A tired, angry Donald Trump faced off against a prepared and relatively polished Kamala Harris in the first presidential debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, and lost.
The expectations for Harris were low, and she exceeded them, avoiding any obvious word salads or mistakes that her detractors were hoping for based on her patchy past performance on the debate stage.
Trump, who looked glum stared down for most of the evening, often boasted that he prepared little in the lead up to the 90 minute slanging match, and it showed.
He had more material to work with: Harris’s record in office for 3.5 years hasn’t been strong, given she’s widely perceived to have encouraged rampant illegal immigration and economic policies that’s produced record inflation.
Trump failed to link her poor record of the current administration sufficiently.
Trump’s chance of winning the presidential election in November dropped from 51.5pc to 50pc throughout the course of the event according to RealClear average of bookies. And that shift probably well sums up the impact.
To anyone who follows US politics closely, it was a long 90 minutes; nothing new emerged, as both candidates trotted out the same arguments and lines anyone informed has come to expect.
The pair furiously disagreed on everything and smeared each other’s characters and record.
Trump dwelt more than he should have on the 2020 election result, once again refusing to concede it was a fair election.
“Wait a minute, I’m talking now,” Trump said at one point, throwing a line Harris had made famous back at the vice president, in one of the few amusing moments of the exchange.
To that vanishingly small group of genuinely undecided voters, Harris would have appeared more optimistic, energetic and likeable, in contrast to a 78-year-old man who appeared to yell more than necessary.
Republicans were angry about the alleged bias of the two ABC moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, who fact checked Trump a lot and Harris not once, despite the Vice-President “lying” just as much.
But will this matter? Hillary Clinton easily “won” all over debates against Trump by a landslide in 2016, and yet Trump ultimately won the election.
Joe Biden’s loss to Donald Trump on the debate stage in June was so obvious and shocking no Democrat could or would reasonably publicly defend his performance.
That was an extreme exception in the history of US debates, which haven’t made much difference to ultimate outcomes in the past. Tonight was nothing remotely like that. This time, Republicans and Democrats will spin the result as victory for their candidate.
“Vice-President Harris commanded the stage on every single issue that matters to the American people,” trumpeted the Harris-Walz campaign team as the stoush wound up, calling for a second debate in October.
Trump’s campaign team said he performed masterfully.
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