Donald Trump emerged Wednesday from a rocky debate against Kamala Harris looking to regain his footing with 54 days until Election Day, the first ballots already going out in Alabama and other states on the cusp of early voting.
Not even three months ago, Trump stepped off the debate stage in Atlanta having watched President Joe Biden deliver a disjointed, whispery performance that eventually led the 81-year-old Democrat to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris, his vice president. By the end of Tuesday night, it was the 78-year-old Trump on the defensive after the 59-year-old Harris controlled much of the debate, repeatedly baiting the Republican former president into agitated answers replete with exaggerations and mistruths.
"We'll see what the polls say going forward, but I don't know how anybody can spin this other than a pretty decisive defeat for Trump," former Rep. Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who has long been critical of Trump, said Wednesday on CNN.
Harris' campaign immediately pitched the idea of a second debate. Fox News has proposed an October matchup but with moderators that Trump has indicated he does not prefer. And he said via his Truth Social account Wednesday that there is no need for a second round,
"In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, "I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!" Well, it's no different with a Debate," Trump wrote, as he claimed victory. "She was beaten badly last night ... so why would I do a Rematch?"
Trump and Harris were together briefly Wednesday in New York, where they joined President Biden and other dignitaries to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. They shook hands for the second time in 12 hours, with the first coming when Harris approached Trump on the debate stage to introduce herself in the first sign of the aggressive approach she would take during the event.
The former president, who flouted convention with a surprise appearance late Tuesday in the post-debate spin room, continued to insist he had won the night, though he also blasted ABC moderators as unfair. It was a tacit acknowledgement that he did not accomplish what he wanted against Harris.
Trump and some of his allies in online posts speculated about punishing ABC by taking away its broadcast license — the network doesn't need a license to operate but individual stations do — or denying access to its reporters in the future.
"We had a great night. We won the debate. We had a terrible, a terrible network," Trump said Wednesday on Fox News. "They should be embarrassed. I mean they kept correcting me and what I said was largely right or I hope it was right."
Yet his framing of the debate results does not square with the broad consensus of political commentators, strategists on both sides of the political aisle and some immediate assessments by voters who watched Tuesday night. But there is also evidence that the debate did not immediately yield broad shifts among people who watched.
About 6 in 10 debate-watchers said that Harris outperformed Trump, while about 4 in 10 said that Trump did a better job, according to a flash poll conducted by CNN. Before the debate, the same voters were evenly split on whether Trump or Harris would win.
The vast majority of debate-watchers — who do not reflect the views of the full voting public — also said that the event wouldn't affect their votes in the election. Perceptions of the two candidates remain largely unchanged.
Harris was jubilant late Tuesday, telling late-night rallygoers in Philadelphia that it was a "great night," even as she repeated that she sees Democrats as "underdogs" against Trump. She won the endorsement of music and cultural icon Taylor Swift.
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire was more charitable to Trump than some, allowing that Harris won by traditional debate standards but fell short in convincing swing voters focused on their economic conditions.
"The majority of those swing voters are still results driven," Sununu said on CNN, adding that Trump still has opportunities to sway voters on the economy, immigration and, especially, foreign policy.
That view was certainly the Republican messaging on Capitol Hill, where the GOP is trying to maintain its fragile House majority and take advantage of a friendly slate of Senate contests to flip control of that chamber.
"Undecided voters' biggest concern about Kamala Harris heading into the debate was the fact that they don't know where she stands on any issues because of her constant flip flops," said Mike Berg, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP's campaign arm. "I don't think she did anything to fix those concerns."
Jack Pandol, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee handling the House races said, Harris "still refuses to tell voters what she will do as president."
Yet even on that score, Trump handed Democrats a cudgel with his answers on health. After twice running for president on promises of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, commonly called "Obamacare," Trump falsely insisted that he saved the 2010 law. At the same time, Trump stood by his long-standing promises to replace the law with something better but when pressed acknowledged that he still had no specific proposal.
"I have concepts of a plan," Trump said in a remark that become quick fodder for online memes and merchandise.
Dent, the Pennsylvania Republican, said that answer tracked with how Trump approached the issue during his four years as president. "He would only say 'we're going to cover everybody, it's going to cost less, and it's going to be beautiful,'' Dent recalled in his CNN appearance. "There was never any policy to back it up. He just didn't care about its impact on people."
Sununu, meanwhile, offered perhaps the most revealing assessment of where Trump stands after the debate. It was not what Sununu said about Trump himself, but about another Republican the governor originally supported in the 2024 primaries: former Ambassador Nikki Haley, who was the last GOP candidate standing against Trump and continued garnering support in 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."