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NewsTranscript
00:00For Donald Trump and the Republicans, immigration is one of them.
00:04Let's hear from Donald Trump.
00:06What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come
00:11into our country and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States.
00:16In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in,
00:21they're eating the cats, they're eating, they're eating the pets.
00:26Very, very strange claims there from Donald Trump, should we say.
00:30Absolutely. So first of all, it has to be said that this has been debunked. There are no cases
00:35of immigrants stealing people's pets and eating them. It is a fake news that's been promoted on
00:41the right, on social media. But this soundbite is the clear example of when Donald Trump went
00:48off message. Immigration should have been, as you said, possibly another weakness of the Democrat.
00:54Instead of going after the policies of the Democrats, which is what his campaign wanted
00:59him to do, he went off on this tangent on these baseless claims about immigrants eating pets
01:06instead of focusing. There were multiple examples of that, where Kamala Harris sort of baited him
01:12and he definitely took the bait. There was one instance where she was actually asked about
01:17immigration and she managed to pivot away from immigration and make fun of him on the size of
01:24his crowd saying, just look at a rally, go to a rally and you'll see that people leave exhausted
01:29and bored. And he immediately, instead of going back to immigration and attacking her, he took
01:34that bait and started talking about how his rallies were the best, that he had the greatest
01:38rallies in the history of the United States and that her rallies had nobody and that she paid
01:44people to come to her rallies. Also a baseless claim. But this was what the Harris team wanted
01:51her to do. Bait him and he took the bait and they wanted to remind voters of how chaotic Donald
01:58Trump can be when he's not on message. They say that is the true Trump and they wanted to remind
02:03some of those voters that maybe have forgotten about the details of the four years under Trump
02:08and that's what they wanted to do. And on that strategy of baiting Donald Trump,
02:14Harris did absolutely very well and the Trump team wanted him to stay on message. He didn't
02:20manage to do that throughout that debate. Let's talk about Ukraine now. Of course a major
02:25issue particularly for us here in Europe. Let's hear what the candidates had to say.
02:30And why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president
02:37otherwise Putin would be sitting in Kiev with his eyes on the rest of Europe starting with Poland
02:44and why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly
02:49you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to
02:56be a dictator who would eat you for lunch. I want to get the war settled. I know Zelensky
03:01very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect
03:06your president. They respect me. They don't respect Biden. We're playing with World War
03:11Three and we have a president that we don't even know if he's. Where is our president?
03:16We don't even know if he's a president. Donald Trump once again then making those
03:20claims of being able to talk directly to Vladimir Zelensky and to Vladimir Putin. Did he win with
03:25that? Look foreign policy is not going to be a game changer in the US election but there were
03:33other interesting things about Ukraine. The moderators asked Donald Trump twice the question
03:38do you want to see Ukraine win this war and his answer was I want to end the war. He was
03:44asked again and he again said I want to settle the war so he didn't want to answer whether he
03:49wanted Ukraine to win and she went after him also again with the baiting sort of going on
03:55the personal attacks saying that world leaders don't trust him that Putin would eat him for lunch
04:03so playing on Donald Trump's ego to sort of get him to react get him off of his game again.
04:10Again foreign policy maybe not a game changer but she did what she wanted to do which is again
04:16show the personality of Donald Trump and repeat those elements that maybe could play a role
04:24in the sort of moderate Republicans. Those sort of never Trumpers who maybe were wavering a little
04:30bit these are the types of topics on which they very much disagree with Donald Trump and the
04:34whole MAGA movement. The sort of talk about NATO and letting Putin do anything he wants with NATO
04:41members who don't pay their fair share. The alliances, the role of America in the world,
04:46all of those things could on a small group make a difference. Finally this is the crucial question
04:52I suppose Ketivan. I mean everyone asks it and perhaps there's no way of answering it but who
04:57won the debate and as well does it actually really matter in the end? Well the first question is easy
05:03to answer because they're already post-debate polling and all of the polls show that everyone
05:09a wide majority about two-thirds of the people who were asked saw Kamala Harris as the clear
05:16winner just like they saw Donald Trump as the clear winner against Joe Biden. The only thing is
05:23that winning a debate doesn't guarantee that you will win the election and Hillary Clinton for
05:28example back in 2016 knows that all too well. How much of an impact a debate has on the final result
05:36of an election is a debate that has been going on in the United States for a long long time.
05:43The difference is that this race is going to be extremely close so even if this debate
05:49maybe changes or moves the needle a little bit to one side or another that could be enough
05:55to tip the race on one side or the other. The Democrats definitely believe that it is
06:02helping them. They've already said that Kamala Harris is ready to do another debate. The good
06:08thing for the Democrats with this debate which was very early for a debate for a presidential
06:14debate is that it was taking place in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania is starting early voting on
06:18Monday so this is going to be very fresh on the minds of those possible voters who are going to
06:23be casting their ballot. There is no game changer. Nobody flunked completely or won handily but again
06:32in a very close race any movement any 10,000 votes here or there could decide the outcome
06:39of this election. More to play for once again thanks very much Kajal Bangorji-Stani our
06:43international affairs editor here on France 24.