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Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright, and you are listening to our election special series On The Call. Each Thursday until election day, I am ringing up somebody who's written or said something about this election that's piqued my interest and picking their brain. This week, on the heels of the presidential debate, I am once again On The Call with my friend Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for the Nation Magazine. Hello, Elie.

Elie Mystal: Hello, Kai. How are you?

Kai Wright: I am digesting what happened on the debate stage in Pennsylvania with the rest of us. Let's start here. Your pre-debate column, which is why I called you up, warned that there was no real winning an argument with the bad-faith debaters of the MAGA world, that this is a lesson you've learned over the years of trying to win such arguments. I actually want to get into your own experience and approach here in a minute, the why you argue the way you do.

I think we've talked a little bit about that in the past. Let's start with the debate itself. Your advice to Harris was to bait Trump at every turn, and it seems like she did exactly that, ryes?

Elie Mystal: Oh, yes. Let's remember I ended that article with saying if we come out of the debate with the same candidate that we had when we went into the debate, that would be a win. Guess what, Kai? Kamala Harris is still the democratic nominee for president.

Kai Wright: Is still the democratic nominee for president.

Elie Mystal: It is already better than the last debate, but, yes, in terms of technical skill, Harris did what I hoped she would do, what I thought was particularly hard to do. She put on a better show. The way that she put on the better show was to use technical mastery to bait, distract, and confuse the old, rambling former President Donald J. Trump. Just to jump right into the weeds a little bit.

Kai Wright: Do it. Go for it.

Elie Mystal: There was one particular section that I think, just as a rhetorician, people should pay attention to as brilliant. They go to the question about immigration. Donald Trump, this is his signature issue. All he likes to do is to talk crap about immigrants and Brown people and make fun of them. This is his thing. Harris gets the first part of the immigration question, and she gives us a standard answer, but then she ends it with this attack about Donald Trump's rallies.

She goes in and how people leave their rallies because they're bored and exhausted, knowing full well that Donald Trump, the supreme narcissist, can't resist that bait. Now Donald Trump has his two minutes to respond to immigration, and he wastes an entire minute on his signature issue talking about his pep rallies.

Kai Wright: I think she even winked when she said it. We were watching, and I was like, "Did she just wink as she was saying that?"

Elie Mystal: It's amazing because they telegraphed before the debate, "We're going to bait Donald Trump." Then during the debate, she was basically like, "I'm baiting you now," and Trump was like, yam, yam, yam, yam, yam, yam, just went hook, line, and sinker for the bait and wasted his own time. Now, fast forward to two minutes later, now Donald Trump is trying to get back on message because he has completely lost the plot.

He goes into how immigrants are terrible and how they're lawbreakers and whatever. As soon as he says lawbreakers, she does another half-smile, and when it rolls back to her, she says, "Yes, speaking about lawbreakers, it's pretty rich coming from--" Then, boom, the felony convictions, all of the court-- Just as a matter of technical skill, it was masterful. I think you see that in the people's reactions post debate. Trump looked old, confused, rambling, couldn't stay on his talking points. Harris was on message for the entire 90-plus minutes.

Kai Wright: Masterful from start to finish. Listen, I have said in public, I'll say again here, I've been amongst the people who was like, "Kamala Harris is a politician." Setting aside all ideology questions, just on the question of political skill, I have long been a skeptic. I've been told by people who followed her in California, "Well, that's because you haven't really seen her perform. I, at one point, said to the TV last night, "I take back every word I ever said about this person's political skills."

It was remarkable because what you just described happened over and over and over again. I kept trying to remember what we were supposed to be talking about that was a card question for her, and we were actually talking about whatever craziness around him that she wanted us to be talking about.

Elie Mystal: She laughed at him at various points. 81 million Americans fired Donald Trump, but he seems to have a hard time processing it. That was a zinger of a line. Here's the thing, Kai, shout out to the lawyers, because one of the things I think you saw with Harris on stage is that thing that they teach you in second-year trial advocacy clinic.

