Tomorrow night, President Biden and former President Trump will face off in the first of two presidential debates. What do both candidates have to prove and what are the pitfalls both are trying to avoid? This week, Errin sits down with her editor, Terri Rupar, for a round of Presidential Debate Bingo to help you prepare for what is poised to be an eventful evening.
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On today’s episode
Our host
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Today’s guest
Terri Rupar is The 19th’s political editor. She previously worked at The Washington Post, where she held editing and digital jobs, most recently covering politics. She joined the Post after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Follow Terri Rupar on X @terri_rupar.
Episode transcript
The Amendment podcast transcripts are automatically generated by a third-party website and may contain typos or other errors. Please consider the official record for The Amendment podcast to be the audio publicly available wherever you listen to podcasts
Errin Haines:
Let’s talk about the, the, the, the legal challenges of –
Terri Rupar:
A fun jaunty intro to the felonies. Yes. Do, do, do, do. Felonies!
Errin:
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about crime-ing. Yeah. No.
Hey, y’all. Welcome to The Amendment, a weekly conversation about gender, politics, and power. I’m your host, Errin Haines. So tomorrow is the first presidential debate. I know the year’s gone by fast, but you are not imagining things. This is actually the earliest a presidential debate has ever been scheduled. It’s the first time Biden and Trump have shared a stage since 2020, and it’s a chance for the American people to hear from the two front runners for the job of President of the United States. This is gonna be a pretty consequential conversation, or pretty consequential yelling match depending on how it goes. So ahead of the debate, I wanted to give y’all a bit of a primer — you know, touch on some of the topics that are probably gonna come up tomorrow so that you can get a sense of what you should be listening for when they come up. And I couldn’t think of anyone better to have this conversation with — or maybe just troll — than my very own editor, Terri Rupar. We’re bringing the conversation that we have on our Slack channel and in the group chat to all of you. Welcome, Terri.
Terri:
Uh, thank you very much for having me, and I’m excited that everyone gets a chance –
Errin:
Wow. Don’t thank me yet.
Terri:
– to hear just how difficult my job is, uh, with all the trolling that I get.
Errin:
All right, so let’s set the table here, Terri. In your mind, what are the stakes of this debate to you? Why does this matter?
Terri:
So, this is a chance for both candidates to kind of make their case to the American public on a stage that they haven’t really had. Trump has many, many events. He’s still having lots of rallies, but they’re not getting the kind of wall-to-wall coverage they used to in his previous runs. And so this is a chance for people who don’t tune into him on purpose to see him. For Biden, it’s really a chance to prove that he is still up to the job. There’s a lot of discussion of his age, which he is…not young. Neither is Donald Trump. For Biden in particular, it’s a chance to show that he can, you know, put sentences together, really convince the American public, stand there for two hours and really make the case that he should get another term.
Errin:
I think for me, you know, it’s not just, you know, for Biden to look energetic or for Trump to behave himself, right? I mean, I can remember four years ago, our takeaway at The 19th was that toxic masculinity was really what took center stage. And so there was little talk of, like, the actual issues that voters care about, like maybe the economy or abortion, immigration, climate. So even though we do have, you know, the same two candidates on a debate stage, this debate is not going to necessarily look like it looked four years ago, right? I mean, the rules, for one thing, are gonna be very different.
Terri:
Yeah. Last time there were smaller audiences, but there were still audiences. This time we’re not going to have audiences in the studio. This is being moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Each candidate will have their microphone muted when they’re not supposed to be speaking. So that will presumably cut down on some crosstalk and some interruptions.
Errin:
Presumably.
Terri:
Both candidates are trying to reach voters who can be swayed to their side. They’re trying to reach their base to turn them out. But we know that the last two presidential elections were decided by a few thousand votes in a few states. And so, uh, moving just a few people, moving a few thousand people, could make a big difference in this election.
Errin:
All right. So now I wanna play around of debate bingo with you, Terri. Is that okay?
Terri:
Yes, absolutely.
Errin:
Okay. For everybody tuning in, what that means is that I have a sheet in front of me with a bunch of topics that I think might come up in the debate, and I want Terri and I to walk through them and think about how they might show up. Ready?
Terri:
So ready.
Errin:
Okay. So I have now gone from podcast host to game show host, apparently. Let’s start with abortion. Uh, I wanna start here because this week also marks the two year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. Abortion was barely discussed during the presidential debates four years ago, and now it’s front and center, and yet Republicans are not really united around a post-op strategy. How do you think Trump is gonna navigate that? How is he gonna talk to people who are not ultra conservative about this issue?
