Bill Clinton's former White House spokesman urges Joe Biden not to debate President Trump

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Gutfeld on Biden ducking the debates

Former Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhardt urges Joe Biden to not debate President Trump.

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," August 3, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: Hi, I am Greg Gutfeld, with Jesse Watters, Dana Perino, Marie Harf, and Dagen McDowell -- "The Five."

The village idiot has spoken. Former Bill Clinton spokesman and sputtering wackadoodle, Joe Lockhart, frantically suggests that under no circumstances should Joe Biden debate Donald Trump. Now, you are thinking that must be a gag.

Nope, according to Lockhart, Trump tells so many lies it's pointless for Biden to enter the ring with someone who can't follow the rules or the truth, but we know he's really saying, right? The moment Biden faces off with Trump and the cognition starts malfunctioning. He's dust, which is really why Lockhart admits Biden can lose the election.

He's just creating a phony reason, hoping no one notices, but we did. He's hoping the campaign create a fake moral loophole for Biden to worm his way out of so he won't tank in public. Oh, we certainly can't debate Trump. He fibs and wears hair plugs. Oh, wait, that's Joe. But if that's the standard for all candidates, we never have another debate ever.

The Democratic Party would be as thin as I am and only half as handsome. But also, wouldn't you want to debate a liar because you could come armed with facts and kick the liars butt. And clearly, if Joe can't handle a debate, how can handle being president? Wouldn't this feeble act disqualify him from the office? Makes you wonder if he really is the actual candidate at all.

You can see Lockhart didn't think this through, which is why he writes for CNN. And it says something that a media company, one that should champion transparency and so on, would push the Suppress, a public forum to evaluate the candidates in real-time. It must be cool to have friends in high places or at CNN, low places too.

All right, Dana, I said this was coming. I said it was coming. I believe he's not going to debate Donald Trump. What say you?

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Well, I have taken the other side of that. And in fact, I think I placed a pretty hefty bet with Tucker Carlson. So I am anxiously awaiting to see if I'm going to have to pay up for that.

GUTFELD: Right.

PERINO: The other thing is Joe Lockhart is not averse to say this. The reason I had the bet with Tucker Carlson is about five weeks ago, I think. Tom Friedman, the columnist for the New York Times wrote a piece also saying that Joe Biden should not debate. And the campaign said Joe Biden is going to debate. Trump has said he wants more debates and he wants debates earlier.

Incumbents usually don't want that, right? They usually are, like, we are not going to bother with that because incumbents are in a pretty strong position. Wanting to debate more shows that, one, President Trump love to debate. He wants to be out there, and he wants to be able to say this is my record. This out is what I want to do.

And he doesn't wanted to be a referendum necessarily on his record, though I'm sure they're going to complain about that. But they want it to be a choice between two people like he did with Hillary Clinton. He drew that distinction quite well. And he wants to do the same with Biden, which has been a little bit hard to do with the campaigning during the Coronavirus.

GUTFELD: Yeah. You need to have a person to draw the distinction. And there is no person there, Dana. Also, we don't condone gambling at Fox News. If after the show, you could just go to the HR department and they'll probably have to fill out some forms. Marie, good to see you, if Joe Biden doesn't debate, how can we even consider him worthy of being president?

MARIE HARF, GUEST CO-HOST: Greg, Biden is going to debate. Biden wants to debate Donald Trump because of all those lies, because of the failed record that he will argue. And look, all of President Trump's supporters who are setting the bar so low for Joe Biden, even you just did, right, it in your monologue, saying once he starts talking it'll be clear that he's no good.

Joe Biden -- that's not a high bar for Biden to leap over. So really, Joe Biden just has to come in. Show America he can put together four sentences. And believe me, I'm confident he can put together a lot more than that. But you are setting the bar so low for Joe Biden that -- be careful. He is going to fly right over it.

GUTFELD: Yeah. Well, you have to understand. I love low bars. Jesse, what do you think? Do you think he's going to debate or not?

JESSE WATTERS, CO-HOST: You also like bars, so it doesn't matter how high or low they are.

(CROSSTALK)

WATTERS: You know what this reminds me of, Greg? You know the guy who always claims he has a really hot girlfriend, but for some reason you never really get to meet her. Like, he's always showing you pictures of how good- looking she is. But every time there's a party, like, there's travel problems or, you know, she had to stay lead work or something like that. Like, this is Joe.

Like, every time there's going to be, like, this slugfest, -- oh, pandemic. I have to stay in my basement. Oh, and the, you know, gloves are going to come off. No, stay in the basement is working. Look at the polls. Oh, maybe I'll do an interview with Chris Wallace. Oh, scheduling conflict, can't do that. Maybe Joe is going to take some questions after a speech.

