Trump allies do damage control as Harris rides fresh momentum post-debate

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — Ex-President Donald Trump is equivocating over the possibility of a second debate with Kamala Harris after his dud display in their first showdown prompted his team and conservative media allies to mount a frantic cleanup operation.

It’s far too early to say whether the tangle in Philadelphia substantially changed the race as Harris beseeches remaining movable voters in swing states to ditch the chaos of the Trump era. But in the aftermath of Tuesday’s debate, both campaigns are surveying the impact of a critical clash before more than 60 million viewers eight weeks from Election Day.

Trump, who took multiple victory laps following President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June, found himself facing the kind of inquest endured by his erstwhile rival. While the ex-president’s campaign will not suffer the same fate as Biden’s shuttered reelection effort, the debate was the latest sign that Trump is still failing to focus on the new challenges posed by Harris and make his own best case.

The vice president was basking in a fresh jolt of euphoria among Democrats who perceive an oft-doubted political figure growing in stature with every test she passes. Harris’ campaign is also leveraging the endorsement of Taylor Swift, which could open a new seam of interest among the pop megastar’s loyal fanbase.

But history suggests that a first debate between two candidates is not historically a reliable predictor of who wins the election. Despite Harris’ strong performance, it’s not yet clear how much progress she made in building the path to 270 electoral votes.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who consistently warns Democrats not to take her swing state for granted, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Thursday that Trump’s base is energized and that the race could not be closer.

“I was ecstatic, like every other Democrat, as I watched the debate. I thought she got under his skin. He reminded much of America about who he was and what he was. She showed people she could be the commander in chief,” Dingell said. But, she added: “At 6:50 yesterday morning, one of my township supervisors called me and wanted to know what I thought. And I said, ‘Well, what did you think?’ And that discussion brought me right back down to Earth.”

“I think Michigan is a dead heat,” she said.

Meanwhile, Harris’ allies are reinforcing the tone of mockery and attempts to goad Trump that emerged at the Democratic National Convention and that the vice president carried into the debate. Philippe Reines, a former Hillary Clinton aide who played Trump in Harris’ debate prep, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Wednesday that the ex-president has slowed mentally since 2016 and compared him to a “malfunctioning appliance.”

“He was all over the place but to some extent structured,” Reines said, referring to Trump when he took on former Secretary of State Clinton. “Now, he’s all over the board.” He added: “I think he’s losing (his) train of thought and he’s just blurting out the next thing in his mind.”

A moment of unity

Hours after the debate, the political bile briefly eased as Harris and Trump, along with Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, gathered at Ground Zero in New York to honor the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The general election rivals only met for the first time at the debate, but they shared their second handshake in 12 hours in a gesture of national unity orchestrated by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

In a more light-hearted scene Wednesday, a grinning Biden took the extraordinary step of donning a Trump 2024 baseball cap. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the president gave a hat to a Trump supporter during a visit to a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, near where the fourth hijacked jet crashed short of its target on 9/11 after a passenger revolt. The Trump supporter had said that “in the same spirit POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it,” Bates said.

But it was only a temporary respite to the bitter fallout from the debate.

The former president did what he always does when presented with unfavorable political facts — deny them. He declared on Fox News on Wednesday that he had “one of my better debates,” despite sweeping negative reviews of his showing. Trump also launched an attack on ABC News, claiming the debate was “rigged” and faulting moderators who fact checked him for setting up a “three-to-one” tag team against him.

But one of his newest associates, former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., may have inadvertently highlighted Trump’s deficiencies in the debate even as he tried to praise the ex-president whom he recently endorsed.

Kennedy said on Fox News that while Trump won the debate on “substance,” Harris “clearly won the debate in terms of her delivery, her polish, her organization and her preparation.”

“I think on substance, President Trump wins in terms of his governance,” Kennedy said. “But he didn’t tell that story.”

Still, Trump’s complaints were more eagerly picked up among his longtime boosters in conservative media, underscoring the way that the Republican Party always falls in line behind its leader. However, Trump’s narrative that he was thwarted by two TV anchors sat uneasily with his claim on stage that he’s such an intimidating figure that US enemies were simply scared of him.

Trump was correct in arguing that he was fact-checked more thoroughly than Harris on Tuesday night by moderators who missed several chances to correct the vice president or to hold her to account for dodging questions. But Harris said nothing that compared to the gusher of untruths from the former president, which included a claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were slaying and eating residents’ dogs and cats. (That racist claim was debunked Wednesday by Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who said there was “no credible evidence.”)

Adopting a more sinister tone in his interview with Fox, the former president accused ABC of putting on a “rigged deal” and warned officials “ought to take away their license.” His comments were ominous considering he’s vowed to wage a presidency of “retribution” if he is elected to a second term in November that would include the use of presidential power to punish his enemies.

The former president also Wednesday publicly toyed with the idea of a second debate, after the Harris campaign challenged him to another round. But the former president, smarting from his treatment at the hands of the vice president on Tuesday, doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to renew the performance.

One the one hand, he may have little incentive to show up again given that he was widely seen to have suffered a drubbing on Tuesday. But if the polls show him trailing in the run-up to the election, there might be a rationale for a do-over. The Harris campaign has a similar conundrum. There’s a case for the vice president folding her tent given that she might not be able to repeat Tuesday’s performance.

Trump, however, is trying to change perceptions of the debate after the fact.

“In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last nigh. Every Poll has us WINNING,” he wrote on Truth Social, “so why would I do a Rematch?” As is often the case, the ex-president’s reading of polls was exaggerated. A flash CNN poll performed by SSRS after the debate found that watchers thought Harris put in a stronger performance by 63% to 37%.

History suggests that it takes at least a week for the full impact of a debate to filter down into the electorate. And the fundamentals of the neck-and-neck race with Harris still seem to favor the former president, whose campaign ads are targeting the vice president over the current administration’s record on the economy, including high prices, inflation and immigration, with an intensity and level of focus that Trump as a candidate has come nowhere near matching.

Trump’s running mate has also been more effective at delivering a sharp political message than his boss. He weaved a dismissal of the Swift endorsement for Harris into a wider attack on the vice president on Fox News. “When grocery prices go by up by 20%, it hurts most Americans. It doesn’t hurt Taylor Swift,” Vance said. “When housing prices become unaffordable, it doesn’t affect Taylor Swift or any other billionaire. It does affect middle-class Americans all over our country.”

No victory laps at Harris HQ

The challenging political backdrop explains why things are still tense at Harris headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. A senior campaign aide told CNN’s MJ Lee that the assumption was that the election remained a 50-50 proposition. “It’ll be incredibly close. We cannot take our foot off the gas, even when the moment feels really good,” the aide said.

Harris also faces choices beyond whether she’ll agree to another debate. While her performance was stylistically strong on Tuesday, she still dodged key questions — for instance, the very first one on whether she believes Americans are better off now or when Trump was in office. The Trump campaign is sure to keep up its drumbeat of complaints that she’s avoiding deeper media scrutiny. And there are many signs that voters want more substance from the Democratic nominee.

Several voters who are undecided or leaning toward Harris or Trump, but open to changing their candidate, told CNN’s John King that Harris did well in the debate but several also cautioned she was not sufficiently specific in explaining her policies.

“Kamala Harris says she wants to lift up the middle class, but how?” said Linda Rooney, who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs and voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the primary. She also voiced concern about Harris shifting her positions on fracking and other issues.

Such doubts are evident in recent national polls too. But they also reflect the fresh complications Trump has caused for himself with his underwhelming debate performance: He may have squandered his best and last chance to expose Harris over those vulnerabilities in front of tens of millions of voters.

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