-Thank you for being here for one of our live shows.
-A live show. It's an amazing concept.
-Have you ever considered doing your show live?
-[ Laughs ] I was joking backstage.
I was like, "This is a big deal, live."
-Yeah. -We do this every night.
-Yeah, you do it every single night.
Every single night. You turn it around really fast.
Tonight was a little strange for you,
because you were doing your show
during the first hour of the debate.
-It's so weird that we've had this two nights in a row.
I mean, the first time, we had the debates on MSNBC, right?
So, these ones, we did not have. They were only on CNN.
They're only on the network that gets them.
And you're in that segment meeting.
It's like, "Should we not mention the debate
because maybe on the off chance we remind someone
it's happening and they turn over there?"
-Yeah. -That's kind of dumb. They know.
-Because I feel like the people who watch your show
are obviously invested in politics,
so it seems like a very small slice of people
that would be, like, invested in politics
but also not care about the debates.
-Well, thank you. -Yeah.
-I like to think of the people
invested in politics invested in me.
-Yeah, that's true.
-Which is a small number, as the ratings showed.
-But, obviously, you managed to go back.
You watched the debate. A lot about healthcare tonight.
-Yes. -Substantive, I think.
Sometimes, I would imagine, for most people,
a little hard to follow.
Do you feel like the candidates do a good job
laying out what their differences are
in regards to healthcare?
-I thought the first night was actually sharper on this,
because the access was very clear.
It was two people were advocating Medicare for all.
Single payer. Everyone enrolls in one plan.
There will be no private plans anymore.
We'll transition that.
And then other people attacking that.
And I actually think Medicare for all --
Whatever you think about its popularity or workability,
at least it is clear what it is, right?
So, people can say, "Well, how are you going to pay for it?
And I don't know if I want to give up
my private health insurance."
But the sort of lines of debate were clear.
Tonight, with these more kind of, like, half-measures
about the public option -- You'll have a $1,000 deductible,
and 8.6% of your income, but not if you're --
You know, that gets way, way, way harder to follow.
-And then it becomes a bit -- I feel as though the takeaway is,
who's making the most effective attack on someone else?
Tonight definitely seemed like a night of attacking.
Joe Biden is obviously the front-runner.
He's going to take those attacks.
It seemed like, last night, they were making Delaney
the stand-in for Joe Biden, because he was sort of the
moderate who was there.
And despite polling at 1%, he sort of had a starring role.
-It was really funny, because, obviously,
the thing that we haven't seen yet is --
you want to see a stage that has
Harris, Buttigieg, Biden, Warren, and Sanders together.
Those are the people who are polling in the top five.
And we haven't had that.
So, last night, I think what CNN tried to do --
and it's not a crazy approach to this --
is they were like, "Let's just make someone
a Biden stand-in, because we don't have Biden here."
And they were like, "Who's the guy at the end?
Delaney. Let's do him." -Yeah.
He was like Brad Pitt to Leonardo in
"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."
-Yeah. I haven't seen it yet. -It's a stuntman joke, yeah.
Not a lot of people have.
And then I want to ask about the issue of electability.
Obviously, this is a question that's coming out right now.
And one thing that people ask is,
"Is this good for people to be attacking everyone?"
Does that weaken a candidate when they go
to the general election?
You could argue, certainly, in the last election,
Hillary Clinton didn't have to go through
this sort of trial by a bunch of candidates,
maybe a little bit with Bernie, but it certainly wasn't this.
Do you feel like it's good or bad
for whoever emerges from this to have been sort of attacked by,
at one point, you know, 22 different other candidates?
-You know, I don't really know that I know the answer to that.
I mean, in some ways, it's unavoidable,
so who's to say whether it's good or bad?
It's going to happen.
I mean, you know, politics is about conflict.
And I think that what I would say about
the first four debates in the Democratic Party is --
they have been substantive.
Like, people do disagree about whether we should have
a single-payer system or not.
There are arguments on both sides
that are not, like, you know, trivial.
There are real arguments on both sides,
and those need to be hashed out.
People disagree about whether we should decriminalize
unauthorized entry to the United States,
which is currently a criminal misdemeanor
but could be handled as a civil matter.
There are people on different sides of that.
It's good to fight about that stuff.
Like, it's good to fight about that stuff
and it is inevitable to fight about that stuff.