Sorry, got to run, got to run, got to be somewhere. So now, we're going to debate President Trump. Actually, Trump cheats. I don't think that's going to happen. This -- it kind of seems like the Joe Biden candidacy may be this big mirage, because I don't know about you. We live in a deep blue state. I go to the weekends. I go to Jersey, another deep blue state.

I haven't seen one Joe flag, Joe t-shirt, Joe bumper sticker. You go on social media, there's no popular Joe Biden account. Even the media is not pro-Biden. They are just anti-Trump. So Biden must be comatose if they are floating this trial balloon. I mean -- or the expectations are so low that he has to have, like, just something short of a medical episode for them to claim he's doing well.

Or he is rusty. The last time he debated a Republican was eight years ago. He debated Paul Ryan once. So what I really think it is they know Joe doesn't have a quick enough wit to win those memorable exchanges that make these modern day televised presidential debates. And the people closest to Joe just do not have the confidence in him.

GUTFELD: I think you defined it. The Joe Biden campaign is the Canadian girlfriend candidacy. It's he guy who always has a Canadian girlfriend. That's why you never see her because she's always in Canada somewhere. Hey, Dagen, I want to play you some of Bill Stepien. Roll that tape, if you will.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to see President Trump on the debate stage against Joe Biden. As you are noting, we're already seeing the liberal left, the liberal media, trying to create trapdoors for Joe Biden to escape his commitment and his obligation to debate Donald Trump on a debate stage in front of the American people. We want more debates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: First of all, I congratulate the Trump campaign on hiring teenagers. I swear that kid can't be more than 14. But Dagen, what are your thoughts? I believe that there is a strategy that they are going to, like, only do one debate. They don't want to do more than one. So what do you think?

DAGEN MCDOWELL, GUEST CO-HOST: Maybe. But at least, one debate because Joe Biden's is at that place in his life where most families would start having those conversations about taking his car keys away from him. Go out and look and see if the rearview mirrors are missing off his car. So Joe Biden has to prove to the American people that he can get up on the wheel, so to speak.

But Ed Rollins, to Stepien's point, has always said Joe Biden has a glass jaw. And he needs to be able to lunge and parry questions about the dealings of his son, Hunter Biden in Ukraine and in China, which is the greatest threat to not only the United States but the world at this point. And so far, Biden's best comeback on that note has been, look, here's the deal, when faced with that. So he's got a long way to go, and he better prep up.

GUTFELD: Yup. All right, President Trump set to hold a news conference at any minute, hooray. But in the meantime, Democrats and the media calling President Trump a dictator and worse, that's next on THE FIVE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: President Trump coming under fire for his comments about mail-in voting and the date of the election. Democrats and the media going absolutely ballistic and comparing the president to one of history's worst dictators. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This man has taken on strong-arm tactics. And I feel very strongly that he is Mussolini, who is Hitler. I don't think he plans to leave the White House. He doesn't plan to have fair and unfettered elections. I believe that he plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold on to the office.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is going to be a split screen on January 20, 2021, if Joe Biden is now going to be the 46th president of the United States, you'll have him being inaugurated and watching police and armed forces trying to pull Donald Trump out of the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: All right. Dagen, this is what's going on. They are preparing the population for two scenarios. One, they are expecting Joe Biden to lose so they are just trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of a Trump second term, or they are preparing the country for a contested election where both parties go to court and the counting never stops. And any attempt by the president to enforce rules or deadlines means he's really just trying to stay in power at all costs.

MCDOWELL: And this also proves that the Democrats have no new material. They keep belching up this village even though this whole dictator (Inaudible) messaging has not turned out to be true. And the idea that President Trump isn't going to leave the White House if he lost. They stole that material from Bill Maher who has been talking about that for the last couple of years.

So pony up some money for these comedians who are out of work and can't do stand up, and pay for some new material there. One thing President Trump is doing, really quickly that is so smart is really targeting China. He's going after TikTok. It's going to get banned in the U.S. if Microsoft doesn't buy it in 45 days. He is shutting down the Chinese consulate in Houston.

There was the indictment of the two individuals working for the Chinese government trying to steal virus secrets. This is bipartisanship. People don't trust China. More than three quarters of Americans, according to PEW research, don't trust China and blame China for the virus. This is super smart because it brings both sides together.

WATTERS: Gutfeld, how 2020 would it be if we had a contested election that went on for a month afterwards?

