Harris Managed What Biden Didn’t: Trolling Trump

Julia Press and David Gura
·14-min read

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In a wide-ranging debate on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly put former President Donald Trump on the defensive. Harris leaned into her past as a prosecutor, needling Trump on issues ranging from immigration to the economy and abortion. He attempted to criticize her record and define her as a radical unfit for the presidency.

Bloomberg senior editor Wendy Benjaminson and host David Gura unpack the viral moments from the night, analyze the candidates’ performance, and discuss what comes next.

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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

David Gura: This is The Big Take, from Bloomberg News. I’m David Gura, in Philadelphia, where Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off in their first debate.

All eyes were on how they’d interact, what policies they’d tackle, and whose messaging would break through.

Harris is a career prosecutor, known for her pointed questions in Senate hearings and viral moments from her past debates, including the 2020 vice presidential debate with Mike Pence…

Kamala Harris: Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.

Gura: People largely expected her to needle Trump in a similar fashion, and she did…

Harris: These dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they're so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors.

Gura: Trump, ever the TV showman, was coming off of his June debate with President Joe Biden, whose poor performance led to his withdrawal from the race. Tonight, as Harris attacked Trump’s track record on the economy, abortion, and immigration, he went on the defensive.

Donald Trump: I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country. I'll do it again and even better.

Gura: And he tried to turn Harris’ tactics against her.

Trump: I’m talking now, if you don’t mind, please. Does that sound familiar?

Gura: This was the initial market reaction to the debate: Bitcoin saw a 1.5% percentage point drop. Meanwhile… at least one notable viewer was impressed with Harris’s performance: Taylor Swift endorsed Harris moments after the debate.

Today on the show, Bloomberg senior editor Wendy Benjaminson and I unpack Harris versus Trump, and talk about what comes next.

This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I’m David Gura.

So we just wrapped up this pretty historic evening amid an historic election, the first debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, also the first time that they've met face to face. Before we get into the highlights of the debate, just set the stage for us here. What were the goals for each of these candidates going into the debate?

Wendy Benjaminson: So Kamala Harris had two goals. She needed to introduce herself to the American people a little bit more, and she needed to needle Trump into getting angry. And she accomplished both.

For Donald Trump, he needed to be the sober, policy-focused former president who would reassure independent voters, women and undecided voters that he could lead the US again. And by many measures, he did not meet those goals.

Gura: I want to ask you just about the atmospherics and kind of your takeaways in terms of how this debate felt compared to the last one. We talked after the, the first debate in Atlanta between President Biden and former President Trump.

Benjaminson: Yeah, it's probably a 180 from where they were at that fateful June debate. I mean, Democrats probably feel now like they had a really good night and Republicans are worried, as opposed to last time. The Republicans in Trump's camp are spinning it, that he had a great debate, that he owned her, that all these things. But, but he was really doubling down on some of the most outlandish stuff that his aides want him to avoid.

Gura: What's the big headline in terms of performance for, for each of these two candidates as you see it?

Benjaminson: Yeah, I was really struck by just how she pulled out all of her prosecutorial experience, all of her experience getting people to react angrily, how she effectively did that, and how ready he was to take the bait.

Every time she gave him an opportunity to go off the rails, he took it, and he took it with relish. There was that one moment where she said something about the rallies, but it was supposed to be about immigration. And he was like, ‘forget immigration. Let's talk about my rallies.’

Trump: She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go and the people that do go, she's bussing him in and paying them to be there.

Gura: Kind of looming large over this debate, certainly something that was talked about a lot going into it was what the polls looked like for, for these two candidates. There was this New York Times / Siena College poll, uh, which showed the candidates neck and neck well within the margin of error. More than a quarter of those respondents still felt like they didn't know who Kamala Harris is, what she stands for. Um, and it was kind of incumbent on her to introduce herself or reintroduce herself as the presidential candidate to them. Um, in that regard, what kind of impression did she leave tonight?

Benjaminson: I really do think that, that was her weakest moment. She was supposed to paint her own picture of who she was. And instead she was so focused on, uh, you know, getting under his skin and making him react that she let him define her as why didn't she do this? Why didn't she fix things in policy that as a vice president, she couldn't fix?

He kept defining her in these crazy ways and she didn't take the bait like he did, but that left the definition to him.

Trump: She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist.

Benjaminson: I do think she was tremendously effective however on the abortion question.

Harris: Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn't want that. Her husband didn't want that.

Benjaminson: He started to talk about how it's now up to the states, that's what conservatives have wanted, which is just red meat to traditional conservatives, as well as MAGA conservatives, the idea that it is up to the states, it is up to local governments to set policy.

Trump: Every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that's what happened.

Benjaminson: He said that, but then he flipped into this thing about executing babies after they were born…

Trump: Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth—it's execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born—is okay.

Benjaminson: Which is just, wholly fictional and I think lost the point on that one.

Gura: Coming up: The candidates on policy proposals… in their own words.

We’re back. I’m here with Bloomberg senior editor Wendy Benjaminson.

Wendy, let's dig into some of the issues that came up during this debate. We've talked about abortion. It started with the economy and this question of, are voters better off today than they were four years ago? That was what the moderator posed. Um, it gave them an opportunity to talk about their policy proposals to combat inflation. This is something we've heard the candidates talking about a lot in recent days.

Did we learn anything new tonight on the candidates’ economic policy positions?

Benjaminson: Not really that much. And I will say that I, I believe Vice President Harris kind of whiffed the first question, and yet it was an impossible question for her to answer.

