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00:00Well, for more, let's speak to James Cohen, Emeritus Professor of American Studies at
00:03Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
00:05Hello to you, James.
00:08What were your main takeaways from that first presidential debate?
00:12Well, I think that everybody is saying what's already been announced and within democratic
00:17ranks it's pretty clear that nobody was very happy with the performance of Biden.
00:23It's concerning.
00:24Nonetheless, I think you can say that in terms of substance, there's a lot more on the democratic
00:29side than on the Trump side.
00:31Trump was full of bombast and lies and sort of an uncontrolled tidal wave of insults
00:40also that he threw at Biden, making it difficult to respond point by point.
00:44There was no way to do so.
00:47The insults are a part, a standard part of politics anywhere in the world, but the lies
00:52do you think?
00:53Trump has made that more of a standard feature.
00:54More and more, yeah.
00:55But the mudslinging, we'll see that time and again.
00:57But the lies.
00:58Should CNN have had fact-checking at the debate?
01:01Yeah, it's not easy to do so instantaneously, but there should have been something because
01:05given the well-known fact, not a piece of fake news that Trump invents stuff and is
01:12full of lies, maybe there should have been something on the screen indicating that that
01:16would have helped.
01:19After the debate.
01:20That was the format.
01:21Yeah, right.
01:22After the debate in Atlanta, there's of course going to be some spin about both candidates'
01:26performances.
01:27But given the hours that come, more and more Democrats posing questions about why is Joe
01:32Biden our man?
01:35I think that that debate is going to have to happen.
01:38I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's not happening.
01:42It's an open secret.
01:43It's not even a secret at all that this discussion is happening as a result of last night's debate.
01:48Nonetheless, I would continue to say that in terms of substance, the Democrats have
01:54it all over the Republicans, and in terms of the model of society that they're defending,
02:00Trump wants to dismantle everything.
02:01He wants to dismantle all forms of regulation.
02:03He wants to give billionaires more tax cuts.
02:07He doesn't believe in using the state for social purposes.
02:11On the Democratic side, there is much more of a project, and also a defense of Democratic
02:17institutions, which is not the case on the Republican side because the Republicans now
02:21have a playbook.
02:22The Heritage Foundation has written them a 900-page playbook, giving them strategies
02:26to give the president, if Trump is reelected, much more authority even than the president
02:31already has to steer clear of the federal bureaucracy and to do exactly as he pleases.
02:36Even if he was sort of a semi-dictator.
02:38Let's talk about that more in a moment, but first, staying with the Democrats, Biden is
02:42not the official candidate yet.
02:47Should Democrats pivot?
02:48Right.
02:49Well, that would take lots of pivoting between now and the convention in Chicago in the month
02:53of August.
02:54I can't speculate about that.
02:55I'm not qualified to say.
02:57For the moment, he's the one who has to decide.
03:01He's probably not going to step aside.
03:03There would have to be a very strong movement within the Democrats to get him to do so.
03:08I can't quite see that happening because the last time there was a Democratic candidate
03:12or any candidate who withdrew in the middle of a race instead of being a candidate for
03:18his own re-election, that was the case of Lyndon Johnson in 1968, that didn't turn out
03:21well for the Democrats.
03:22So that's probably not a great strategy unless you really have no other recourse.
03:25I can't.
03:27As of today, I can't see it happening.
03:28Right.
03:29And back to what you were saying about the Republican playbook, if Donald Trump does
03:32win the White House, as polls look like he will do.
03:36Well, things could change.
03:37There are a few swing states where things could still swing.
03:41And there's another debate to come as well.
03:44What are some of those overhauls that his team is outlining on U.S. institutions, on
03:49political appointees?
03:51What I see is that he wants to get rid of as many career civil servants as he can.
04:01In particular, in the Office of Management and Budget, he wants to get rid of as many
04:05appointed officials who were appointed for life or appointed out of competence.
04:12He wants to turn them into the kind of personnel that you can fire at will and bring in political
04:16loyalists.
04:17Essentially, yes-men.
04:18Yes-men.
04:19That's what, which would be disastrous in a number of domains where if you're a yes-man,
04:23you don't have technical answers about how to solve problems.