GUTFELD: It's almost something that we deserve just for the hell of it. You know what? These people are crazy. Number one, they forget that Republicans are polite and courteous. You know, we are not the party that burns the flag or defends militants, you know, says that, you know, violence is protest. Republicans, if they lose, it's not like they're going to surround the White House.

No, they are going to regroup and they're going to make a scotch. They might order firearms. And then they're going to put Muffy to bed. You're not crazy Jesse Watters rioting in his khakis. You can't riot in khakis and flip-flops. We understand. You don't have to worry about Republicans. Politics is not their life.

I mean, Trump supporters aren't the people that were burning Minneapolis or Atlanta or Santa Monica or New York City or Portland or Seattle. So we are good. We are good. I wouldn't worry. And maybe police your own side since you don't trust the police that we have.

WATTERS: Yeah, never riot in flip-flops. I think that goes without saying. Dana Perino, they had a Democrat primary here in New York, June 23rd. They still don't know who won, all mail-in.

PERINO: Right. And so in those -- there was a report to the New York Times today about the immense frustration. And there are places where mail-in voting works well after several years of working out the kinks. I think Utah would be a good example of that. But a state that's going to just try to do mail-in voting all at once in the middle of this very contested election.

I can understand why people would be worried about it. I think some of the concerns are like -- if you're going to prepare for something on election night, I wouldn't so much worry about who's going to win as much as thinking about just conditioning yourself to know that you might not know that night. In fact, you probably won't know.

In 2018 in that midterm, it took about another seven days to figure out what the actual Congressional election count was going to be. So just start conditioning yourself to know that you're not going to stay up until 2:00 a.m. and be, like, OK, good or bad. Maybe you cried. Maybe you're so happy depending on who wins. It is very much not going to happen this year. It's very, very unlikely that you'll have a result that night.

WATTERS: Yeah. That's going to really stink. All right, Washington Post --

PERINO: Greg has a question or a point.

WATTERS: Please, in the back.

GUTFELD: I just want to make a point that the reason why Dana said that is because she doesn't want to sit in the chair for seven days, because she knows that she's going to be doing all the political coverage, like, back in the studio. And they are going to keep her there 24/7. She's going to be sitting there with Karl Rove, and they will be eating, like, plain nuts and wilted lettuce. I think that they should stay.

PERINO: It will be like impeachment when I felt like my rear end was growing with every hour that I sat there for all those days.

WATTERS: To be a hard news anchor. All right, Marie, the Washington Post right here says that mail-in ballots three times more likely to be rejected. That doesn't sound very good to you, does it?

HARF: Well, first of all, Greg, Republican supporters of Donald Trump showed up at the Michigan State House with semiautomatic weapons, so spare me this idea that there's only political violence on the left.

GUTFELD: Non-violent, non-violent.

(CROSSTALK)

HARF: -- they had huge long guns.

GUTFELD: Peaceful.

(CROSSTALK)

HARF: Nothing about that was peaceful.

(CROSSTALK)

HARF: Nothing about that was peaceful.

GUTFELD: Nobody got hurt.

HARF: -- this is going to be very difficult, Jesse.

WATTERS: Yeah.

HARF: And the reason we need Congress and state legislatures right now to pass funding to get mail-in ballots and voting right is because this is a very hard thing to do. And President Trump weirdly might actually backfire on himself by trying to convince his supporters that mail-in ballots aren't legitimate.

What if a bunch of his supporters don't vote because of that? It seems like a strange logic. If it's good enough for the president, it should be good enough for his supporters. But that's why Congress right now needs to spend some money to make sure we can do this safely. And I totally agree with Dana. We will not know on election night.

We certainly won't know about the Senate, about a bunch of House races. We won't know that for a little while, I don't think.

WATTERS: All right. So Marie, you think Congress needs to do something that's really hard. Not a great track record.

(CROSSTALK)

WATTERS: Coming up, America's cities see another bloody weekend as murders and shootings spike.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MCDOWELL: Here are some of the stats that liberals who are calling to defund the police do not want you to see. Both Chicago and Portland suffering bloody July's, murders spiking in the windy city by 140 percent, Portland saw its deadliest month in 30 years. New York City passing last year's shooting numbers with four months left to go in 2020.

And the Wall Street Journal finds that 36 of the 50 biggest cities have seen double digit increases in homicides. Other types of violent crime are down, Greg.

GUTFELD: Yes.

MCDOWELL: Go.

