Special | 11m 17s | Video has closed captioning.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off Sept. 10 for their first and possibly only debate before Election Day. Join PBS News' Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett as they a host post-debate discussion with Amy Walter, of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, Republican strategist Kevin Madden and Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross.
Aired: 09/11/24
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We have been watching alongside our full team of analysts and of course, each of our reporters who covers the campaigns.
Laura Barron-Lopez has been reporting on the Harris campaign and Lisa Desjardins on the Trump campaign.
I want to begin with you two before we turn to everyone else here.
Let's just get your quick takeaways.
The candidates' work here is oh, now.
The surrogates and the campaigns take over.
What are you hearing from them in terms of how they saw the debate and their takeaways?
Laura?
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, Harris' campaign is feeling really good about this debate.
They feel as though they did a number of things that she wanted to do going in, which was goad him.
And she did that on quite a few fronts.
She did that on abortion.
She did that on election denialism.
And they said also that in the first hour of the debate, 71 percent of the grassroots donations that they were getting were from women.
So they feel as though some of her strongest moments were when she was going after him on abortion and when she was talking about those personal stories of women who were having miscarriages and unable to get the care that they needed.
And they also feel -- said that based on the undecided voters that they were tracking live during the debate, that the campaign was tracking, that another strong moment for her was her response when he -- when Donald Trump was questioned about her Black identity and her saying that racism is a pattern for him and that America doesn't want this anymore, as well as her response to him on election denialism and January 6.
They said that that ranked really well with the undecided voters.
AMNA NAWAZ: Lisa, we knew that the Harris strategy was going to be to try to goad President Trump to going off-script.
LISA DESJARDINS: Yes.
AMNA NAWAZ: What's the Trump campaign saying about some of those moments?
LISA DESJARDINS: The Trump campaign knew that too.
Former President Trump knew that.
I will tell you, I have not heard from my Trump campaign sources, some of whom usually do text me back in situations like this.
So that's a sign.
The Trump campaign did put out an official statement declaring that Trump was the winner of this debate.
There's been a lot of response when I posted that on social media, people saying they don't see it that way.
But let's talk about other Republicans, Republicans in Congress.
I just got this from a Republican Senate source.
They want to take back the Senate.
They are very much in reach of doing that, wrote me: "I was in pain watching it.
Imagine what Nikki could have done," talking about Nikki Haley.
"Trump just took the bait and took the bait and missed the argument," when Vice President Harris talked about, for example, Wharton economists from his alma mater criticizing his economic plan.
And then the size of his crowds really got under his skin and you could see his tone and demeanor changing.
Now, what Republicans on Capitol Hill thinks really probably doesn't matter.
What matters is undecided voters.
And we have been following voters throughout this campaign.
We talked about it during the last debate.
One of them, Zach Horn (ph) from Pennsylvania, Republican undecided voter, texted me this.
He said: "I have been moving toward Harris.
Tonight's debate further confirmed that move toward Harris."
He said: "I am looking for someone to build a foundation of civility.
Harris offers that.
Trump does not."
He says: "Tonight, I could see her as a commander in chief."
That's a big deal.
GEOFF BENNETT: Well, let's bring in our panel of experts.
We have got Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter.
Democratic strategist, Ameshia Cross.
And Republican strategist Kevin Madden.
Ameshia, there was a question heading into this debate about how much Kamala Harris, the degree to which she would engage directly with Donald Trump and how much would she really speak beyond the debate stage directly to the American people?
She did both.
AMESHIA CROSS, Democratic Strategist: Yes, absolutely.
Kamala Harris had a high ceiling to clear and a very delicate balance, because she is a part of the current administration.
But she was also able to not only set herself apart, but to lean in on the policies that matter the most to the American people.
She talked about the economy.
She talked about the middle class.
She talked about housing.
She talked about women's reproductive rights.
But she also attacked Trump hardcore.
She went after him on statements about January 6, what he didn't do and what he should have done.
She went after him on a lot of the rhetoric that he's utilized over time, in large part the divisiveness, the darkness, the lack of a path forward, the way that he's trying to take America back.
And she hit him hard on his own criminality.
For him to start radicalizing and talking about the tropes that are -- he's issued in about migrants, but then to slam him down about the things that he's currently facing, I thought that was a really, really hard hit.
GEOFF BENNETT: Kevin, your assessment of how the former president did tonight?
(LAUGHTER) KEVIN MADDEN, Republican Strategist: Look, usually at these debates, I have like a very complex analysis, right, multilayered analysis.
I think mine is very simple here.
This was a clear case of a very clear strategy beating no strategy.
The Harris strategy here was so apparent from the beginning, which is connect with swing voters on every single issue that matters to them as best she can, housing, cost of childcare, I think the abortion issue, which, of course, we know is important to a lot of suburban women that are going to decide this election.
Also, bait Trump into talking about himself and relitigating his past grievances.
Trump took that bait every single time.
And he didn't connect on a lot of issues.
He did probably his best on immigration.
