Political pundits are warning that former President Donald Trump‘s campaign needs to quickly improve following Trump’s performance in his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump and Harris faced off in a debate for the first and possibly last time, in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. In the aftermath of the onstage showdown, a majority of polls and pundits found that the vice president outperformed the former president.
Poor reviews for Trump did not come exclusively from the left, with several conservative pundits agreeing that Harris came out on top—such as Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume, who said during a broadcast that “Trump had a bad night.”
Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren suggested on Wednesday in a post to X, formerly Twitter, that Trump requires “tough love” from advisers and a quick shift in momentum if he wants to defeat Harris.
“Trump needs some tough love from his team,” Lahren wrote. “He MUST buckle down and get to business.”
Chip Somodevilla
Robert Collins, political analyst and Dillard University professor, told Newsweek via text message on Wednesday that the Trump campaign “needs to get back on message” to improve their standing, while pointing out that “their strongest messages are about inflation and immigration.”
“Trump allowed himself to get knocked off message by Harris during the debate. She set the agenda and she baited him into traps which he took,” Collins said. “That’s why the polling shows that most people think Harris won the debate.”
Collins went on to say that the Harris campaign “needs to stay focused on the messages that are most advantageous to them,” pointing to abortion rights and middle-class tax cuts in particular.
“They need to set the agenda,” he said. “And not get baited into debates over immigration or inflation, which are issues where Trump has the advantage.”
A CNN/SSRS flash poll released shortly after the debate found that 63 percent of debate-watchers thought Harris won, while 37 believed that Trump was the winner.
Harris was also the winner in a YouGov poll of registered voters who “watched at least some of the debate,” with 54 percent of respondents backing the vice president and 31 percent backing Trump. Another 14 percent were undecided.
Tim Miller, former Republican campaign staffer for Jeb Bush who is now supporting Harris, said in an X post that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told him that whoever helped Trump prepare for the debate should be fired.
“Just spoke with Lindsey Graham in the spin room he said the debate team
should be fired and Trump was unprepared,” Miller wrote. “‘Disaster'”
Trump reportedly did little preparation for the debate, forgoing the traditional “mock debates” that Harris used to prepare herself in favor of a limited number of “policy sessions” with staff, according to The Washington Post.
“Trump scoffed beforehand about the concept of debate prep. So he didn’t. @KamalaHarris did. And it showed,” David Axelrod, chief strategist for former President Barack Obama‘s two successful presidential campaigns, wrote on X.
“[Harris] was as well-prepared as any candidate I have ever watched,” he added. “Kudos to her and her stellar debate team.”
While polls and pundits suggested that Tuesday was not a good night for the former president, Trump quickly declared victory following the debate, while falsely claiming that “every single poll” showed that he had defeated Harris.
The former president shared the results of several easily manipulated surveys from social media and conservative media outlets to his Truth Social account as supposed proof of his victory, while leaving out results from scientific polls.
With Election Day only 55 days away, a potential second debate between Trump and Harris remains up in the air. The Harris campaign immediately called for another debate following the first one. Trump on Wednesday would not commit to a second debate.