Kai Wright: Keeping in mind she is a trial lawyer.

Elie Mystal: The law and order version of being a trial lawyer you saw last night, because it's that specific lawyer skill where you've got to remember all the facts, have complete command of the evidence, seem effortless and charismatic and interesting to the jury, and bait the hostile witness into saying exactly what you need him to say. She did that time and time again. You can almost imagine if you used to watch the Kyra Sedgwick Closer television show or whatever legal procedural you like, this is how you talk a person into confessing their own crimes.

Kai Wright: Harry Mason. I did it, and I'll tell you why.

Elie Mystal: My man at the end was so confused, he was like, "Viktor Orbán likes me." It was a trial lawyer's way of defeating Donald Trump. It was really brilliant. I was thoroughly impressed.

Kai Wright: Going into this debate, every political analyst with access to a keyboard or a camera, left, right, and center repeated the same set of must dos for each candidate. That Trump had to stay on message about the economy and immigration, and that Kamala Harris is just more of Joe Biden, who nobody likes. Harris had to show she could master the material in unscripted settings and appear credibly presidential.

Again, these were the pre debate goalposts set by everybody, but even that setup says a lot about the asymmetry of the political conversation to me, that all he had to do was not behave like a child, which he failed to do. After all these years in public service, she had to prove that she was smart enough to be on the stage.

Elie Mystal: The misogyny inherent in this presidential election, and especially in the coverage of this presidential election, makes me want to vomit because it's so obvious and it's being done by people who arguably should know better. It's hard to understand how they're not doing it on purpose.

The idea that this C student, the 78-year-old C student who hasn't ever understood basic physics, much less the deep inner workings of the American government, the idea that he is even remotely qualified to stand next to the vice president of the United States, who's been the senator from California, who's been a longtime top prosecutor at both the state and local level, the idea that these two people are even in the same league in terms of intellectual quality, ability, and deep knowledge of the workings of the American government, is foolish.

Yet the media acts like it is Harris who must prove to them, mainly the white, conservative men in the media, that she's intelligent. It's ridiculous. I don't understand people who watch the debate with that lens, but if you did, then surely, whatever you wanted Harris to do, she did it backwards while wearing heels.

Kai Wright: I have to say, I was bracing myself to hear-- because I agree with all of that. I was bracing myself to read a bunch of, oh goalpost moving for her and him this morning, and I didn't. That hasn't happened.

Elie Mystal: That shows you how bad Trump did, though. One of the reasons why the narrative was set up the way it was pre-debate was that they were expecting Trump to do pretty much what he did, maybe stay a little bit on message, and they were setting themselves up to declare Trump the unofficial winner, if you will because they knew that Trump was going to lose the debate in terms of substance, but they were planning to declare Trump the unofficial winner of the "Good horse sets and would you have a beer with him?" version of debate analysis and horse race coverage.

He failed at that miserably, too, because that's the other thing, Kai. There's no way you could watch that debate for 90 minutes and tell me that the person you'd rather have a beer with or you'd rather go out to dinner with was Donald Trump. He was an old, angry, rambling man, whereas Harris was light and happy and positive and forward thinking. I thought, actually, for instance, one of her best lines of the debate was near the end, when Trump is sundowning and he's like, "She's Joe Biden."

Harris very calmly says, "I'm not Joe Biden, somewhat obviously, but when I am here, is to offer a new generation of leadership." Who doesn't want that after listening to Trump for 90 minutes and just dealing with what Trump has put the country through over the past eight years, to say nothing of the general sense of our politics have been so captured by an aging-out boomer generation? Harris is literally the future.

Kai Wright: Even thinking about ABC, they were the best I have seen at live fact-checking in the Trump era. It just dawned on me at some point in the conversation, I was like, "Is this a moment we're witnessing where finally, enough of the previous guard of people in both parties and on network television and all of it who were clinging to these conventions of the past have finally gotten that that doesn't apply to a conversation involving Donald Trump, that we're in a different era. It just felt like there were people who had fundamentally different understandings of the era we're in.

