Well, i think this is so rich coming from someone who has been prosecuted. The prosecutor turned vice president faces down the criminal expresident. 's next big court appearance is in november at his own criminal sentencing. Tonight, the man who played donald trump in the harris debate prep joins me live. Yes or no, you still do not have a plan? i have concepts of a plan. And senator cory booker on his fearless forecast of the harris performance. Donald trump was fired by 81 million people, so let's be clear about that. Plus, sarah longwell with new swing vote reaction to the debate. I think she was the clear winner. He did a poor job of taking her bait and allowing himself to get upset. And what happens next. Let's turn the page on this. Let's not go back. Let's chart a course for the future. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york, i am chris hayes. The first presidential debate of the year between donald trump and president joe biden was the most consequential in american presidential history. It was june 27 and biden's performance brought about a reckoning within the democratic party, resulting in president biden's monumental and deeply selfless decision to step aside, suspend his reelection campaign. Last night, 11 weeks later, more than 67 million people watched trump's base biden's replacement at the top of the democratic ticket. Vice president kamala harris. The steaks were even higher. Going into last night's debate, kamala harris carried an unbelievably difficult burden. There is the fact she is the first black woman at the top of a major party ticket, trying to become the first woman ever elected president of the united states and even if everything else about this race was normal, that itself would be an extremely difficult road to navigate. But of course, nothing about this election has been normal. Since the first debate, kamala harris had to navigate an absolute political minefield. For three weeks while her party was in abject turmoil, the vice president had to avoid being seen as grasping or ambitious as she remained a loyal soldier to the president, joe biden. When the president decided to suspend his campaign, she had to launch her own presidential campaign in one day. She then had just a matter of weeks and even days to consolidate support, unify democrats and plan and lead a convention. She managed all of it with tremendous success. And so just 52 days into her campaign for president, kamala harris entered last night's debate with an immense task before her. The vice president needed to navigate a bunch of contradictory imperatives. She had to shore up her democratic coalition while also reaching out to the all important swing voters in swing states. She had to handle the lies and mania and weirdness of her unpredictable opponent, while also getting her own message across to viewers and in the face of high expectations and even higher pressure, kamala harris executed all of that flawlessly. On one of the most important issues in this election, abortion, kamala harris eviscerated the former president's position and spoke directly to the experiences of american women. Nowhere in america is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It is insulting to the women of america and understand what has been happening under donald trump's abortion bands. Couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied ivf treatments. What is happening in our country? working people, working women who are working one or two jobs, who can barely afford childcare as it is, have to travel to another state to get on a plane, sitting next to strangers, to go and get the health care she needs. Barely can afford to do it and what you are putting her through is unconscionable. Harris also used her opponent psychological weaknesses to her advantage. At multiple points in seemingly almost every answer, she deliberately baited trump with words she knew he would not be able to resist. I'm actually going to do something really unusual and i'm going to invite you to attend one of donald trump's rallies, because it is a really interesting thing to watch. You will see that he talks about fictional characters like hannibal lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. First of all let me respond to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies, there's no reason to go and people that do go she is blessing them in and ping them to be there and showing them in a different light. So she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies. The most incredible rallies in the history of politics. Showing them in a different light? the vice president finished the job with what can only be described as a punch to the gut, painting donald trump as a loser and a disgrace. Donald trump was fired by 81 million people, so let's be clear about that and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that, but we cannot afford to have a president of the united states who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election and i am going to tell you that i have traveled the world as vice president of the united states and world leaders are laughing at donald trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you and they say you are a disgrace and when you then talk in this way in a presidential debate and deny what over and over again are court cases you have lost, because you did, in fact, lose that election, it leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have, in the candidate to my right, the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact. That is deeply troubling and the american people deserve better. Kamala harris accomplished everything she needed to last night. She needed to accomplish a lot. Knocked it out of the park. The vice president is known for being a politician who really prepares and it was clear she took her debate prep seriously. A former deputy assistant secretary of state and spokesman for hillary clinton and played the role of donald trump in clinton's debate prep in 2016. There he is and what appears to be a flip phone video in costume, roleplaying a scenario where trump tried to hug clinton and chased her around the room. He reprised the role of trump and kamala harris's preparations. He joins me now. It is good to have you. First what did you think of that debate? i could watch it all night. I mean, she put on a clinic. There is no part of it you can watch that says that is bad. It was a remarkable performance. I know the former president is saying the same thing, but as usual one of them is lying and one of them is not. Take me through the prep. First of all what was your approached approach to playing trumpet and what were the signature things you are doing and how was that gamed out and prepared for? first, my role in it is the kind of sexy part of it, but i really just had to focus on the left side of the screen, which is him. There is a team that helps the vice president that was headed up by karen dunn and it was amazing and it was a frictionless team that i have worked with other teams and it was great. The vice president has great people around her. Not just the two of them, but they ran it. From my perspective you just want the candidate to get used to what they are going to see and hear and experience and it was an added oddity that they never met