Trump Aides Reveal Just How Badly Trump Veered Off Script in Debate

Donald Trump’s advisers are frustrated about how the former president veered wildly off script during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, according to reports from The Guardian and Axios.

Kamala Harris easily baited Trump with lines attacking the crowd size at his rallies and the fact that people left them early out of boredom. As a result, Trump lost his focus and went on angry rants, going against the carefully crafted plans from his debate prep team.

For example, if the ABC News debate moderators were to dispute the false rumor that Haitian immigrants are killing and eating people’s pets in Ohio, then Trump was supposed to say it was hearsay and attack Harris on how illegal immigration helps crime. But Trump got stuck arguing over the rumor and Harris’s attack on his rallies.

Trump advisers say that the Republican presidential nominee was also prepped on how to deflect Harris’s attacks back onto her, but he couldn’t help himself, launching into his trademark grievances like the 2020 election. They told him not to respond directly, but he did anyway.

The plan was to press the vice president about why she and President Biden weren’t implementing any of her solutions right now, and pin today’s problems on her and the administration, according to Axios. Trump was supposed to dismiss Harris’s plans for the future, point out failures in the present, and pin the blame on her for things like the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But given the opportunity, Trump whiffed, offering up a word salad.

Trump’s advisers pointed to his closing argument as one of the few times when he appeared to stick to the script, but that wasn’t enough to erase his ranting and raving from earlier in the debate. Republicans have been hoping for years that one day Trump would eventually become presidential, leave behind his petty grievances, and focus on the important things. They thought he would do so after he was first elected president, and then again after the attempt on his life in July, but each time, he quickly dashed their expectations. Tuesday’s debate is only the latest evidence that he refuses to change.

Two days after Donald Trump mentioned Springfield, Ohio, in the presidential debate, falsely accusing Haitian migrants in the town of abducting and eating pets, the city is already rocked by threats of violence.

On Thursday morning, Springfield City Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat “to multiple facilities throughout Springfield,” according to a city statement. Mayor Rob Rue did not release the exact language of the threat, but said it came from an individual claiming to be from Springfield who expressed frustration related to Haitian immigrants.

Springfield government officials say they were made aware of the threat, which “was sent to multiple agencies and media outlets,” via an email message at 8:24 a.m.

Meanwhile, some Haitian families are reportedly keeping their children home from school over fear they will be attacked. One Haitian woman told The Haitian Times that her cars had been vandalized, and the windows broken in the middle of the night. She fears she will have to leave the town to feel safe again.

Over the past several days, right-wing figures including J.D. Vance, Republican representatives in Congress, Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, and Trump adviser Stephen Miller, among many others, have pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets. They shared memes of AI-generated animals begging not to be eaten—and Vance even said he didn’t particularly care if the racist conspiracy turned out to be false.

Police and city officials in the town said they have received no credible reports of pets being stolen and eaten.

But then, during Tuesday’s debate, Trump pushed the unfounded claim before a national audience. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

In response, Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine tried to push back against the rumors, after a half-hearted attempt earlier this week, and said he would send more resources to Springfield to deal with the influx of immigrants.

The Clarks, one family at the center of tension of the community, whose son was killed by a Haitian driver in December, are begging “morally bankrupt politicians – Bernie Moreno, Chip Roy, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump” to stop using their son’s “death for political gain.”

“Please stop the hate,” Nathan Clark, the boy’s father, said.

Springfield City Hall is closed for the remainder of the day. It may be that Trump is more of a threat to the town than any Haitian refugee.

This story has been updated.

J.D. Vance crashed and burned during an interview on CNBC Thursday where he couldn’t back up Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs on foreign goods, or his own conservative economic populist ideas.

CNBC’s Becky Quick gave Vance the opportunity to refute a misconception about Trump’s economic policies, and Vance quickly spouted off some noneconomics—only to get brutally fact-checked.

“Well, I think one of the things I think they say is for example about Donald Trump’s economic policies is that somehow they’re going to jack up inflation,” Vance said. “Which is rich coming from Kamala Harris whose economic policies have directly led to inflation.”

“But tariffs are inflationary,” Quick replied.

