What's my subscription to the New York Times have me doing this week? Preparing a strawberry pretzel pie, solving spelling bee with no hints, planning a trip to one of the 52 best places to go, getting to the bottom of the big pants trend, and I'm finally replacing my vacuum with a recommendation I can trust. What will your subscription to the Times have you do? Why not find out? With our best offer, go to nytimes. Com/subscribe. Hey, it's Michael. Before we get started, a few details about a major developing story that's still being pieced together. The FBI is investigating what appears to be another attempted assassination of former President Trump, this time as he played golf at one of his clubs in West Palm Beach on Sunday afternoon. Trump, who was unharmed in the incident, was golfing at around 1:30 PM when, according to law enforcement, secret service agents spotted an armed man hiding in the bushes surrounding the golf course. Agents then fired at the man who fled the scene in a car but was later apprehended on a nearby highway. It was not immediately clear if the suspect had fired any shots. Police said they found a rifle with a scope near where the man was spotted, along with a camera and two backpacks.

A law enforcement official identified the suspect as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Raufe of Hawaii. Last year, Raufe told the Times that he had recently traveled to Ukraine as a volunteer fighter in the country's war against Russia. These are the key facts that we know for now. We'll be following developments over the next few hours, and we'll bring them to you as soon as we can. Okay, here's today's show. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

As everyone saw two nights ago, we had a monumental victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential debate.

From the moment that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris walked off the debate stage last week.

You saw a President for all America and Kamala Harris.

You saw the confidence, you saw the vision, you saw the poise.

Both their campaigns and the wider political world have argued over who won during their showdown.

What was her take on the debate, Michael? She spanked that ass.

Her whole strategy was to distract by locking Donald Trump so she didn't have to talk about her record or her policies. Whoever did debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired. But the real question is what their first and perhaps only debate meant to a small sliver of undecided voters in a handful of key swing states whose ballots could determine the outcome of the election. Today, my colleagues, Campbell Robertson and Stella Tan, speak to three such voters about what they saw during the debate and how much closer it's brought them to a decision. It's Monday, September 16th. Campbell, tell us about Bob and Sharon Reid and where they fit into this group of undecided American voters at this pretty late moment in the presidential race.

Before I get to the reads, to step back, the undecided vote at this stage of the race is pretty small. When I say small, I mean about 10% of voters told us in Times polling that they're genuinely uncertain about whether they'll be voting for Trump or Harris. Some say it's even smaller, like 5%. Either way, it's not that many people. But in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they punch way above their weight because these states are so important and the margins are so narrow that how these voters make up their mind could swing the whole race. They're a pretty diverse group. They're older voters, younger voters, voters of color, white voters. They tend to be, by definition, pretty moderate on the issues. A lot of undecided voters, when you really start talking to them, you'll pick up pretty quickly that they're really actually not that undecided. They might really know who they're going to vote for. They're just waiting to get the convincing case, or they're just not plugged in at all. But Bob and Sharon Reid are truly undecided. I've been tracking them for months now as part of a project that the National Desk at the Times has undertaken to hear from undecided voters.

And at every stage of the race, the Reeds have not been ready to say who they will vote for at all. They have serious reservations about both Trump, first Biden, and now Harris.

So just describe the Reeds for us, what we need to know about them to understand how it is that they remain undecided.

The Reeds are a lovely couple that They are both retired school teachers.

I had 35.6 in high school, but then I taught 15 or 17 years of college.

So you taught math?

And I taught 32 years in the public school, and then I did 17 years at the college.

She taught special education. They live on a small farm.

Corn, hay, and alfalfa. Just say hay. Just say hay.

In North Central Pennsylvania, the single most important swing state in the country. They retired from school teaching a few years ago, so they're living on their pensions. They said that inflation has hit them hard. Their fixed income has not kept up with inflation, so that is on their mind.

What What would you describe their political leanings and past voting as being like?

Have you all always, at the presidential level, voted Republican?

Most times, yeah. Yes.

So they're Republicans. In presidential elections, they have voted Republican pretty faithfully. They voted for Trump in 2016. They voted for him in 2020. But particularly, Sharon really thinks he has gone downhill since 2020. They think of him as unpredictable. Even when he talks about policies they like, they don't think he'll carry him out.