and what is great as i had never met her. The first day i met her i said madam vice president it is nice to meet you and 20 minutes later i was telling her how she was ruining america. What was your approach? one of the most important things to prepare for if you are debating trump. Like the go to moves, the things that might rattle someone who hasn't been in the same room? will i would take a step back. A debate in its ideal form is a job interview. You have two people who are going for the same position you want to put their experience and their best foot forward. They want to be professional. They want to think about curveballs that may come their way and we have all been in that situation. The situation we haven't been in is when the other candidate for the job is six feet to your left and they have a chainsaw and the only way they can win is by blood being blood being you up. What she did last night that was so amazing was she was not just pointing out things that might get under his skin. She was making her case directly to the camera to the american people. She was talking about her plans and what was also incredibly amazing what she did something that no one else has really been able to do in the last year, which is remind people that this guy actually served and has a record and that record is really bad. And you know you have talked about this. This amnesia issue is a problem. Where he starts out saying, you know, you completely screwed the border. It has to be hold on, bowel, you were there for four years. You were in charge of the border and promised us a wall and it is not they are. That has not happened enough and it is important to lay out that case. Third, for my own in terms of asking about prep, first of all we all get makeup before we are on tv and the makeup artist said you already had makeup on and i said no. She said you've got it on your four head. I can't get it off. It is so caked on. The guy uses like plaster of paris. But the thing i noticed over eight years and by the way i feel like 50 years when you say a flip phone. It was not black and white, chris. It is that he is really decompensating. His language has always been choppy and he has always digressed. There is something else going on. I think we watch and it is like he always speaks like that. He does not. If i lose track of my thoughts i stop for a second. When he loses track of his thoughts, he goes to another thought quickly, so it doesn't sound like anything. It sounds like jumping around. That is not what he is doing. Also he will go off on covid for 10 minutes and not say tony fauci. Four years ago he would go on for five minutes about fauci. So there is something, you know, i am the camp that has always noticed that, but narrowly in terms of watching everything he has said and done over the last few months and reading every word. There is something not right. We will play a little selection and one of these is the notorious, they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats, which is both a disgusting and racist slander to a group of people and also completely invented. But he started on the rallies. We play that clip and he got from people go to my rallies to that and he cannot follow a train of thought. He interrupts himself. Here is a smattering of what that looked like. She is a marxist. Everyone knows she is a marxist. Her father is a marxist professor in economics and he taught her well. In springfield they are eating the dogs, the people that came in, they are eating the cats. They are eating, they are eating the pets of the people that live there. She was big on defund the police. In minnesota she went out. When a minute, i am talking now. If you don't mind, please. Does that sound familiar? he was proud of that last one. He referred to it as cute and gave a little kudos to himself afterwards that he was calling back to that moment. In terms of set pieces like debating, how much of that was planned? it seemed to me that there were certain things that you know he won't leave alone. John mccain. Charlottesville, very fine people. The outcome of the election. His rallies. That were intentionally in her answers to get him to narcissistically obsess over them. I think, look, you know, she has seen him over the years. This was his seventh general election. He debated i think 11 times in the primaries. Notably zero times in 2020, the 2024 primaries and yet he calls everyone out for being scared. I think she was almost acting like she was watching it. You know, kind of watching it on tv and saying old on, dude, what about this? that is what she was doing, calling out facts. What is particularly telling when you show these clips of his digressions or whatever you want to call them is that they make no sense. He is not a rubik's cube. He is not hard to figure out. He is jenga, you push one thing and he falls apart. But if you say your crowd sizes are low and people leave, why wouldn't you say that's not true, that is mean. I'm proud, they are the biggest things. What he actually starts doing is a different level of insanity. It is a subset. What he is saying has never been truthful. It has never been real. It has never been normal, but it is decompensating and i think the thing about the frog, you know, in water. Boil them slowly, you don't know what's happening. We all have been into it, so we don't realize how serious it is. Look, joe biden, i love joe biden. When joe biden was 78 and ran for president, no one thought, i'm concerned with how he looks. Donald trump is 78. If he wins we could be back in this conversation in two years. How are we supposed to know that he was going off the rails? did you do off the rails as him? you do everything. You have a good tennis player who wants to get better. I have friends who obsess with tennis. They get a tennis pro. You want to test your backhand, set the ball machine to test your backhand. If you want to use the ball machine as a target for your serve, great. It is simulation. Any kind of prep whether it is congressional prep, deposition prep or any kind of interview, you want people to have thought things through. It's not like you are sitting around and saying this is a good line, memorize it. There been great stories that people would love about the biggest moments in debate history. The candidates thinking about them when they are not in prep. Lloyd bentsen, i knew john kennedy. He actually snapped at his team when they said dan quayle might say that he knew jack kennedy. He apparently said if you're going to waste my time, he walked out of the room. George bush when al gore crowded him, he had this smirk on his face and he said that the smirk on his face is because his team had crowded him in the hotel room and said what are you doing? they said gore has sometimes done that. He said i don't care who has done that, get out of my face. Then when the moment comes you are like, holy cow, i've heard this. Philippe reines, thank you for your time tonight. Thank you, chris. Still ahead, did the debate move the needle? swing voters weigh in with their thoughts. First, the extraordinary performance of kamala harris last night and how she was underestimated. Senator cory booker joins me on that, next. Can your pad do that? see what foam can do for you. 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