ShareNEW YORK: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump shook hands Wednesday at New York’s 9/11 memorial to mark the anniversary of the attacks, hours after they clashed in a combustible TV debate. The Democratic vice president delivered a strong performance against her Republican rival, most analysts said, as the two head toward the November election neck-and-neck in the polls.
Both candidates declared victory after coming face to face for the first time on the biggest night so far of the campaign — although any major shift in support may be unlikely. Pop megastar Taylor Swift broke her silence on US politics minutes after the debate, backing Harris as president and praising her as a “steady-handed, gifted leader”.
The ABC News-hosted debate in Philadelphia was punctuated by tense exchanges, with Harris focused on policy while Trump’s answers were littered with wild falsehoods and were often about his past grievances. On Wednesday, Trump came out swinging in an early morning
interview with Fox News, claiming — without evidence — that the debate was “rigged” against him. “It was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything and not correcting with her,” he complained.
After replacing Biden as the candidate in July, Harris rode a wave of enthusiasm through the Democratic convention that boosted her popularity and gave her record fundraising numbers. And with Biden gone, 78-year-old Trump finds himself as the candidate facing questions about his advanced age, with renewed focus on his eccentric and often rambling speeches.
But Harris, 59, had seen her polling momentum begin to stall ahead of the debate. The Democrat has been reaching to the center, showcasing a parade of anti-Trump Republicans — most recently former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, who was thrown out of the House leadership over her opposition to the tycoon.
Trump has largely appealed to his own base, with apocalyptic warnings about migrant criminals and painting a dark picture of a country in “decline” that only he can save. In a threatening social media post at the weekend, Trump vowed to prosecute Democratic donors, lawyers and elections officials who engage in behavior he deems “unscrupulous” in November. He used the debate on Tuesday to double down on his bogus voter fraud claims from 2020.
In New York on Wednesday, Biden looked on as Harris and Trump greeted each other again, with all three wearing blue commemorative ribbons. They watched as the names of the almost 3,000 victims of the attacks were read out. “We stand in solidarity with their families and loved ones. We also honor the extraordinary heroism on display that fateful day by ordinary Americans helping their fellow Americans,” Harris said in a statement. Harris heads Thursday to North Carolina — one of a handful of states expected to decide the election, where she has erased a six-point Trump lead to draw level. Trump is due onstage in Tucson, Arizona on Thursday focusing on “our struggling economy and the rising cost of housing”.
Harris’ running mate Tim Walz will travel to Michigan and Wisconsin from Thursday to Saturday, as his Republican opposite number J D Vance deals with the fallout from another round of controversial remarks. The Republican vice presidential nominee amplified a false claim Monday that Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating pets in Ohio. In the debate, Trump repeated the bizarre claim, which has been debunked by local authorities.
Harris started on the front foot by surprising Trump by approaching him to shake his hand before they took to their lecterns — and then kept the upper hand. Trump repeatedly raised his voice as he hit back at the vice president on immigration and the economy, branding her a “Marxist” and blaming her for what he said were the failings of Biden’s administration. Harris responded by looking on in amusement before declaring that she represents a fresh start after the “mess” of the Trump presidency — and saying: “We’re not going back.”
In a sign Trump realized things had not gone as well as he hoped, the former president made an unusual appearance in the debate “spin room” afterwards to speak to journalists. Swift endorsed Harris on Tuesday after her debate, calling the Democratic presidential nominee a “steady-handed, gifted leader” who could lead the country with calm rather than chaos. In a post on Instagram, Swift told her over 280 million followers that she will vote for the US vice president in the Nov 5 election, in the biggest celebrity endorsement yet for Harris. Polls show the race essentially tied between the two candidates.
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift said in her post. Swift was pictured with her cat in the post, which she signed as “childless cat lady”, in a dig at Vance, who in a 2021 interview called some Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” Swift also said she was impressed by Harris’ running mate Tim Walz.
Trump on Wednesday dismissed her endorsement, saying he “was not a Taylor fan”. “It was just a question of time,” Trump told Fox News in an interview. “She’s a very liberal person. She seems to always endorse a Democrat. And she’ll probably pay a price for it ... in the marketplace.” Until Tuesday, Swift had been conspicuously quiet on the 2024 race, even as many of her fans began organizing under the banner “Swifties for Kamala”. But the 34-year-old said discovering AI-generated images of her falsely endorsing Trump — which “conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she said — had inspired her to speak up. – Agencies
