Former President Donald Trump left Republicans openly grumbling about a series of missed opportunities to define Vice President Kamala Harris at Tuesday night’s debate.
Harris repeatedly goaded Trump into veering off-script, while he made Republicans squirm with claims that Haitian migrants were eating neighbors’ pets in Ohio.
Democrats relished in the performance, suggesting to reporters on Wednesday that he brought the worst version of himself to the debate stage.
“He’s inflammatory, irrational, and irresponsible. He can’t control himself. It’s just the nature of the man,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
But Republicans were far more introspective. In a series of interviews with the Washington Examiner, senators practiced the lines they wanted Trump to deliver and dissected the times they felt he let Harris off the hook.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who attended the spin room for Trump ahead of the debate, suggested his attacks were not concrete enough. On Afghanistan, he said Trump should have mentioned that Harris was the “last person in the room” when President Joe Biden decided to withdraw. He also highlighted the “tiebreaking” Senate votes she cast that he said caused record-high inflation.
“I think that’s what the conversation should have been about last night because I think that’s what the American public is asking,” he said.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) wanted a greater focus on public safety. “We spent three seconds on that,” he quipped.
But the greatest critique was that Trump did not adequately tie Harris to Biden’s record. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) called it a “powerful moment” when Trump said she had 3 1/2 years to enact the policies she says she will on day one, but others questioned why he waited until his closing statement to make that point.
“I was glad he raised it, but it would have been better if it would have come up earlier,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).
Republicans were particularly keyed in on the first question of the debate, in which Harris skirted around whether voters are better off than they were four years ago. Instead of questioning her answer — she presented her vision for a Harris term rather than litigating Biden’s — Trump veered off-topic to immigration.
“She got away with that,” said Lummis.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that Trump failed to put Harris on defense on topics ranging from the border to national security.
“There were so many instances where I would have had a Reagan-esque, ‘There you go again, Harris. You want to do everything except talk about an agenda that you were partially responsible for implementing and defending,’” he said.
Republicans insisted the missteps were not fatal. Even if some swing voters liked Harris’s performance more, Tillis reasoned, the independent vote is still malleable.
“There’s not a lot of intensity, a lot of excitement outside of the party base,” he said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), echoing some other Republicans, predicted the state of the race was largely unchanged.
“I don’t think she hurt herself,” he said of Harris. “I don’t think he hurt himself either.”
But many Republicans felt Trump failed to capitalize on perhaps his highest-profile chance to define Harris, who is an unknown quantity to many voters.
A New York Times-Siena College poll ahead of the debate found that 28% “needed to learn more” about Harris, compared to 9% for Trump.
“I think it helps. She’s a newcomer to the scene, relatively,” Durbin said of her debate performance on Tuesday. “Her explanation of her position on the issues will be helpful.”
Trump could debate Harris once again. He is leaning against it publicly but left the door open in brief remarks to reporters in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday.
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But Tillis said Trump needs to do a better job preparing if he is going to move forward. He is among a chorus of Republicans who think a rematch would be a good idea.
“I would encourage him to do exactly what I had to do,” he said of his own Senate debates: “Get over the annoyance with the prep and get it done.”