Terri:
Trump’s strategy so far has been to take credit for the end of Roe v. Wade and the end of a federal right to abortion and say that actually everyone does agree with him — that people thought that Roe was wrongly decided, which is not fully inaccurate. But people still actually are generally not crazy about how it’s been sent back to the states as an issue. So he likes to say this has been very popular. It has not actually been that popular. He says it’s what everyone wanted. It’s not actually maybe what everyone really wanted. So he has said really clearly that he would not back a federal ban on abortion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t be able to use other tools to restrict abortion. There’s ways to restrict access to medication abortion, which is now the most popular method of abortion. And there’s other kinds of tools that the Democrats and abortion rights advocates like to point to that he could use to restrict abortion anyway.
Errin:
Yeah, I mean, he said a lot of things about abortion, right? And so whether he will be pinned down on any of those things on a debate stage will certainly be interesting. And meanwhile, you know, you have, uh, President Biden who has become increasingly, I think we could say, comfortable with talking about abortion. This is somebody who wasn’t even really trying to say the word “abortion” for years. And now has made that kind of front and center — abortion definitely on the ballot for voters — but also something that Democrats are absolutely campaigning on and really trying to use that to frame the stakes, I think, even more broadly about rights as we head into this election this year as. As that being the thing that this election is really about.
Terri:
Yeah, it’s absolutely one of the strongest issues for, um, Biden and Democrats overall. We know that when we’ve seen abortion ballot measures in past elections, they perform better than the Democratic candidates. It’s an issue that really kind of goes across party lines. Independents, um, want more access to abortion. They don’t want it to be restricted. And so it’s absolutely an issue that, even though Biden has been historically — I mean, as a Catholic, in particular — uncomfortable with, he still is kind of… he’s gotten a lot more comfortable as time has gone on. And it’s a line Trump really has to walk between not alienating religious conservatives who were very happy by the end of Roe. They want him to go further. They want Congress or whoever the Senate president to go further to restrict abortion. But while also not alienating independent voters, uh, or people who might swing, people who are really uncomfortable with all the abortion restrictions that have been put in place.
Errin:
All right. Next bingo topic. So also new to 2024 is the legal aspect that is accompanying this campaign. Uh, we’re talking about the various criminal cases that former President Trump is facing. How should President Biden and the Democratic Party really be holding Trump accountable for his felony charges and now criminal conviction? Do you think that this is something that President Biden is going to bring up on the debate stage tomorrow?
Terri:
I would be surprised if the moderators don’t bring it up. This feels like something that’s so core to this election. It is history making, uh, in that this is just a really unusual situation we’re in. We’re only about two weeks out from Trump’s scheduled sentencing on the 34 felony convictions in the Manhattan case, and so it’s just…it’s a key factor in what’s happening in this election. Not to mention the, uh, civil cases, which he was found liable for sexual abuse and for defamation, and also for lying about the worth of his businesses. Those are all issues that feel really relevant to who he is and who people might be voting for for the next President of the United States.
Errin:
I’m gonna say something here that I don’t really say very often, which is: Terri, you’re making a really good point here.
Terri:
Oh my god, thank you.
Errin:
Yeah. And it’s recorded, so like, don’t, like, play this back a lot. I think what I would say is, I think that you’re exactly right that this is something that’s going to come up, whether either one of the candidates bring it up or not, right? I think it would be journalistic malpractice to not bring it up. Well, I mean, look, we also have to talk about what is also factoring into this election factoring in with Republican voters, and that is the Hunter Biden trial. Hunter Biden was recently convicted for a gun violation. How, if at all, have Hunter Biden’s charges impacted Joe Biden’s stature in the eyes of voters?
Terri:
I think it’s really unclear still. I mean, Hunter Biden is not running for president. Um, I think for a lot of Americans, they see somebody struggling with addiction, and with legal issues. And for a lot of people, that’s pretty relatable. It also can be seen as proof that the justice system is not just fully rigged in Biden’s direction, um, that his son was convicted on these gun charges. It’s unclear how much it will really matter to people, but also, again, Hunter Biden will not be on stage.
