The highly anticipated ABC News presidential debate which took place on 10 September 2024 saw Vice-President Harris triumph over former President Trump. Senator Lindsey Graham led the Republican criticism to reporters afterwards, admitting Trump ‘got rattled’ and ‘missed opportunities’ on the big stage.
Hundreds of press representatives from around the world were hosted in the Pennsylvania Convention Center – a fifteen-minute walk down Philadelphia’s Arch Street from the debate venue at the National Constitution Center. Throughout the evening, campaign surrogates walked into the media spin room, scrambling to wrestle control of the narrative as the dust settled.
Within a minute of Trump’s closing statement, a parade of dark blue paddle signs entered the room: Vance, Rubio, Gaetz, Ramaswammy, and Kennedy. As they were swarmed for comment on the former president’s performance, it became clear their work was cut out for them.
Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance sought to legitimise Trump’s claims that immigrants were ‘eating dogs’ in Ohio, saying he ‘did not know the full spate of animals that are being consumed in Springfield’ but that the campaign had heard a ‘911 call … that some immigrants in Springfield were capturing geese at the local pond’. Needless to say, Trump had veered off message.
‘The entire debate strategy from Kamala Harris was to try and dangle this big piece of red meat in front of him and see if he would bite and, throughout the course of basically the entire debate, he went for it.’ Hugo Lowell, the Guardian’s senior Trump correspondent and a regular guest on MSNBC, told the OPR.
‘When he starts having an argument about whether Haitian immigrants are eating pets, you know it’s over, you’ve lost at that point.’ Lowell continued, ‘Trump knew when he came off stage, and I think it actually informed his decision to go into the spin room to try and spin the reporters himself.’
It was indeed a bruising affair for Trump, who took Harris’ bait on crowd sizes and began to lose control of his emotional responses as the debate continued, lauding world-leaders such as Hungary’s Victor Orban and refusing to support a Ukrainian victory against Russia.
Trump’s appearance at the spin room was unprecedented. Talking to the OPR, Anthony Scaramucci, former Trump press secretary turned Harris supporter, said: ‘I think [Vice-President Harris] won all ninety minutes.’ According to Scaramucci, ‘if you need any more evidence than what I’m saying just look at Mr Trump wondering around in here trying to defend himself.’
The Harris campaign had a long coordinated run-up to the debate, beginning with attack ads near where Trump lives in Mar-a-Lago, mocking his crowd sizes. The entire arrangement was undoubtedly intended to rile Trump up, and it worked in derailing a debate that Harris was not going to win on policy issues alone.
‘Her first answer on the economy was bad’, said Freddie Hayward, US Correspondent at the New Statesman, ‘particularly because she spoke too quickly and also because I don’t know how much she’s come to terms with how much she needs to distance herself from the past four years.’
‘If she speaks about the IRA and the mass spending that happened after COVID, I think people will associate that with inflation so I don’t think that will be popular’ he added, ‘she needs a bit more retail’.
Harris touched on two pieces of economic policy in the first question of the debate that she had tested a week earlier in a stump speech in New Hampshire, promising $6,000 tax cuts in child benefits and $50,000 in tax cuts for new small businesses. It was a more tangible policy in contrast to Trump’s assertive ‘millions’ and ‘billions’, but it failed to grip control of the public’s attention as she had hoped.
‘It sounded scripted … and it is’, said Lowell. ‘I think she gravitated towards that because it was top of mind and very easy, it was a couple of factoids that she knew and it enabled her to get settled into the debate.’
‘On the economy, most American voters, if you look at the polls nationally, rate Trump as probably being a better custodian of the economy than Harris.’ He added: ‘Harris really needed that to land and I am not sure it landed quite as strong.’
But the debate was decided in snippets, as the Harris campaign was fully aware. Rile Trump up, and they can clip it until election day. In that they succeeded, but it was a far more meticulous process than meets the eye.
Twenty-four hours before the debate, Harris and her campaign launched an advertisement on FOX News, mocking Trump’s crowd sizes. It was the latest saga in a month-long feud about crowd sizes where the Harris campaign has sought to demean Trump on a key point of personal pride: his popularity.
The next morning, just twelve hours before the debate, POLITICO broke a story that Scaramucci and former Trump advisor Olivia Troye would hit the spin room floor hours before the debate, hogging key media coverage time before the debate, calling out their former employer and arguing he is unfit to lead.
