Trump says he is ‘less inclined’ to go head to head with Harris again but claims he won debate ‘by a lot’ – live

Donald Trump, talking to Fox and Friends, mentioned he didn’t know if he needed to debate Kamala Harris again, claiming he “won the debate” final evening.

Well, I’d be much less inclined to as a result of we had a nice evening. We won the debate.

Trump had beforehand agreed to take part in a debate hosted by Fox News, moderated by Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier. But this morning, he mentioned:

I wouldn’t need to have Martha and Bret. I’d love to have someone else apart from Martha and Bret.

Donald Trump is at present being interviewed on Fox & Friends. We can have extra element on that interview quickly. But he has instructed the present that it was his “best ever” debate, and that he won it by “a lot”.

He attacked the ABC information community and claimed “they kept correcting me”, saying that Kamala Harris instructed “outright lies” and was not corrected. In a acquainted diatribe, he claimed the debate was “totally rigged”.

“So many things I said were debunked, like totally debunked,” he instructed the information programme. “But she could say anything she wanted. My stuff was right, but they would correct you.” He accused ABC, with out proof, of being the “most dishonest news organization” and that the debate was stacked in opposition to him.

Responding to Taylor Swift asserting she would vote for the Harris marketing campaign, he mentioned: “She’s a very liberal person, she always seems to endorse a Democrat and she will probably pay the price for that in the market.”

House Republicans have expressed dismay at former president Donald Trump’s debate efficiency in opposition to Kamala Harris, as snap polling instructed she was broadly seen by the general public to have won final evening’s presidential election TV debate.

“It’s just sad,” one House Republican told website The Hill, including “She knew exactly where to cut to get under his skin”. Trump allowed himself to get distracted from key speaking factors as Harris acquired him to discuss concerning the dimension of the crowds at his rallies, or make false claims about abortion after start.

“[It is] just overall disappointing that he isn’t being more composed like the first debate,” the nameless House Republican instructed the Hill, including “The road just got very narrow. This is not good.”

A CNN flash poll after the debate instructed that two-thirds of the watching public believed that Harris had out-performed Trump, with the information community reporting that “96% of Harris supporters who tuned in said that their chosen candidate had done a better job, while a smaller 69% majority of Trump’s supporters credited him with having a better night.”

Another House Republican supply talking anonymously instructed the Hill web site “She talks to us like toddlers but is doing a good job provoking him. Many are disappointed he couldn’t stay focused or land a punch. Not sure much changes but it wasn’t a good performance,” whereas a third mentioned “It’s not devastating – but it’s not good.”

The conservative Fox News political analyst Brit Hume additionally contended that Harris had won, telling viewers “She baited him, successfully. She came out ahead in this, in my opinion. No doubt.”

The CNN polling margin – 63% for Harris, 37% for Trump – marks a sharp reverse of the numbers Trump achieved when debating Joe Biden earlier within the 12 months, which led to the sitting president pulling out of the race, and comes as megastar Taylor Swift announced she was endorsing Harris, signing her message as from a “childless cat lady”, a dig at Trump’s VP decide JD Vance.

According to a flash poll by CNN, registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate broadly agreed that Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump.

This is primarily based on a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, that additionally discovered that Harris “outpaced both debate watchers’ expectations for her and Joe Biden’s onstage performance against the former president earlier this year”.

The CNN snap ballot discovered:

• Watchers mentioned, by 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a higher efficiency onstage in Philadelphia

• 96% of Harris supporters who watched mentioned that their chosen candidate had accomplished a higher job

• A smaller 69% of Trump’s supporters thought he had accomplished a higher job

• Voters who watched the debate discovered their views of Harris have been improved

• Trump was seen to have a bonus on the economic system, immigration and being commander in chief. Harris was extra trusted on abortion and defending democracy

However, the overwhelming majority who tuned in mentioned the debate had no impact on who they have been going to vote for within the November election.

Following the debate between Trump and Biden in June, watchers mentioned, 67% to 33%, that Trump outperformed the president.

Archie Bland

And lastly, the fifth key trade of the evening was on the Biden legacy, writes Bland:

Donald Trump: Where is our president? We don’t even know if he’s a president.

Kamala Harris: You’re not working in opposition to Joe Biden, you’re working in opposition to me.