Elie Mystal: I think you're half right. I think that they started that way. I think they started off really strong. I think they lost stamina. I think that the moderators lost stamina over the course of 90 minutes as Trump continued to hammer and lie and speak out of turn, and speak out of turn. I counted Kai. After the immigration question, Trump got the last word on every single question for over 45 minutes of that 90 minutes debate.

That was because he just kept demanding it. He would demand and he would talk. Even people were like, "Oh, why did they unmute his mic?" They didn't unmute his mic. He was just shouting. You were picking him up on other mics, and he kept shouting until they let him in, whereas Harris tried to do that once, and both Muir and Linsey just ran over. When you actually looked at the time, the post-debate analysis showed that Trump spoke for over 45 minutes compared to Harris.

Trump had something like 39 responses compared to Harris's 23. He dominated the time. It works out for the Harris campaign because it was a "never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

Kai Wright: That's what I was going to say. That was part of the point for her I took was like, "Yes, let him go. Absolutely. Let's continue to talk about--"

Elie Mystal: From a campaigning perspective, I don't think that was fatal or even problematic, but from a moderation perspective, what you saw was the moderators lose stamina and steam over the course of 90 minutes against the relentless Trump attacks. As it was happening, I was having this moment of reflection of it's a little bit like the country. You start off, you're like, "We're going to stop this crazy man," and they just wear you down. They just keep pushing, they keep on you.

I think that the moderators got exhausted after a time. Hopefully, that's not what happens with the American voters. It's 55 days left to the election. We don't have to keep up the fight much longer, and hopefully, people can keep their energy up and keep their chin up until we get through this election, and then everybody can take a nap.

Kai Wright: To this point, I imagine others, but certainly the New York Times and the Washington Post had the convention of "Let's talk to the swing voter and see how they felt following the debate," and still managed to find swing voters that--

Elie Mystal: What even is that?

Kai Wright: The self-declared undecided voters who felt like Harris was not specific enough about her policies and so they're still undecided on which of the two candidates they want. No shade to anybody who is genuinely undecided. I don't know, but that you could watch that conversation and say that Kamala Harris didn't have enough detail on her policy while Donald Trump did and that that could be presented as, "We did some reporting and these are the things we found," it just--

Elie Mystal: You're being nice, Kai. I do have shade for people who are self-declared still undecided at this point, especially on the issue of who has the more specific policies. If you are undecided on policy questions at this point and specifics, then you're just not a serious person because the contrast between these two candidates could not be more clear. Their positions as they lay them out-- Kai, you're talking about media coverage. Can we just take a moment and acknowledge that if a woman or a person of color had stood up on a national presidential debate stage and said, on the issue of American healthcare, "I have the concepts of a plan."

Kai Wright: "I have a concept of a plan," 10 years later.

Elie Mystal: That would be the headline in every legacy media organization for a week.

Kai Wright: Or made reference to people eating dogs and cats.

Elie Mystal: That's not something that the rest of us are allowed to do. I cannot go into a job interview and say, "Oh, I have the concept of a column." No, no, no. I would get laughed out of any publication that I applied to as a Black-- "Oh, I have the concept of a job." No, no. Nobody would accept that from me, and nobody should accept that from him, but they will. If you heard that, if you heard Donald Trump say that after nine years, all he has is the concept of a plan for healthcare, and then you want to come at me with, "Well, Harris wasn't very specific about her plan," no, you're not a serious person.

You're not an undecided person. You're a Republican person who doesn't want to say aloud that you're Republican because people are going to call you racist. That's your issue.

Kai Wright: It's that part. I'm not willing to call people unserious or not, but it's that part. I do question the complicity of these newspapers to continually take actually Republican voters and describe them as undecided voters and as a consequence, be able to continue a narrative about whether or not Kamala Harris is a serious candidate because they're asking Republican voters whether she's convinced them or nothing.

Let's take a break. I'm talking with Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation. Coming up, I do want to talk about how and why you debate the way you do. That's next.

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Okay, Ellie. Like I said, your pre-debate column in The Nation was prompted by your own experience debating with bad-faith MAGA types. You point out that the public conversation is just rigged. Let's just spell out now the ways in which, setting aside-- you can use the presidential debate as an example if you want, but setting that aside, the ways in which you see the conversation itself rigged.

Elie Mystal: Here's my issue when you debate these people. They don't want to actually debate policy because you, as the liberal, as the pro-democracy guy, as whatever, have better policies, you have more popular policies. If I'm debating gun control, the idea that everybody should have background checks and red flags laws, that's the more popular policy. The idea that women should have control over their own bodies is the more popular policy.

The idea that democracy is preferable to authoritarianism is the more popular policy. When you debate Republicans, they don't want to talk about policy. They want to talk about personality. They want to make it a show. They want to make it about some cultural issue. My strategy or thought process is that, "Oh, if you want to make it a show, I'm going to show you what a show really looks like. If you want to make it about culture, if you want to make it about entertainment, I'm going to show you what an entertaining culture actually looks like."

See, partially because of how I look, I know we're on radio, but a large man--

Kai Wright: With Frederick Douglass-style hair.

Elie Mystal: With large hair, but in some ways, even my personal appearance is bait. Even that is bait. I want you to try to come at me with some personal thing that you think that I haven't thought of or you think that I'm scared to talk about so I can take it, use it, make fun of you, and then redirect you to your own personal foibles and problems and issues because my fundamental idea is that if you want to debate culture and entertainment and personal issues, I want to make that conversation so deeply unpleasant for you that suddenly you want to talk about policy.

Suddenly you don't want the fat Black guy coming at you about your own issues, you want to roll back to, "Actually, can we just talk about abortion?" "Yes, let's just talk about abortion."

Kai Wright: The point is, "Okay, if we're going to have this ratchet ass conversation, let's go there, and if I'm winning at that, then, okay, so now can we put that aside and talk about--"

Elie Mystal: Right. You've said this to me offline once and it really has stuck with me that I'm a trench fighter. It's because partially of my personal history and how I got into media in the first place, but I am a creature of the comment section. I understand how the Internet works and how people can be mean and snarky and whatever, and I just do it better than most people. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want to get into a flame war or snark war with Kendrick Lamar.

I think I would probably lose that. I got touched up by Roy Wood junior on Twitter the other day. If you're a professional comedian, you're going to beat me, but if you're just some random lawyer politician person, now, I'm probably not just smarter but wittier and quicker than you. If you're going to try to go into personal stuff, I'm probably going to win that battle. For me, it all started in-- I know we're not supposed to be talking about me this much.

Kai Wright: No. This is the explicit purpose of this part of the conversation is to talk about you and how you argue this way. It all started where.

Elie Mystal: It started in middle school. I was bullied when I was a kid. I'm not ashamed to admit that. I was bullied. I was a nerdy kid and I got beat up a lot. What I learned was not really how to punch back. I'm still not very good at fighting, but, man, I could really make the bullies think twice about hitting me if I made fun of them in front of their boys because bullies don't like being laughed at.

The worst ass-kicking I ever got, 8th grade, the bully caught me outside, hit me in the stomach, and I doubled over and I go, "Ugh, Lewis, I can see why nobody ever taught you how to read, because you hit like a truck." His boys started laughing. Then Lewis proceeded to just beat me down, but that was the last time he hit me because there are easier marks. There are people you can beat up that aren't going to make your own people laugh at you.

That's my strategy when I'm now as a grown-ass man debating Republicans. If you're going to hit me, you go for it, but you're going to look bad doing it, and you're going to look bad enough that eventually, you're going to want to talk about the policies where I can actually beat you, where I can actually defeat you because your policies are bad. Your policies are unpopular. Your policies are ungenerous. I can make that point once I force you to talk about them.

Kai Wright: Again, so then bringing us back to the presidential debate, in fact, and just the way that Democrats have dealt with Donald Trump over the years, it does feel like Kamala Harris is the first to understand that argument, that "You're a bully, and I'm just going to make you look like a fool for bullying me."

Elie Mystal: It's so hard because you have to both acknowledge this man is a train wreck, this man is a clown, but you also have to acknowledge that he's a very dangerous clown. He's a clown with a machine gun. You have to keep both of those ideas in your head at the same time. He's funny, we can laugh at him because he's ridiculous, but also, God help us should he have power again, because he will do horrible things for the country. Harris was able to keep both of those ideas in her head at all points for over 90 minutes, and that's why she won.

Kai Wright: We talked to Anand Giridharadas about this back right after Tim Waltz was the pick and he was making the point that when you call him a strong man over and over again, when you call somebody an authoritarian strongman for 10 years, people hear the word strong is ultimately the reinforcing of the idea that Donald Trump is somehow more vigorous.

Elie Mystal: Trump has always been a weak man's idea of a strong man because he's performatively a strong man, but in his core, he's a very weak, scared individual who has no personal political core and has no personal political courage. Both things are true at the same time and that has largely flummoxed Democrats, but not last night.

Kai Wright: Not last night. 54 days, I guess when people listen to this, left in this election cycle. A lot can happen. There are still some emails that can be discovered. There's still a swift boat from--

Elie Mystal: Oh, my God. Somebody handcuffed James Comey, please.

Kai Wright: I don't know. What do you think? What are you looking at for the next 55 days?

Elie Mystal: Oh, Kai, I'm a Democrat, so I live in fear. I'm, of course, terrified about what still could come. Look, I think that the energy from the Harris campaign is immaculate. The vibes are immaculate right now. It's going to be a razor-thin election, but the thing that I keep telling people is that it's going to be razor-thin margins, but the Electoral College margin needs to be large. It cannot just come down to one state. It can't just come down to Pennsylvania or Georgia or North Carolina.

We got to get all of them because if it comes down to one state, the Supreme Court will flip it and give it to Trump. If all the Supreme Court has to do is take a Harris victory in one state and make that state instead go to Trump by only counting some votes and, "Oh, those Black people in Philadelphia, those votes didn't really count."

Kai Wright: What does that last scenario actually look like? Play out an example of how that would work, how the Supreme Court could [crosstalk].

Elie Mystal: Trump already has his MAGA people sitting on boards of elections all across the country. All you need to have happen is for one state to be very close and for that board of elections to refuse to certify the notes from the Blackest part of that state because they won't decertify the votes from all the state. They won't say, "Revote in the state." They will just decertify the votes from one or two heavily minority counties, whether it's Philadelphia, whether it's Detroit, whether it's the counties surrounding Atlanta. Once they do that, the Supreme Court, if it is close, six to three with a conservative supermajority--

Kai Wright: Then there's a legal case over-

Elie Mystal: There's a lawsuit [unintelligible 00:27:26]

Kai Wright: -that particular board's refusal to certify those particular votes. That goes up. It goes to the Supreme Court.

Elie Mystal: That goes to the Supreme Court, and then the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, all they have to say is, "Oh, well, the state's board of election controls if they want to exclude the votes or the state's board of election doesn't control if they want to include the votes," depending on which way helps Trump more. If they only have to do that in one state, as we saw in 2000 with Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court can get that done.

If they got to do it in three states or four states, if they have to flip literally four states from Harris to Trump to declare Trump the victor, then I don't think that they can get that done, and that's what we saw in 2020. The difference between Harris winning the election and Harris becoming president after winning the election is the difference between 2000 and 2020 and that difference is, does it come down to one state or not?

Kai Wright: On that cheery idea, Elie, we will leave it there. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation Magazine. Thanks for joining us again. Dear listener, if you have something you want me to dig into on one of these On The Call segments between now and election day, call us up. Let me know. I am happy to find somebody to talk about it. Give us a call at 844-745-8255 that's 844-745 Talk. Leave a voicemail, be sure to give me your first name, say where you're calling from, and then just tell me what you want me to go find out and we'll see if we can do it. All right. Talk to you on Sunday.

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