NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump emerged from a rocky debate with Kamala Harris on Wednesday and is now trying to regain his footing 54 days before Election Day. The first ballots are already being distributed in Alabama and other states where early voting is scheduled.
Less than three months ago, Trump walked off the debate stage in Atlanta after witnessing President Joe Biden’s incoherent, whisper-like speech that ultimately led the 81-year-old Democrat to abandon his reelection campaign and endorse his running mate, Harris. By the end of Tuesday night’s debate, Trump, 78, was on the defensive after Harris, 59, controlled much of the debate and repeatedly provoked the former Republican president into agitated answers full of exaggerations and falsehoods.
“We’ll see what the polls say going forward, but I don’t know how you could frame this other than as a pretty decisive defeat for Trump,” former Rep. Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who has long been critical of Trump, said on CNN on Wednesday.
Harris’ campaign immediately floated the idea of a second debate. Fox News has suggested a vote in October, but with moderators Trump says he does not prefer. And on Wednesday, he said on his Truth Social account that there was no need for a second round.
“In the world of boxing or the UFC, when a fighter gets beat or knocked out, he stands up and screams, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, a debate is no different,” Trump wrote as he claimed victory. “She got beaten badly last night… so why would I want a rematch?”
Trump and Harris met briefly in New York on Wednesday, where she joined President Biden and other dignitaries in marking the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. They shook hands for the second time in 12 hours. The first came when Harris approached Trump on the debate stage to introduce herself – an early sign of the aggressive approach she would take during the event.
The former president, who broke convention with his surprise post-debate Spin Room appearance overdue Tuesday night, continued to insist he won the night, even as he called the ABC moderators unfair, a tacit admission that he had not gotten what he wanted against Harris.
Trump and some of his allies speculated in online posts about a possible punishment of ABC by revoking its broadcasting license – the broadcaster itself does not need a license to operate, but the individual stations do – or by banning its reporters from accessing the network in the future.
“We had a great night. We won the debate. We had a terrible, terrible network,” Trump said on Fox News on Wednesday. “They should be ashamed of themselves. I mean, they kept correcting me and what I said was mostly correct, or I hope it was correct.”
But his account of the results of the debate is not consistent with the broad consensus of political commentators, strategists on both sides, and some immediate assessments of voters watching Tuesday night. But there is also evidence that the debate did not immediately result in major shifts in opinion among viewers.
According to a CNN snap poll, about 6 in 10 debate viewers said Harris did better than Trump, while about 4 in 10 said Trump did better. Before the debate, those same voters were split in their opinion about whether Trump or Harris would win.
The extensive majority of debate observers – who do not represent the opinion of the electorate as a whole – also said the event would not affect their voting decision. Perceptions of the two candidates remained largely unchanged.
Harris cheered overdue Tuesday night, telling attendees at the nighttime rally in Philadelphia it was a “great night,” even as she reiterated that she sees Democrats as “underdogs” against Trump. She won the endorsement of music and culture icon Taylor Swift.
New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, was more favorable to Trump than some, acknowledging that Harris won by customary debate standards but failed to win over swing voters who were concerned about her economic situation.
“The majority of these swing voters are still results-oriented,” Sununu said on CNN, adding that Trump still has opportunities to influence voters on economic, immigration and especially foreign policy.
At least that was the message from Republicans on Capitol Hill, where they are trying to maintain their delicate majority in the House of Representatives and employ a favorable starting position in the Senate elections to their advantage in order to gain control of that chamber.
“The biggest concern of undecided voters before the debate with Kamala Harris was the fact that they don’t know where she stands on any issue because of her constant shifting of opinions,” said Mike Berg, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate Republican campaign arm. “I don’t think she’s done anything to address those concerns.”
Jack Pandol, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which oversees House elections, said Harris “still refuses to tell voters what she will do as president.”
But even on that front, Trump has dealt a blow to Democrats with his answers on health care. After running for president twice on a promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly called “Obamacare,” Trump falsely claimed he had saved the 2010 law. At the same time, Trump has stuck to his longstanding promises to replace the law with something better, but when asked, he acknowledged that he still doesn’t have a concrete proposal.
“I have concepts for a plan,” Trump said in a remark that quickly became the fodder for online memes and merchandise.
Dent, the Pennsylvania Republican, said that response was consistent with Trump’s approach to the issue during his four years in office. “He just kept saying, ‘We’re going to insure everybody, it’s going to cost less and it’s going to be beautiful,'” Dent recalled during his CNN appearance. “There was never any policy that supported that. He just didn’t care about the impact on people.”
Sununu, meanwhile, offered perhaps the most insightful assessment of Trump’s position after the debate. It wasn’t about what Sununu said about Trump himself, but about another Republican the governor originally endorsed in the 2024 primary: former ambassador Nikki Haley, who was the last Republican candidate to run against Trump and continued to garner support in the primaries weeks after she dropped out of the race.
“Imagine what Nikki would have done in that debate,” Sununu said. “It would have been great.”
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Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-Deveaux, Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price and AP congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
