Will debates give Biden or Trump an edge?

KCRW's Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

President Biden is trailing Donald Trump in several battleground states, according to new polling from the New York Times and Siena College. While polling this far out from an election often doesn’t represent final results, it can reveal trends that candidates should seriously consider, says Mo Elleithee, executive director at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service. In Biden’s case, the polls indicate less support among young voters, nonwhite voters, and blue collar workers. With Biden and Trump agreeing to a series of debates in June and September, can the president use the head-to-head settings to regain ground with those crucial groups?

The Democratic National Convention will take place in Chicago this summer. There are some concerns that the contentious atmosphere surrounding the convention, including nationwide campus protests and anger with the president’s support for the war in Gaza, could lead to a scene similar to the unrest at 1968’s DNC, also in Chicago. Are those concerns overblown? And would more protests allow Donald Trump to emerge as a figure who can end the growing sense of chaos among voters?

Kansas is the focus of our 50 states series this week. Mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion statements have become a growing legal concern for legislators and administrators in Kansas and at universities across the country. Does requiring a commitment to DEI fall mean forcing an ideology on faculty and students?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to left right and center everybody. I am David Green. I want to make one thing
0:04.6	clear here. We do not obsess about polls on this show, but we are a politics show and
0:10.9	so we kind of like them. And so it's worth asking where things
0:15.2	stand right now six months from the presidential election. There is a fresh
0:19.0	poll from the New York Times Siena that shows Donald Trump is leading President Biden in five pretty
0:26.0	important swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
0:30.4	Biden is holding a lead, a small one in the state of Wisconsin. Those poll numbers burst
0:36.0	into the news cycle in the middle of a pretty hectic week for Trump and his
0:40.4	supporters. The Speaker of the House Mike Mike Johnson, Ohio, Senator J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswami, several others, made
0:48.0	their way to New York City to rally around Trump as his hush money criminal trial is continuing.
0:54.3	Trump also had time to go on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt's show
0:58.7	on the same day that President Biden challenged Trump
1:02.3	to some debates starting this summer and here is the
1:05.8	former president.
1:06.8	Now you have said you'll debate him anywhere any time.
1:10.0	Do you think he'll agree to any debates? Do you think he'll agree? Do you think he'll agree?
1:15.0	I don't think so, but I hope he does.
1:18.0	Do you think what happened is, you know that white stuff that they happen to find,
1:22.0	which happened to be cocaine in the White House.
1:24.2	I don't know.
1:25.2	I think something's going on there because I watched this state of the union and he was
1:29.4	all jacked up at the beginning.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.