Kamala Harris "stood up to Trump from the first minute ... and kind of took him off guard all the way through the debate." Wesley Widmaier, an international relations professor at the Australian National University, speaks to TaiwanPlus about the debate between U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
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00:00This debate was seen as a big test for Kamala Harris in particular because
00:04she's relatively unknown by the American public. How do you think she fared?
00:09I think the immediate consensus was that she did quite well. She did everything
00:13that she had to do. She stood up to Trump from the first minute when she shook his
00:18hand and kind of took him off guard all the way through the debate in terms of
00:23everyone knowing that she was going to try to fluster him to serve bait that he
00:27would take and he took the bait repeatedly and then articulating a good
00:31solid middle-of-the-road policy agenda. She argued for targeted tax cuts to
00:37first-time homebuyers and small businesses. The issue of abortion is
00:41something that's very important to women and there's a big gender gap that she
00:45has 15 points in her favor and she probably added to that a little bit from
00:49Republican-leaning women one might imagine. So all in all has to be judged a
00:53solid win for Harris. How does this debate leave the chances of both
00:58candidates now? Usually debates are held much later in the American election
01:03cycle and so they have a much more immediate effect on how people vote. So
01:08there is two months is a long time in politics. The last two months have been
01:11historic and unprecedented. No one knows what the next two months hold but the
01:16here and now Harris scored a solid win. This was their first face-to-face
01:21meeting during this election campaign. How did Trump respond to Harris as an
01:28opponent? In terms of Trump's response to Harris this is just testament that
01:33people show you who they are and they are who they are. Everyone knew coming
01:39into this debate that Harris would try to rattle Trump. She strode out,
01:43introduced herself, got into his space with the handshake, needled him about
01:48crowd size, referred to his criminal convictions, just about every annoying
01:53little thing a person could do to get under someone else's skin she did. Now
01:58Trump knew this was coming and the extent to which he cannot seem to
02:03control himself was fully on display there. The American people in polls
02:08prefer Harris as an individual. It's actually because of disappointment with
02:13the economy over the Biden years that they're somewhat skeptical of the Biden-
02:17Harris record. But they seem to like Harris more as a person. This is only
02:22going to reinforce that because Donald Trump could not control himself.