McCaskill: VP Harris or Gavin Newsom Should Be at the Top of the Dem Ticket After Tonight

MADDOW: “All right, joining us now from the debate spin room in Atlanta is our beloved pal, former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, also kan NBC political analyst. Claire, dying to know what you think about how things went tonight and what you’ve been hearing since.”
McCaskill: “Well, first, the easy part. Donald Trump is a liar, a flawed character, mean, a jerk, very unlikable, and that was obvious tonight. Now, the hard and heartbreaking part. I have been a surrogate for some presidential candidates in my time. I know what the job is after a debate of a surrogate. I have never wanted to be a surrogate more than I do right now, because when you are a surrogate, you have to focus on the positives. But I have said very clearly and very plainly on this network, and my job now is to be really honest. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight and he didn’t do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight. Now, does that mean that my phone blowing up with senators and campaign operatives and donors, big donors from all over the country, does that mean that Joe Biden is not the candidate? I don’t know that. I think we will know a lot more in a few weeks, how this plays out, how the polling plays out, but I think a couple of things are going on right now. I think I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. You know, you have to ask, how did we get here? How did we get to the point that we are spending a whole lot of time talking about the vice president tonight instead of talking about the president. And I don’t know how the rest of this story is written. I don’t know if things can be done to fix this, they might. And Trump is so terrible that this might heal itself, but based on what I’m hearing from a lot of people, and some of them are people that are in high elected offices in this country, and you might guess where they serve, there is a lot more than hand-wringing tonight. I do think people feel that we are confronting a crisis.”
MADDOW: “Claire, I want to talk to you about this in very nuts-and-bolts terms. Given what you are describing, the kind of reaction that you are describing among people in the kinds of positions that you are describing, or at least alluding to, what can be done? What do you personally think should be done?”
McCaskill: “Well, I think — listen, this could be a situation where everyone talks it out over the next few days. I do think that this is a time that Ted Kaufman and Ricchetti and Donilon and Ron Klain are going to have to have a heart-to-heart with the president about his ability to exude strength. And listen, nobody is a bigger fan of Kamala Harris than I am, and, you know, Gavin Newsom did a remarkable job tonight as a surrogate. And what he said, stuff I disagree with anything they’re saying, but those two people are signaling to a whole lot of Americans that are paying attention, how come they’re not running? How come the Democratic Party doesn’t have them at the top of the ticket instead of using them to shore up what had become, after tonight, some pretty glaring weaknesses in our president?”
MADDOW: “But specifically, though, given that we are 130 days out, and the Democratic convention is very, very, very late, and President Biden has been confronted with these kinds of questions from the very beginning of this campaign, actually from before the beginning of this campaign. As soon as he was sworn in, people started talking to him about, ‘Say now you won’t run again,’ and he has been from that he is the guy, and if he’s not going to jump, nobody’s going to push him. The type of crisis, in your words, that you are describing, has to have a resolution, and if the resolution is not going to be that President Biden is going to leave the ticket, what else can be done? What else can be changed about the campaign? Are you saying the only solution is to take him off the ticket?”
McCaskill: “No. I don’t know, honestly, what the solution is tonight. I know how this felt tonight. It felt like a gut punch to most people in this country who are paying close attention and know how dangerous Donald Trump is to all the values that we hold dear. And so I think it will take a couple of days for people to recover from the gut punch, but there will be leaders that have the ability to talk to the president. I think the president’s family would get involved if it actually got to that point. It may be that you can repair this damage. Maybe he can come out and show more vigor and show the ability to really stay on track. But, you know, there were some moments tonight that all of us were holding our breath, and that is not the kind of thing you want to happen 130 days out from an election when you’ve got Donald Trump on the other side of the equation.”
MADDOW: “Right. Senator Claire McCaskill, very good to have you with us tonight. Thank you, my friend. Keep talking to people, keep letting us know what you are hearing from inside Democratic politics and those people in high elected office who we will never ask you the name of. Much appreciated. Our friend Steph Ruhle is back. Steph, I know you’ve been talking to people as well.”
RUHLE: “I’ve been talking to current Democratic lawmakers, former lawmakers but more than anything, donors, and they’re really frustrated tonight. They are upset.”