This line from Harris, clearly scripted, was nonetheless a helpful shorthand for the way in which she desires the race to be framed: as a probability to transfer on from the political division that has exhausted Americans for the final eight years, with her as a candidate who is not wedded to each side of the Biden file. In her closing assertion, she mentioned: “You’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country: one that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past, and an attempt to take us backward. But we’re not going back.’”

In his personal closing assertion, Trump lastly did what his group would have needed him to do all through – blame Harris relentlessly for every part voters dislike about Biden. “She’s been there for three and a half years,” he mentioned. “They’ve had three and a half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?”

But by then, it felt just like the narrative of the evening was irreversibly set. And when Trump rambled into the declare that “we’re going to end up in a third world war, and it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry,” it merely appeared like regular service had been resumed.

Archie Bland

The third key trade, writes Bland, is on abortion. Namely, the final evening’s factcheck on a wild declare that Democrats will execute infants after start.

Donald Trump: Her vice-presidential decide says abortion within the ninth month is completely fantastic. He additionally says execution after start … and that’s not OK with me.

Moderator Linsey Davis: There is no state on this nation the place it is authorized to kill a child after it’s born.

While it’s not precisely a Woodward and Bernstein second to observe that murdering infants is unlawful in America, it was important that Trump was far more completely factchecked by the debate moderators than he was when he confronted Biden. And it was a part of a part on abortion rights, up there with the economic system as one of many key points driving this election, which did him few favours.

Meanwhile, in the event you had “baby killers” in your bingo card, chances are you’ll nonetheless have been caught unawares by Trump’s different actually wild lie of the evening: his reference to false claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are consuming their neighbours’ pets. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he mentioned. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Harris turned to a visible shorthand she used repeatedly over the course of the debate (above) – cocking her head and Trump with a bemused look on her face and her chin resting on her hand. You will definitely see this memed endlessly within the days forward.

The Spingfield metropolis supervisor mentioned that there have been no such experiences, moderator David Muir famous. “But the people on television say their dog was eaten,” Trump replied. After the debate, Trump and his supporters characterised this type of trade as proof of a “three-on-one” debate, which you can also make your individual thoughts up about. Harris, for her half, responded by saying “talk about extreme” and instantly pivoting to her personal assault traces – the inverse of Trump’s strategy.

The fourth key trade was on healthcare:

Linsey Davis: So simply a sure or no, you continue to do not need a plan?

Donald Trump: I’ve ideas of a plan.

By coincidence, this is precisely what I instructed my editor when she requested how shut I used to be to submitting about an hour in the past. It is additionally the type of wafty reply on a matter of substance that is possible to be clipped up and utilized in Harris assault advertisements repeatedly over the following few weeks.

Trumps “concepts of a plan” refer to how he would change the Affordable Care Act, the favored Obama period regulation that mandated the supply of medical insurance to low-income households. There have been different evasions, too, like his difficult language on abortion, and on whether or not he had any regrets about January 6. On Ukraine, Trump wouldn’t say that he needed Kyiv to win, as a substitute saying “I want the war to stop” and claiming that he would finish it earlier than even taking workplace by making Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy discuss to one another.

Archie Bland

Archie Bland writes that there are 5 key exchanges which might be possible to dominate the marketing campaign within the days forward. The first is on the economic system, as Kamala Harris promised to carry up the center class whereas Donald Trump blamed her for prime inflation.

Moderator David Muir: When it comes to the economic system, do you consider Americans are higher off than they have been 4 years in the past?

Kamala Harris: So, I used to be raised as a middle-class child. And I’m really the one particular person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the center class and dealing folks of America.

Donald Trump: We have inflation like only a few folks have ever seen earlier than. Probably the worst in our nation’s historical past.

The debate kicked off with a part on the economic system, arguably the hardest part of the evening for Harris, who should contend with the truth that many citizens blame the Biden administration for years of excessive inflation. While Harris set out extra particulars of her personal agenda, from a $6,000 baby tax credit score to a tax deduction for small companies, her level that she and Biden have been dealing with the Trump legacy of “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression” didn’t actually make an affirmative case for the file of the final 4 years.

Trump did land his factors about inflation and the doubtful declare that he created “one of the greatest economies in the history of our country” in his first time period. But he additionally acquired distracted: by Harris calling his plan to elevate tariffs a “Trump sales tax”, and by his personal digression into a declare that “millions of people [are] pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums”. That was a trace of what was to come.

