Capehart and Ponnuru on Harris' debate success and Trump's embrace of conspiracy theories

Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including the presidential debate marking a major moment in the race for the White House, Donald Trump comes under scrutiny for conspiracy theories and the gender gap in presidential polls.

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Amna Nawaz: The presidential debate marks a major moment in the race for the White House, and Donald Trump comes under scrutiny for conspiracy theories.

On that and more of the week’s news, we turn to the analysis of Capehart and Ponnuru. That’s Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post, and Ramesh Ponnuru, editor for “National Review.” David Brooks is away.

Great to have you both here.

Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor, “The National Review”: Thanks.

Jonathan Capehart: Amna.

Amna Nawaz: Sol three days after that first debate between Vice President Harris, former President Trump, there’s only one poll that we have seen so far conducted in the days after. It gives us a limited view of the impact.

So now we see Vice President Harris up with 47 percent to Trump’s 42 percent nationally in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Jonathan, it’s hard to say just yet what the impact of the debate will be. We hope there will be more polls coming up soon, but the Harris campaign clearly feels good about what happened. I guess the question is, did she do enough in the debate to answer questions that voters had about who she is as a leader in her policies?

Jonathan Capehart: Well, if we’re being honest, yes and no. And the Harris campaign should be excited about where things are.

They went into the debate with the momentum at their back, and her performance, arguably, was superb. And on the one hand, she answered questions that people had, because Donald Trump and Republicans spent a lot of time degrading her, questioning her intelligence, questioning her abilities, questioning her accomplishments, downplaying the fact that she’s run for elective office, citywide in San Francisco, statewide in California, statewide for A.G. and Senate, and nationwide as vice president.

And she showed up on that stage, and as we say, she showed up and she showed out, and showed that she was able to more than handle the debate, the man across from her, and to run the country.

Where — and this is, I think, the fault of debates these days. Anyone who was expecting a deep dive in policy at this debate was — had their expectation — they had the wrong expectations. 2016, Hillary Clinton was blasted, criticized by a lot of people for having too many plans, too many policies.

And now people are criticizing Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, for not having enough plans. But if you watch her rallies, as I have done — I watch both their rallies — I know she said in the debate the opportunity economy, and some people said, well, she didn’t say what that was.

She’s been talking about it on the campaign trail for weeks now.

Amna Nawaz: Ramesh, we knew, we knew going in that she was going to try to goad Donald Trump into reacting. She did. He went for it time and again on crowd size, on immigration, topic after topic.

That worried a lot of Republicans I talked to. Did it worry you?

Ramesh Ponnuru: Well, I think that it worried a lot of the people around Donald Trump, and he was, of course, on notice that that was going to happen.

But he appears to be just congenitally incapable of resisting taking the bait. And I suspect that one of the reasons that some of the people around him are probably all right with the idea that he’s not going to do another one is that he would follow the exact same pattern if he had that debate again.

So she had flaws as a debater, but he had something more like a meltdown. It may not show up in the polls, because I think this is going to be a tight race all the way through, but there’s no question who did better and who did worse in that debate.

Amna Nawaz: So you don’t believe it’ll show up in the polls? Do you think that debate will have any impact on his support?

Ramesh Ponnuru: I think that anything that happens in this race is going to have a small effect on the overall numbers, but that could still be a big effect in terms of the percentage of undecided voters that are still out there, because this is trench warfare.

And it’s, I think, going to stay that way through the end of the election.

Amna Nawaz: You agree with that, Jonathan? And do you think they should debate again?

Jonathan Capehart: Absolutely. Well…

Amna Nawaz: Well, you. What do you think?

Jonathan Capehart: Yes, I want them to debate again.

And, look, as an American, I would like for them to debate again. And I would like for that next debate to actually be focused on policy. But as Ramesh just pointed out, Donald Trump is congenitally incapable of not dealing in grievance.

And one of the great things Vice President Harris did on that debate stage was she threw out the bait, he took it, he threw some stuff back, she pivoted and talked about what she wanted to do. And I would like another debate between the two of them so we can talk about things like, OK, you both say you want to no longer tax tips. How’s that going to work?

Today, he’s talking about no more taxes on overtime. I’m sorry. Really? Or how about let’s talk about his tariffs plan. Have her explain more about the opportunity economy and how you’re going to pay for it. But that ain’t ever going to happen.

Amna Nawaz: Well, let’s talk about the other big story Lisa and Laura were reporting on earlier as well. And that is Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance’s repeated remarks about the population, the Haitian immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio, repeating lies about the population there.

And that’s now led to real threats against people in the community, bomb threats, schools being evacuated, also paired with his association with a woman named Laura Loomer, who traffics in racism like this online, recently tweeting that the White House will smell like curry if Kamala Harris was elected, also echoing messages of white supremacists, talking about Great Replacement Theory.

