Welcome to a post-debate edition of the From the Politics Desk newsletter, breaking down all the action from tonight’s showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
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Harris rattles ‘angry’ Trump in debate as both candidates seek mantle of change
By Jonathan Allen and Peter Nicholas
PHILADELPHIA — Former President Donald Trump found out Tuesday night that he’s got a much tougher rival on his hands now.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who took the Democratic nomination when President Joe Biden stepped aside following a catastrophic debate performance in June, delivered aggressive attacks and coherent rebuttals. And she baited Trump, who, in one particularly agitated moment, bristled at her attempt to interrupt him — with some allies saying after the debate that he had lost control at a key moment.
“Wait a minute,” he scolded, his annoyance clear in his tone and expression. “I’m talking now. You don’t mind? … Does that sound familiar?”
On Fox News, Laura Ingraham said Harris “moved the points a little bit on betting markets.” Three Republican sources — a political operative, a Trump ally and a donor — described Trump as coming off as “angry” during the debate, as Harris pushed his buttons and got him going off on tangents after questions about some of his key policy areas.
Another Trump fundraiser said Trump’s frustration hurt his ability to execute on his own plans and the points he wanted to make — but hoped that voters would feel similar rage.
“Trump is so angry he can’t clearly get his message across,” the Trump fundraiser said. “She’s cool, calm and able to provoke him. I was stressing hearing it.” But, the fundraiser noted, American voters “are stressed and angry. Maybe they very well identify with Trump’s anger.”
Trump has made his supporters white-knuckle through bad debate nights before, when he narrowly won the 2016 election and when he narrowly lost the 2020 election. But Trump, who was heartened in the past week by some more favorable public polling than he has seen recently, missed an opportunity to lock in his good personal vibes.
After Tuesday’s matchup, he approached reporters to criticize the ABC News moderators and call the night a win. He declined to answer questions about committing to a second debate, which Harris’ campaign challenged him to do in a statement earlier in the night.
“The polls are very good, I felt very good about it,” he said.
Read more from Jon and Peter →
The key takeaways from the Harris-Trump debate
By Sahil Kapur
Harris leans in quickly on lowering costs: Harris used the first question to lean into her plan for an “opportunity economy,” seeking to cut into Trump’s advantage on the issue with swing voters by presenting herself as the candidate of the middle class while calling Trump a corporate tax-cutter.
Harris defends policy shifts: A significant weakness for Harris in the campaign has been the left-wing positions she took as a Democratic presidential primary candidate in 2020 that she has since abandoned or backtracked from — such as banning fracking, mandating buybacks of semiautomatic firearms and decriminalizing border crossings.
“I made that very clear in 2020, I will not ban fracking,” Harris said. “I have not banned fracking as vice president. In fact, I was the tiebreaking vote on the inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking,” an ecologically controversial way to extract oil and natural gas.
Harris added, “My values have not changed.”
Trump dodges on vetoing federal abortion ban: Trump and Harris engaged in a lengthy clash over abortion, during which Trump declined twice to say whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed one.
“Well, I won’t have to,” Trump replied. He said he’s “not signing” such a ban because there’s “no reason to,” arguing that “everybody” is happy with the termination of Roe v. Wade.
Trump returns to Biden attacks: Trump’s performance included a wide sprinkling of attacks on Biden, who dropped out after his disastrous late-June debate showing against Trump. He criticized Biden’s handling of classified documents, knocked him for opposing the Keystone XL pipeline and called the Biden’s administration “the most divisive presidency in the history of our country.”
More debate night coverage
That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