But I will tell you, I think, for a lot of voters out there, it was less relevant to their experience and it was more about Trump being agitated and making it more about Joe Biden and what Joe Biden did wrong.
So it just felt like there were a lot of lost opportunities here for Trump to really fill in the blanks with a lot of voters about why Kamala Harris would be sort of out of the mainstream.
And, instead, I think what you're going to see now is a strategy -- and we're already seeing it.
We're seeing a -- a strategy of blaming the moderators for sort of putting a thumb on the scale when it came to fact-checks.
And I just don't think that is going to connect.
We got to remember, we're in essentially what is a European version of a snap election.
And the compressed time schedule means that any advantage right now is really going to make a difference.
And I think, right now, you have to say advantage Harris with swing voters.
AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Yes.
GEOFF BENNETT: Which is interesting, because Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, you could argue, Amy, both came into tonight's debate with the same goal, which is to try to find any edge they could to change the dynamics of this razor-thin race.
I saw you shaking your head when Kevin was talking about Donald Trump's unforced errors and the missed opportunities.
AMY WALTER: Right.
So, this was also about trying to fill in the blanks for somebody who's not as well-known.
And that's Kamala Harris.
And I think both sides have been saying this for a while now.
It's both a risk and an opportunity to not be as well-defined as the vice president is.
The opportunity for Trump in this was to fill in those blanks, make her -- attach her to the Biden presidency and to some of her past statements.
He did that, but in a very scattershot way.
I wrote down the first time he said "Harris is Biden" was 10:24 p.m.
So it took over... LISA DESJARDINS: I wrote that down too.
AMY WALTER: Yes.
LISA DESJARDINS: Exactly.
AMY WALTER: It was an hour into it.
LISA DESJARDINS: Yes.
AMY WALTER: Harris, from the very beginning, was on offense and making him the incumbent.
When we talk about voters wanting to see a change, she talked about turning the page.
What is this election going to be about?
I'm the one that's turning the page.
He's the one back on grievance.
So she did what she wanted to do.
To Kevin's point, she converted on the strategy that she had put forward.
He was supposed to go in there and make this connection between Biden and Harris, make her look out of the mainstream.
He was not as strong on that, in part because he was spending so much time either defending himself or, as folks have pointed out, relitigating past grievances.
AMNA NAWAZ: Lisa, to that point -- and Amy's mentioning the issues here.
Two of the strongest issues for former President Trump are the economy and immigration.
And after the first set of questions on the economy, it was really the immigration issue he returned to again and again and again.
He really didn't come back to some of those economic points that are relatively strong for Republicans.
LISA DESJARDINS: It is interesting that Vice President Harris invited people to go to a Donald Trump rally, because I will say that watching him at many rallies, his argument on immigration in his rallies is more cohesive.
It's easier to get your hands around than what he laid out tonight in this debate.
It was fractured.
He was sort of pulling at headlines that he had heard and didn't seem to understand, versus arguing a big picture about a border in crisis.
He really wasn't able to make his own best argument, I think, on immigration tonight.
He said it a couple of times, but when you listen to his remarks outside of this, usually, you hear different, kind of, like I said, more well-strung-together arguments.
Now, I will also say one question we have all had is also about progressives and enthusiasm on that side.
And I am in touch with my goddaughter, who's a college student.
I'm getting texts that she's sending out saying that some skeptical progressive students, at least one that she knows, was actually endeared watching Kamala Harris tonight.
And so that's also positive news for that campaign.
(CROSSTALK) AMNA NAWAZ: I want to get Laura's take too on the Harris campaign response to some of the points they wanted to work in tonight.
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes, I think that, to Kevin's point, Kamala Harris was able to really paint Donald Trump in a way that Joe Biden wasn't previously, even though he tried to, which is this is the extreme candidate.
And she made that argument over and over again, whether it was on immigration, whether it was on January 6 and rule of law, talking a lot about how he's cozying up repeatedly to dictators.
He used Viktor Orban, who's widely seen as an antidemocratic authoritarian leader, as someone who gives him a good character evaluation.
And just on the point of immigration, Donald Trump at his rallies, as well as tonight, has repeatedly said that he would carry out mass deportations.
And when David Muir asked him about that, he essentially said, yes, he would have people go door to door to carry out these mass deportations of undocumented migrants.
And he also repeated that lie about Haitian migrants eating pets.
AMNA NAWAZ: Amy, real quick in 10 seconds, do they debate again?
(LAUGHTER) AMY WALTER: I very much doubt it.
If you're the Trump campaign, I would not say yes.
AMNA NAWAZ: OK. On that note, that concludes our coverage of this presidential debate.
If you're watching on YouTube, don't go anywhere.
Our coverage will continue, with Lisa and Laura wrapping up more highlights from that debate.
GEOFF BENNETT: And join us tomorrow night, as we will wrap up the political headlines and all the day's news on the "PBS News Hour."
I'm Geoff Bennett.
AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.
For all of us here at PBS News, thank you for joining us.