Errin:
Yeah, I think we have to keep saying this is, I mean, it’s a false equivalency, right? Because Hunter Biden is not actually running for president, you know? So on the campaign trail, uh, former President Trump has really brought up Hunter Biden to talk about the criminality of, you know, “the Biden crime family,” you know, has been something that he’s used. But I wonder how that plays out when these two men are face-to-face on a stage.
Terri:
Yeah, it’s possible that if Trump decides to go after Hunter Biden on the debate stage, that people have a lot of empathy for him and his family, and kind of see that as a negative against Trump, and see that side of him that we know a lot of people don’t like where he’s just kind of yelling and slinging mud and being negative. It’s a side that we know that voters don’t necessarily like, or maybe they just see it as, “of course, all politicians are corrupt, all politicians have these problems. Like everyone has legal problems. What does it matter that Trump also has these felony convictions?”
Errin:
All right, so I wanna move to another topic, and it is the main topic in every election year. So of course, it is on our bingo card, and that is the economy. Specifically with respect to the economy this cycle, inflation is really kind of dominating the conversation around the economy. So, by the numbers, the economy is actually at a good place right now. We’re adding jobs, inflation is slowing, but it doesn’t feel like public sentiment is really reflecting that. And I wonder what you make of that, or how that’s gonna, you know, what the candidates might say could impact public sentiment on this issue.
Terri:
So not only is the economy gonna be really front and center over the next few months as Trump and Biden campaign, but I think it’s also gonna be a big part of this debate. I would be surprised if it’s not a big part of this debate because both candidates have records to campaign on and also have made a lot of promises. So they’re both gonna wanna point to each other’s promises about what they will do next. Trump in particular has promised widespread tariffs that many people think would increase inflation and increase prices for most Americans. And so while they’re pointing back and forth, it’ll be interesting to see how they address each other’s points and how much the moderators step in. You know, I think Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have both shown, on their shows, that they’re willing to kind of push back on these candidates, these presidents, and talk about what’s real and ask them questions and challenge them. It’s still difficult and it’s difficult, I think, in a debate, for things to not get bogged down if you’re trying to say, “well, is this actually true?” Again, the economy is complicated, how much are you gonna argue over exactly what inflation means and what it means for people. But yeah. Errin, I’m curious. You have done TV. What do you think they’re gonna say?
Errin:
No, I mean, I think that people’s feelings, especially as it pertains to the economy, really do matter almost as much as the facts of the economy for people. You can tell people that the economy is doing better, but how they personally are experiencing that — what that means for them in their own households — is really what matters. And also the extent to which these candidates understand what the American people are feeling and experiencing in terms of the economy. You know, I think also President Biden being able to talk about things like student loan debt cancellation. The Biden Harris administration just announced that medical debt is not going to be a factor on credit reports, which is going to be hugely helpful, disproportionately, to women, to people of color, who carry that medical debt burden.
Errin:
And it does have an impact on, you know, their ability to operate in this economy. And so touting, you know, kind of what they see as those types of wins, you know? But for former President Trump, I think, you know, he’s gonna get on the debate stage and say what he’s been saying at his campaign rallies — that the country is worse off than they were when he was president. And that when he was president, the economy was doing great. And that is the narrative that he will probably try to continue to sell.
Terri:
And I think Biden cannot really say, “We did amazing; everything is great now,” because people don’t feel that.
Errin:
They won’t feel great.
Terri:
Whereas Trump…Trump really has no problem just saying, “Everything was amazing when I was president.”
Errin:
Yeah. And his voters certainly agree and are hoping to return to that period. Right? But what about the independent voters that both of them are kind of fighting over? I think that is really kind of the audience that they are speaking to as well.
So, speaking of audiences that both candidates will need to speak to, that brings us to our next bingo card issue, which is women. So both of these men need women to turn out for them, but how are they gonna go about making their case to women specifically during this debate? I’m predicting again this year that women are going to be the deciders of this election, even though this is a rematch. Lik, I’ve also written about how this election is largely a vote between two very contrasting versions of masculinity, right? So I think that’s a dynamic that we’re surely gonna see play out on the debate stage.
Terri:
Yeah. One thing about rewatching debates from 2020 that really jumped out was just how much we know about these two men — how much we’ve seen them, how much we’ve heard them speak. It is possible that I have spent more time listening to and watching them than other people have. It’s just possible.
Errin:
Thank you for your service.
Terri:
Maybe everyone else did not rewatch the 2020 debates this week.
Errin:
There’s still time.
