“While much of the focus the past few days has rightly been on Vice President Harris’ total and complete shutdown of Trump, it shouldn’t be lost in the shuffle that Trump took at least five toxic positions on the debate stage. Trump may try to say something outrageous at his ‘press conference’ today to try to change the subject from his disastrous debate performance. But he should instead be pressed to explain these five toxic positions he took during the debate,” writes Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams in a memo that then lists off Trump refusing to say whether he’d veto a national abortion ban, still claiming he won in 2020, using “we” to refer to January 6th insurrectionists in that unintentionally correct acknowledgement, the “concept of a plan” for replacing Obamacare, and failing to say Ukraine should drive the Russians out of their territory.
“The debate was a mess for Trump, yes. But these answers are simply toxic. In almost any other circumstance, any one of these answers might drive days of a media crisis for the candidate. Taken together, they are an unmitigated disaster. The voters who will decide this election are repulsed by positions like these. Maybe this is a big part of why Trump is so loudly truthing ‘THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!'” Sams continued, urging reporters to needle him on these items. “Trump should have to answer for these positions. I know it’s unlikely his warm blanket Sean Hannity will ask, and that Trump doesn’t want to have to account for them on another debate stage, but he should have to say what the ‘concepts’ are that he is considering to repeal the ACA,” and so on and so forth.