five, four, three, two, four, or by e-mailing us at argument at NY Times Dotcom. The argument is, as always, a production of the New York Times opinion section. Our team includes Allison Brusic, Isaac Jones, Phoebe LAT, Paula Schoeman, Vishakha Darba, Kate Sinclair and Kathy to.

I'm filled with the love of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. I don't know about you guys.