After spending weeks warning Donald Trump that he needed to up his game in order to prevent a Kamala Harris victory in November, Republican pollster and former strategist Frank Luntz predicted that Tuesday night’s poor presidential debate would do Trump in for good.
“It was a pretty negative performance—pretty pessimistic, cynical, contemptuous,” Luntz said Wednesday on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “And I think that this will cost him, yes.”
“I’m trying to decide if I want to go on record, and the answer is yes,” he added, “I think that he loses because of this debate performance.”
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Following the debate, which saw Harris come out on top, according to polls, focus groups, and many network commentators, Trump lashed out at the moderators for fact-checking his many false claims.
Harris immediately challenged the former president to another encounter, but Trump told Fox News Wednesday morning that he would be “less inclined” to participate because, as he saw it, he did so well the first time.
Luntz made his prediction regardless of whether any additional debates take place.
“This is not the worst debate performance I’ve seen in my career, but it’s very close to it,” Luntz said, citing “the conversations about people eating dogs and cats, calling the leader of Hungary one of the greatest world leaders, repeatedly missing the opportunity to focus on inflation and affordability, and the complete inability to present his point of view without completely tearing into her, into Joe Biden, into whomever was in his sights.”
It’s safe to say that Trump didn’t adhere to Luntz’s advice following Harris’ sudden entry into the race in July. The following month, Luntz told CNBC that Trump should stop talking about the size of his rally crowds—something he immediately did Tuesday after Harris mentioned his ongoing fixation with the topic.
Luntz said on CNN around the same time that Trump “has been very negative and very hostile”—traits that he said showed themselves again Tuesday night in front of an audience of 67.1 million, according to Nielsen.