So I mean, is he going to spend time going after- Vindictive. Is he going to be vindictive and go after his enemies or people that done him wrong. That worries me.

In this year's Republican primary, she was so fed up with Trump that she voted for Nikki Haley. Bob grudgingly voted for Trump. But they've both told me they are totally open to voting for a Democrat, even though they are Republicans, and they prefer Republican policies. They voted for Josh Shapiro for governor, the moderate Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, and they like him so much that Sharon was a little worried he'd get picked as Harris's running mate and he'd have to leave Pennsylvania.

How did they think about this presidential debate heading into it last week?

Given all their concerns about Trump, they really hoped that Harris was going to make it easy for them in the debate, that she would give a plan, she would give specifics, and even if they didn't agree with all of it, there would be enough of it that they agreed with that they could look at each other and say, You know what? We're just going to vote for Harris. So they watched it very closely. And the minute it was over, I gave them a call.

First of all, Bob, how was your birthday?

Good. I went swimming up in Knauble. Then we went to Texas Roadhouse and went to see the movie Reagan.

I liked it. I thought it was good.

I thought it was fair.

It's Dennis Quaid, right? And as soon as we started talking about the debate, it was clear that the Reeds didn't get what they wanted out of it.

I think she tried a couple of times to say, I want to do this and I want to do that. And that's nice promise. I hope she can get them through Congress. But overall, I think they were still swiping at each other a lot.

They really didn't think either candidate delivered a plan that met them where they are.

What do you mean? Well, I thought Harris would come out with all these programs, and I would like three quarters of them or something like that. I thought maybe Trump would lay out some economic plans, but they didn't seem to come out with anything. Trump just seemed to attack and tack, and Harris was trying to say, I'm the stable person in the room.

Well, what did either of make of some of the specific economic policies that both candidates talked about? Because they did talk about a few specific policies.

Well, Trump talked about tariffs.

Tariff and stuff. I didn't like that because you put tariffs on, we all pay more.

Bob thought, Well, this is just going to make everything more expensive. So he wrote that off. Now, Harris mentioned her policies, and she mentioned three in particular, which were tax credits for home buyers, for people having children and for people starting businesses.

It doesn't help us.

And both of the reads were like, Well, that's not going to help us.

I'm not a first-time home buyer. I'm not going to be burying any children. None of that's going to help me at all.

They're in their 70s, they're on a fixed income, and inflation is hurting them. And they didn't hear anything from her that would address those concerns specifically.

How are you going to deal with rising costs? How are you going to deal with that? I didn't hear any answers from either one of them on those.

Basically, they're hearing a bunch of, from Harris in particular, specific policies that are aimed at much younger people in the economy just starting off in their adult economic lives, and that's just not them. Basically, they're not hearing anything for themselves.

We mentioned the economy, and you didn't hear anything from anybody. That was reassuring. He stuck to his terrace. He talked about sending. But on virtually every other answer, Trump talked about immigration. Did you feel any progress in understanding that, or was it just what you think they did?

She didn't say what she would do. And he was just slamming the Biden administration for letting them in.

While the economy is their number one priority, they've both brought up immigration as an issue that's important, and they both came away to pointed.

You know, Trump killed that border bill. And he did it because he wanted it to be an issue in the election.

Sharon does blame Trump for killing the border bill.

When they question him on that, boy, He just skirted that.

But she didn't believe that Harris really had a plan to really get things under control, in part because of what she saw as happening under the Biden administration.

And he said he was going to go down and nationalize the National Guard and take these people and move them out of the country. That's really upsetting or upheaval for everybody.

Bob has been turned off every time he's heard Trump talk about this plan to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

You've been here 10 years. The National Guard is going to come to your house and load you up in a van and take you out because you're not an American citizen. That doesn't seem realistic.

He thinks it's a terrible idea and wouldn't work.

Here you have the reads on their two biggest issues, not getting satisfying or sufficient answers from either candidate on this debate stage. I'm curious what else Campbell struck you from what Bob and Sharon took from this debate?

Well, I think their views of the candidates is most stark when you hear how they talk about the war in Ukraine.

