Kamala Harris 'Power Move' Handshake with Donald Trump

Videos of Vice President Kamala Harris' handshake with former President Donald Trump as the two candidates took the debate stage went viral on social media, with many users praising Harris' action.

As Harris and Trump were introduced by the ABC News' moderators and took the stage in Philadelphia Tuesday night, Harris walked directly toward Trump's podium and reached out for a handshake. As Harris approached her Republican opponent, she introduced herself by name, and said, "Let's have a good debate." Trump responded by saying, "Good to see you, have fun."

Tuesday is the first time that Harris and Trump have met face-to-face, and marks a pivotal moment in the already unprecedented 2024 race. It was also the first time that there was a handshake between presidential candidates since the 2016 campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toECrUqRQRw

"Trump either wasn't expecting the handshake or he didn't want to do it," wrote Jemele Hill, a contributing writer to the Atlantic.

Progressive podcast host Kyle Kulinski added, "it looked like Trump didn't want the handshake but Kamala went for it."

"Aggressive pursuit of handshake=good," said MSNBC host Jen Psaki.

A Little Thought:

You could see when Trump walked on stage that he was going straight to his podium with no handshake or greeting for his opponent but Kamala Harris being the better mannered of the two wasn’t having it.

It was worth watching just to see the handshake and of course hearing Trump make the statement below:

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” said Trump. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president in post signed ‘childless cat lady’

In an Instagram post published minutes after the US presidential debate ended, Swift said ‘the simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth’

Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, in a post on Instagram published minutes after the US presidential debate, saying the Democratic candidate would be the “warrior” to fight for the rights and causes she believes in.

“As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can,” Swift wrote on Instagram to her 283 million followers late on Tuesday, adding: “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election”.

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

In her statement, Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote.

Swift also addressed AI-generated images shared by Donald Trump in late August that falsely depicted Swift and her fans endorsing his campaign for president.

She said: “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”

Swift said she had watched the US presidential debate between Harris and Trump, and urged her fans to do their research on “the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most”.

She signed off “Childless cat lady,” a reference to comments made by Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. The picture that appeared with the post was of Swift with her cat Benjamin Button, one of three she owns.

Speaking in 2021 to the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vance called senior Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

The Trump campaign dismissed Swift’s endorsement, with spokesperson Karoline Leavitt saying: “This is further evidence that the Democrat party has unfortunately become a party of the wealthy elites.

“There’s many Swifties for Trump out there in America,” Leavitt said.

Swift endorsed Democratic candidates in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020, but until Tuesday was yet to back anyone in 2024.

Asked about Swift’s endorsement of Harris on Tuesday, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz said: “I love her songs, but I want to live in a world where liberals make my art and conservatives make my laws and policies.”

Some of Swift’s fanbase had already started already mobilising for Harris. The Swifties for Kamala Coalition officially launched in late August, raising more than $138,000 for the Democratic candidate in a virtual rally featuring Carole King and the senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, said on MSNBC he was “incredibly grateful” to Swift. “I say that as also as a cat owner, a fellow cat owner,” he said, adding that her endorsement took courage, “and that’s the kind of courage we need in America”.

In 2012, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland tried to establish the correlation, if any, between celebrity endorsements and votes. They used Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama ahead of the 2008 Democrat primary to examine whether it had any effect on the polls.

The researchers concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement was worth about a million votes for Obama, who beat his main primary challenger, Hillary Clinton, by about 270,000 votes in the states used in the sample.

Swift is a popular figure nationwide; especially among Democrats. An October 2023 Fox News poll found that 55% of voters overall, including 68% of Democrats, said they had a favourable view of Swift. Republicans were divided, with 43% having a favourable opinion and 45% an unfavourable one.

Cayce Myers, a professor of public relations at Virginia Tech, said Swift’s endorsement may have an impact on the election because it may encourage younger Gen Z fans to vote.

Myers added that while celebrity endorsements do not necessarily translate into meaningful turnout, Swift’s endorsement was going out to a particularly large fanbase, and was focused on women’s rights, an issue that favours Democrats.

A Little Thought:

The cake don foundation of Donald Trump must be dripping in the same way as his friend Rudy Guilianos does after hearing about Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris.

Trump should be in no doubt that this is a big thing win for the Harris campaign and a disaster for the Trump campaign.

