The Campaign Moment: Trump accepted Biden’s debate proposal. Now what?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2024
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s Friday, so it’s time for The Campaign Moment — our weekly roundtable conversation to help you keep track of the biggest developments of the 2024 campaign. Senior political reporter Aaron Blake, who writes The Post’s new newsletter by the same name, and national political reporter Michael Scherer join Martine Powers this week. There is a lot to dig into about the debates agreed to this week by President Biden and former president Donald Trump. Also on the must-chat list: the latest from the hush money trial in New York, the reporting by Michael and Post colleagues on the Trump campaign’s “leaner” ground strategy and the implications of some of the latest polling.
You can now also follow The Campaign Moment in a new feed to hear extra episodes from Aaron and our politics team as the campaign year continues.
Subscribe to Aaron’s newsletter, The Campaign Moment, here.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
Today’s show was produced and mixed by Ted Muldoon and Sean Carter. It was edited by Renita Jablonski and Mary Jo Murphy.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | So as we're going to be discussing today, one of the big pieces of political news from this week is that President Biden and former President Trump have settled on terms to have two debates. |
| 0:12.8 | And while that might be exciting for some of us in the news, |
| 0:16.4 | I think there are a lot of Americans who aren't so excited about this. |
| 0:19.6 | They say, you know, does anyone really need this? |
| 0:21.6 | Do we need to see another |
| 0:23.1 | Biden versus Trump debate so given that reaction who do you think would make for a |
| 0:29.6 | better debate like if there were a nationally televised debate between any two |
| 0:35.8 | individuals today, who would it be? Any two individuals? Yes. Brad Pitt, |
| 0:40.8 | Angelina Jolie. Ooh! |
| 0:44.0 | That's a deep cut and would be highly stressful for everyone. |
| 0:48.3 | Aaron, how about you? |
| 0:49.2 | First of all, I don't like the debate hating. |
| 0:51.8 | Debates are great. This is an important part of our |
| 0:54.4 | deliberative process as a country. But if I weren't so excited about actually having debates, |
| 1:00.1 | I would say maybe like Drake against Kendrick Lamar. |
| 1:03.3 | I feel like that's something that people would want to do right now. |
| 1:05.7 | I was like there's only one right answer to this question and it's Drake versus Kendrick. |
| 1:10.0 | I swear if they had them come out at the beginning of this debate to do like 10 minutes of a pre-debate, |
| 1:15.8 | the ratings on this debate would be astronomical. |
| 1:19.1 | I had the right answer five years ago. It's Friday, May 17th, and welcome to this week's episode of the campaign moments. |
| 1:30.0 | I'm |
| 1:34.3 | Martin Powers one of the hosts of Post Reports and I'm Aaron Blake the senior |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.