I don't know. There's part of me that says I could see him give in Ukraine to Putin because he thinks he's so great.

Sharon is worried Trump is just going to give Putin whatever he wants, that he'll cozy up to him. She doesn't like the way he talks about him.

I don't know if she has the ability the diplomacy to end it and has a respect of the people to do it.

But she's doubtful that Harris is going to stand up to him, that she's going to be tough enough when she's facing down some of these dictators. How much does the January sixth stuff play in your thinking about him?

A lot.

It was also striking how they reacted to January sixth.

Any time he's asked about it, he had no responsibility. Even at that That debate. Oh, I was just asked to give a speech.

The Reids really don't like that. They have real concerns about January sixth, and it just highlighted everything that turns them off Trump.

Because you've described the Reids as Republicans who have become disillusioned with Trump, I wonder what they made out of Harris's efforts in the debate to make some pretty overt gestures to Republicans who have soured on Trump. For example, she mentions that many prominent Republicans have backed her because they don't like Trump. Does that mean anything to the reads as seemingly of a target audience for that message?

I actually I think that gets right to their dilemma.

Well, I'm not surprised she's Cheney support because Cheney hasn't liked Trump from the very beginning.

They see these other Republicans as turned off by Trump as they are. That's not the issue. They don't like Trump, and these other Republicans don't either.

That's not going to tell me how I'm going to vote. I'm still more on the issue.

But that doesn't, to them, give them a case for Harris.

So what I'm hearing is Trump's performance in this debate, clearly, feeds into their discomfort with him. But it doesn't quite push them into the hands of Kamala Harris because They don't hear enough specifics and they don't know in their hearts yet that she's ready for the job.

That and they're Republicans. They prefer Republican policies. And While they don't want to vote for Trump, it's going to take more convincing for them to vote for a Democrat.

Right. More convincing than what we understand to be last confrontation between them on a debate stage, which was really probably Harris's best chance to win over the reads and Trump's best chance to alleviate some of their concerns.

As far as we know, yeah. At the end of that phone call, as I I do, after all the phone calls I've had with them this summer, I asked them, did this move you one way or the other?

I didn't hear anything the night that was...

What's this, one way or another?

Well...

And they basically said, no.

I am no farther to voting for either one of them than I was before.

And, Bob, are you still 51% of Trump.

Yeah. Not anymore, not 52, but just 51 or 50 and a half or something like that.

Sharon is still completely undecided. She has no idea what she's going to do in November. And Bob is ever so slightly leaning toward Trump, but he doesn't love it. Listen, I've dragged you across these calls too often, too late at night. I appreciate this again. You all have a great weekend, and thanks again for holding. I really do appreciate it. You're welcome.

Thank you for making us sound good.

All right. Thank you all. Have a good one.

You have a good one, too.

Bye.

Well, Campbell, thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

After the break, my colleague Stella Tan speaks to an undecided voter who says that the debate brought her much closer to a decision. We'll be right back.

My name is Jasmine Uyoa, and I'm a national politics reporter for the New York Times. I grew up in Texas on the border with Mexico, and I've been reporting in the region since I was in high school. Now I travel the country looking for stories and voices that really capture what immigration and the nation's demographic changes mean for people. What I keep encountering is that voters don't fall into neat ideological boxes on this very volatile issue. There's a lot of gray, and that's where I feel the most interesting stories are. I'm trying to bring that complexity and nuance to our audience, especially in such a critical election year. And that's really what all of my colleagues on the politics team and every journalist at the New York Times is aiming to do. Our mission is to help you understand the world, no matter how complicated it might be. If you want to support this mission, consider subscribing to the New York Times. You can do that at nytimes. Com/subscribe.

A few weeks ago on the show, we spoke to an undecided voter named Emily, who lives in Dun County, Wisconsin, a Purple district in a crucial swing state. She's 43 years old, works for a small business in Wisconsin's manufacturing sector, and is the mom of two teenage daughters.

I voted since I was 18, since I've been able to vote. I've been able to come to a decision. This is honestly the first election where I just don't know who I vote for. I need to, I need to vote. I don't want to. It makes me sick.

