Philadelphia – The clearest sign that Kamala Harris’s campaign thought it had won the ABC presidential debate was the fact that her jubilant supporters in the post-debate publicity room were bragging that they had “finally managed to punch Donald Trump” — and were discussing the possibility of a rematch.
The clearest sign that Trump knew he had lost was the fact that Trump himself appeared in the campaign room to defend his debate performance Tuesday night.
Shortly before 11:30 p.m., the former president headed to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where a fleet of aides, including Robert Kennedy Jr., Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, former adviser Stephen Miller, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — as well as his running mate J.D. Vance — were struggling hard to prove that Trump had done anything other than ignite onstage.
“We thought this was our best debate ever — my best debate ever, I thought it was very interesting,” Trump said, who was immediately greeted by a swarm of reporters and cameras. “The polls are very good, but apart from the polls, I felt very good, I had a great time doing this. I hate to talk negatively about our country, but that’s what happened, they destroyed our country.”
The former president’s visit to the spinning room came as a big surprise to the Trump team. Some aides were tipped off to his appearance just before he walked in, accompanied by an entourage that included top advisers Stephen Cheung, Boris Epstein and Corey Lewandowski, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“It shows courage and confidence,” said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign official who was present during the mad rush to shove cameras in Trump’s face. “Kamala Harris would never do that.” A Harris aide, who was drawn into the large crowd when Trump entered the propaganda room, said the former president’s appearance was a mistake and that he looked “desperate.”
One reporter shouted at him, “If you're so confident you're going to win tonight, why are you here?”
Trump replied, “Well, I think I did, but some people asked me, 'Are you coming here tonight?'”
He was right to be concerned, as his team struggled to portray the performance as anything less than a catastrophic disaster for Trump. When asked to directly address whether Trump had had a bad night, Sen. Tom Cotton said he had seen “any of the comments.” Asked why Trump had not made any clear plans for his next term, Cotton simply said, “You don’t have to worry about what Donald Trump is going to do — you know what he’s going to do.” Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, lamented the lack of focus during the immigration debate.
Even the sardonic Stephen Miller had trouble defending Trump’s debate obsession with discredited conservative racist claims that Haitian immigrants were eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. (“They’re eating the pets of the people who live there,” Trump said Tuesday. “That’s what’s happening in our county.”) Miller repeatedly pointed to the 911 call that raised concerns about the geese instead; Gaetz pointed to the same call when asked.
The muted reaction from Republicans was in stark contrast to the eagerness of Democrats to analyze and dissect the event.
“We’ve been waiting for someone to punch Trump on abortion — since 2016! — American women have been waiting for this moment. It was so satisfying,” said Minnie Timaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. “She took him down. She blamed him. She didn’t back down. And she made him, in his own staccato way, double down on what he did: He took credit for turning the tide.” Roe “Tonight, he did not pledge to veto the national ban. I put it on the record.”
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who has led Democratic efforts to legalize protections for in vitro fertilization, laughed when asked about Trump's insistence tonight that he is “a leader in IVF, which is fertilization.”
“He clearly doesn’t understand how IVF works,” Duckworth said. “That was the real point in the debate when he went into a downward spiral that he never recovered from. He was clearly on the defensive, and he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.” Sen. LaVonza Butler (D-Calif.) pointed to a different moment, when Harris brought up Trump rallies, as the point at which he “started to unravel.”
But it was California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) who made one of the most insightful observations early in the night. Asked how important the debate was in the grand scheme of things, he predicted it would make a difference — because of the way Trump himself would react.
“Donald Trump is not going to be able to not overreact to how bad he did tonight for days to come,” Newsom said about 40 minutes before Trump’s surprise appearance in the propaganda room. “I think this is going to be a shift in a way that’s even more profound than the evening itself — we’re going to see him react to this for weeks and weeks and weeks, with a pity party and a grievance mentality. I’m sure he’s going to be complaining about the referees and the rules for weeks.”
