Trump Says He Defeated Harris in Debate

Trump Says He Defeated Harris in Debate

Trump Says He Defeated Harris in Debate, With eight weeks remaining, Donald J. Trump’s aggressive spinning of his debate performance revealed he understood it was subpar and left advisors wondering how to proceed.

Former President Donald J. Trump visited the spin room after his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, something he declined to do after his debate against President Biden in June.Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Following Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald J. Trump immediately went into sales pitch mode. He entered the spin room to tout his own performance, gloated on Fox News, and went on a late-night posting binge to hype illogical online polls that he claimed showed he had defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Given that it was a three-on-one debate, it was the best debate I have ever had.” Shortly after the debate concluded, Mr. Trump made reference to the two moderators from ABC News in a post on Truth Social.

Mr. Trump was insisting the same things privately to advisers and allies in the hours after the debate, according to three people with direct knowledge who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations. Mr. Trump appeared jubilant, as if he truly believed what he was telling them, the three people said.

But Mr. Trump’s actions after the debate told another story.

Mr. Trump’s aides hinted that he would want to visit the spin room after his debate with President Biden in late June. But he rejected the idea, and after his triumphant performance that night he f

However, he turned down the proposal, and following his victorious show that evening, he didn’t feel the need to go to the spin room since he knew that his victory over the weak president was so complete that he could just relax and watch the media dissect Mr. Biden.

Also Read: Is Trump in Trouble? As Debate Looms

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, his aggressive spinning seemed to be an unconscious admission that his performance wasn’t up to par.

The day after Mr. Trump’s debate with Ms. Harris, his aides and his allies were largely echoing his praise of his performance in public, but privately several conceded that the former president had a rough outing, in stark contrast to his more controlled appearance against Mr. Biden.

An exception was the recent Trump endorser Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Vice President Harris clearly won the debate in terms of her delivery, her polish, her organization and her preparation,” Mr. Kennedy said on Fox News on Wednesday, adding that while Mr. Trump “wins” on substance, “he didn’t tell that story.”

Instead of blaming Mr. Trump directly, some of his supporters publicly criticized his debate preppers. However, his close followers also held the belief that, for an unpredictable and unconventional presidential candidate who had experienced numerous terrible nights over the past nine years, one poor night would ultimately not mean much.

His advisors started preparing for a barrage of bad press that would follow the debate and may give Ms. Harris a brief but noticeable lift in the polls. Some had anticipated a time of momentum during which they would have criticized Ms. Harris for her liberal record and her affiliation with Mr. Biden.

Also Read: Hillary Clinton Helps Kamala Harris in Debating Trump

Following the debate on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump said to Fox News’s Sean Hannity, “The reason you do a second debate is if you lose— and they lost.” By Wednesday, Mr. Trump was attacking ABC News with vitriol. In an additional appearance on Fox News, he declared, “They should take away their license for the way they did that.” Instead, he pondered over which Fox moderators he would let to lead a second debate.

It is unknown how honest Mr. Trump’s close supporters and advisers have been with him thus far, but few, if any, share his alleged assessment of his performance against Ms. Harris. Telling Mr. Trump that he was fantastic has been the easiest way to respond when he asks, “What do we think?” as he did several times to folks he spoke to overnight and on Wednesday. And a lot of people followed the easiest route.

Several of the network’s pundits on Wednesday morning looked for the good aspects of Mr. Trump’s performance, while some Fox News opinion hosts, including Jesse Watters, did not offer glowing reviews.

The former congressman from South Carolina, Trey Gowdy, stated on Fox News, “There’s no reason he can’t do it, but the moderators didn’t fact-check her.”

Following the discussion, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham complimented Mr. Trump on social media for arguing that his administration had made America safer. Mr. Graham, however, was visibly disappointed in the spin room afterwards, Politico claims, stating what he had hoped to hear: “When I left we had the most secure border in 40 years, mortgage rates were below three percent, gas was $1.87, the Abraham Accords, energy independent, you screwed it all up.”