Like Bob and Sharon Reid, Emily is a longtime Republican voter.

A lot of my values in general have aligned more with the Republicans. But right now, there's too many extremes.

Who found herself deeply dissatisfied with her choices in this election.

I have seriously thought about just writing in a candidate at this point, too, because our options are not looking good.

Like Sharon, Emily voted for Nikki Haley, not Trump, during the Republican primary, even though by that point, Haley had dropped out of the race.

I want to see people who are going to be willing to work with each other. Back to Let's take care of the middle class and let's stop fighting.

In July, with Trump as the Republican nominee and Joe Biden suddenly out of the race, we asked Emily if she was open to voting for Kamala Harris.

I really don't know enough about her as a candidate for president to say one way or the other. It'll be interesting to see how she performs in debates and things coming up to see if she can keep her composure.

For her, the debate was going be crucial. When it was over, Daily producer Stella Tan called Emily back to see whether the debate had changed any of her thinking.

Hello?

Hello. Is this Emily?

Yes, it is.

How are you doing?

Not too bad. How about you?

I'm doing pretty good. I really appreciate you talking to me again and letting me show up on your metaphorical doorstep again. When we talked over the summer, it was right when Biden dropped out and Harris had just become the presumptive nominee, and you were still getting oriented on her. I'm wondering, right now, how close are you to making up your mind on who to vote for for President?

I am still struggling. I'm still torn. I mean, it's tricky. I do come from a pretty conservative family, and this hasn't been easy for them either. I think they're struggling, too, with which way to go. It's like coming down to what's... Do you compromise on some of your beliefs and some of your policy positions in order to help to preserve democracy and bring us back to some level of decorum and civility. I think that's gotten to be an issue.

What were the moments that most stood out for you from the debate? What did they leave you thinking and feeling?

Maybe an overall impression, I guess, of the debate that actually left me very frustrated with former President Trump was just his overall decorum, his rhetoric. My 16-year-old daughter was watching with me. And a big thing that we came back to was the opening of the debate and the fact that he made a beeline for the podium rather than trying to meet in the middle and handshake, and she had to initiate that. Then throughout the debate, I can't recall a time when he actually made eye contact with her or looked at her. Then the way that he continued to refer to they, they. That may have been part of his strategy is to continue to try to tie her to Biden. But in doing that without looking at her, without going in for that handshake, without actually addressing her, to me, it was very demeaning. So that really bothered me. And then the fact that, to be honest, for the majority of the date, he looked like my daughters did when they were toddlers and they were not getting their own way or they had gotten yelled at and were sitting and pouting in the corner.

A lot of people have been remarking on Harris's facial expressions and gestures in response to some of the things that Trump was saying. I'm curious how her expressions landed with you, especially in this context of you wanting a president who can work across the aisle and lower the temperature on the rhetoric.

For me, I guess some of it just made me laugh. And honestly, it was just like, okay, she's making this face, and I'm making the same face here at home. What did she just say? How was this? Did that actually come out? I didn't think it was over the top. I didn't think she was disrespectful in any way. So it didn't really sway me one way or the other.

I wanted to ask you about a couple of things you mentioned to me when we had our conversation before. You mentioned that the economy was a big issue for you. Yes. Is that still true? Can you talk a little bit about how the debate affected your thinking on on how the candidates would approach economic issues?

Yeah. No, definitely. The economy is still a major issue for me. To be honest, I was really disappointed in both candidates. I was really hoping to hear something more. For me, Donald Trump, all he was talking about was tariff, and that's not going to fix the economy in and of itself. And so there was nothing else there from him. And Kamala, while she did have her three points, she was talking about small business, she was We're talking about $25,000 for first-time homeowners, $6,000 for families in the first year of life. I'm sure there's people out there for that. That was wonderful, and they were happy to hear that. I'm a college-educated woman working class in my 40s. I own a home, and I have teenage children. So for me, this is all great. She's focusing on how to help people get started. How do you help all of the millions of Americans who are already small business owners? I work for a small business owner. For homeowners, in the last 5-7 years, our homeowners insurance has basically doubled. So what are you going to do for homeowners? How are you going to help us to continue to live in our homes, to maintain our homes?

