Trump, Harris teams reflect on tumultuous summer: The debate, Trump assassination attempt and Biden drops out

Top staffers from the Trump and Harris campaigns met at Harvard University’s Campaign Managers Conference on Friday to discuss the summer of 2024, which has given way to an unprecedented political season that has included a disastrous debate performance by President Joe Biden, the incoming Democratic nominee on Vice. President Kamala Harris, and two attacks against former President Donald Trump.

Much of the discussion focused on Harris’ 107 days as the new Democratic nominee and how the campaigns had to adjust their strategies on a very tight timeline. The following are highlights from the wide-ranging interview.

Campaigns are debated over the candidates’ work ethics

Sparks moved toward the end of the debate when a member of the Trump campaign said the former president “worked” Harris.

“Why didn’t you trust your candidate more?” asked Taylor Budowich, deputy campaign director for the Trump campaign. “Why didn’t you throw more? You said… you could never compete with the amount of attention that Donald Trump got. You never gave him a shot.”

The Harris campaign fired back at Budwich, saying his strategy was successful and not the Trump campaign’s.

“Your strategy was a good strategy, but you have no idea how hard the people on the other side worked,” said Quentin Fulks, senior deputy campaign director for the Harris campaign. “I don’t know how hard you all work.”

Budowich interjected, saying he was referring to Harris and not the entire campaign, but Fulks confirmed Harris had worked hard.

“I didn’t say he didn’t work hard. I said he did,” Budowich clarified.

Fulks defended the vice president, explaining that it was not a fair comparison because Harris’ campaign had a different strategy, and it was not successful. He reiterated that it had nothing to do with his work ethic.

Asked by ABC News’ Brittany Shepherd about President Joe Biden’s comments calling Trump supporters trash, Fulks said Democrats need to do a better job of not creating self-inflicted wounds.

“Our people, once again, are shooting themselves in the foot,” Fulks said.

“Right discipline is better than Left discipline,” he added. “And that’s not morals, values, anything. It’s literally discipline and seeing how you win and what you can do. swallow to win.”

Democratic consequences of the Biden-Trump debate

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign chairwoman, was unfazed by repeated messages about Biden’s debate performance, repeating that he had a “bad night” and pointing to Obama as a precedent for uneven debates, the campaign argued. Biden’s true path to winning the election no matter what.

“So we felt very strongly that we had a path to 270. We felt that we had the right candidate, that person and that person that we believed led our country pretty well,” O’Malley Dillon said. “We still believe that.”

Without specifying a specific moment, Fulks acknowledged that early in the debate, campaign workers could tell Biden wasn’t speaking.

Trump’s team was much more blunt, saying Biden “wouldn’t survive” the debate for “one minute” of the election cycle, according to Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita.

“I think for us, and this with all due respect to the president, we felt there were challenges that were fully exposed in the debate,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director. “There are still days when these challenges don’t seem obvious. That night was not one of them.”

Referring to the performance and aftermath of the Biden debate, O’Malley Dillon said, “There has probably never been a more difficult time for a campaign team to navigate.”

Blair quickly responded that even navigating two assassination attempts and indictments was difficult, and O’Malley Dillon later acknowledged the difficulty of the Trump team’s summer and mentioned that he had reached out to Trump campaign manager Susie Wiles.

Asked about the large number of Democrats calling for Biden to drop out of the race after his disastrous debate performance, Fulks referred to it as “slow bleeding.”

Fulks later agreed with a point LaCivita made: visibility matters in running for office, and the Biden campaign wanted to put Biden in the public eye by holding a series of events to address his debate performance.

“I think Chris is right,” Fulks said. “Something visual has happened in front of people’s eyes. The only way to deal with this is to provide something visual. And the only visual game you have at that point is to get Joe Biden in front of as many people as possible, which is what we tried to do. And so when he caught COVID, it’s almost like a dagger.”

The Trump campaign said it was preparing for the inevitable, adding that in May it began tracking opposition candidates and asking for alternatives to Harris, but also included other possible candidates, such as Michelle Obama and the former secretary of state. Hillary Clinton

Trump’s attack

What was a pivotal political moment for both campaigns was as harrowing as it was a harrowing personal moment, the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, which “was very limited in how we could campaign because we were basically shut down after the first attempt. , it’s not no more outside events,” said Tony Fabrizio, head of the Trump campaign poll. “And if we want to do an outdoor event, the time had to be doubled.”

The Harris campaign, for its part, drew its own negative publicity in the days following the attack.

“We also took into account the way the campaign was carried out. “There is no place for political violence in democracy. And we wanted to make sure our campaign reflected that at this time,” added Julie Chavez Rodriguez Harris campaign manager.

Drops Biden, becomes Harris candidate

The Harris campaign, pressed multiple times on whether it knew about Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race before the announcement was made public or if there was any prior conversation about the possibility of Biden dropping out, confirmed that it was soon known. that there was no interview before and before he made his announcement.

When asked if there was a possibility that another Democrat could run in addition to Harris, Fulks said there is always a possibility, but noted that Biden wanted to throw his support behind Harris. He added that a late-cycle Democratic primary would be messy.

“From my point of view, Vice President Harris was the only reasonable choice to make. But I think President Biden did that: he’s his vice president and he was loyal to him, and he decided to support him,” Fulks said.