Trump’s Plan: Skip the Debates, Win Iowa, Avoid Prison

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first Republican primary debate of the 2024 election is over. Chris Christie wiggled his fingers. Nikki Haley took Vivek Ramaswamy to the woodshed. Tim Scott was a “nonentity.” And then there was that elephant decidedly not in the room, Donald Trump, who instead spent his evening raving about water pressure to Tucker Carlson. As the former president is expected to turn himself in at the Fulton County Jail, the Matter of Opinion hosts discuss what we learned from the first G.O.P. debate — and what it means when everyone in the party is still desperate to both be Trump, and be rid of him. (A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Transcript

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0:00.5	I would love to just hear one word from all of you.
0:04.8	What's one word that sums up how you felt about this debate?
0:09.9	The amusement. A amusement. Wow. That's a rip-off. Come on, come on.
0:16.8	Carlos? Darkness. Darkness. Darkness. So I'm going to, for once, break the rules as everybody
0:24.8	who is a faithful reader of my column knows. I'm a big fan of the Indigo Girls. And I have not
0:29.6	one word, but I have a lyric from an Indigo Girls song, and it is, no one can convince me we aren't
0:36.0	gluttons for our doom. That's how I felt. That kind of fits with darkness, doom. And at one point
0:44.1	in the debate, I believe Mike Pence said something like, God is not finished with the United States
0:50.8	of America. And one of my Catholic friends on Twitter tweeted, yes, there's much more chastisement
0:58.3	and punishment to come. From New York Times opinion, I'm Lydia Pullgreen. I'm Michelle Cottle.
1:07.6	I'm Ross Douthit. I'm Carlos Uzzi. And this is a matter of opinion.
1:19.2	So I watched the GOP debate last night. I know you all watched the GOP debate last night.
1:24.9	Did any of you watch the interview with Trump portions? I did not watch the Trump interview.
1:32.1	I mostly, I went back and read, read the transcript, which was actually a mistake because it's,
1:37.2	it's terrifying. Wow. And it seems even weirder when you're not watching. What's what's terrifying
1:42.8	about it? I listen, I'm we're going to come back to Trump. But first, there were eight candidates
1:49.6	on stage last night that was a lot of words said. But did any of you feel like we got a better sense
1:56.4	of where we are in terms of this, you know, stated desire to, that the American people seem to be
2:02.5	telling us to find a post-Trump candidate. Are we any closer to that? I mean, it certainly didn't
2:08.5	look like it from the debate. I mean, the audience was clearly more into Trump than anyone else
2:14.8	as well. But there was no breakout performance. There's, there's this kind of aimlessness that you
2:22.4	see, except maybe from Vivek Ramaswamy, who basically is running as a younger Trump and maybe the
	...

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