Second, writes Bland, is Harris tempting Trump into going off matter:

Kamala Harris: You will see through the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will speak about “windmills cause cancer”. And what additionally, you will discover is that folks begin leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and tedium. And I’ll inform you the one factor you’ll not hear him speak about is you.

Donald Trump: People don’t go away my rallies. We have the most important rallies, probably the most unimaginable rallies within the historical past of politics. That’s as a result of folks need to take their nation again.

Can it actually be this straightforward to wind him up? Again and again, Harris selected traces that keyed into Trump’s private preoccupations – and managed to goad him into responding to them at size as a substitute of specializing in the sorts of points that matter to voters. This trade about crowd sizes, throughout a part of the debate that was supposed to be about immigration, meant that he had much less time to discuss a topic that is one of many areas the place voters have probably the most doubts about Harris.

Similarly, throughout a part about Harris’ altering place on fracking, he allowed himself to be sidetracked by her declare that he was given $400m by his father. Then there was the gross sales tax factor; the controversial conservative roadmap for a second Trump time period, Project 2025; and the way in which he let a dialogue concerning the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal flip into one about his invitation to Taliban leaders to come to Camp David for talks.

None of those topics would have been on his marketing campaign managers’ listing of the speaking factors they’d have needed him to hit – and none of them imply very a lot to swing voters.

Archie Bland

After a interval of undoubted momentum for Kamala Harris, the vice-president got here into this debate having stalled considerably. Recent polls counsel that the race is successfully tied, each nationally and in many of the battleground states that can possible resolve the end result. Because the way in which voters are distributed offers Republicans a bonus within the electoral school, and since you would normally anticipate to see Harris’ post-convention bump fade considerably, polling consultants like Nate Silver have not too long ago seen Donald Trump as the favourite to prevail.

Many presidential candidates have “won” debates and finally misplaced the race – but there is little doubt that Harris had a adequate evening to change these odds in her favour. Trump’s group needed him to hold the Biden administration’s unpopular insurance policies round her neck, but as a substitute he repeatedly lapsed into rambling and excessive Maga speaking factors that appear possible to have left many citizens nonplussed.

The downside is not a lot that he revealed himself as an erratic character, which any swing voter absolutely already is aware of: the issue is that he gifted Harris, who appeared supremely well-prepared, the prospect to current him because the exhausting candidate of the all-too-familiar previous – and herself because the optimist with a imaginative and prescient for the long run.

Archie Bland

In the Guardian’s First Edition publication, Archie Bland writes that even Fox News said Kamala Harris won final evening’s presidential debate. Bland writes:

Democrats’ moods can solely have been improved by the information, a couple of minutes after it ended, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris, and signed her publish “childless cat lady”. And CNN’s snap ballot instructed that voters thought Harris won by a margin of 63% to 37% – almost as large a margin as Trump achieved over Biden final time round. Key to Harris’ success was baiting her opponent into rants on marginal subjects, as a substitute of speaking concerning the points that voters are considering.

But whereas tens of millions watched, Harris and Trump will attain tens of millions extra by the clips that can now be distributed by information and social media. For additional studying on the debate, take a take a look at Gabrielle Canon’s key takeaways and this factcheck on both candidates.

US presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went head to head on Tuesday evening of their first – and probably solely – debate earlier than voters head to the polls on 5 November.

Democratic candidate Harris put her Republican rival Trump on the defensive with a stream of assaults on his health for workplace, his help of abortion restrictions and his myriad authorized woes.

A former prosecutor, Harris, 59, managed the debate from the beginning, getting below her rival’s pores and skin repeatedly and prompting a visibly offended Trump, 78, to ship a sequence of falsehood-filled retorts.

At one level, she goaded the previous president by saying that folks usually go away his marketing campaign rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”

Trump, who has been annoyed by the dimensions of Harris’ personal crowds, mentioned, “My rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

He then pivoted to a false declare about immigrants consuming pets in Springfield, Ohio, that has circulated on social media and was amplified by Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance.

The debate ended with Harris vowing to be “a president for all Americans” whereas Trump attacked her as “the worst vice-president in the history of our country”. It was a becoming finish for 2 candidates who provided starkly totally different visions for the nation in what could be their solely presidential debate.

No different presidential debate has but been formally scheduled, so the face-off on Tuesday might signify the final time that Harris and Trump meet earlier than election day. The days forward will decide whether or not the debate made a lasting impression on the undecided voters who will resolve what seems to be a neck-and-neck race.

More on that in a second, but first listed below are another key updates: