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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Maybe the most important thing about last night's vice presidential debate was simply this.

Kamala Harris: Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. I'm speaking.

Brian: Again, all right. It was that. Whether you take that as a response to the interrupter in-chief, from last week's debate or a statement to all white mansplainers from all women and people of color for all time, there it was, arguably the simplest and most memorable vine from last night, "Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking." We'll play more clips as we go, on policy differences and questions that each of them evaded and each of them did.

People could barely process anything we could learn from last night when the next debate became the bigger issue this morning. If you haven't heard this yet, the debate commission announced that because of the uncertainties of President Trump's coronavirus status, the debate next Thursday will be held virtually, not in person. President Trump has already announced that if it's virtual, he will not attend. We'll talk about both debates now with Wall Street Journal politics correspondent Tarini Parti. Hi, Tarini. Welcome back to WNYC.

Tarini: Hey, Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian: Let's start with the new news. Can you tell us more specifically what the Debate Commission announced?

Tarini: The Debate Commission announced this morning that because of concerns about the President's health, they were going to be doing this next debate virtually. So far we've heard from the President already say that he will not be participating if this happens virtually. We've heard from the Biden campaign that they're willing to go ahead with it. This back and forth will likely continue for the next few days until we figure out how this is going to happen, if it's going to happen.

Brian: Who are we talking about when we talk about the Debate Commission?

Tarini: This is a nonpartisan group of people who come up with the rules for the debates, where it's going to be, who the moderators are. The Debate Commission essentially comes up with what the structure of these debates is going to be. The key thing to know is that they're nonpartisan.

Brian: Nonpartisan. Or maybe it would even be more accurate to say bipartisan because isn't it a group of people who were appointed specifically by Democrats and by Republicans?

Tarini: That's exactly right. Yes, Bipartisan is a good way to put it.

Brian: Can you tell us in more detail what President Trump's reaction was?

Tarini: The President this morning has reacted in a way that he usually does. He has been tweeting, he has also done an interview with Fox Business News this morning in which he has already addressed the debate issue. He seems to think that the Debate Commission made this decision because they favor Joe Biden is the point he's trying to make. He thinks that-- he's already said that the moderator from the first debate Wallace of Fox News was too biased and favored Joe Biden. He's trying to make that argument again that this is not going to work for him if the Commission is going to continue to favor Joe Biden.

Brian: It's pretty much a hoot to a lot of people in America that he was accusing the moderator from Fox News of being biased for the Democrats. I guess he did it in 2016 too at that first debate when a woman who happened to be with Fox News, asked him a question about gender. She had a big reputation as a conservative and he lashed out at her and basically made her lose her job at Fox News, but there we go.

Tarini: The President seems to do that if you ask him tough questions. Chris Wallace has interviewed him in the past and pushed him on a lot of issues. I think that we're not seeing this as a pattern, when he gets pushed on things by moderators or people who are interviewing him, he seems to think that it's because of a personal bias against him.

Brian: Now, the Trump campaign had already objected to the plexiglass barriers put up for last night's debate, seeing it as overkill and overprotective and sending a politically biased message. Can you remind us why the Debate Commission ordered that even with Pence testing negative consistently since the White House super spreader events from over a week ago?

Tarini: The Harris campaign had asked the Commission in the aftermath of, at this point, more than a dozen White House officials testing positive for COVID-19. They asked for more safety precautions. One of the things that the Commission agreed to was sitting the candidates farther apart. They went from 7 feet to 12 feet and then they went back and forth on plexiglass for awhile.

The Harris side asked that there be some sort of division between the two candidates with plexiglass. There was, I believe, back and forth over how high it should be, how thick it should be, how much plexiglass would be used. Then they finally came to an agreement with what we saw last night, two plexiglass dividers between the candidates.

Brian: It's really very simple. The CDC guidelines are to quarantine for 14 days after exposure to people with confirmed COVID-19. It hasn't been 14 days yet since the apparent White House super spreader events, of the Amy Coney Barrett introduction and the presidential debate prep sessions. As far as the Pence situation goes there were people who thought that he should not be allowed to participate at all in person either because of that CDC timeline.

For next week's debate, it's a gray area. The CDC guidelines say you can be around others 10 days after symptoms first appeared, if you've also gone 24 hours with no fever without the use of fever reducing medications or other symptoms of COVID-19 getting worse. From what the President's team has disclosed he would actually meet those criteria by next Thursday if his symptoms don't get worse between now and then.

But, I guess, Tarini, we can't really know the answer to those questions regarding the CDC guidelines and whether the President meets them for an in-person appearance because his record so far suggests he can't be trusted and his team can't be trusted to disclose if his symptoms start to get worse. Would you say that's the Debate Commission's thinking?

