US presidential debate: 'Bombast and lies' from Trump

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00:00Well, for more, let's speak to James Cohen, Emeritus Professor of American Studies at

00:03Sorbonne Nouvelle University.

00:05Hello to you, James.

00:08What were your main takeaways from that first presidential debate?

00:12Well, I think that everybody is saying what's already been announced and within democratic

00:17ranks it's pretty clear that nobody was very happy with the performance of Biden.

00:23It's concerning.

00:24Nonetheless, I think you can say that in terms of substance, there's a lot more on the democratic

00:29side than on the Trump side.

00:31Trump was full of bombast and lies and sort of an uncontrolled tidal wave of insults

00:40also that he threw at Biden, making it difficult to respond point by point.

00:44There was no way to do so.

00:47The insults are a part, a standard part of politics anywhere in the world, but the lies

00:52do you think?

00:53Trump has made that more of a standard feature.

00:54More and more, yeah.

00:55But the mudslinging, we'll see that time and again.

00:57But the lies.

00:58Should CNN have had fact-checking at the debate?

01:01Yeah, it's not easy to do so instantaneously, but there should have been something because

01:05given the well-known fact, not a piece of fake news that Trump invents stuff and is

01:12full of lies, maybe there should have been something on the screen indicating that that

01:16would have helped.

01:19After the debate.

01:20That was the format.

01:21Yeah, right.

01:22After the debate in Atlanta, there's of course going to be some spin about both candidates'

01:26performances.

01:27But given the hours that come, more and more Democrats posing questions about why is Joe

01:32Biden our man?

01:35I think that that debate is going to have to happen.

01:38I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's not happening.

01:42It's an open secret.

01:43It's not even a secret at all that this discussion is happening as a result of last night's debate.

01:48Nonetheless, I would continue to say that in terms of substance, the Democrats have

01:54it all over the Republicans, and in terms of the model of society that they're defending,

02:00Trump wants to dismantle everything.

02:01He wants to dismantle all forms of regulation.

02:03He wants to give billionaires more tax cuts.

02:07He doesn't believe in using the state for social purposes.

02:11On the Democratic side, there is much more of a project, and also a defense of Democratic

02:17institutions, which is not the case on the Republican side because the Republicans now

02:21have a playbook.

02:22The Heritage Foundation has written them a 900-page playbook, giving them strategies

02:26to give the president, if Trump is reelected, much more authority even than the president

02:31already has to steer clear of the federal bureaucracy and to do exactly as he pleases.

02:36Even if he was sort of a semi-dictator.

02:38Let's talk about that more in a moment, but first, staying with the Democrats, Biden is

02:42not the official candidate yet.

02:47Should Democrats pivot?

02:48Right.

02:49Well, that would take lots of pivoting between now and the convention in Chicago in the month

02:53of August.

02:54I can't speculate about that.

02:55I'm not qualified to say.

02:57For the moment, he's the one who has to decide.

03:01He's probably not going to step aside.

03:03There would have to be a very strong movement within the Democrats to get him to do so.

03:08I can't quite see that happening because the last time there was a Democratic candidate

03:12or any candidate who withdrew in the middle of a race instead of being a candidate for

03:18his own re-election, that was the case of Lyndon Johnson in 1968, that didn't turn out

03:21well for the Democrats.

03:22So that's probably not a great strategy unless you really have no other recourse.

03:25I can't.

03:27As of today, I can't see it happening.

03:28Right.

03:29And back to what you were saying about the Republican playbook, if Donald Trump does

03:32win the White House, as polls look like he will do.

03:36Well, things could change.

03:37There are a few swing states where things could still swing.

03:41And there's another debate to come as well.

03:44What are some of those overhauls that his team is outlining on U.S. institutions, on

03:49political appointees?

03:51What I see is that he wants to get rid of as many career civil servants as he can.

04:01In particular, in the Office of Management and Budget, he wants to get rid of as many

04:05appointed officials who were appointed for life or appointed out of competence.

04:12He wants to turn them into the kind of personnel that you can fire at will and bring in political

04:16loyalists.

04:17Essentially, yes-men.

04:18Yes-men.

04:19That's what, which would be disastrous in a number of domains where if you're a yes-man,

04:23you don't have technical answers about how to solve problems.

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