An in-control Kamala Harris won the night by baiting her opponent into increasingly incoherent rage. And then Taylor Swift weighed in.

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Trump takes the bait

The debate’s first question was about the high cost of living, and Donald Trump responded with an allegation about undocumented immigrants taking American jobs: “They’re taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings,” he said. “They’re going in violently.”

It might have been his most lucid, on-message answer of the entire night. Within minutes, the former president had grown visibly angry, apparently prompted by Harris’s sly reference to the Wharton School of Economics, which Trump attended as a young man. “It was an artful way to trigger him, and it worked instantly,” wrote Olivia Nuzzi at NY Magazine (soft paywall).

He quickly returned to his racist attacks, repeating a lie currently popular in rightwing circles about Haitian immigrants in Ohio devouring pets. “In Springfield they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he insisted. “It’s like [Harris] is debating MAGA Twitter come to life. Victor Orban, dead pets, Ashli Babbitt, ‘J6’, noted ‘Never Trump’ conservative David French on X.

For all his base-friendly bluster, a brief answer about healthcare may turn out to have been Trump’s most important rhetorical moment. Responding to a question about his planned replacement for Obamacare, the popular healthcare law he has spent nine years threatening to repeal, Trump pleaded that he had “the concepts of a plan” (his whiny tone really needs to be heard to be fully appreciated). The soundbite was seemingly “tailor-made for Democratic attack ads on a topic that is of searing personal interest to millions of Americans”, according to the Hill.

Harris takes control

Harris, meanwhile, looked in control from the start. Among her best moments was a powerful answer on abortion rights, delivered early in the debate, that blamed Trump for the repeal of Roe vs Wade during his tenure and warned that he would usher in a nationwide abortion ban were he to become president again. Then she went after Trump for inciting the violent mob at the US Capitol: “So for everyone watching who remembers what January 6th was, I say we don’t have to go back… And if that was a bridge too far for you, well, there is a place in our campaign for you. To stand for country. To stand for our democracy. To stand for rule of law. And to end the chaos.”

More consequential than any particular answer, however, was the difference between her own composure and Trump’s increasingly incoherent fuming, wrote NY Mag’s Jonathan Chait (soft paywall): “She established herself as presidential by appearing calm and confident, in vivid contrast to the bellowing lunatic on the stage beside her.”

The immediate reaction

Unsurprisingly, Harris was deemed the runaway winner of the debate. “She probably had the best night of any of Trump’s debate opponents since he began running for president in 2015,” said Eugene Daniels of Politico. “Tonight was just devastating,” said veteran newsman Chris Wallace on CNN. “It was a shutout on almost every subject I can think of. Trump looked angry, scowling, and old.”

Even Trump’s supporters had to concede their candidate had a very bad night. “She crushed him,” a Republican battleground strategist told Politico. Senator Lindsey Graham, usually one of Trump’s most unquestioning loyalists, said it had been a “disaster” and Trump’s debate team should be fired.

Ultimately, it’s the voters’ opinion that matters, however – and they seem to agree that Harris took it in a walk. A snap CNN poll of debate watchers found she had won 63% to 37%, with many voters especially impressed by her answer on reproductive rights. Harris adviser David Plouffe tweeted that the campaign’s internal live polling showed a “40 point difference with undecided voters on their abortion answers. Widest gap I’ve ever seen in debate dials.”

In an election this tight, a marginal increase in support among key swing-state voters can make all the difference; the opinions of well-paid political commentators and enthusiastic campaign supporters matter a whole lot less. After all, as journalist Julia Ioffe wryly noted on X, “Hilary Clinton also won the debates against Donald Trump.”

Taylor Swift speaks up

Shortly after the debate ended, the world’s most popular musician issued a statement on Instagram. Taylor Swift said she would be voting for Kamala Harris, calling her a “warrior” and a “steady-handed, gifted leader”, adding that she was “so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades”. She signed the statement “childless cat lady”, a reference to remarks made by Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, in 2021. In an interview, Vance said Democrats were promoting an “anti-family” agenda led by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.

While the Harris campaign has stayed quiet on the precise coordination of the Swift statement, it’s well-established that the narrative coming out of a presidential debate is just as important as 90-minute event itself (hence the existence of the post-debate “spin room”, where campaign surrogates are tasked with arguing that their candidate just won). In that context, the timing of Swift’s announcement – which yesterday helped land a potentially devastating one-two punch on Trump – was nothing short of impeccable.

More reading, watching and listening

Read:

Republicans dismayed by Trump’s ‘bad’ and ‘unprepared’ debate performance (The Guardian)

Trump never looked at Harris in the eye, and eight more body language tells from the presidential debate (Politico)

Now the debate is over, here’s what to expect in the sprint to Election Day – and beyond (CNN)

Polling guru Nate Silver’s latest election forecast (Silver Bulletin)

Wait, Kamala Harris owns a gun? (Vox)

Listen:

Harris baits Trump: inside their fiery debate (NYT’s The Daily podcast)

Alpha Harris (The Bulwark’s Next Level podcast)

Harris had a theory of Trump, and it was right (The Ezra Klein Show)

Watch:

Fact-checker extraordinaire Daniel Dale corrects Trump’s many false claims during the debate (CNN)

Jon Stewart’s extended segment on the debate (The Daily Show / YouTube)