In The Spin Room: Donald Trump And Allies Insist He Won The ABC News Debate, But Grouse That It “Was Three Against One”
Donald Trump called into Fox & Friends this morning, continuing to insist that he won Tuesday’s presidential debate against Kamala Harris yet also that the ABC News event was unfair and “three against one.”
That was a reference to David Muir and Linsey Davis, who in co-moderating also did fact-checks of some of the former president’s wildest claims.
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The former president was intent on spinning his performance at the debate, even though he was repeatedly baited by Harris, often sounded angry and went back to his unfounded claim that he won the 2020 election.
The effort to control the narrative started just minutes after the event ended, when both campaigns dispatched their armies of surrogates to the spin room, the Olympic-sized pool area of blue carpet in the Philadelphia Convention Center. The spin room spectacle is an endurance test for campaign talking heads to stick the talking points in the face of large scrums of journalists and camera crews, their queries threatening to knock them off their game.
JD Vance, his running mate, was adamant that “what we saw from Donald Trump was he was crisp. He was clear. He had a clear vision.”
A common theme of Trump’s allies was that the debate was “three against one.” David Bossie, the Citizens United president, called ABC News’ debate “disgraceful.” “They put the thumb on the scale for Kamala Harris, but that didn’t matter. I mean, Donald Trump still won the debate, still talked about the issues, still had to fight three against one, not just one.”
Stephen Miller, the Trump White House senior adviser and chief architect of its immigration policy, was there, insisting that the former president’s claim that migrants were eating cats and dogs was grounded in reality. “Resident’s testimony. These are facts,” he insisted to reporters. During the debate, co-moderator David Muir told Trump that the network that they contacted the city manager of Springfield, OH, where the incidents allegedly took place, and he said there was no evidence of it.
Miller went on about the impact of the crisis at the border, before another journalist queried him on the other big news of the night, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris.
“I hadn’t seen that, but I think people are going to vote based on the issues,” he said.
Miller soon got distracted from the commotion in the room: Trump himself had arrived, and was quickly surrounded by a sea of cameras and reporters waving their Otter-enabled iPhones. Some journalists quickly grabbed chairs to see above the heads, as the former president faced the scrum.
It’s uncommon, if not unprecedented, for a presidential nominee to visit a general election spin room, but Trump was there to lay claim to victory.
“It was the best debate, personally, that I have ever had,” Trump said, adding that the post-debate “polls are indicating that we got 90 percent, 60 percent, 72 percent, 71 percent and 89 percent.”
Then a reporter interjected, “Where are you getting these numbers from?”
He didn’t answer. A CNN post-debate poll gave the win to Harris.
Another surrogate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was bashing the debate moderators on X/Twitter during the event, but he was one of the few who couldn’t hide his disappointment afterward, per Politico. Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote that Graham told him the debate was a “disaster” for the former president.
Among Harris surrogates, there was a sense of relief, even if they didn’t want to dwell too much on comparisons to June, when Joe Biden’s poor performance simply couldn’t be spun. “It was a hard night,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who was in Atlanta for the CNN event and returned to the spin room for this debate, acknowledged earlier in the evening.
“Everyone from the president to the staff all knew how tough it was,” he added. “But we’re now in a place where we have a new candidate.”
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) told reporters afterward, “This was definitely a different energy. The vice president had some great moments. She definitely took Donald Trump to task.”
Earlier in the evening, Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) had outlined what Harris needed to do — including making clear that she was not Biden. Post-debate, Newsom called the debate an “exceptional night because we have an exceptional candidate.”
It was a good enough night for the campaign that even when the news came that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris, they tried to steer the conversation back to the debate itself.
Campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said that they were “incredibly grateful” for the endorsement, before veering back to the events of the evening.
“I think what Taylor understands is what the American people understand: The vice president was not doing what Donald Trump was doing on that debate stage, which was try to seek ways to try to divide the American people,” he said.
Surrogates for both campaigns expressed a willingness for another debate, perhaps in October, for what would likely be the finale before the election.
Yet that is far from a sure thing. NBC News wants the next one. About 90 minutes before the Tuesday night debate started, Fox News had proposed a series of dates, even if it is hard to see the Harris campaign agreeing to a matchup on the network.
Trump himself complicated matters further this morning, as he even nixed the idea of Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, on the news side, from moderating a debate hosted by the network and said it should instead feature opinion hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or Jesse Watters.
Trump apparently was upset over the anchors’ post-debate analysis, compared to figures like Watters, who declared him the winner. “We won that debate by a lot,” the former president insisted.
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