Scaramucci and Troye then walked through a series of swing state local radio shows, hitting each station at timed intervals for key listening hours before the debate kicked off. The messaging before the debate was clear: Donald Trump is unfit to lead – hear it from former associates on radio and then watch the man himself on TV.
As the debate commenced, the media took to their seats and silence broke out in the room as reporters from across the world assessed the two nominees sparring on stage.
Although Harris had left parts to be desired in her economic policy, she came back strong on tariffs, labelling it as a ‘Trump sales tax’ and quoting Trump-sceptic economists at Wharton, the college Trump proudly attended.
The Harris strategy had shone through by the fourth question on immigration. Harris diverted to crowd sizes, Trump lashed out, and before you knew it he was talking about immigrants eating cats and dogs.
Trump’s usual forte on immigration issues was surprisingly weak. He failed to connect Harris to border issues as effectively as in his recent rally speeches. He managed only once to label the Vice-President as ‘the border tsar’, the term he uses to describe Harris’ involvement with overseeing immigration over the southern border.
Trump’s petulance outshone his narrative. He chose to hit the Vice-President with immature attacks, notably: ‘I’m talking now, does that sound familiar.’ This nod to Harris’ famous interjection in the 2020 Vice-Presidential debate against Mike Pence fell flat in what could have been a strong retort later on.
Vivek Ramaswammy told reporters that ‘it was a three-on-one performance’, labelling David Muir’s moderation as a ‘farce’. But fact checkers after the event pointed out that Trump’s many inaccuracies were called out only a handful of times after the debate.
‘Losers complain about the rules’ said Senator Chris Murphy, speaking to the OPR. ‘Donald Trump lost the debate, he knows he lost the debate, that’s why he just showed up to this hall to try and get a second shot at the cameras’.
‘When you engage in repeated, off the wall, bald faced lies like migrants are eating your pets, how can a moderator stand by and do nothing,’ Murphy continued.
Senator Murphy formed part of a wider roll out of Democrats on the floor, including governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Laphonza Butler, Governor Ray Cooper, and Governor Josh Shapiro, while Trump’s team consisted of Rep. Gaetz, Vivek Ramaswammy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Lara Trump, and Lindsey Graham, among others. From a British perspective, the volume of influential American politicians in one spot was surreal.
In a bizarre end to the event, the Trump spin team was whisked away by aides stating ‘the bus was waiting’ an hour before the event officially ended. This left democrats commanding the spin floor and ultimately getting more interaction with the press.
Altogether, the messaging from the republicans was disjointed. Some were hesitant about a second debate, while others from the Trump campaign team suggested they had already agreed to it. Senator Lindsey Graham, for instance, told the OPR that he would ‘love another debate’.
Rep. Byron Donalds insisted that Trump had to ‘remain calm’ the next time Harris tried to get under his skin. President Trump, however, refused to acknowledge whether there would be another debate, instead telling reporters on the spin floor that he thought it was the best debate he had ever done.
Sen. Laphonza Butler told the OPR that she looks forward to another debate, saying she thought ‘there should be one some time in October.’
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the question on a lot of reporters’ lips related to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris in the aftermath of the debate. The pop-star cited Trump’s AI generated endorsement as a leading reason why she decided to come out and endorse the Vice-President in this campaign. She spoke of LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights being high on her personal agenda.
It seemed that the Trump ticket had been expecting this endorsement to come through and came prepared with rehearsed soundbites. When asked on the topic, Rep. Gaetz stated, ‘I think most Americans want liberals to make their music and conservatives to make their laws and their policies.’
According to the Trump campaign, the debate is unlikely to change the fundamentals of the election, with Harris still trailing on important issues such as the economy and immigration.
‘I think the swing voters that both the campaigns are trying to go for in the swing states are the type of people that hate politics and probably don’t watch these things’, said Freddie Hayward of the New Statesman. ‘So I don’t think it will have that much of an impact’, he added.
Whether the debate will affect the polls remains to be seen, but one takeaway was abundantly clear: the Harris spin operation was effective and succinct, while the Trump campaign was disorganised and reckless.
If there is a second debate, perhaps consistent messaging should become a top priority for the Trump-Vance ticket.