-
Donald Trump boasts that he won the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
-
But the former president’s actions show that he doesn’t really believe that explanation.
-
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump’s words were not the only sign of his defeat.
It was a bad sign for former President Donald Trump when his campaign declared victory while he was still in a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Like his premature statement in the early hours after Election Day 2020, it created an atmosphere of desperation and lack of confidence.
There were ample signs Wednesday morning that Trump, frankly, had lost his debate against Harris. It may have been close.
Despite the reputation he built in GOP primary debates, Trump has struggled in general election showdowns. Polls showed him losing all three of his 2016 debates against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. His first debate, against then-former Vice President Joe Biden in 2020, is widely considered one of the worst debates ever.
It remains to be seen how much difference Tuesday’s debate will make. Studies have shown that debates have little impact on elections, but even in an era of neck-and-neck races, Trump and Harris remain narrowly separated in the small number of swing states that will determine the presidency.
Trump, of course, still won the White House in 2016, despite his struggles against Clinton. But once again, largely through his own actions, he has put his campaign in a difficult position.
These are the signals Trump added to his debate loss.
The prediction markets gave Harris a slight edge.
At the start of the debate, Trump held a narrow lead on PolyMarket, a crypto-based betting marketplace that counts election forecaster Nate Silver among its advisers. By the end of the 90-minute showdown, Harris emerged as the favorite for the first time in two weeks. Her lead didn’t last long, however, as Trump regained a narrow lead by Wednesday afternoon.
Prediction markets are far from perfect. As Vox reported, traders on PredictIt, one of PolyMarket’s competitors, at one point gave Clinton the third-highest odds of winning the Democratic nomination in 2020, even though she wasn’t running.
Prediction markets operate on shaky legal ground in the U.S., meaning their user bases may be less reflective of the real populations that drive their outcomes. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives, has gone back and forth with PredictIt over how it operates. In May, the government regulator moved to explicitly ban de facto political betting altogether.
There are a number of advantages. Traditional, high-quality polls are less sensitive to real-world events that shape elections. Such events can play havoc with pollsters if they occur while their survey is already in the works, potentially resulting in a sample of voters who come to the table with very different experiences.
Trump’s beloved stock market isn’t much better.
There may be an even better gauge than prediction markets. Trump’s willingness to mix business with politics has made his initials a publicly traded asset once again. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, fell Wednesday.
Traders have shown a tendency to sell shares of the ailing company when there is negative news about Trump.
A CNN poll showed Trump losing by a significant margin.
To compensate for the lag in traditional polls, television networks often conduct so-called “snap or flash” polls immediately after debates to capture debate viewership. By design, the poll includes only voters who watched the debate, leaving out many Americans who vote but may have seen only part or none of the showdown. Historically, such polls may also reflect a bias by supporters who believe their candidate won the debate.
That said, CNN’s flash poll had Harris winning the debate by a margin of 63% to 37%. Presumably in response, Trump began posting on Truth Social not long after the debate various screenshots of unscientific polls conducted on X. Trump has long been fond of grasping at straws like this.
The Murdoch Media Empire was also not happy.
Rupert Murdoch’s media companies couldn’t resist broadcasting and publicizing Harris’ victory.
Immediately after the event, Briton Hume, chief political analyst at Fox News, told the network: “Make no mistake. Trump had a bad night.”
The front page of the New York Post ran a headline describing Trump as “shocked.”
And the Wall Street Journal editorial board, long considered the voice of the GOP’s establishment wing, also saw Harris as a winner.
“Ms. Harris, lesser known than the former president, had the most to gain, and we believe she helped herself. She clearly won the debate, but not because she made a powerful case for her vision or the record of the past four years,” the editorial board wrote.
Instead, the board concluded that Harris won by simply egging Trump on.
“Harris set the trap by spending much of the debate talking about the past, or Joe Biden, or immigrants eating pets, but not about how he would improve the lives of Americans over the next four years.”
Trump and his allies blamed ABC
Before the debate ended, Trump campaign officials lashed out at ABC News for moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis’ live debunking of some of Trump’s claims.
“3 to 1, just as expected,” Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, wrote on X during the debate.
Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son, added: “Funny how the hack moderators at @abcnews only “Factcheck” Trump and let Kamala lie nonstop. Fake News is the enemy of the people!”
Their complaints gave the impression of a frustrated coach lashing out at officials rather than facing up to his team’s blame for the loss.
Look what Taylor Swift did because of it.
Taylor Swift, the biggest star on the planet, came out from the sidelines to support Harris minutes after the debate ended. Swift’s support was always expected, but her silence led some fans to speculate that she might not run in the 2024 race.
The fact that she announced her endorsement right after the debate only reinforced the narrative that Democrats were ready to tear the ball down. For what it’s worth, Harris’ campaign claimed to have been surprised by the timing of Swift’s announcement.
Trump declines to seek revenge.
Before Biden dropped out of the race, Trump pestered the president for months about debates. Amid a back-and-forth with Harris over debates, Trump declared that he wanted three showdowns with her. Some of Trump’s allies are still raising the possibility that another debate will happen.
But for now, Trump is running away from his former bravado and, like Apollo Creed, boasting that “there will be no revenge.”
“In the world of boxing or UFC, when a fighter gets knocked out or knocked out, they stand up and scream, “I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!” Well, it’s no different with a debate. She got beaten big time last night,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. “Every poll has us WINNING, in one case 92-8, so why would I do a rematch?”
To be fair, Creed, Rocky Balboa’s fictional enemy, won their first fight. But Creed loses the rematch and his title by a decisive margin.
It was fitting that the Trump-Harris debate took place in Philadelphia.
Read the original article on Business Insider