Economists across the board have said Trump’s plan to impose 10–20 percent tariffs on all U.S. imports, and a 60 percent on imports from China, will raise prices for consumers. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Harris dubbed Trump’s tariffs effectively a “sales tax” that could cost households up to $4,000 per year. Trump seemingly hadn’t understood what she meant and cried that he had no “sales tax.”

Vance tried to save his answer, “Well, not always—”

“They’re either inflationary, or people aren’t buying the products anymore,” Quick said simply.

Vance explained that tariffs would increase prices in the short term, but over the course of multiple years, the prices would go back down as U.S. manufacturers were induced to make investments in a particular industry.

CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin cut in to point out that Trump’s proposed tariffs did not target any industry in particular and would likely raise prices across the board, leaving U.S. manufacturing scrambling to pick up the slack in every sector.

“There are certain industries that unfortunately we don’t have. Now wouldn’t it be great if our country were to invest in some of these industries that we’re missing on the manufacturing side? But the amount of time it may very well take to ‘induce’ every, every industry to invest here to manufacture, that’s the complication with the plan,” Sorkin said.

Sorkin asked whether Trump planned to use his broad tariffs as a “negotiating cudgel” with China for other things, or if Americans could expect them to go into effect.

“I do think that it’s a negotiation,” Vance acquiesced, but then went right back to claiming that tariffs would not increase prices in the long term. He also claimed that because Trump had imposed tariffs narrowly during his first presidential term, they could also be imposed broadly without negative effects.

Vance later turned to his favorite subject, immigration, and seemed particularly excited (maybe a little too excited) to get in a point about his favorite city to complain about: Springfield, Ohio.

“If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous country—most prosperous city in the world; America would be the most prosperous country in the world,” Vance said.

Here, Vance completely ignores the fact that the United States … is one of, if not the most prosperous country in the world. The U.S. has the highest global gross domestic product, at $25.43 trillion. More to the point, there is plenty of evidence that immigrants drive economic growth by filling more jobs and spending more money—this is true in Springfield. It’s also worth noting that here, Vance is speaking about immigrants generally, not undocumented workers.

It appears that Vance’s anti-immigrant politics and doom and gloom perspective about the country he hopes to run have caused him to elide some plain economic facts—and this became increasingly clear as Vance’s interview went on.

When asked what the first regulatory actions of the Trump administration would be, Vance was quick to answer: “Drill, baby, drill!”

Vance launched into a lengthy explanation of the importance of increasing natural gas drilling, and dismissed the claim that the country was already in a “renaissance” of American energy production as “preposterous.”

“It’s been a total disaster under the Biden-Harris administration,” Vance said. “And again, you just look at the energy costs. You look at how much Americans are paying for energy compared to three years ago. If it was so successful, then why are Americans payin’ 40 percent higher? When we’re sitting in Pennsylvania—we’re sitting on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas!”

“We’re producing more crude oil than any country. Ever,” Quick said, sounding slightly exhausted.

“We’re producing a lot less crude oil than we could be,” Vance replied, explaining that the U.S. is producing far fewer barrels under Harris than it would be under Trump.

When Stephen Miller claims that Venezuela is safer than the United States, he doesn’t want to be questioned about his sources.

While lingering in the spin room after the presidential debate Tuesday, the senior Trump adviser took questions from the press. Speaking about “criminal migrants that have been flooded [sic] in the country,” Miller claimed Venezuelan crime rates are down because all the criminals are coming to the United States.

“The crime rate in Venezuela is down, I believe, over 60 percent,” said Miller, echoing a point parroted by Trump himself. “Let’s put it this way, if you’re a dictator of a poor country with a high crime rate, wouldn’t you send your criminals to our open border?”

“Are you trusting the official figures from the Venezuelan dictatorship?” asked NTN24 reporter  José María Del Pino. “Those are Maduro numbers.”

Miller repeatedly refused to answer the question—by the end yelling loudly about how the criminals are coming here.

Venezuelan security officials have reported a 25 percent drop in the country’s violent crime and homicide rate, but the absence of official reports makes it hard to verify the data. Equally important, there’s no indication that any such drop is because of an “open border” or because  Maduro “let his criminals out of their jails” and into U.S. cities.

Miller is best known for his cruel immigration policies (which include eliminating DACA, enacting the Muslim ban, and implementing family separation) and his bad temper, which eventually got him demoted. Clearly, both of these impulses were on full display during his latest altercation with the press.

