(CNN) – The Greatest Showman has just turned his back on tens of millions of viewers.
At least for now.
Donald Trump’s refusal to participate in another presidential debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris marks a significant moment in the 2024 campaign and hints at the vulnerability of a political career built on the foundations of his television fame and mastery of staging. scene.
The former president said he doesn’t need a rematch because he won Tuesday night’s debate, despite overwhelming criticism that he had a botched performance against a vice president who bested a former reality star.
“Because we have had two debates and because they were successful, there will not be a third debate. “It’s too late anyway, voting has already started,” Trump said during a wild campaign speech in Arizona on Thursday, also referring to his first debate against Joe Biden, on CNN in June, which led to the president being pushed out. of the race for his own party.
But there is a possible alternative explanation: that Trump – who normally cannot resist a chance to dominate the small screen – does not fancy a repeat of a confrontation in which he was neither prepared nor focused and squandered his best opportunity to take down his opponent in a suspense election. The former president might be right to mitigate the risk; After all, polls show him in a tie with Harris in a race where the fundamentals of top voter priorities like the economy and immigration may favor him.
After Tuesday’s onstage meeting, Harris had said that she and her opponent owed voters a new debate. Trump’s move paved the way for the Democratic nominee’s team to gloat that he is afraid to debate her and to push a performance in which she mocked and berated a cranky former president with bravado and a smile. Harris’ top campaign advisor, David Plouffe, called Trump on social network X a “chicken.”
The Republican candidate often changes his mind. But his announcement that there will not be another debate seemed firmer than many of his previous statements and turns.
His event in Arizona – which was apparently going to focus on economic policy, judging by a backdrop that read “No tax on tips” and “Make Housing Affordable” (“Make housing affordable”) – revealed that Trump is still fuming about Tuesday night’s debate. He spent a long time at the beginning of his speech reviewing the debate, complaining bitterly about Harris’ responses and saying that ABC News had set her up. His litany of complaints, however, contradicted his claim that he had won. “People said I was angry in the debate, angry, and yes, I am angry because he (Biden) allowed 21 million illegal aliens to invade our communities,” Trump said, using unverified figures on undocumented immigration.
Trump’s pivot against a second debate with Harris came as both candidates stepped up their campaigns with an exchange of attacks in recent days. Trump also became embroiled in another controversy over the type of extremist companions at his campaign events, after attending a 9/11 commemoration with Laura Loomer, a far-right debater known for promoting conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman whose penchant for conspiracy theories has made her popular within the “Make America Great Again” movement, criticized Loomer for an “appalling and extremely racist” social media comment that denigrated Harris’ Indian-American heritage.
The furor over whether there will be another debate and Loomer’s proximity to Trump are examples of the heated controversies that erupt at the end of campaigns, which can often seem irrelevant to the final outcome. But now that the close race has been reduced to the daily routine of a few hundred thousand voters in a few states, these firestorms reveal a lot about the candidates and their campaigns.
Trump’s extreme defensiveness and Harris’ exuberance this Thursday in North Carolina show how each campaign thinks its candidate did in the debate.
As she did after her euphoric convention in Chicago, the Democratic candidate begged her followers not to become complacent. “Understand that we are the losers,” the vice president told a crowd in Charlotte.
It’s still too early for a critical mass of polls to chart the debate’s true impact on the race eight weeks before Election Day. And the outcome of debates is usually not a good indicator of the outcome of elections.
But the candidates’ itineraries Thursday showed that each side understands how close the elections can be. Democrats haven’t won North Carolina since 2008, but the state could help pave an alternative path to the White House if Harris can’t win critical Pennsylvania. Trump’s trip to Arizona highlighted that a state that once seemed to turn red, when Biden was still a candidate, is once again competitive with Harris as a candidate, as she has expanded the electoral map for Democrats.
Both candidates need to win over moderate, suburban and swing voters in battleground states. And they are taking very different approaches to doing so. This Thursday, Harris promised to unite the country and courted traditional Republicans unhappy with Trump. She touted her endorsements from former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney and her daughter, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, adding, “Democrats, Republicans and independents are supporting our campaign.”
If Harris is trying to seduce the suburbs, Trump is trying to scare them. He ruminated a series of dark scenarios around the idea that the United States was being invaded by foreigners, escaped prisoners, and criminals overwhelming small towns with “Harris’s immigration crime.” He repeated false claims spread by conservatives that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, steal and eat pets.
Although he occasionally returned to what appeared to be a prepared text highlighting Americans’ economic difficulties—he announced that he would propose ending overtime taxes, for example—Trump showed exactly the same lack of focus that hurt him in his performance in the debate. And again he seemed more willing to deploy his flamboyant rhetoric and dark humor than to address the issues that could win him the election.
At times, Trump veered into strange distractions. For example, and not for the first time, he seemed obsessed with the size of a large man in the auditorium. He asked, “Wasn’t ‘The Apprentice’ a great show?” and remembered with nostalgia the last night of his election campaign in 2016. He also recounted conversations with former first lady Melania Trump in which he called her “honey” and she criticized his jokes, his hair and his habit of making fun of the way he that Biden was walking down a flight of stairs.
It is increasingly evident that Trump is underperforming in his own campaign. The shocking ads by him and his vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, are making sharper economic arguments than he is.
Still, Trump remains ahead of Harris in most polls when voters are asked who they trust most to manage the economy and immigration. So while his rhetoric may seem atrocious to many progressives, his message clearly resonates with millions of Americans. In the economic argument, buried deep in his speech, about the actions of the Biden-Harris administration, he hinted at the reasons why the former president can still win the elections. His demeanor during most of his speech in Arizona showed why he may not.
The former president’s continued indiscipline on Thursday suggests one reason why his campaign may not want its candidate to get on a debate stage again, after 60 million people watched his first meeting with Harris.
But Bryan Lanza, a senior Trump campaign adviser, insisted this was a tactical decision. “It doesn’t have to do with being scared, it has to do with what our priorities are toward the end of the election,” he said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” Lanza added: “We have better opportunities through individual interviews – through our rallies, through going to these states and having this impact – than going to a debate that is going to stack the deck against President Trump.”
But Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said Harris had intimidated the former president. “Donald Trump was weak, he honestly came across as a little desperate,” Pritzker told Wolf Blitzer. “Kamala Harris appeared strong and presidential. If I had another debate with her and it happened again, that would be it for her campaign: I would be finished.”
Pritzker was giving Harris the best impression. But she might not perform as well in a second debate. And in 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was judged the winner of each of her debates with Trump, but he was the one who was sworn in the following January.
Not everyone who knows Trump believes his decision is final. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a CNN commentator who used to work as Trump’s White House communications director, envisions a scenario in which the former president could change his mind if he finds himself at a disadvantage close to Election Day.
“I would predict that he might change his mind on this,” Griffin said on “The Situation Room.”
“If Kamala Harris rises in the polls because of her performance in the debate, where most people think she won, I could see a world in which in a couple of weeks Donald Trump says: ‘I challenge her to a debate,’” Griffin said.
“I can see him thinking, if things get a little tighter in the final eight-week stretch, I might need a big time to stay competitive against her.”
