Trump then gave a thumbs up as he walked off the stage into a waiting room full of advisers who believed they had a new and devastating ammunition for Biden.
“A lot of material came out of the debate,” said Chris LaCivita, a top adviser to Trump, who boasted that Thursday night’s debate performance was “the most one-sided victory in the history of American politics.”
Republicans are ecstatic, seeing the debate as a turning point in an already aggressive campaign. As some Democrats suggested they might remove Biden from the running, Trump aides and allies smugly said it was too late. “Like Joe,” one Trump campaign email gushed as Trump prepared to hold his first post-debate rally on Friday afternoon in Virginia, a state Biden won by 10 points four years ago but that some polls show is a close race.
President Trump also had another reason to celebrate Friday morning: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal prosecutors wrongly charged hundreds of defendants with disrupting the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The decision blocked many of the criminal cases stemming from that violent day that Biden has made the centerpiece of his campaign against President Trump.
Still, Biden’s supporters argued that Trump’s responses at the debate were damaging to him because he avoided questions about accepting the election results and failed to condemn the January 6 riots. A rapid-fire poll by CNN, which hosted the debate, found that voters who watched the debate believed Trump had won by a large margin, but 81% also said it had not influenced their choice in the race. Five percent said the debate had changed their mind, and 14% said it had made them reconsider but had not ultimately swayed their vote.
A Biden campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal figures, said the hour after the debate, from 11 p.m. to midnight, was his busiest fundraising period since the campaign began last April, raising $14 million over the two days – the day of the debate and the morning after.
But Republicans rejoiced. As Democrats discussed how to move forward, Trump’s allies ignored the potential threat posed by the younger Democratic standard-bearer.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer,” said Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.), who was at the scene representing Trump. “The agenda is the same.”
Biden’s advisers said Biden would “absolutely not” withdraw, and that he has been predicted to do so many times before and proven skeptics wrong.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a Republican and one of the front-runners to be Trump’s running mate, said the debate would add momentum to an already “strong” campaign.
““I think you’re going to see donations pour in. You’re going to see President Trump gain momentum,” Burgum said.
Biden had been raising significantly more money than Trump for months and using that money to build a bigger presence in battleground states, but Trump’s conviction on May 30 changed that, galvanizing the Republican base and allowing Trump and the Republican National Committee to report in their latest financial disclosures that they had more cash on hand than Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats are hoping that early spending on the ground will still be hard to keep up with, but Republicans suddenly have more money to throw at them, and now their debate performance has fulfilled their greatest hope.
“This debate was a fascinating contrast between a man who has the energy to be president and a man who clearly doesn’t,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), another leading contender to be Trump’s running mate.
Several vice presidential candidates attended a debate fundraiser hosted by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) on Thursday. They then watched the debate on a volleyball court on the Georgia Tech campus. Attendees included Burgum and Vance, as well as Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Eric Schmidt (R-Missouri), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), according to a person familiar with the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and Trump’s daughter-in-law, was also in attendance.
Vice President Harris defended Biden after the debate but acknowledged he got off to a “sluggish start.” Biden “offered a very clear contrast to Donald Trump on every issue that matters to the American people,” she said on CNN.
Trump’s advisers, who had accused CNN of bias before the debate, said they were pleased with how the network was running the debate.
While some Democrats have criticized CNN for not fact-checking Trump’s false claims in real time, LaCivita believes “CNN has jumped on the bandwagon” and said the Trump campaign’s decision to accept CNN and the Biden campaign’s terms “worked very well.”
Trump is scheduled to speak at a 3 p.m. rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, a city Biden won by about six points four years ago, and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Virginia) is expected to attend.
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election analysis provider, still rates Virginia as likely to favor Democrats in the presidential election. But Trump has been bullish not only on Virginia, but also on Democratic-leaning Minnesota. A recent Trump campaign memo said the campaign and national party are “securing leases” for 11 “initial” office locations in Virginia and eight in Minnesota, and will “build out a range of custom voter contact audiences in both states” by the end of the month.
Democrats have dismissed the Trump campaign’s move as bombast. “If Mr. Trump wants to spend time and money campaigning in Democratic states, he is free to do so,” said Caroline Stonesipher, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign.
But they also say they didn’t take the state for granted from the start. Virginia Democratic Party Chair Susan Swecker said in an interview Thursday that five new offices for Democratic campaigns have opened in the state, bringing the total to 11. She said she couldn’t remember any presidential campaign raising money as early as the Biden campaign.
Recent polls have shown Trump and Biden neck and neck in Virginia, and Dave Wasserman, a senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report, noted that research on the state is limited. Given Virginia’s 2020 results and the national voting trends since then, Wasserman said it’s not surprising Biden has a slight lead in Virginia.
Wasserman added that for now, “everyone wants to be on the offensive, and they want to be aggressive by wading into tough territory,” even if other states are far more likely to decide the election. “If Virginia plays out this fall, the election is already over for Trump,” Wasserman said.
Arndorf and Levin reported from Atlanta. Josh Dorsey contributed to this report.