By the end, a shouting Miller tries to badger the reporter with questions, rather than the other way around. “Are Venezuelan gangs in this country, yes or no? Yes or no?” he repeats over and over again.

“Sir, you said that in Venezuela the crime rate is lower than the USA; what are your numbers? That is the question,” said an annoyed Del Pino.

As Del Pino notes, the Venezuelan homicide rate is still four times higher than that of the U.S. At the same time, violent crime and homicides have also dropped in the U.S., a point you won’t see Miller or Trump bringing up.

While Donald Trump’s team is publicly pushing a postdebate victory lap, many in his camp were privately disappointed in the Republican candidate’s performance on Tuesday.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported Wednesday night that several Trump insiders were “stunned” by his poor performance and by just how easily he fell for all of Kamala Harris’s attempts to provoke him.

“I’m told that as soon as Donald Trump exited that debate stage, he immediately began quizzing those waiting in his viewing room about how the last 90 minutes had gone,” said Collins. “While several people praised him to his face, telling him they did a great job, that’s not what a lot of them are saying privately today.

“Instead, those around Trump have described what happened as a draw at best and a loss at worst,” Collins said. “Several of them told CNN they were stunned that the former president failed to do a better job executing on the talking points that he had been preparing with his team for weeks against Vice President Harris, her record, her policy reversals.”

Apparently, all that practice with members of his team, such as former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, had ultimately amounted to very little when it came time to debate.

“Trump had actually done more debate prep ahead of his first meeting with Harris than he did for his debate with President Biden earlier this summer. Yet they didn’t believe that he made some of the central arguments against her,” Collins explained. She said that Trump had failed to utilize one of his main criticisms against her: that Harris hadn’t enacted many of her campaign promises during her time in office.

“He didn’t go there until his closing argument, which surprised a lot of people in his inner circle,” Collins said. “Instead, they believe that Trump took the bait every single time Harris offered it up.”

“While multiple Trump allies described what happened last night as a missed opportunity for the former president, they have since started downplaying the debate’s significance overall,” Collins said.

Emerging details behind the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump suggest that by the second commercial break, Harris was totally in control—and Trump knew he was blowing it.

As soon as the stagehands announced that the duo were clear for the four-minute commercial break, Trump lunged off the stage and away from the former prosecutor, letting a heavy sigh escape his pursed lips, according to CBS News’s Sara Cook.

While he was gone, Harris reportedly spent half of the break writing nonstop on her sheet of paper, only pausing to fix her hair.

“She then reviewed what she wrote for the next minute, making a few tweaks, before putting the pen down and looking out around the room with her hands folded in front of her. She took a sip of water from a glass placed under the lectern,” reported Cook.

Trump reemerged behind the podium with 30 seconds to air. The candidates did not look at each other, but stared straight ahead until the program resumed.

In the aftermath of the debate, Trump has baselessly attempted to claim that every postdebate poll has indicated he won the face-off. A CNN flash poll after the debate indicated that 63 percent of Americans felt that Harris outperformed Trump.

Meanwhile, conservatives have spent the better part of the day lamenting Trump’s performance, with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham decrying the MAGA leader’s performance as a “disaster.”

Donald Trump sought to visit the 9/11 memorial in New York City Wednesday to commemorate the twenty-third anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

But apparently he hasn’t been to this event much in years past (if at all), because one of the attendees was picked up by C-SPAN’s microphones calling out the former president and convicted felon.

“Where were you for 20 years? I’ve been here. Where were you?” one angry person asked Trump.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, considering how thin-skinned Trump and his supporters can be, the person was not captured on video. Trump is not particularly well liked in his native city, and he isn’t particularly happy with New York after its residents gave him his only criminal conviction in May. Bizarrely, during his visit to the Big Apple on Wednesday, he brought along the 9/11-denying, proudly Islamophobic, and self-described “pro-white nationalist” Laura Loomer.

The ceremony Wednesday was also attended by his running mate, J.D. Vance, President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris, but none of them appear to have been targeted by any hecklers. Trump doesn’t have the best history of honoring slain Americans, whether it’s his visit to Arlington National Cemetery last month to make a campaign video or his refusal, in Paris in 2018, to visit the graves of American soldiers killed in World War I, calling them “suckers and losers.”