Tarini: I think that's definitely a part of it. What we also know about this virus is that some days you could be feeling fine and not show any symptoms and then you could have a relapse and start showing symptoms and have a fever again. There's just so much uncertainty in the next few days about the President's health, how this debate is even going to happen.

I think both campaigns obviously have put their messages out there today publicly. We'll, we're going to assume they're going to be doing some more behind the scenes back and forth with the Commission to see if there's any way they could come up with something. Of course, if the President's health stays the same, if he could participate in the debate.

Brian: Listeners, our lines are open for anything you want to say or ask about last night's debate or the one that may or may not take place down next Thursday. Did the Debate Commission do the right thing? What would you do under those circumstances if you were the president with coronavirus? What should Joe Biden say or do? 646 435-7286 or anything about last night's Vice presidential debate, 646 435-7286 or tweet a thought or a question for politics reporter to any party from the Wall Street Journal @BrianLehrer.

The clip I played before Pence interrupting and Harris saying, "Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking," how specific to a specific interruption did you hear those moments as being and how broadly representative of something larger?

Tarini: I think based on what we saw last night, the Pence and Harris really weren't answering a lot of the specific questions. The interactions between the two were interesting and this quote in particular is one that as you mentioned will be something that people remember, because heading into this debate both sides were very aware of the gender dynamics that were going to be at play.

Clearly, Mike Pence did interrupt the Senator and she used that opportunity to show that she's not going to let them get the best of her. She's going to make her case despite the interruptions. It was different from what we found at the first presidential debate though, where the interruptions took over and we didn't really hear any substance. We did get at least some substance last night, even though there were obviously some dodges from the candidates on certain questions.

Brian: One thing that matters a lot about the candidates and COVID is what they would do about it next with 700+ deaths a day on average, continuing in this country and the politicization of the vaccine timeline. Here are Harris and Pence on that.

Harris: They still don't have a plan. Well, Joe Biden does, and our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy for contact tracing, for testing, for administration of the vaccine and making sure that it will be free for all. That is the plan that Joe Biden has and that I have knowing that we have to get ahold of what has been going on and we need to save our country. Joe Biden is the best leader to do that and frankly, this administration has forfeited their right to re-election based on this.

Pence: The reality is when you look at the Biden plan, it reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way. Quite frankly, when I look at their plan, the talks about advancing testing, creating new PPE, developing a vaccine, it looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.

Brian: Tarini, can you fact-check the heart of that? Is there a Biden plan that does or does not look like a Trump plan?

Tarini: The Biden-Harris plan is extremely detailed and they've talked about it repeatedly on the campaign trail. They have specific proposals for testing for, for sending PPE to small businesses to reopen schools. We saw Pence really reach there going back to Biden's 1988 presidential campaign when he was accused of plagiarism. Clearly he was prepared with that attack because it's hard to defend the administration's handling of the coronavirus.

We saw in the first presidential debate, the President really struggled with that. This seems to be Pence's response for that. Obviously, in many parts of the country testing is still not up to the mark. A lot of doctors, small businesses still struggling to get PPE. He might say that their plan is basically what they're doing now, but the reality on the ground is quite different.

Brian: The reference, the plagiarism, there was to Biden back in 1988, cribbing some lines from a British politician during Biden's first presidential campaign and it was one of the reasons he dropped out. Right?

Tarini: That's exactly right. He really, you could see, you had to reach far back to come up with some attack on the coronavirus criticism.

Brian: Here's an exchange over the President's behavior toward COVID having caused nothing less than a super spreader event at the White House and all these people now getting it because they are in his circle. Yesterday, it was the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and Presidential Aid, Stephen Miller. And we know about Melania and Chris Christie and three Republican senators and the rest. Here's Vice President Pence on the mostly unmasked, not at all social distanced and partly indoors, Amy Coney Barrett introduction.

Pence: Many of the people who were at that event, Susan, actually were tested for coronavirus and it was an outdoor event, which all of our scientists regularly and routinely advise. The difference here is President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interest of their health. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris consistently talk about mandates and not just mandates with the coronavirus, but a government takeover of healthcare, the Green New Deal, all government control. We're about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people.

Harris: Let's talk about respecting the American people. You respect the American people. When you tell them the truth. You respect the American people when you have the courage. To be a leader-

Brian: Tarini, one fact-check. First of all, the Coney Barrett event, which he said was outdoors, was partly indoors, wasn't it?

Tarini: That's right. What we saw on TV of course, was the outdoor Rose Gardens celebration of her nomination, but we know that they were a lot of smaller gatherings inside the White House. It was not all outdoors. He tried to make the point that outdoor gatherings are okay, but you still have to be socially distant. You’re still encouraged to wear masks even though you're outside.

His defense didn't quite all add up. He also tried to make it a conversation about choice versus mandates and went on to talk about the Green New Deal, which of course is unrelated to what happened at the Rose Garden that day.

Brian: Pence also pivoted Trump's irresponsibility to somehow being about trusting the American people to make up their own minds on how to protect themselves. I think that's really important. They don't believe in limits on gatherings or anything like that as public health measures, certainly not at the federal level, just leave it up to every individual, not even the states, because Trump argues over and over again to the governors that they should let everything go at full capacity.

Sporting event attendance, schools at full capacity. That's his position, just leave it up to every individual, whether to risk infecting their neighbors, whether themselves, so in that context, what did you think about that exchange between Pence and Harris?

Tarini: He basically said that individual people should be able to make the choices for themselves taking some libertarian approach to dealing with this pandemic. What we've seen is that this patchwork of rules and regulations related to dealing with the pandemic in different states and counties, it is not as effective because people, of course, move from one place to another.

We also have seen how states have been competing against each other for federal help on protective equipment for funding. He's trying to make, again, the case that a personal choice is what Republican support and is the way to handle this versus mandates which of course sounds a little scarier to most people.

Brian: Laurie in Florida, you're on WNYC, hello from New York, Laurie. Laurie, you got to listen to the phone, not the radio, which is coming to you on delay, so we can cut out people if they say bad words that the FCC doesn't allow. We'll get back to you. Elizabeth, in Bergen County. You're on WNYC. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi.

Brian: Hey, there, you're on the air. You want to say something about last night's debate?

Elizabeth: Yes, I did. I wanted to say that I thought that when they were asked going forward, what the Democrats would do in regards to the pandemic and how that they would handle it. I felt like it was an opportunity for Kamala Harris to say that we should-- the mandate, which obviously was just said was a scary word, but it is something that needs to be done across the country so that we can open the schools and the businesses and take care of everything whether we have to start from ground zero and shut everything down for-- I know that's a bad word and nobody wants to hear that or say that, but even if it's just for a couple of weeks to get a handle on it.

Look what's happening in Wisconsin this morning. Their hospitals are 85% to capacity. It's just not right but I felt like that was a moment and an opportunity where she just needed to say going forward, what we could do in comparison to what we haven't done, which that to me--

Brian: Missed opportunity in your opinion. Tarini, what about that?

Tarini: Yes, I think with mandates, Harris and Biden campaign have talked about mask mandates and they realized that they might not be constitutional so they've had to walk that back. I think that's that they're going to have to balance and talking about they don't want in these types of debates, they're trying to reach independence. They're trying to reach moderate Republicans who might not like Trump.

I think part of it is not scaring off those voters who might not believe in mass mandates or shutting everything down. They're trying to take the approach as Joe Biden has said that he's going to invite all the governors to the White House and encourage them to individually come up with some mandate to get this virus under control. They're still saying they're going to leave some parts of it up to the states, but they're going to have more of a unified approach where they bring people together at the White House, as Joe Biden has said a lot on the campaign trail, in which we have not really seen the President do.

Brian: It's a dilemma for all governments, not to say Trump hasn't completely backed away from national policy on this, which he has, but how local and how widespread to make mandates of shutdowns. Certainly, there's a widespread belief that there should be a mask mandate for when you're in the company of other people or at very least when you're in the company of other people and you can't social distance six feet. But even here in New York City, we're seeing where the mayor wanted to impose closings this week by zip code based on hotspots and then the governor stepped in and said, "No zip codes are too broad. We have to have these more hyper-local color codes." That conversation and back and forth is even going on at that local versus hyper-local level. Let's take another call. Amy in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi, Amy.

Amy: Hi, Brian. I'm on this party [unintelligible 00:20:49] anyway. I just remember hearing Susan Page, the moderator after she introduced the question say you have, I think, it's two minutes or something to answer without interruption. Mike Pence would interrupt and Kamila Harris would say, "I'm speaking." I'm glad she stands up for herself so well, but I didn't hear if Page ever said, "Without interruption. These are the rules that you've agreed to."

Brian: Amy, thank you. We played one example of Pence interrupting and Harris saying, "I'm speaking" earlier. Here's another one.

Harris: Joe Biden has been very clear, he will not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year.

Pence: He said he’s going to appeal the Trump tax cuts.

Harris: Mr. Vice president, I'm speaking. I'm speaking.

Brian: Again, Tarini, if nothing else landed from last night's debate, which in certain ways was meh, there certainly was that.

Tarini: Yes. As far as the question about the moderator, moderating these debates has become a very tough job as we've seen last week and then last night. You don't want to step into the candidates talking too much because you want them to debate ideas and have a free-flowing conversation, but, of course, you also want to enforce the rules. I think the moderators have a tough time balancing those two things.

Brian: I think and I'd be curious to hear Susan Page's, who's a great reporter and political analyst. I don't know how much experience moderating debate she has, but hear her take as to whether she was following what I would call the Jim Lehrer model. Jim Lehrer from PBS, the late PBS anchor. He was on this program for an interview few years ago after he got knocked, I guess that was in the 2012 presidential debates cycle, for not stepping in enough and making candidates actually answer the questions and allowing them to evade.

He really had a philosophy about that, which was, his job is just to put the topic out there basically, and then it's up to the candidates to go back and forth. If for whatever reason, a candidate chooses not to fact check or challenge his statement by the other candidate, then that's a risk they're taking for their election and letting a falsehood, or a distortion, or an opinion that they disagree with go unresponded to. It's possible that Susan Page just was following that philosophy. I'd be curious to ask her at some point.

Tarini: It does end up being a thankless job sometimes being a good moderator.

Brian: Yes. On the other side of that, Chris Wallace was very interventionist last week trying to get them to hold time, continuing to admonish the President when he kept interrupting, sometimes following up and saying, "But you didn't give me an answer to this question or that question." There was that. One of the more memorable lines for the last night was Senator Harris' response to the question of whether she would take a coronavirus vaccine that the President announces. Here's that.

Harris: If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it. Absolutely, but if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I'm not taking it.

Brian: Now, Pence tried to say later that Harris was undermining the nation's recovery by casting doubt on a potential vaccine, but it's not really what she was saying. How did you hear it? I'll tell you how I heard it.

Tarini: I think she's trying to differentiate between the President and science really. We've heard the President and even Mike Pence say that we could have a vaccine by the end of the year before the election, things like that. I think that she is trying to keep the focus on what the scientists are saying about the vaccine rather than pushing the President's political talking points on the vaccine because the President clearly seems to believe that if he can promise some vaccine before the election, it'll help his reelection chances.

Brian: Right. Yes. She was clearly saying if Trump announces it and the scientists say it's safe, then she would take it. If Trump announces it without the scientists saying it's safe, then she would consider it political and a risk. I think people are trying to distort that answer this morning or since the debate. Mike in Jackson Heights. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mike.

Mike: Hi. I have general questions for Democrats. They are always dancing on the obvious question, but they never asked the question. My question would be for Pence yesterday. Yes, you tell everybody to take care of themselves, take care of their neighbors. If you feel like getting sick, go ahead and get sick. The questions that have been asked is who will pay for all of this? Who will treat you? All of us, we're not Presidents of the United States. We're not going to get an approved treatment, we're not going to no bill in the mail once we get out of the hospital. The question that should have should have been asked yesterday by any of Democrat at any given time is yes, you promote this self-quarantine, self taking care of yourself, but who will pay when you get sick?

Brian: Mike, thank you very much. It's really a question for both sides of the aisle, Tarini. The President yesterday announced that he was feeling so great because of his Regeneron polyclonal antibodies treatment. Who knows if he's feeling great or really why he's feeling great if he is, but he was attributing it to that and saying that he would make that available to anybody in the country, even though it's not approved for general use yet and for free. Did he flesh that out or say how he would pay for it?

Tarini: He really hasn't. The President, of course, has gotten a level of treatment in the last few days that few people, if any, can afford to or even have access to. The treatment he got was on compassionate use, which is an experimental drug that has not been approved and he of, course, got special access to it because he's the President of the United States. Joe Biden has talked a lot about the cost of coronavirus in terms of patients contracting, the virus, and then being stuck with the medical bills. He has a plan in which they wouldn't have to pay for a lot of their bills that relate directly to coronavirus.

We really haven't heard a lot from the administration on how they would deal with something like this with so many Americans contracting the virus. Then also we haven't heard the administration really deal with the pre-existing conditions issue. We know that with so many Americans contracting the virus, they could have long-term impact from contracting this virus. We saw Mike Pence yesterday really dodge a question on that front. He was pushed about what the administration would do about people with pre-existing conditions because they're trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and he didn't really answer that question.

Brian: There was that exchange. It was really in the Supreme Court section of the debate, in fact, in which Pence wouldn't say how the Trump-Pence administration would financially protect people with pre-existing conditions after they end Obamacare, which is the law that currently does protect people with pre-existing conditions. Harris wouldn't say whether a Biden-Harris administration would consider adding justices to the Supreme Court because Pence pivoted to that, but certainly, Pence pivoted to that to avoid answering the question of how they would protect people with pre-existing conditions because they have no plan.

Before you go, were you surprised that there wasn't more emphasis by Harris herself on the historic firsts that she is, first African American woman on a major party ticket, first Asian American on a major party ticket? Do you think her calculation

on that was that that's just assumed and everybody knows who she is and it would be more of a political risk than a political benefit to talk about that? She talked about it just a tiny bit, and it was really in response to Pence attacking her record on criminal justice reform.

Tarini: Right. She did bring it up a little bit, as you said, but from the campaign's point of view, based on people I've talked to, I think they saw her speech accepting the nomination as her introduction and addressing the historic first that her nomination represents. I think they felt like they had taken care of that. I know, because we're so close to the election, they're trying to keep the focus on the pandemic as much as possible and trying to really make the election a referendum on the president's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

She was trying to stay focused on that as much as possible. We have seen her-- The way the campaign has used her on the campaign trail, she has been trying to connect with Black voters and Latino voters, talking about her mother's experience as an immigrant. It is something that they are talking about but not necessarily on the debate stage last night.

Brian: She did mention that she was born in Oakland, California to her immigrant mother because even with Harris, there's been this little whiff of birtherism that even the president and some of his supporters have tried to start going, though that doesn't seem to be catching on. All right, we will leave it there with Tarini Parti, politics reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Tarini, Thanks a lot.

Tarini: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Much more to come. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and with us now, national political correspondent for POLITICO, Chris Cadelago, whose been covering the Kamala Harris campaign a lot as well as other things on the trail. Hi, Chris, thanks for coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Chris Cadelago: Thank you so much.

Brian: Let me start on the breaking news this morning that the debate commission has announced next Thursday's presidential debate will be virtual, and President Trump has said he won't attend if that's the case. We talked about it some in our last segment, but what's the latest on that?

Chris: What we saw from the commission this morning, which was rumored to be happening but we hadn't seen an announcement yet, was the unilateral decision on their part to make the next presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden virtual. I think it's important to look at the way in which they did this because we often see these negotiations drag out and become public between the two campaigns trying to one-up each other and argue their positions publicly rather than just to the commission. We had the commission come out and make this decision, draw the line in the sand. Then, as you mentioned, within a few minutes, we had President Trump on Fox Business channel.

He had a long interview. I think it was over 40 minutes with the hosts there, Maria Bartiromo. He basically said this is not something he wants to do. We saw him in a video yesterday that he released saying that he feels like he's cured, that he took this cure as you guys were talking about in the last segment, and he feels like he can do this in-person. He sees that doing this virtually is essentially a waste of his time. We also heard from the Biden campaign saying that whatever safety measures both health officials and the commission recommend, he's all for. We basically have this stand-off between the two of them after this decision was made.

Brian: How did he sound? I assume you were listening to it. In a 40-minute TV interview on the phone, did his breathing seem labored or anything like that?

Chris: There was a little bit of raspiness in his voice. I didn't catch a lot of labored breathing. With Trump, a lot of these things, we've seen him telegraph so far. He weighed in on-- He spent several minutes going back to the Hillary Clinton emails. A lot of these things were just veering way off any current topic that you can imagine most voters would care about. I did notice one thing, and going back again to the debate last night, two comments he made about Kamala Harris that you just would really never hear come out of the mouth of Mike Pence, who obviously took a very different approach with Harris than Trump would have. He called her a monster several times and he also-- [crosstalk]

Brian: He called Kamala Harris a monster?

Chris: A monster as well as a communist. He said she's so far beyond socialism that she's a communist, and of course, we know her record is one that, frankly, in the Democratic primary, she was getting a lot of heat from the left and the party. Those two things stuck out to me and just in terms of people were so on-guard last night watching that debate about instances of sexism and racism that might emerge because there have not been very many times that we've seen a woman on this stage, obviously with Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, and Sarah Palin. Those two things really stood out to me about Trump today.

Brian: Listeners, we can keep taking any of your thoughts about last night's debate or about the debate commission's decision to hold the presidential one scheduled for next Thursday virtually because of President Trump's coronavirus status, and Trump now refusing to participate under those conditions, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Chris, politically, it would typically be in Trump's interest to debate again and in Biden's interests not to, right? Because Biden seems to be in the lead, and the person who's behind traditionally has more to gain from the opportunity to contrast themselves with the leader side-by-side. Assuming Trump is refusing to debate based on a political calculation, do you think that conventional wisdom doesn't hold up in this case?

Chris: I think what it tells you is despite everything Trump has said about how well he did in that debate and how the cards were all stacked against him, including a lot of criticism today, again, about the moderator Chris Wallace and about how much he thought he was able to dominate Joe Biden, the fact that he is the one backing out of this debate after really weeks and weeks and weeks of Trump's campaign and Trump trying to throw out these allegations using op-eds by Democratic writers that have really have nothing to do with Joe Biden, making the case that Biden shouldn't debate, it's now Trump who's essentially trying to use this virtual debate as an excuse to pull out.

