Former President Donald Trump isn’t sure if he wants to have a second discussion with Kamala Harris after his lackluster performance in the first one caused his team and conservative media allies to quickly clean up the mess.
It’s still too early to tell if the chaos in Philadelphia made a big difference in the race, but Harris is urging voters in swing states to leave the confusion of the Trump era behind. But now that the debate is over, both campaigns are looking at what happened in front of more than 60 million people eight weeks before the election.
After President Joe Biden’s terrible showing in the debate in late June, Trump took several victory laps. Now he is facing the same kind of investigation that Biden faced.
The former president’s campaign won’t go the way of Biden’s, which was shut down, but the debate was yet another sign that Trump is still not paying attention to the new problems Harris brings up and making his best case.
Democrats are feeling very happy about the vice president because they think she is becoming more important in politics with each test she passes. Harris’ campaign is also using Taylor Swift’s support, which could get the pop star’s loyal fans interested in it in a new way.
And her supporters are adding to the tone of making fun of and trying to provoke Trump that started at the DNC and was carried over by the vice president into the debate. Philippe Reines, a former Hillary Clinton aide who played Trump for Harris’s debate prep, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday that the former president’s mind has slowed down since 2016 and likened him to a “appliance that doesn’t work right.”
“He was all over the place but somewhat structured,” Reines said about Trump when he fought Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time. “He’s all over the place now.” “I think he’s losing his train of thought and will say the next thing that comes to mind,” he said.
A moment of unity
A few hours after the debate, Harris, Trump, Biden, and JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president, met at Ground Zero in New York to remember the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks. This seemed to calm things down a bit.
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The candidates for president only met for the first time at the discussion, but they shook hands for the second time in 12 hours as a sign of national unity. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg organized the event.
As part of a lighter scene on Wednesday, Biden bravely wore a Trump 2024 baseball cap while laughing. White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that the president gave a Trump fan a hat while he was at a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
This is close to where the fourth hijacked plane crashed after a passenger revolt on 9/11. “In the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap,” the Trump supporter said. “He wore it for a short time,” Bates said.
But it was only a short break from the nasty effects of the argument.
When faced with bad political news, the former president did what he always does: he denied them. He said on Fox News on Wednesday that it was “one of my better debates,” even though most people didn’t like it.
In his attack on ABC News, Trump said the debate was “rigged” and that the judges who checked his facts were setting up a “three-to-one” tag team against him.
But one of his new friends, former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., may have brought up Trump’s flaws in the debate while he was trying to praise the former president, whom he recently backed.
Kennedy told Fox News that Harris “clearly won the debate in terms of her delivery, her polish, her organization, and her preparation.” Trump won the debate on “substance.”
Kennedy said, “I think that President Trump wins in terms of how he runs the country.” “That story wasn’t told by him.”
Of course, Trump’s complaints were picked up more by right media outlets that have always supported him. This shows that the Republican Party always follows its leader. But Trump’s story that he was stopped by two TV hosts didn’t fit with what he said on stage, which was that he is such a scary figure that US enemies are just afraid of him.
There was truth to Trump’s claim that he was fact-checked more carefully than Harris on Tuesday night. He was right. The moderators missed several chances to correct the vice president or hold her accountable for avoiding questions.
But Harris’s lies were not nearly as strong as the former president’s. For example, he said that Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio were killing and eating people’s dogs and cats. That racist claim was shot down by Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday, who said there was “no credible evidence.”
In his appearance with Fox, the former president used a more threatening tone when he said that ABC was staging a “rigged deal” and that the government “ought to take away their license.” His words were scary because he has promised to be a president of “retribution” if he wins a second term in November. This would mean using the power of the presidency to punish his critics.
The former president also talked about the idea of a second debate in public on Wednesday, after Harris’s team asked him to do so. But the former president doesn’t seem eager to renew the show. He is still upset about how the vice president treated him on Tuesday.
At first glance, he might not want to show up again since he was generally thought to have been badly beaten on Tuesday. But if studies show that he is behind in the run-up to the election, there might be a reason to try again. The Harris team is in the same tough spot. Since the vice president might not be able to repeat her act on Tuesday, there’s a case for her taking down her tent.
But Trump is trying to change how people think about the debate now that it’s over.
“When a fighter in boxing or the UFC loses or gets knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH!'” It’s the same in a debate too. Last night, she got badly beat up. “Every poll says we WON,” he wrote on Truth Social. “So why would I fight again?”
As is often the case, the former president’s view of the polls was too optimistic. A quick CNN study done by SSRS after the debate found that 63% of people who watched thought Harris did a better job than 37% who thought Johnson did a better job.
From what we know about the past, it takes at least a week for voters to fully understand the effects of a debate. And even though the two candidates are tied, the former president still seems to have the upper hand.
In his campaign ads, he attacks the vice president over the current administration’s record on the economy, including high prices, inflation, and immigration, with a level of intensity and focus that Trump hasn’t even come close to matching as a candidate.
Trump’s running mate has also been better than his boss at getting his political points across. He made fun of Swift’s support for Harris as part of a bigger attack on the vice president on Fox News.
“Most Americans feel bad when food prices go up by 20%.” Vance said, “It doesn’t hurt Taylor Swift.” “When home prices go up too high, it doesn’t affect Taylor Swift or any other rich person.” People in the middle class across the country are affected by it.
No victory laps at Harris HQ
Things are still tense at Harris’s offices in Wilmington, Delaware. This is because of the tough political situation. A senior campaign staff member told CNN’s MJ Lee that the race was still seen as a 50/50 chance. “It’s going to be very close.” “Even when things are going well, we can’t take our foot off the gas,” the aide said.
Harris has to decide more than just whether to agree to another argument. Even though she did a great job with her style on Tuesday, she still avoided important questions. For example, the first one asked her if she thought Americans were better off now or when Trump was in office.
The Trump team is sure to keep saying that she’s avoiding more in-depth media coverage. And there are many signs that people want the Democratic candidate to say more.
A number of voters who aren’t sure yet or are leaning toward Harris or Trump but are open to switching their vote told CNN’s John King that Harris did well in the debate, but that she wasn’t clear enough about her plans.
“Kamala Harris says she wants to help the middle class, but how?” “I voted for Nikki Haley in the primary,” said Linda Rooney, who lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia and voted for her. She was also worried that Harris might change her mind about fracking and other topics.
Recent national polls also show that people have these kinds of questions. But they also show how Trump’s poor showing in the debate has made things more difficult for himself. He may have missed his best and last chance to show Harris’s flaws in front of tens of millions of voters.