At least on Wednesday, Trump doesn’t appear to have said anything insulting or weird about the people killed in 2001, even if he seems to have only gone to the 9/11 commemoration because it’s an election year.

J.D. Vance invited the internet Tuesday to “keep the cat memes flowing,” hoping to spread cartoonishly racist rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio had begun eating house pets (which even he acknowledged were probably untrue).

Donald Trump would later go on television that night and make an impassioned—and entirely nonsensical—plea to the American people to buy into the xenophobic smears.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in! They’re eating the cats! They’re eating … they’re eating the pets of the people who live there,” Trump cried, while Kamala Harris laughed at him.

Ultimately, there is little humor to be found in a presidential candidate spreading extremist right-wing lies that have already made targets of a group of extremely vulnerable people.

Still, Trump’s mindless parroting of these lies did lead to an onslaught of memes, but not the lame A.I.-generated ones that Vance had hoped for. On X, a veritable tidal wave of memes have emerged nailing Trump for just how stupid he sounded.

While many right-wing pundits are blaming ABC moderators for undermining Trump during the presidential debate, The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins pointed out in a post on X that Trump could do bad all by himself.

Comedian Kylie Brakeman wrote that Trump had originally made the outlandish claim in response to Harris’s claim that he was too outlandish.

At home across America, viewers of all species were disturbed by the president’s empathic delivery of patently unsubstantiated claims.

But some could acknowledge that maybe there was something different about Trump’s cadence as he unloaded his total garbage—maybe even musical?

There were actually a lot of Simpsons references, for some reason.

Most regrettably, some X users quickly moved to verify Trump’s claims. What they found was beyond disturbing.

At the bottom of this internet spiral, there are two simple truths. One, combating the lies of Trump and Vance requires facts, such as the official statements of local officials who insist that there are “no credible reports” to back up the Republican presidential ticket’s fantastical claims of migrants digging in on house pets.

And another point, that countering Trump’s blatant extremism requires an acknowledgment of just how ridiculous he has become.

“F you, Taylor Swift!” shouted Megyn Kelly, “and f all of the people who want to see these children have body parts chopped off.”

For those not fluent in Republican crazy-speak, Kelly’s meltdown was triggered by Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris the night before, barely one hour after Trump all but face-planted on the debate stage. Kelly was especially triggered by Swift highlighting her appreciation for vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s support of LGBTQ+ rights.

“So this woman is fine with his plan to take custody of the children from parents who won’t want them to chop off their body parts and put them in Minnesota courts’ custody so the body parts can be chopped off and they can be sterilized,” Kelly ranted, echoing Trump’s recent baseless lies about “transgender operations.”

Other Republicans seemed just as nervous about Swift’s endorsement. Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance took a more cordial tone speaking with Fox News on Wednesday—but still felt the need to weigh in on the news. “I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music or are fans of hers or not, are gonna be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.” (Perhaps the same could be said of Donald J. Trump.)

Other right-wing commentators, like Ben Shapiro, took another approach: making fun of Swifties. “Note: if you vote for a particular candidate because your favorite singer is doing so, please don’t vote. You are too stupid to vote,” wrote Shapiro on X. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, threatened to impregnate her.

Trump himself offered a vague threat to the singer, saying, “She’ll probably pay a price for it at the, uh, in the marketplace.”

They probably have a right to be concerned. As of Wednesday morning, at least 300,000 people clicked on Swift’s link to register to vote.

Remarkably negative reactions to Donald Trump’s performance during his first formal matchup against Vice President Kamala Harris have left conservatives reeling—and Trump panicking.

On Wednesday, the former president attempted to wiggle out of any further debates against Harris, claiming that he had actually beaten Harris and deserved to be acknowledged for the “K.O.”

“In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why would I do a Rematch?”

Later, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that he didn’t believe he “had to do it a second time,” only to suggest that he could be open to following through on the two other debates slated to be hosted on NBC and Fox in the coming weeks.

(No polls have indicated that Trump would win by such a large margin. A CNN flash poll after the debate indicated that 63 percent of Americans felt that Harris outperformed Trump.)

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign was more than ready for a second face-off, inviting Trump to debate the former prosecutor again just hours after the debate ended.

“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement on Tuesday night. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”