PHILADELPHIA—Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump were divided over who won the Sept. 10 presidential debate, which candidate appealed most to undecided voters, and whether the ABC News moderators conducted the debate fairly.
Those were among the themes that emerged after surrogates for both candidates circulated in “The Spin Room,” located in Hall B of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Immediately after the 90-minute showdown between Harris and Trump ended, dozens of surrogates began trickling in, ready to make their best pitches to roughly 1,000 reporters.
In an unusual move, Trump made a surprise visit to the spin room. Surrounded by a crush of hundreds of reporters jockeying for position and shouting questions, Trump said, “This was my best debate.”
Trump said he visited the spin room because he had promised interviews with some media personnel. After the media scrum, Trump spoke with Fox News host Sean Hannity, telling Hannity that he won the contest.
Pennsylvania is among a handful of battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the Nov. 5 election between Harris and Trump.
A Pennsylvania spokesman for the former president, Tim Murtaugh, told The Epoch Times he thinks Harris cannot win the state because she has been “a lifelong opponent of fracking.” That procedure, which helps extract oil and gas from the ground, employs many thousands of Pennsylvanians.
“You cannot draw a straight line” from that position to the one she now says she holds, Murtaugh said.
During the debate, Harris pointed out that she hadn’t taken action to ban fracking while she has been vice president. “I will not ban fracking,” she said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said that Harris is doing the right things to reach voters in the commonwealth and secure a victory there. He told reporters, including The Epoch Times, that she is showing up in Pennsylvania communities “that are oftentimes ignored” by national candidates, such as Beaver County, a rural corner in the eastern side of Pennsylvania.
“She needs to keep doing exactly what she’s doing” to reach undecided voters, Shapiro said. The governor said Harris can count on him to continue stumping for her. Noting he has known Harris for nearly 20 years, he called her “incredibly well-prepared to serve as president of the United States.”
Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former communications director who now supports Harris, told The Epoch Times he thinks that Harris is “winning undecided voters” with her messaging.
Several Trump surrogates said Harris gave few specifics about how she would implement the policies she described. They also said that in their opinion, the moderators helped Harris.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former independent candidate for president who now supports Trump, said, “Unfortunately, we had moderators who were clearly biased, who were constantly fact-checking Donald Trump.”
ABC News moderator David Muir’s inaugural question for the debate was: “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”
Harris responded by stating that she was going to create “an opportunity economy.”
Kennedy said the moderators should have insisted on an answer from Harris.
“They simply sat there on the sidelines and allowed that [response from Harris] to pass,” Kennedy said.
When asked about Trump supporters’ complaints about the moderators, Shapiro countered, “Any time a team is whining about the ‘refs,’ they lost.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) lauded Harris, saying she “had the facts to back up her policies, and she’s the only one who talked about unifying the country. ... And that is what America wants.”
“So I think what the American people can take from this is that he is serious about fixing the issues of this nation; she wants to continue the campaign of ‘vibes,’ with little substance,” Donalds said.