It basically points to the fact that he doesn't want to do it, that he feels like he has more to gain by going and holding a rally and being able to make all of his charges in a way. Obviously, it won't have the 70 million person audience that a debate would, but he'll be able to go out unfiltered. You've seen over the last few days since he's gotten out of the hospital, the White House- this comes at a time when fewer reporters are on the White House grounds doing reporting because they're being warned about coronavirus there, that the White House is putting out these videos on their own with no media filter. I think Trump doesn't want to do it.

The other point I would make about the debate is the reaction to this debate is essentially what we've seen in a nutshell from both of these campaigns. Trump likes to turn up the heat. He likes to make every situation at a level 10, sowing chaos whenever he can, and then, you have Biden, his whole MO in this has been trying to paint a picture of normalcy, of calm, trying to lower the temperature. You saw it after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. There were a lot of Democrats even saying, "Biden's got to come out. He's got to make a forceful call. We need to hear from him right away."

He put out statements but he waited, I think a day or so, a day and a half, to come out with a speech that was basically a reach across the aisle, "I'm counting on these Republicans to do the right thing." Of course, we know that that is not happening, and this looks like it's moving forward, this nomination. I think that's where you see the debate. Anything that drops in less than a month now, you're basically going to see the same pattern between Trump and Biden, where Biden says, "I trust health experts. We're going to do what we think they think is right now." Trump is going to- without even telling us when his last negative test was, so we don't know how many days he's going to go out and try to hold rallies as soon as he can.

Brian: In that context, has the Biden campaign reacted to the president's refusal to debate yet because, after the first debate, it was some people who support Biden who said he should refuse further debates because the president wouldn't play by the debate rules last week. What's the Biden camp's reaction, if any, so far?

Chris: I think it's telling that the Biden campaign came out and said, "If Donald Trump is still testing positive for the virus, we will not do the debate." That was an agreement they did come to in the last couple of days. Joe Biden was asked about this morning and he basically said, "Trump tends to change his mind on these things so many times and weave back and forth and make contradicting statements that I'm going to wait and see really what the decision on this is." He said he doesn't really know what he's going to do if Trump decides to just go out and hold his own rally on that same day.

Brian: Of course, we know from Trump's record, that he will say one thing one day and then reverse himself and be able to campaign on both things, like this week, he said he was cutting off negotiations with the House Democrats on another coronavirus relief package, and the next day, yesterday, he proposed a version of one. What is his record suggest about the finality of this position about not participating in a virtual debate?

Chris: It's going to come down to the wire whether this happens and the way in which it happens, particularly, if he's holding off. It does not seem like there's anything out there to suggest that the commission is going to back off on this decision and decide to hold it in person. It's hard to see that happening. The debate is coming up so soon. We just had Donald Trump in the hospital. We'll just have to see if he changes his mind. You could look at it both ways.

I think you're right. In any normal circumstance, in any campaign, it's always the candidate who is down in the polls, who needs the comeback, so to speak, who is pushing for more debates, agitating for as many debates as they can get to hold the leader in the polls accountable and try to knock them off their game and see if they can shake it up. For Trump, I guess all we can assume at the moment is that he feels like he can do that in other ways. He's been out there criticizing the next moderator, who is Steve Scully from C-SPAN, saying that he's a "Never Trumper".

Like I said, he's criticized Chris Wallace. Any way in which he can poke holes at the authority of the debate, the commission itself, he'll do that. Even if that means he decides at the last moment that he's going to do the debate, he will have had days and days of news cycles where he's tried to take down all of these people in authority and these institutions we've had down a notch.

Brian: Of course, he wouldn't just be snubbing a debate moderator next week, he'd be snubbing the public in a certain respect because it's a town hall style debate, where regular people are selected to ask the questions. Is that right?

Chris: Yes, that's right. How they would do that is still up in the air. We know that they were saying the moderator would fly down to Miami. I guess the assumption would be that the moderator would be with these voters who would be asking questions to the candidates, who would each be in different locations in the country. They would not have to be in the same city.

I guess that goes both ways. The last debate between Trump and Biden was so hard to follow, so chaotic, and really indecipherable in terms of where we know where they stand but in terms of them being able to really put their positions out there, that having voters there asking questions versus a member of the news media, I think some people feel like would help facilitate answers that aren't interrupted in the first five seconds.

Brian: Yes. Who is the moderator next week, by the way? I don't even know. Do you?

Chris: Yes, it's Steve Scully from C-SPAN.

