Democracy Dies in Darkness
Early Brief
Early Brief

The Washington Post's essential guide to power and influence in D.C.

Harris needed a good night. She had one.

Analysis by
and 

with research by Alec Dent

Early Brief

The Washington Post's essential guide to power and influence in D.C.

11 min

Good morning, Early Birds. It has been 23 years since the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Shanksville, Pa., and at the Pentagon. Send tips to earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us.

In today’s edition … New Hampshire primary results … Easing inflation signals a likely Fed interest rate cut … but first …

Trump’s second debate did not go as well as his first

Debate night started with an awkward handshake and ended with an endorsement by self-dubbed “Childless Cat Lady” Taylor Swift.

The first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump was the latest high point for Harris in her seven-week-old campaign — and quite a contrast to the previous presidential debate, in which President Joe Biden gave a shaky performance that led to calls for him to end his reelection bid.

Republicans are fretting that Trump missed a moment and let Harris get to him. Meanwhile, Democrats are thrilled at Harris’s performance.

“Slay,” is how one Democratic official responded when asked how Harris performed.

The stakes were higher for Harris. Trump is a known quantity, while 28 percent of likely voters said they felt they needed to learn more about Harris, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll conducted last week. The debate was her best opportunity to show the American people who she is — and to remind voters who Trump is.

Harris’s strategy was to get under Trump’s skin, a campaign official said, and she did that. A few examples:

  • She said people leave his rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”
  • She said military leaders have told her he’s a “disgrace.”
  • She said 81 million people fired him and “he is having a very difficult time processing.”
  • She said Russian President Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch.”

It appeared to throw Trump off his game.

“She clearly got under his skin,” Marc Short, a former top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, told us. “He looks angry and not focused on winning topics of border and the economy.”

As our colleague Josh Dawsey notes, “The thing Trump hates most” is when people laugh at him. Trump reverted to “re-litigating” all of the things he perceives as slights or attacks, one Republican strategist said, adding that it was a mistake for Trump to respond that way.

Trump tried to bring his answers back to the issue of the border and immigration, but that was usually only after long rambling responses where he repeatedly took the bait Harris offered:

  • He said his rallies “are the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” after demanding to respond to Harris’s encouragement of viewers to attend one of his rallies.
  • He falsely said there is “so much proof” that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he was being “sarcastic” when he recently said he “lost by a whisker.”
  • He repeated without evidence the allegation that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the pets of the people that live there,” after Harris claimed people leaves his rallies leave early.
  • He praised Viktor Orban, the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, after Harris said world leaders had laughed at him.
  • Asked by moderator David Muir about his baseless comment in July that Harris only recently started identifying as Black, Trump said Harris could identify however she liked. He then added that he had read that Harris was “not Black” before reading that she was.
‘Concept of a plan’

The debate was light on policy proposals from both candidates.

Harris, who has pitched her campaign as “a new way forward,” went into more detail about what she would do if elected than Trump did.

She pitched her plans to increase the child tax credit and give tax breaks to small businesses and pledged to sign bills strengthening border security and protecting abortion rights if Congress passes them into law.

Trump responded by questioning why she hadn’t done those things as vice president.

  • “She’s going to do this, she’s going to do that,” he said. “She’s going to do all these wonderful things. Why hasn’t she done it?”

But he gave few specifics about his own plans, instead pitching a second Trump term as a return to his first.

Trump said he would replace the Affordable Care Act “if” he could find a plan that is better. When asked by moderator Linsey Davis if he has a plan, he said he has “concepts of a plan” that he’ll reveal “in the not-too-distant future.” (Trump has been promising details of a health-care plan since he started running for president in 2015.)

The most substantive policy exchange of the night was on abortion.

Trump, who has been all over the map on the issue, praised the “genius” and “strength” of the six Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and “were able to get it to the states.”

Trump said he supports exceptions for rape and incest and said “there’s no reason” to sign into law a national abortion ban because “we’ve gotten what everybody wanted.” (He also said that his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), was wrong when he said Trump would veto a national abortion ban and that they never talked about it.)

Harris gave a passionate defense for reinstating Roe.

“I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” she said.

The shadow of Biden

Harris’s ties to a relatively unpopular president are one of her biggest vulnerabilities, but neither the moderators nor Trump pressed her to say how her administration would differ from Biden’s.

Trump mocked Biden several times, but he waited until the final minutes of the debate to argue that a Harris administration would represent a second Biden term.

“She’s trying to get away from Biden,” Trump said. “‘I don’t know the gentleman,’ she says. She is Biden.”

Earlier in the debate, Trump accused her of abandoning her positions, echoing a question from the moderators about why she opposed fracking and proposed mandatory gun buybacks when she ran for president in 2019.

“She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania if she won the election,” Trump said — accusations that Harris quickly denied.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was the post-debate endorsement of Harris by Taylor Swift, arguably the most popular person on the planet. In a post on Instagram, Swift posted a photo of herself holding her cat, writing to her 283 million followers that she’s voting for Harris. She also encouraged them to vote early, linking to vote.gov, which provides information on registering to vote and how.

(And take that, internet: Swift hanging out with Trump supporter Brittany Mahomes at the U.S. Open on Sunday was not a sign that she backs Trump.)

After Harris’s strong evening, her campaign announced that she wants another debate with Trump, although the decision to request another debate had been made before it started, our colleague Michael Scherer reports.

More coverage of the debate:

What we’re watching

At the White House

Biden and Harris will participate in 9/11 ceremonies today. They will begin the day in New York at Ground Zero. Then they will head to Shanksville, Pa., to participate in a Flight 93 wreath-laying ceremony before another wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon.

On the campaign trail

Trump and Vance are also scheduled to appear at Ground Zero, and Trump will also travel to Shanksville. Additionally, Trump is set to appear on “Fox & Friends” today.

Maggie Goodlander, a former Biden White House aide, won the Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) last night. She’ll face Republican Lily Tang Williams for the Democratic-leaning seat in November.

Former senator Kelly Ayotte easily won the Republican primary in the governor’s race in New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is not running for reelection. She’ll face Joyce Craig, the former Manchester mayor who won the Democratic primary, in November in one of the most competitive governor’s races in the country.

On the Hill

The House is scheduled to vote on the six-month continuing resolution that includes legislation to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. But a significant number of Republicans across the political spectrum have come out against the bill for a variety of reasons, including some who never vote for short-term funding and others who say a six-month extension is not good for essential government services, including the military.

We’re watching to see whether Republican leadership moves forward with the vote, risking it failing, or pulls the CR from consideration. If they hold the vote, Democratic absences could help Republicans’ vote count.

Also: The House Administration Committee is holding a hearing on “American confidence in Elections.” The secretaries of state of Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Ohio and West Virginia are scheduled to testify.

We’re watching to see if the hearing becomes contentious as Trump has upped his rhetoric suggesting the election would be stolen and threatening to jail election officials or workers.

In the economy

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the latest inflation data at 8:30 a.m.

The data “is expected to show prices climbed roughly 2.5 percent in August, compared with the year before,” our colleague Rachel Siegel writes. “That would be a noticeable improvement over the 2.9 percent notched in July, in part because of falling gas prices.”

Easing inflation would help cement the case for the Fed cutting interest rates at its meeting next week, Rachel writes.

The Media

Must reads:

From The Post:

From across the web:

Viral

Obviously it was Beyoncé

Thanks for reading. You can follow Leigh Ann and Theo on X: @LACaldwellDC and @theodoricmeyer.