Donald Trump’s campaign is reeling after his poor performance in the debate against Kamala Harris exasperated Republican allies who thought he had been unprepared, outplayed by the vice-president, and delivered erratic messages to voters.
The televised face-off in Philadelphia on Tuesday — watched by nearly 60mn Americans, according to preliminary Nielsen estimates — marked a new campaign inflection point that could hurt Trump, who is now battling to regain his footing with less than two months left before the November 5 US presidential election.
“I think it was a missed opportunity to knock her out . . . She was losing momentum. I think it probably stabilised her,” a top Trump donor told the Financial Times.
Although Republican strategists and lawmakers did not think Trump’s uneven performance had crippled his campaign, many conceded the former president had struggled and that his re-election bid now looked more tenuous.
“The biggest frustration about his performance is he took the bait on nonsense stuff, which prevented him from closing the deal. So definitely a missed opportunity,” said one senior Republican strategist close to Trump.
“Maybe he was overconfident. Maybe he didn’t prepare. Maybe he was just tired,” said John Catsimatidis, the billionaire New York City grocery magnate and Trump donor.
Catsimatidis also conceded that the vice-president had performed “much better than people expected” in the debate. “She kept her mouth shut for the last three months. Everybody thought that she was not capable of debating.”
Harris put Trump on the defensive for much of the 90-minute debate on Tuesday night, starting with an unexpected handshake between the two leaders — who had never met — before she tore into him over issues from abortion to his reputation with foreign leaders.
The former president appeared rattled at several points, including when Harris questioned the size of the crowds at his campaign rallies. Trump railed about migrants in response, rehashing an internet conspiracy theory that some were stealing people’s pets to eat them.
The debate had shown “Trump at his absolute worst”, said Frank Luntz, the veteran pollster who has worked for many Republicans over the years.
“He was given so many opportunities . . . every time inflation could have been raised, he chose to divert to a different issue,” Luntz said “Did [Harris] rattle him? Absolutely. Should he have been rattled? No way. But it is who he is.”
Luntz said Trump had “no choice” but to seek another televised showdown offered by Harris’s campaign, although the Republican candidate has not said if he will take part. “He has to recover. He has to give people a reason not to see this as his defining moment.”
On Wednesday morning, Trump and Harris appeared together at a ceremony to commemorate the September 11 2001 attacks in New York City, and shook hands again.
But minutes earlier, Trump had called into a morning television show on Fox News, insisting he “did great” and that the debate had been “rigged” against him, accusing the debate’s moderators at ABC News of being “dishonest” and saying their broadcasting licence should be revoked.
A CNN poll conducted by SSRS immediately after the debate found 63 per cent of 605 people who watched it thought Harris had won, compared with 37 per cent for Trump. Before the debate, a panel of voters was evenly split, 50-50, on which candidate would perform better.
A YouGov poll from Wednesday of more than 3,300 people found 43 per cent thought Harris had laid out a clearer plan, with 32 per cent saying Trump had, and 24 per cent were unsure.
Betting markets also moved sharply in Harris’s favour during the debate. While Harris and Trump entered Tuesday night with similar odds, traders predicting the winner of the presidential election gave the vice-president a seven-point advantage over the former leader by the end of the night.
Even some of Trump’s top allies in Congress conceded that Harris had scored some points against the former president. “Kamala Harris? She knows how to needle people,” said Byron Donalds, the Florida Republican congressman, after the debate.
“[She] answered the question of can she stand on the stage and look the part, OK. But where was the policy, where was the leadership? She dodged and deflected on her own record,” he added.
According to the FT’s national poll tracker, Harris had a slim 2.1 percentage point lead over Trump on Tuesday before the debate, with tight races in all of the key battleground states.
The senior Republican strategist said that, despite their concerns, Trump’s poor showing was “unlikely to drastically move the race”. “She was better than passable, but hardly a knockout,” the strategist said of Harris.
It remains unclear whether Trump will agree to a second presidential debate. Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign manager, signalled late on Tuesday that the vice-president would be willing to participate in another face-off next month.
Yet Trump on Wednesday expressed reservations to Fox News, which has proposed three possible debate dates in October.
“I don’t know that I want to do another debate,” Trump said. “I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night.”