Trump, Harris teams reflect on tumultuous summer: Debate, Trump assassination attempt and Biden drop out

Senior staff from the Trump and Harris campaigns met at Harvard University’s Campaign Managers Conference on Friday to discuss the summer of 2024, which gave way to an unprecedented political season that included a disastrous debate performance for President Joe Biden, a subsequent Democratic nominee for Vice . President Kamala Harris, and two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump.

Much of the debate focused on the 107 days with Harris as the new Democratic nominee and how the campaigns had to adjust their strategies on a much shortened timeline. The following are highlights from the sprawling, wide-ranging conversation.

Campaigns spar over the candidate’s work ethic

Sparks flew toward the end of their discussion when a member of the Trump campaign said the former president was “working out” Harris.

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

The Harris campaign pushed back at Budowich, saying its strategy was successful and not the Trump campaign’s doing them.

“Your strategy was a good strategy, but you have no idea how hard the people on the other side worked,” said Quentin Fulks, primary deputy campaign manager for the Harris campaign. “I have no idea how hard you all work.”

Budowich interjected, saying he was referring to Harris and not the entire campaign, but Fulks claimed Harris was working hard.

“I didn’t say she didn’t work hard. I said she became unemployed,” Budowich explained.

Fulks defended the vice president, explaining that it was not a fair comparison because the Harris campaign had a different strategy that he said was not successful. He reiterated that it was nothing related to her work ethic.

Asked by ABC News’ Brittany Shepherd about the fallout from President Joe Biden appearing to call Trump supporters trash on a call organized by the nonprofit Voto Latino during the final weeks of the campaign, Fulks said Democrats need to do a better job of not creating themselves. -inflicted wounds – points out that some in his own party were very quick to criticize Biden after the White House and Biden himself tried to clarify the statement, compared to what he sees as the Republicans’ very long leash on Donald Trump.

“Our people again continue to shoot ourselves in the foot,” Fulks said.

“The discipline on the right is better than the discipline on the left,” he added. “And it’s not about morals, values, any of that. It’s literally about discipline and seeing the big picture of how you win and what you can swallow to win.”

Democratic fallout from the Biden-Trump debate

Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign chairman, was unfazed by the repeated messages about Biden’s debate performance, repeating that he had a “bad night” and pointing to Obama as a precedent for incumbents having uneven debates, claiming , that the campaign saw a real path for Biden to win the election despite it all.

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

Without pinpointing a specific moment, Fulks admitted that early in the debate, campaign staff could tell Biden was not performing.

Trump’s team was far more pointed, saying it was clear Biden “wasn’t going to survive” the election cycle “about a minute” into the debate, according to Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager.

“I think for us, and with all due respect to the president, we felt there were challenges that were on full display during the debate,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director. “There have also been days when these challenges seem less obvious. That night was not one of them.”

Referring to Biden’s debate performance and what followed, O’Malley Dillon said, “There probably hasn’t been a more difficult period for a campaign team to navigate.”

Blair quickly interjected, noting that two assassination attempts and navigating the charges were also challenging to navigate, and O’Malley Dillon later acknowledged the difficulty of the Trump team’s summer, mentioning that she reached out to Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign manager, in the aftermath .

When 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 a “slow bleed.”

Fulks later agreed with a point LaCivita made earlier in the day: Visuals matter when running, and the Biden campaign wanted to publicize Biden and do a series of events to counter his debate performance.

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

The Trump campaign said it was preparing for what ended up being the inevitable, adding that it began tracking and opposition research and polling alternative candidates as early as May on Harris, but also varied in other possible candidates , such as Michelle Obama and former Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton.

assassination attempt on Trump

Clearly a defining political moment as much as it was a harrowing personal moment for both campaigns, the first assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, “severely limited where we could campaign because after the first attempt, told they us basically, lock down, no more outdoor events,” said Tony Fabrizio, chief pollster for the Trump campaign. “And if we want to do an outdoor event, for example, it required twice the delivery time.”

The Harris campaign, for its part, withdrew its negative advertising in the days following the assassination attempt.

“We were also aware of the way we campaigned. “There is no place for political violence in democracy. And we wanted to make sure our campaign reflected that in this moment,” added Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris’ campaign manager.

Biden drops out, Harris gets nominated

The Harris campaign, pressed several times on whether it was made aware of Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race before he made the announcement, or whether there were any conversations beforehand about the possibility of Biden dropping out , claimed it found out in short order. before he made his announcement and that there were no prior talks.

Asked if there was any chance another Democrat would be the nominee besides Harris, Fulks said there is always a possibility, but noted that Biden wanted to throw his support behind Harris. He added that a Democratic primary this late in the cycle would have been messy.

“From my perspective, Vice President Harris was the only sensible choice to make. But I think President Biden did — she’s his vice president and she was loyal to him and he decided to support her,” said Fulks.