Swift is the biggest pop star in the world with 283 million followers on Instagram, if she persuades just 10% of her following how to vote then it can spell disaster for Trump once again.

Trump Rushes to Spin Room to Save Face After Disastrous Debate

The former president visited with reporters after the ABC debate as his surrogates struggled to defend his performance

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia.

The clearest sign that Kamala Harris’ campaign thought she won the ABC presidential debate was the fact that her elated surrogates in the post-debate spin room were gloating about “finally landing a punch on Donald Trump” — and floating the possibility of a rematch.

The clearest sign Trump knew he lost was the fact that Trump himself appeared in the spin room to defend his debate performance on Tuesday night.

Shortly before 11:30 p.m., the former president shuffled into the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where an armada of surrogates, including Robert Kennedy Jr., Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, former advisor Stephen Miller, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — as well as running mate J.D. Vance — had been struggling mightily to make a case that Trump did anything other than burst into flames on the stage.

“We thought it was our best debate ever — it was my best debate ever, I think, and it was very interesting,” Trump, who was immediately met with throngs of reporters and cameras, said. “The polls are very good but beyond the polls, I felt very good, I had a good time doing it. I hate to speak about our country so negatively, but that’s what happened, they ruined our country.”

The former president’s visit to the spin room caught much of Team Trump by surprise. Some aides received word he would be appearing only just before he walked in, accompanied by an entourage including top advisers like Steven Cheung, Boris Epshteyn, and Corey Lewandowski, a source familiar with the matter says.

Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign official who was present for the mad dash to shove cameras in Trump’s face, said Trump’s surprise appearance “shows fearlessness and confidence. Kamala Harris would never do it.” A Harris aide, who got swept up into the large huddle as Trump entered the spin room, remarked that it was a mistake for the former president to appear and that it looked “desperate.”

“If you’re so confident you won tonight, why are you here? Why not let the performance speak for itself?” one reporter shouted at him.

“Well, I think it did, but people [asked] would I come here? And I made an obligation to a couple of people,” Trump replied.

He was right to be concerned, as his team was struggling to cast the performance as anything less than a cataclysmic disaster for Trump. Asked to address directly whether Trump had a bad night, Sen. Tom Cotton said he had seen “any of the commentary.” Asked why Trump didn’t detail any plans for his next term, Cotton said simply: “You don’t have to worry about what Donald Trump is going to do — you know what he’s going to do.” Lara Trump, his Republican National Committee co-chair, bemoaned the fact that there wasn’t enough focus during the debate on immigration

Even the dead-eyed Stephen Miller was having trouble defending Trump’s fixating during the debate on conservatives’ racist, debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. (“They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our county,” Trump said on Tuesday.) Miller repeatedly referenced a 911 call raising concerns about geese instead; Gaetz referred to the same call when questioned.

The muted reaction from Republicans could not have stood in starker contrast to Democrats’ eagerness to dissect the event.

“We have been waiting for someone to just land a punch on Trump on abortion — since 2016! — American women have been waiting for this moment. It was deeply satisfying,” Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said. “She nailed him. She pinned it on him. She didn’t flinch. And she got him, in his rambling, ranting way to double-down on what he did: He took credit for overturning Roe tonight. He would not commit to vetoing a national ban. She got him on the record.”

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who has led Democrats’ efforts to codify protections for in-vitro fertilization, laughed when asked about Trump’s insistence tonight he was “a leader on IVF, which is fertilization.”

“He obviously doesn’t understand how IVF works,” Duckworth said. “That was really the point in the debate when he began his downward spiral that he never recovered from. He was clearly on the defense, and it was clear he did not know what he was talking about.” Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) pointed to a different moment, the moment Harris invoked Trump’s rallies, as the point at which he “started to unravel.”

It was California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), though, who offered one of the most prescient observations early in the night. Asked how significant the debate would be in the grand scheme of things, he predicted it would be make a difference — because of the way Trump himself would react.

“Donald Trump will not be capable of not overreacting to how badly he did tonight over the course of the next days,” Newsom said, roughly 40 minutes before Trump made his shock appearance in the spin room. “I think this will shape shift in a way that’s even more profound than the evening itself — we will see him reacting to this for weeks and weeks and weeks, with his pity party and his grievance mindset. I’m sure he’ll be complaining about the refs and the rules for weeks.”