Terri:
There is still time, but we do know a lot about them. What are we gonna learn that is gonna feel really different? I mean, I think for Joe Biden, again, the challenge is to seem like he is completely up to the job. I think talking about abortion and reproductive rights generally could be really key for women voters. Um, you know, this is somewhat how he talks to the base about those issues. We know that since Dobbs, women specifically have moved in terms of how much they will vote on abortion. People who are for abortion access are more likely to say it’s a key part of their vote than they were pre-Dobbs when the people who said abortion was a major factor in their decision-making were almost all people who opposed abortion. And I think for Trump, again, it’s some of the things that have long turned people off about him, which is the insults, it’s the crude language, it’s the kind of… it’s the Trump that we heard on the Access Hollywood tape. It’s the Trump that said, “Blood coming out of wherever” about Megyn Kelly. To attract women voters, he needs to not be that Donald Trump, and make people feel like it is okay for them to get behind him.
Errin:
Next bingo card issue: gender affirming care and LGBTQ rights, which absolutely is an issue in this campaign. Wondering if and how it’s going to come up on the debate stage. So, the foundation of Trump’s campaign has always been alienation and othering, whether that’s immigrants, Black people, queer people. Do you think, on the debate stage, he’s going to be using those kind of same rhetorical strategies? Like, is he going to be literally transphobic on the debate stage?
Terri:
I’m curious to see if this issue comes up, how it comes up and kind of the rhetoric both candidates use. You know, Biden has generally promised to have trans Americans’ backs, um, as laws in states kind of restrict access to bathrooms, restrict access to sports, restrict access to gender-affirming care. But because it’s all in the states, the federal government doesn’t have a lot of control over. It is limited in kind of how much it can respond and how much it can do. And so, kind of, does he make specific promises? Or does he just kind of say, as he said before, “I see you, I have your back.” While often Trump and conservatives make a pitch that’s based on this idea of keeping women and girls safe — now this obviously implies cis women and girls — so that is, “they won’t be in your sports, they won’t be in your bathrooms.” This is part of the othering language. The rhetoric comes across as a very, like, “We’re just trying to protect you. We’re just trying to be reasonable.” But it has real implications for trans Americans.
Errin:
Yeah. And their ability to exist in public life, right?
Terri:
Yeah.
Errin:
It’ll be interesting to see whether this is an issue that the moderators bring up or whether it’s something that, you know, one or both of the candidates bring up. But I mean, I don’t see how it doesn’t come up. I mean, it’s Pride Month after all. Like, why wouldn’t this be an issue that is addressed in this debate?
Terri:
And it is something that a lot of legislation is being passed on, even if not at the federal level.
Errin:
Absolutely. And something that matters to voters and that they should get to hear from these candidates about. So, uh, I don’t know. I’m predicting that that may be something that comes up on the debate stage, too.
Alright, so, lightning round, Terri. Get ready. Are you ready?
Terri:
Yes. I just did finger guns. That means I’m ready.
Errin:
Alright. So Project 2025. First lightning round question: Only 12 percent of Americans say that they even know about Project 2025, which is this long wishlist from the Conservative Heritage Foundation should former President Trump return to office. Is 12 percent a lot, or is it a little, you know, with five months to go to the election? And do you think that bringing up Project 2025 on a debate stage is really worthwhile Democratic messaging and a worthy use of their time on a debate stage?
Terri:
It’s maybe more than I expected. Senate Democrats — congressional Democrats overall — have recently started a new push to really highlight Project 2025. So part of what’s in Project 2025 is cutting a bunch of the federal workforce — eliminating the Federal Department of Education, ending the independence of the Justice Department, which feels particularly relevant given the investigations into Trump’s behavior. It takes aim at anything having to do with equity programs, anything about race and gender. A lot of these positions are not super popular, and so..
Errin:
Turns out!
Terri:
Turns out. So Democrats are really trying to highlight the stuff that’s not that popular and say, “Look, this is what’s going to happen. This country is not going to be the kind of…this country is not going to be what you want it to be under Project 2025.” Which Trump has said, “This isn’t my plan.” But it still has a lot of ties to people who have worked with him in his first administration or people with ties to him. So, Errin, I’m gonna turn things around. I’m gonna ask you to start out talking about Covid because I just kind of relived four years ago by rewatching these debates. Do you think it’s gonna come up? Do you think voters wanna hear about it?