GUTFELD: Oh. I thought you had a question. So you have Chicago, murder up 140 percent, You got Portland, deadliest year in 30 years, the shootings in New York, more now than in the entire year prior, or as CNN likes to put it, the summer of love. Because is really is about the media playing all of this down. But I believe --

And I think it's fair to say the combination of violent protests and anarchy combined with the demonization, the marginalization of law enforcement has killed more people than a nation of corrupt cops ever could in overtime. So our leaders are -- have allowed the mob to dictate the future and the future is now here for those who survive. If we don't get a handle on this, the cities will die.

And for these reasons, you cannot raise a family in a hail of bullets, so you're going to leave. You can't run a business if the insurance companies no longer cover riot damage. You can't always be wondering about your spouse driving home from work if a crowd might surround her and she might panic or he might panic, and then that ends up being a crime, because that person might've defended themselves or driven off in a panic.

These are all real issues that I think about every single day living in the city. And I'm watching my friends leave. Everybody here knows people that have left this city already.

MCDOWELL: And I know somebody who got attacked on the way to work here within the last, like, 10 days. Again, you're just trying to avoid getting hit in the head when you come to work at three in the morning. Marie, do you think with this downward spiral happening the more cities will actually ask for federal help through the operation legend that has expanded to Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee last week.

HARF: Well, Dagen, I think what's interesting in the data is that murders are up in many of these cities. But overall, in the top 25 largest cities, overall crime is actually down over five percent this year including violent crime. So I've been reading a lot today in preparation for this segment about this, because people -- experts on this are looking at the reasons why that might be the case.

There've only been four other years since 1960 where violent crimes went down and murders went up. And basically, the experts don't know how to account for that right now. It's been such a weird, bizarre year in so many ways. Some of them are looking at increased domestic violence, for example, because people are at home more.

So I think the jury is still out on why this is actually happening. But I can guarantee you, to speak to your question. Democratic mayors are not going to ask for Portland style tactics in their cities.

MCDOWELL: I didn't say Portland. I didn't say Portland. Portland was a federal courthouse being attacked. And so that is the power of the federal government to protect that federal property. I am talking about the investigative role of people with the ATF and other federal agencies, Dana, like in Chicago where they come to investigative work.

And they can actually charge murders that the federal level potentially, which carries a longer sentence.

PERINO: Cities across America that are seeing this increase in homicides, they're not going to ask for actual help in the way that you're talking about, Dagen. But you can guarantee they're going to ask for money -- and money for what? Many of these cities are passing resolutions or even laws to defund their police, to slice down their police departments.

So why should federal taxpayers pay into that? I am not for that. I think I'm going put -- to draw a big bright line and say, nope, I am not for that.

But what Greg is talking about is very real. If you end up having homicides go up, and people are now realized they could work from home, and now their schools aren't opening so they think, well, maybe we can go to a place where the schools will open or maybe I guess I have to try to learn to homeschool, all of this thing -- all of these things can happen very quickly.

And I believe that one of the reasons -- I don't think it's that hard to figure out for -- statisticians might not be able to figure it out, but maybe one of the reasons that other crimes are down and just because people haven't been out and about. But murderers are because the gang violence is up, the drug violence is up.

And I haven't -- I've been -- I've been like three places in four months. I go to those same three places over and over again. And I'm not in the city. And I feel for the people that are in the city right now because, one we love the city. We have a great city, but you can destroy a city like that.

MCDOWELL: And we're watching it happen certainly here in New York. And Jesse to Dana's point that gang-related crime is usually drug crime, 80 percent of it roughly. Guess what? Federal crime, that's where the feds can help out. You have a racketeering enterprise or organization. That's where the feds can help out and come in, do investigative work and actually make charges.

It worked in New York City under Rudy Giuliani busted up drug dens in Hell's Kitchen. Why not now? Because these cities are run by Democrats.

WATTERS: Well, the divergence in homicides and other crimes is very easy to explain, Marie. You don't burglarize a home if you know someone is locked down in it. And a lot of people aren't being raped because bars aren't open. The things that are happening, the homicides and the shootings are because the police really aren't there and they've shut down these violent task forces. That's very simple.

The only silver lining of this that I can see, I think there's going to be a big baby boom in this country right about now. Because if you keep people in homes for six months with your spouse and just alcohol, you're going to have babies. And when you flee cities because of the violence and move to the suburbs, much cheaper and easier to have a baby and raise them in the suburbs. So we finally might be able to pay for the retiring baby boomers.

PERINO: Are you trying to tell us something, Jesse?

WATTERS: What's that?

MCDOWELL: Jesse, are you telling us something?

WATTERS: I'm pregnant.

MCDOWELL: I thought you were looking like you retaining water.

GUTFELD: You can be. In 2020, he can be pregnant.

WATTERS: That's right. That's right.

MCDOWELL: We stand corrected.

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