Also Read: Trump Mocks Harris’s ‘Tiny Crowds’

Speaking when pressed for an explanation, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said that the reason the former president went to the spin room was “because he’s fearless and unafraid to take questions from reporters, unlike Kamala Harris” and criticized her for not doing news conferences or one-on-one interviews.

She noted that Mr. Trump “strongly drove home” his idea that Ms. Harris was “responsible for the problems we are facing today,” a point Mr. Trump rarely mentioned on Tuesday night. Additionally, she claimed that the moderators on ABC News were teaming up against the former president and stated that Mr. Trump’s advisors “could not be more proud” of him “for delivering a masterful debate performance in a three-on-one fight.”

The expectation among Mr. Trump’s advisors and supporters was that he would ask Ms. Harris why she hadn’t fulfilled her goals in the three and a half years that she had been working with Mr. Biden, bringing up the subject of her tenure on Tuesday night. His assistants were pleased with his performance during his practice sessions. Before the debate, a person who was briefed on the sessions stated that he anticipated Mr. Trump would pose a modified version of the fateful question that President Ronald Reagan asked President Jimmy Carter in their 1980 debate: Were Americans better off now than they were four years ago?

However, Mr. Trump saved his version of that argument for the end of the discussion, appearing to remember his main goal for the evening only in his concluding remarks.

Trump Says He Defeated Harris in Debate

He fell for Ms. Harris’s hook time and time again, focusing on his own complaints about things like the size of his crowds, the value of his family inheritance, and whether or not he won the 2020 election that he lost.

Mr. Trump’s advisors offered “pivots” for numerous lines of attack that surfaced on Tuesday night during his debate preparation sessions. Usually, these were replies meant to shift the conversation back to Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden’s collaboration and their shared oversight of immigration and the economy. However, Mr. Trump caught himself in each and every trap Ms. Harris set for him, failing to use those pivots.

With eight weeks remaining in the election, Mr. Trump and his advisors must now decide how to proceed.

On Wednesday, he attended a Lower Manhattan memorial service for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, when he shook hands and seemed to welcome Ms. Harris warmly once more. Later on, he went to a fire station with Laura Loomer, the right-wing provocateur who flew with him to the debate and uploaded a video on social media last year labeling September 11th as a “inside job.” On Wednesday, Ms. Loomer—who has been instrumental in advancing the pet-eating narrative—posted conspiratorial queries regarding Ms. Harris’s earrings.

When faced with comparable instances of self-inflicted danger in the past, Mr. Trump has attempted to shift the conversation by launching an absurd gambit or organizing a shake-up of the campaign. Although he has openly defended his leadership of the campaign, Mr. Trump’s crew is already at odds over his recent decision to elevate Corey Lewandowski to a key position. Mr. Lewandowski, who was ousted as his 2016 campaign manager, is known for having sharp elbows and favoring a “let Trump be Trump” attitude.

After Tuesday, it’s unclear if the campaign’s strategy or his own strategy would change in any way.

Trump Says He Defeated Harris in Debate

After a disappointing performance, Mr. Trump typically casts around for others to blame. But at no point during his debate prep sessions was Mr. Trump advised to get hung up on responding to jabs about the size of his inheritance or over wild rumors about Haitian migrants eating pets, a person with knowledge of the sessions said.

Readied for a tough stretch, his advisers now hope he can turn his focus back to the economy, with plans to hold events to highlight the high cost of living under the Biden-Harris administration and to compare it with the much lower prices before the coronavirus pandemic when Mr. Trump was in office.

After the debate, Mr. Trump is going to the West Coast, where he will be doing some of his busiest fundraising events. He will fly to Tucson, Arizona, on Thursday afternoon to give a campaign address that is supposed to be about housing and the economy. On Friday morning, he will hold a press conference at his golf course close to Los Angeles, and that evening, he will attend a rally in Las Vegas.

One remaining question is whether Mr. Trump will debate Ms. Harris again. In 2020, the former president pushed his disastrous first debate with Mr. Biden out of the news in part because he contracted Covid and wound up hospitalized. But he also stabilized his standing with a stronger second debate in October.