Many Americans feel that the economy is not better off, whether that's true or not. So she couldn't really answer the question directly. Instead, she turned it into her opening argument about what she will do for the country.

Harris: We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children. And I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest…

Benjaminson: But it was an unsatisfying answer nonetheless.

Gura: Former President Trump kept coming back to the issue of immigration. He would mention conspiracy theories. Vice President Harris blamed former President Trump for the failure of a bipartisan immigration bill.

Uh, he suggested it could have been handled by executive order, uh, and that she's embarrassed by her kind of track record is what he called being a ‘border czar.’ That's not what her title was. Can you give us just the gut check from Washington, what was your takeaway from all the finger pointing on the issue of immigration that we saw?

Benjaminson: Well, it was sort of the same theme we've been talking about where he had an opportunity to score points. He had an opportunity to expand his support beyond his base and make some valid points about the state of immigration in the country and how there were a record number of border crossings during the Biden administration.

But again, he devolved into talking about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating people's pets.

Trump: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating, they're eating the pets of the people that live there.

Benjaminson: … and that's where David Muir had to come in and say, you know, ‘I talked to the city manager, nobody's eating anyone's pets.’ So again, he sort of missed that opportunity.

Gura: Let's talk a bit about foreign policy. There was some discussion about tariffs, some time spent on Ukraine and Afghanistan, uh, Israel and Hamas, competition with China. What were the notable kind of policy proposals or positions that you heard tonight when it comes to foreign policy and maybe drilling down a little bit on, on global trade policy?

Benjaminson: Well, I was really interested to hear what Kamala Harris would say about Israel because she wants to stem the losses Biden was seeing among voters of color and young voters who are much more sympathetic to the Palestinians in the Israel Hamas war. And yet, you know, her husband is Jewish, he's outspoken about anti Semitism, and so she did a pretty good job of threading that needle, where she pretty much hewed to the Biden administration position on Israel and its right to defend itself. But she brought up the Palestinian deaths and called for a two state solution, which I thought was a smart way to balance that without going against the boss too much. The boss being Biden.

Harris: I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters.

Benjaminson: Trump really surprised me by saying that his only goal in Ukraine was to end the war. As if he didn't really care whether Putin took Ukraine or not, and that was surprising to me that that he painted it as, ‘I don't want there to be any more human deaths,’ but it was really like, sure, Putin could take Ukraine. Why not?

Trump: I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win, when I'm president-elect and what I'll do is I'll speak to one. I'll speak to the other. I'll get them together. That war would have never happened.

Benjaminson: On global trade, I think Kamala Harris had a really nice turn of phrase when she called tariffs the Trump sales tax. She is trying to explain to people who may not be that familiar with tariff policy that when you charge, even foreign companies, more to import their goods, they will pass that on to the consumers. And I think sales tax was a really effective way to say it.

Harris: My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump's sales tax, which would be a 20 percent tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month.

Benjaminson: I think he scored some points with the success he had in his first term of getting NATO countries to contribute more to their own defense. He keeps phrasing it though as if they paid the United States and what he means is they increased their own defense spending.

Trump: I said either you pay up or we're not going to protect you anymore.

Benjaminson: But it was a success in his first administration and he was wise to point that out.

Gura: I think back on that debate in Atlanta, you know, Donald Trump seemed to distance himself from comments that he'd made previously denying the results of the 2020 election. During this debate in Philadelphia when David Muir brought up the January 6th insurrection and election integrity, even citing Trump saying he lost by a whisker, Trump doubled down on the idea that he actually won in 2020.

Trump: Look, there’s so much proof. All you have to do is look at it. And they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval.

Gura: What did you make of his return to deny the outcome of the 2020 election?

Benjaminson: Right, that, that was a moment where I really think he may have helped with his base. He may have, thinking he was at a rally and sort of forgetting the goal, which is, again to attract undecided, independent, other voters who might not yet be sold on Kamala Harris. And instead he just completely doubled down and went on this long spiel about how he really did win the election, how he got more votes.

He just kept going on and on about that, and then made it even worse for himself by acting as if he had no responsibility, no part in January 6th, and that the only person who died was, and sadly, Ashli Babbitt, one of the protesters, when in fact several law enforcement officers lost their lives after that incident.

Gura: Let me ask you what I realize may be an unfair question, and that is if, if you had to make a judgment call about who won this debate, which may be the, the last debate we have between now and, and election day, who would you say won?

Who do you say, who would you say came out ahead in this debate?

Benjaminson: I think Kamala Harris came out on top of this, even though she may not have succeeded in getting her own story out there to the American people as effectively as she wanted. What she did was what Joe Biden could not do in June, which is show voters that Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. That, you know, he much more wants to talk about the size of his rallies than policy.

And, you know, that was where I think, you know, she really succeeded. And again, he failed to expand his base, at least in this debate.

Gura: Wendy, as we were kind of processing what had unfolded on the debate stage, when Taylor Swift posted a picture of her with a cat and threw her support behind Vice President Harris. What do you make of the endorsement?

Benjaminson: [laughs] I mean, Taylor Swift is incredibly influential, and tonight she said Kamala Harris won. Tonight she said she was the childless cat lady who was going to vote for Kamala Harris, and I think that was just the perfect bow on the end of uh, Kamala Harris' night.

Gura: Wendy, great to talk to you, if there's another debate, no doubt we'll do it again.

Benjaminson: Let's do it again.

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