After years of somehow never meeting, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were side by side again just hours after their confrontational debate on Tuesday night, when they both attended a remembrance ceremony on Wednesday morning for the victims of 9/11 in New York.
Their second handshake either side of midnight was facilitated by Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and marked a rare moment of cordiality – or at least civility – in an election campaign defined by the fiery nature of Tuesday night’s televised debate in Philadelphia. The tone for that 90-minute encounter was set by Harris, who approached the former president Trump’s podium to offer a handshake he could not refuse: it could be interpreted as an ambush as much as a greeting.
Harris’s polished and aggressive performance was generally deemed to have overshadowed the defensive and, at times, agitated turn by Trump, and her campaign team immediately proposed a second debate between the pair. But the former president, insisting he had come out best in the exchange, was unenthusiastic about the idea.
“The first thing they did is ask for a debate because when a fighter loses, he says, ‘I want a rematch,’” Trump told the hosts of Fox and Friends on Wednesday morning before dismissing the idea that the candidates would meet for another verbal sparring session.
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“I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night, we won the debate, we had a terrible network.”
That was a reference to his belief that the host network, ABC, would effectively side with the Democratic candidate against him and it was a theme which prominent Republicans ran with immediately after the debate was over.
Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s Republican primary opponent turned loyal advocate, said afterwards that Trump had done well in what was a “three to one” debate. The repeated fact-checking by the hosts, David Muir and Linsey Davis, of Trump’s statements was held up as evidence by Republican commentators of the former president’s pre-debate assertion that it was “rigged”.
[ Five key moments from the Harris-Trump debateOpens in new window ]
Whether the debate will have any meaningful impact on the ultimate decision of voters still willing to be swayed is impossible to ascertain. But the 90 minutes Harris spent under the glare of both the national spotlight and the clearly rattled Trump has helped to create a sharper portrait of a vice-president many Americans profess not to know.
Reacting to Taylor Swift’s written endorsement of Harris, which she posted immediately after the debate, Trump said that the global pop phenomenon “always seems to endorse a Democrat. And she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”
Trump will spend Thursday and Friday campaigning in Arizona and Nevada while Harris will visit North Carolina, a state deadlocked in the polls, before returning to Pennsylvania on Friday for another rally.