Good morning! If you have trouble deciding between onion-flavored mayo, pickle-flavored ketchup, and a dozen other condiments, you’re in luck. Heinz UK dropped a limited-run “Every Sauce.” The unholy combo contains 14 sauces to satiate the appetites of even the most sadistic among us.

The Commerce Department will drop its updated inflation numbers this morning. No matter what happens, we can all rest easy knowing AriZona Iced Tea is still 99 cents.

2024

🗯️ Democrats debate dumping Biden

Well. At least it was entertaining in a “can’t look away” kind of way. In the words of one CNN commentator, the debate was a "slow-motion car wreck" for the Biden campaign.

President Biden needed to reassure voters that he’s up to the job of serving another four years in the White House. CNN’s post-debate polling indicated that, um, didn’t happen. Instead, it showed 67% of viewers believe Trump won.

Biden allies blamed his raspy voice on a cold. Cable news panelists (a notably trustworthy crowd), including former Biden staffers, openly called for his removal from the Democratic ticket.

• President Biden has won the nomination. The only way he is not the Democratic nominee is if he personally decides to drop out.

• In the hypothetical world where that happens, it would be difficult to deny Vice President Harris the nomination in his place. But that would be up to Democratic Party leaders and convention delegates.

Incumbent presidents often face plant in the first debate. But that’s never prevented them from winning reelection. And it wasn’t a total disaster for Team Biden, either.

• Biden laid down the law with a few hits like “You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” and “He has no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”

Many Biden supporters believe he won the night when it came to policy — like his push on abortion rights — and only failed in presentation.

President Trump: In a shocking twist, Trump’s supporters last night — which included a gaggle of VP wannabes — thought he killed it out there. Trump’s zingers included:

• "I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence and I don't think he did, either.”

• “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one.”

While post-debate discussion is mostly centered on Biden's age, many Republicans saw Trump as victorious. He focused on his (pre-covid) economic record as president and hit Biden on inflation. Trump redirected a question on January 6 to the state of the economy and world at the time.

At the end of the night, while two-thirds of viewers considered Trump the winner, just 5% said the debate changed their mind on whom to support.

Indie candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wasn’t invited to last night’s debate. But he was sure to hold his own “Real Debate” instead. RFK is currently polling at about 7% nationwide.

The next debate is scheduled for September 10 on ABC. Details of a possible VP showdown haven’t been nailed down yet.

If you'd like to watch last night's Biden-Trump trainwreck, check it out here. If you’d like to jump straight to the important bit where they argue about who’s better at golf, that’s right here.

In other news, the Supreme Court dropped some hot decisions yesterday:

• 💊 Justices nixed opioid maker Purdue Pharma’s multi-billion dollar bankruptcy plan. The court ruled 5-4 that the plan illegally released the company’s owners (the Sackler family) from liability.

• 💰 The power of financial regulators took a hit. The SEC can no longer use in-house tribunals when suing people for fraud. In a 6-3 ruling, the court said people have the right to a federal jury trial per the Seventh Amendment.

• ⚖️ Women facing medical emergencies will be able to get abortions in Idaho (for now). The court refused to rule, basically saying “Oops, never should have taken this case,” and tossed it back to a lower court.

POLITICS

🔵 The two campaign strategies are unfolding. The Biden campaign is up with an ad tying Trump to the 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The ad features a doctor worried that anti-abortion laws could prevent doctors from saving women’s lives in the ER.

🔴 Pretrial hearings continued this week in Florida for the federal indictment of Donald Trump. This case is about his alleged mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The two sides are currently debating the thrilling details of what evidence to include and what Trump can say publicly about the case. No trial date is currently set.

• The Trump campaign took to the airwaves with a new strategy last night. The new ad takes aim at VP Kamala Harris, telling voters that a vote for Biden/Harris is, considering Biden's age, a likely vote for President Harris.

⚪ A Republican-backed poll of the Montana Senate race shows a tie at 48% as Republicans attempt to knock out a longtime Democratic incumbent. When a third-party Libertarian candidate is included, the Republican leads by 3%.

TRIVIA

The first televised presidential debates aired in 1960 between JFK and Nixon. Before the advent of such programming, voters were left clueless about how they should vote. But the debates didn’t last. In what year was the second round of presidential debates?

Hint: They involved an incumbent Republican.

WORLD

🇧🇴 Bolivia: A Bolivian general was arrested after storming the presidential palace and staging a coup (sort of Bolivia’s national pastime). But many doubt this was a genuine attempt at seizing power. Instead, they accuse the country's embattled president of planning the event himself to solidify his support.

🇭🇳 Honduras: Ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, 55, will spend the next 45 years in a U.S. prison. Honduras extradited him shortly after he left office in 2022. And a federal court just convicted him of helping traffic 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

🇺🇸 United States: The U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions ban slavery with one *slight* exception: “as a punishment for crime.” Voters in California will decide in November whether to remove that exception from their constitution. The rule is often used to force prison inmates to work for almost no pay.

BRIEFS

• President Biden pardoned “LGBTQI+ service members" convicted of crimes related to the military’s former ban on gay sex (which is unrelated to those kicked out of the service for being gay)

• Oklahoma, in a move sure to draw legal challenges, will require public schools to teach the Bible, which it says is necessary for "a complete understanding of Western civilization"

• A freight train derailed in suburban Chicago yesterday, sparking a short evacuation over unfounded fears of hazardous leaks

• SpaceX, which is now valued at $210 billion, won a contract from NASA to knock the International Space Station out of the sky when it's decommissioned in 2031

• Walgreens, after losing 80% of its stock value in five years, will close a “significant” chunk of the 25% of its stores that are underperforming

QUOTE

SNACKS

🍿 Movies: We are so back. Filming for "Freaky Friday 2" is underway with Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Chad Michael Murray all returning. The movie hits theaters sometime next year.

🤖 AI: NBC will use an AI clone of legendary sports commentator Al Michaels to stream daily recaps of the Paris Olympics this summer. Creepy? Cool? Little of both?

🐼 Pandas: Two new pandas are en route from China to the San Diego Zoo as part of China's panda diplomacy program. Yun Chuan and Xin Bao are the first new pandas the U.S. has received in 21 years.

ANSWER

After their initial run in 1960, presidential debated disappeared until 1976. That year, President Ford (R) took on Governor Jimmy Carter (D). History had thrown Ford from the House of Representatives into the White House in about 8 months in 1973-74. Not having been elected either VP or president, Ford was unpopular and felt a solid debate would be his saving grace.