Errin:
Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if America is interested in revisiting Covid or the pandemic, even though that was largely the reason that Trump lost in 2020. But maybe everybody just wants to move on. But it’s really interesting to think about, given that really the main question in any election is, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” All right, so let me ask you about protests and public safety because, you know, four years ago we were talking about protests in the context of the racial reckoning, the Black Lives Matter movement. This cycle we’re talking about campus protests over the war on Gaza. How are these moments different? Do you think those differences affect the outcome of the election?
Terri:
I think that so far, at least, the protests over Gaza are not as widespread. They’re not as big as the protests in the summer of 2020 on Black Lives Matter. And I think the Democratic Party just isn’t as aligned with these protesters as they were in 2020. You saw basically all elected Democrats, and some Republicans, backing the Black Lives Matter protests four years ago in a way that we’re just not seeing now. And so also because school is out right now, the protests just…there are still people protesting. They’re not as big. I think it’s a really big TBD of how each candidate wants to talk about this or if they wanna talk about it.
Errin:
All right. Next topic: Child care. This is an economic concern that many women care about. So what would it mean for either of these men to address child care? Will this ever be seen as a true political topic?
Terri:
So if you’ll recall, Ivanka Trump, during the Trump administration, pushed her father to make moves on child care. Biden also tried to make moves on child care to make it more affordable for people, more available for people. Everyone has mostly failed so far. If they talk about it, it’ll be interesting to see exactly how they frame it, if they have specific proposals and if they know how they would make any difference on that.
Errin:
Okay. Immigration. Do we think Trump is gonna double down on his anti-immigrant rhetoric?
Terri:
You know, I do think that. I would look out for names like Lincoln Riley, who’s a college student in Georgia who was killed, and also Rachel Morin, a mother in Maryland who was killed last year. Undocumented immigrants have been charged in both of their deaths. These are the cases the right often likes to highlight to paint immigrants as dangerous. Broadly, we know that undocumented immigrants do not commit crimes at higher rates than American citizens.
Errin:
Okay. Supreme Court. Something that obviously people are paying a lot more attention to. But does it make the debate stage?
Terri:
So Biden just, earlier this month, said at a fundraiser that he thinks the next president, the winner of this race, will get to appoint two justices. I don’t know who they’re replacing exactly. I guess there’s probably betting markets for that.
Errin:
TBD!
Terri:
But absolutely, they both kind of wanna make this an issue. The Supreme Court has given conservatives a lot of wins, which makes it a motivating factor for both sides.
Errin:
Yeah, and I think it’s important to remember that there was, you know, that moment in the debate where then-candidate Biden said that he was going to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. That was during a primary debate. All right. Big Lie. January 6. Does it come up on the debate stage?
Terri:
I feel similar to Trump’s felonies. This kind of has to come up. I, yeah, I imagine the moderators would bring this up. It’s part of why Biden is kind of saying that he needs to run again. It’s a continuation of the argument in 2020. He said, because of Charlottesville, because of white supremacy, I need to run. These are the same kind of threads that go to January 6, 2021. So I think that it is part of Biden’s core pitch and it’s also an enormous moment of the past four years in our politics.
Errin:
Yeah. Wow. Well, I mean, Terri, I feel like we’ve covered a lot here. Like, I don’t even need to text you tomorrow night. Like, don’t even worry about contacting me. It’s fine.
Terri:
Oh, great. Okay.
Errin:
We’ve already done it here.
Terri:
Great. You’re blocked.
Errin:
Okay. But I will be watching the debate. We’ll be watching as a politics team. And hopefully, you know, if you guys are watching with us, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on social media. If you have any questions, if you have any thoughts about how the debate goes, we wanna hear from you. So, uh, yeah, let’s all watch this as a big Happy American family. Happy debate night, Terri.
Terri:
Happy debate night.
Errin:
That’s this week’s episode of The Amendment, which is also a newsletter, by the way, that I write. You can subscribe to it for free by going to 19thnews.org. That’s also where you can find all of our great journalism around gender, politics and policy. One last thing before we wrap this episode: The 19th is having a little free get together on July 5 in New Orleans. So Fourth of July weekend. Mark your calendar and join us, and me, for a few hours of brunch. Did you hear me? Brunch conversations and solution sessions that are focused on building healthy communities in the face of climate change. It’s a really great stop for locals and also for everybody who’s in town for Essence Fest. So get more information and register today at 19thnews.org/neworleans. And I hope to see all of you there. For The 19th and Wonder Media Network, I’m Errin Haines. Talk to you again next week.
