A former senior adviser to US president Barack Obama says “by all accounts” Kamala Harris won yesterday’s presidential debate against Donald Trump, but it’s unlikely many people would be changing their vote in the wake of what was said.
Obama and Harris are Democrats while Trump is a Republican.
Sharing his analysis of the debate on Breakfast, associate professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University Peter Loge said both Harris and Trump avoided answering questions while mostly sticking to talking points.
“By all accounts, Harris won the debate,” he said.
“I don’t think many votes were won or lost last night, but it does set up a conversation for the rest of the campaign.”
One found nearly a quarter of Trump supporters polled will at least reconsider their vote. (Source: 1News)
Loge said Harris reminded middle-class Americans “I am one of you” by speaking about living a more average life in stark contrast to Trump who Loge said boasts about being wealthy.
Officials in the Ohio city of Springfield have addressed one of Trump’s false statements from the debate, that immigrants were killing dogs and cats in the town.
“Unfortunately, however, we’re talking about nonsense rumours about what the immigrant community is doing in the United States which reinforces views that immigrants are weird or different. We are not talking about inflation, immigration, things that actual voters actually care about.”
Loge said this was part of Trump’s strategy, to “wander around” and incite fear amongst Americans.
“One of his arguments for all three times he has run for President is ‘the American people should be afraid’. We should be afraid of people who don’t look like us, who come from other countries, who don’t speak like us.”
He said Trump speaks to a lot of the anger which has been in America “since the beginning” and how countries talk about their history and their stories is important.
“How ya’ll talk about Māori, for example, is really important. And how we talk about our history is really important.
“The question is, is our history optimistic in moving forward? Which is the history that Harris is telling, saying ‘yeah bad stuff happened but ignore some of it, we can get through a lot of it’.
“Or is it Trump’s story? Which is ‘we used to be perfect back when we were ideal and idealised, but now our story has now gone off the rails and our story is one of fear’.”
More than 57 million Americans watched debate live
1News US correspondent Logan Church said the high viewership showed how many people were interested and engaged in the race. (Source: Breakfast)
1News US correspondent Logan Church told Breakfast that early numbers indicated an “incredible number of people” tuned in to the live television debate.
“More than 57 million people were watching that debate live on television in this country. And that doesn’t include the people watching on streaming services, or on social media or in other countries around the world.”
He said this figure was “far more than how many tuned in to the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump a couple of months back”.
“I think it just shows how many people are interested and engaged in this election which is, at this stage, neck and neck with only about eight weeks to go.”
Both leaders met again today in New York City to mark the 23rd anniversary for the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
“We’re probably not going to see them standing together for some time, purely because another [debate] hasn’t been scheduled,” Church said.
Church spoke to the former White House Communications Director for Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, who said Trump did “terribly” and underestimated Harris.
“He looked at her, he’s a little bit of a sexist and a little bit of a misogynist, said ‘this is going to be no problem for me’ and yeah, he did terribly tonight.”