Those are the things I really would have liked to have seen from her last night, and I didn't.

So there was one more thing. You mentioned reproductive rights in our conversation last time. Do you lean toward one or the other on that issue?

This is one of those, I think, to where I struggled because people They want to pigeonhole you into one view or the other. If you're conservative, you view it this way, and if you're liberal, you view it this way. When it comes to reproductive rights and specifically abortion, I do have very strong feelings about the manner in which that should be utilized. I do consider myself pro-life, so more of a conservative. I don't view that as a means of birth control. But I do also understand and can appreciate through different experiences, life experiences of my own, I can understand where this is not a black and white issue, and there has to be room for that. There has to be exceptions. There has to be places where this can happen. And so I'm still struggling personally with like, yes, I don't want to see it used in this way, but I don't want to see people being stuck in a position where they have no choices. And so she backed away from answering how she felt about late term abortion. And I was wishing she would have talked about that. But by the same token, I was thoroughly disgusted by his comment.

He kept calling it abortion after birth. But if a child is born, it's not abortion. It's just by definition. And so essentially, you're talking about execution of children. And to me, that was just so off the wall. For him to continue spewing that is just sickening.

I know you said earlier that you were still struggling, but did the debate help you make up your mind on who to vote for?

I don't know if I'm comfortable, even with myself to myself yet. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable saying yes or no to that one way or the other. I'm not sure what I'm hoping to hear yet. I don't know if there's something that I'm wanting to hear. Whether it's right or wrong or makes any sense when you grow up a certain way, whether you grow up liberal or you grow up conservative, I think it is hard for a lot of people. If that's what you've always been and that's what you've known and you've been very comfortable in that, I think there is just some level of uncomfortableness. I don't know if subconscious. If you feel like you're betraying what you are and where you've been, even though that's not true, people grow and people evolve. I wouldn't say that I would be changing necessarily my values or where I necessarily see things falling on policy. But it's coming down to more of a matter of let's restore some civility and decorum into the White House, the sanctity of the President of the United States, that office, what that means, what that stands for, and let's try to start bringing people back together.

One thing she said last night was, let the divisiveness be on the policy issues, not on all of this other unimportant stuff that we're trying to make into issues, and that's essentially dividing us.

Well, there's not a whole lot of time until the election. I know you said that you're not quite sure what you're hoping to hear, but I'm wondering if it gets to be November fifth, what do you think you'll do? Do you think you'll go to the voting booth and make the call there, or is there a chance you might stay home?

No, I definitely will not stay home. I definitely will vote.

Or writing in. Yeah.

No, I know we had talked about writing in a candidate. I think after last night, I would feel more comfortable making a decision versus writing someone in off the call. I would say that it definitely pushed me in one direction. After watching him and listening to him and the attempts to find ways to continue to divide us in the way that he treated her last night and the way that he treated the American public. It definitely pushed me to vote for Kamala.

This was so interesting, Emily. I'm really, really grateful to you for talking to me.

Well, I thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

All right. Take care, Emily.

You, too. Have a good night.

You, too. Bye.

Thanks. Bye.

Over the next 49 days, we'll keep in touch with Bob, Sharon, and Emily to learn who they ultimately chose to vote for and why. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I are talking about cat memes. In an interview on Sunday with CNN, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said that he stood by the debunked claims spread by he and Donald Trump that Haitian migrants in his state were eating people's pets. But it wasn't just a meme. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana, because you guys Moments later, on the same network, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, scoled Vance for standing by those false claims.

I mean, Dana, that was bonkers. Listen, the governor of Ohio, the mayor of that town in Ohio, has said, This is all made up. These are all lies. There's no truth to it. And the United States senator from Ohio just came on your show and blamed his own constituents for his own lies. This guy's so pathetic.

But the thing is, Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan, Luke Vanderplug, Eric Krupke, Mujdj Zady, and Nina Feldman, with help from Diana Wyn. It was edited by Patricia Willens and Ben Calhoun, with help from MJ Davis Lynn. Contains original music by Marion Lozano, Alicia Baetou, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lantferk of Wunderly. Special thanks to Megan Ludet and Mary Sue. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.