While Donald Trump’s campaign publicly claimed victory in Tuesday night’s debate with Kamala Harris, at least some aides privately acknowledged that Trump was unlikely to have been able to persuade undecided voters to support him, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Will what happened tonight be beneficial to us? No,” one of Trump’s aides said.
The sentiment encapsulates the predicament of the Trump campaign, with 55 days to go until the election, as Trump still launches an attack line against Harris and seeks an opening to upend her gains in the polls in key battleground states.
And it was an admission that despite their hopes of a happy Trump onstage, they had instead brought an angry Trump, seemingly unable to shake off the ridicule his supporters showed him after leaving the rally early and after being fact-checked multiple times by the moderator.
For weeks, the Trump campaign had seen the debate as a golden opportunity to air attacks on Harris’ policies that they believe were being underreported in the mainstream media to a prime-time television audience of millions across the country.
By that logic, even if networks refused to air Trump’s rallies or campaign comments, when he spoke during a debate they would be forced to air him live and uninterrupted.
But within 10 minutes of the debate, Trump was being provoked by Harris, missing multiple opportunities to attack even his favorite topics like illegal immigration, and culminating in an altercation with the moderator over whether Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating their pets.
The original plan to manipulate the allegations of attacks on pets by immigrants was to say it was hearsay when the host challenged it, and then pivot to attacking Harris about the impact of illegal immigration on crime.
The problem, according to people briefed on the preparations, was that Trump struggled to execute the plan, became caught up in Harris’s mockery of his rally and then got embroiled in a spat over the veracity of that story.
The highlight, as pointed out by several Trump advisers, was Trump’s final remarks – which were rehearsed – in which he questioned why Harris had not yet implemented policies she had proposed as part of the Biden administration’s agenda.
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Trump campaign staffers Suzie Wiles and Chris LaCivita publicly echoed their boss’s comments and declared victory in a statement: “The choice couldn’t be clearer: President Trump is the winner tonight, and he will win for America if he returns to the White House,” they wrote.
Trump’s advisers were also uniformly critical of the debate moderators, ABC News hosts David Muir and Lindsey Davis, and their repeated fact-checking of Trump’s extreme claims, suggesting the debate looked like a three-on-one battle.
Still, their personal assessment of the debate differed from the victory declaration Trump made during his visit to the Fox News spin room and was used as a reason for his hesitation about whether to hold a second debate with Harris with 55 days to go until the election.
“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it, but I think if you won the debate, maybe I shouldn’t do it. Why do another debate?” Trump said when pressed by Fox News host Sean Hannity.