Jonathan, this is not a secret meeting that Mr. Trump is having with someone at Mar-a-Lago. She’s traveling with him. What message does that send?

Jonathan Capehart: It’s an ugly message. It’s a reprehensible message.

I want to take folks back to 2008, when Barack Obama was about to announce his candidacy for the presidency and tapes came out from sermons from his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, caused a firestorm in his campaign, pushed him to give one of the best political speeches in American history and the best speech on race in the country to save his campaign.

He was being roundly criticized, 2008. Here we are in 2024 and a former president and current presidential nominee is flying around with a conspiracy theorist, after folks know what she has said and what she has done. Can you imagine if Jeremiah Wright had gotten off of Barack Obama’s plane days and weeks after those sermons came out?

You can’t imagine it because it would not have happened and it did not happen. It is reprehensible and shameful that Republicans are not demanding of Donald Trump what, quite frankly, the nation demanded of Barack Obama in 2008. He — Donald Trump should be held accountable. He should made to — he should be held to account for associating himself with this person.

And if he doesn’t want to, if he wants to embrace and literally rhetorically embrace her, then do that. But I think Republicans need to step out and loudly condemn him for what he’s doing. It’s horrible for their party, but it’s even more damaging for this country.

Amna Nawaz: Ramesh, what’s your take on this?

Ramesh Ponnuru: Well, she has come under some pretty severe criticism from even Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is herself a firebrand.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene said that Loomer does not speak for Trump, does not speak for MAGA, does not speak for the Republican Party. Well, if Trump believes that, he can say that, and he hasn’t.

What he’s said so far is simply that he disagreed with her statement, presumably the racist one about curry, which, by the way, smells great. And what he didn’t say was anything like, this is disgusting, I had no idea she was this kind of person. He doesn’t care about that sort of thing. As long as she supports him, that makes her a good person in his eyes.

Amna Nawaz: We have heard, as you mentioned, Marjorie Taylor Greene saying this doesn’t represent the party, but Donald Trump is the leader of the party. He is their presidential nominee, and we haven’t heard a lot of outcry from other Republicans.

Does this now represent the party?

Ramesh Ponnuru: Because the problem, if these Republicans denounce Loomer, Loomer is obviously not the problem. The problem is a candidate whose sense of judgment and whose sense of decency doesn’t preclude associating with a 9/11 denier, with a racist, with a conspiracy theorist.

As long as she supports him, he thinks that that’s fine.

Amna Nawaz: So the relevant trend here worth digging into is this yawning gender gap I have been keeping an eye on. It’s 18 points between the candidates by one measure. That’s larger than it was in 2020, larger than it was in 2016.

We know women vote in larger numbers than men in presidential elections, on top of the Taylor Swift endorsement. I’m just working that in here. Is there anything that either of you see changing that would close that gap?

Jonathan?

Jonathan Capehart: I wonder how much the fearmongering that Donald Trump is engaging in will pull some of these women back. And

I want to be clear about something. There’s always been a gender gap, but a lot of it has been driven by the fact that Black women, African American women, have been solidly in the camp of Democrats. The fact that the gender gap is widening says to me that white women are moving in the Harris direction.

Whether they stay there is another thing. And one data point that everyone should keep in mind, remember, no Democrat running for president has won a majority of the white vote since 1964.

Ramesh Ponnuru: Young Hispanic men, young African American men have also shown some signs of being more open to Trump. That’s also expanding the gender gap.

One other thing to watch in this is what happens with married women and married men versus single women and single men, because that’s another gap, a marriage gap. With married women in 2020, they narrowly went for Trump. Is that going to happen again or are they going to be turned off by him?

Amna Nawaz: Thirty seconds left.

Do you see anything coming from former President Trump that speaks to that demographic right now?

Ramesh Ponnuru: I think that it is very hard to ascertain what Trump’s strategy is at the moment. The things that he needed to do at the debate, for example, was define her, and he was too busy talking about himself to do that.

Amna Nawaz: Ramesh Ponnuru, Jonathan Capehart, great to have you both here. Thank you so much.

Jonathan Capehart: Thanks, Amna.

Amna Nawaz: And we will have much more coverage of the presidential race online, including a conversation with two linguists about what Trump and Harris’ respective speaking styles say about them as candidates.

Nicole Holliday, Linguistics Professor, University of California, Berkeley: Every speech that she’s given or every appearance that she’s had in this cycle, she seems to be more and more like a traditional politician. So she’s very rehearsed. She’s very under control.

She’s really moving her style towards something that is more legibly presidential for a general audience.

Jennifer Mercieca, Communications Professor, Texas A&M University: For Donald Trump, his speaking style was really honed through the experience that he had working in reality television. He learned from working on “The Apprentice” how to build a moment and build suspense. And he learned comedic timing.

Through his rallies, he has certainly learned how to interact with the crowd. He spends a lot of time cultivating his style.

Amna Nawaz: You can find that full conversation our YouTube page.