Brian: With Chris Cadelago, national politics reporter for POLITICO, let's go up to Irvington-on-Hudson and see what Cheryl has to say or ask. Cheryl, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Cheryl: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to note that, as you noted, Trump's refusal to play by the rules with last week's debate. He lied about the pre-debate testing, the Trump family flouted the mask rules in the debate hall. It's clear that he's knowingly exposing people to a deadly virus if he were to go forward and debate with Joe next week. I'm still worried about Joe from last week's debate. It's still nine days from that debate. I don't think he's out of the woods on that. Pence violated the quarantine and isolation rules of the CDC by debating last night. I think there shouldn't be live debates because the science speaks for itself, and it emphasizes Biden's belief in science.

Brian: Right. Thank you, Cheryl. There is, as I said in the first segment today, CDC guidelines by which one could argue that Trump could debate in person. The CDC guidelines say, "You can be around others 10 days after symptoms first appeared, if you've also gone 24 hours with no fever without the use of fever-reducing medications, and other symptoms of COVID-19 are improving." Chris, we can probably say those things are true as of now about the president, but I think the caveat there is we can't really know the answer to those questions because the president's records, so far, suggest that he and his medical team can't be trusted to disclose if his symptoms start to get worse or if he's really on fever reducers or not.

Chris: That's right. One of the reasons we can't do that is because we don't know how many days he was experiencing symptoms, to begin with, before this was reported out, his positive test results was reported out. They've given some of the treatments that he had. They started to do more briefings, obviously, a couple of days into his hospital stay, but this whole idea about how forthright they were about his last negative test would lead you to conclude that it would be difficult to know when he is totally in the clear to be around people again.

Being around his people, so to speak, or his staff that is there on their own volition and making the decision to do that is different than being there against an opponent in a debate and people who are there for political reasons. I think if you work in the White House, that's the decision you make if you decide to be around the president. We know that the chief of staff and other close aides to the president were in protective gear over the last couple of days and in the presence of the president, and that's their decision. They can do that.

Whether Joe Biden and others in the debate hall want to be around someone who just recently and still has COVID is something that falls to both the Cleveland Clinic, which is doing the health precautions for this, as well as the debate commission. When you bring these other parties in, they don't necessarily want to be liable for something like this, especially with so little time left in the election.

Brian: Let's take another call. This is Paula Whitney in Crown Heights. You're on WNYC. Hello, Paula Whitney.

Paula: Thank you, Brian, and good morning.

Brian: Good morning.

Paula: Some background, I worked for CUNY, I have a great union, and I have terrific health coverage. I also have 19 disabilities. I have two questions. The first one is, why on earth is no one talking about the Trump and Republicans antipathy towards Obamacare? Why do they despise it so? My answer is that they want to protect the interests of the insurance companies. My other question is, after four years, where on earth is the Republican health care plans? Those are my two questions. Thank you.

Brian: Thank you very much. Let's play a clip from the debate last night. That's exactly pertinent to those questions. This starts with Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris: If you have a preexisting condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they're coming for you. If you love someone who has a preexisting condition, they're coming for you. If you are under the age of 26 under your parents' coverage, they're coming for you.

Moderator: Senator Harris, Thank you.

Kamala Harris: You're welcome.

Moderator: Let me give you a chance to respond.

Mike Pence: Well, I hope we have a chance to talk about healthcare because Obamacare was a disaster and the American people remember it well. President Trump and I have a plan to improve healthcare and protect preexisting conditions for every American. Look, Senator Harris, you're entitled to your own opinion but you're not entitled to your own facts. You, yourself, said on multiple occasions when you were running for president that you would ban fracking. Joe Biden looked at a supporter in the eye and pointed and said, "I guarantee that we will abolish fossil fuels."

Brian: There's actually a lot in there. We hear another Mike Pence pivot, which he did a number of times last night, and in pivoting to fracking and fossil fuels, he managed to not answer the question about where their plan is for abolishing- I mean, for protecting people with preexisting conditions, even 19 like the caller, from getting health insurance, protecting them- sorry, to make sure that they can get health insurance is a better way to put that, which Obamacare is the law that explicitly protects right now. Do they have a plan?

Chris: They don't have a plan. We should be clear about that. They're also simultaneously trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act in the courts right now, which is another point Kamala Harris made. There was a couple points in there where she let him off the hook. She didn't necessarily call him out in the way that she could have about the lack of a plan, that the president has been saying now month after month is coming momentarily. It hasn't come yet.

You'll remember back in the 2018 midterm elections when Donald Trump teased a middle-class tax cut that was supposedly coming, that few people on The Hill had heard about, which never came. She also let him roll the suspense when he talked about the COVID death rates. There were some moments where even strong supporters of Kamala Harris, people who felt like she did a good job last night, felt like she could have come in and corrected Mike Pence.

Brian: Let's play another clip. This is where, whether or not she corrected Mike Pence, she went after Trump on his taxes.

Kamala Harris: We now know because of great investigative journalism that Donald Trump paid $750 in taxes. When I first heard about it, I literally said, "You mean $750,000?" It was like, no, $750. We now know Donald Trump owes and is in debt for $400 million. Just so everyone is clear, when we say in debt, it means you owe money to somebody. It'd be really good to know who the president of the United States, the commander in chief, owes money to because the American people have a right to know what is influencing the president's decisions. Is he making those decisions on the best interest of the American people, of you, or self-interest?

Brian: Chris, taxes came up a couple of ways last night. That certainly was one. The other way, in the clip that we played a little earlier, was Pence arguing that the Biden-Harris team would raise your taxes, and Harris repeated Biden's promise that he would not raise taxes on anyone making $400,000 or less. The only parts of the Trump tax cuts that he would repeal or keep out of his tax plan would be those on people making over $400,000, that's whose taxes would get raised.

They went back and forth on that, and then, Harris brought up what we just played, the president's tax returns, and as revealed by the New York Times that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars to people who are not identified and the potential national security risks of that. How do you see the tax returns issue playing politically? Is it another nothingburger, where people are already on the sides about whether to trust Donald Trump and his character, who he's indebted to, and it's nothing, or did she use it because they think it's moving the needle a little bit?

Chris: I think she used it because it was an offensive position that she can take. More broadly, the trouble that we saw for Pence and Donald Trump in these closing weeks of the election is the issues where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris feel most comfortable talking about, which is Trump's and Pence's handling of COVID, the state of the economy right now, the jobless rate, are things that are really front of mind for voters. They're the things that people care about the most.

Trump's taxes are more reinforcing of the position that people already have. Trump has spent so much time with his hardcore supporters, telling them not to trust the media. He's made the argument that he's millions of dollars in other taxes besides federal income taxes. I think that's a talking point that you hear a lot among Trump supporters. Mike Pence's points in the debate, the ones where he was going after Kamala Harris, were both classic Republican arguments like Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes, and also, ones that are certainly less front-of-mind for people right now, which is, "Are you going to pack the Supreme Court?"

There's an argument to be made that Biden should be giving an answer for that. Three times during the primary, Biden said something along the lines, Democrats would rue the day, that they decide to pack the court. Kamala Harris had a different position in the primary. She said it was a discussion she was open to hearing about. Joe Biden did not put Kamala Harris in the best position in that exchange with Mike Pence because Joe Biden hasn't given an answer. He's basically said that he now thinks it's a distraction away from the issues that people care about and that people are already voting.

Both sides are very much, as you pointed out, in their corners right now on a lot of these issues, but less so on COVID. This issue of masks, yes, people don't like mandates, but support for wearing masks is way above a majority right now in polls. To be taking an anti-mask position, which the Republican Party has taken, is in contrary to where most of the public is right now. That's the problem for Mike Pence and Donald Trump, is they backed themselves into a corner on some of these things.

Brian: One last clip of Pence for this segment. This is going to start with the question from the moderator, Susan Page. I'll just let her ask it.

Susan Page: Vice President Pence, President Trump has several times refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power after the election. If Vice President Biden is declared the winner and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, what would be your role and responsibility as vice president? What would you personally do? You have two minutes?

Mike Pence: Let me just say, I think we're going to win this election. President Trump and I are fighting every day in courthouses to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating this universal mail-in voting that'll create a massive opportunity for voter fraud. We have a free and fair election. We know-- We have confidence in it. I believe in all my heart that President Donald Trump is going to be reelected for four more years.

Brian: That was an edit of a longer answer that Pence gave, but that was the part that went to the point of Susan Page's very good question, which is, "If Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, what would be your role and responsibility as vice president?" I think it's newsworthy, Chris, that he did not answer that question. He did not say, "It would be my role as another elected official of the United States to make sure that a peaceful transfer of power takes place," rather than stand by the president side if he refuses to leave office after the courts if it goes to the courts declare a winner.

Chris: It's certainly notable that he didn't answer the question. What I would add to that is, in the moments and hours and days after Donald Trump first raise this as a possibility that he would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power, we did see a whole lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill, and this is not something that they do very often, come out and object to what the president said and basically guarantee in terms of their power, being an equal branch of government, that they would not allow that to happen. We have heard from people who are not part of the Trump administration, Republicans, that this is not something they would stand for.

Brian: He just repeated in that answer the president's rationale for holding open the possibility that he wouldn't leave office, which is that universal mail-in voting is creating a massive opportunity for voter fraud. One of the things that we might have to look forward to, if we can use the phrase look forward, is Trump trying to claim that the election is invalid if he loses just based on the number of mail-in ballots there are without any specific allegations of fraud, under the theory that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud, and we'll see how far he gets with that, if he tries to do that. All right, Chris Cadelago, national politics correspondent for POLITICO.

 

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