NBC's Chuck Todd on Wednesday praised Vice President Kamala Harris for how she handled the presidential debate with former President Trump, arguing that she did a better job than her predecessor, President Biden.
“It's interesting to me that the Harris campaign has decided to take on Trump, to belittle him and make him look small. He's not the frightening person that Joe Biden has portrayed him to be, or even Hillary Clinton to a lesser extent, threatening to destroy America,” Todd said on MSNBC's “Andrea Mitchell Report.” “It takes its cue from the way Barack Obama dealt with Donald Trump. He never actually faced Trump on the campaign trail, but he did belittle him. That was the Gary Busey attack.”
“This is something that's bothering him,” Todd said. “He can't stand it. So if I were LaCivita/Wiles, I wouldn't put him against her again. The abortion issue alone is a contrast. That's the most important thing in this debate.”
NBC's Chuck Todd argued that Harris not only outperformed former President Trump, but also outperformed his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
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“He ran against J.D. Vance,” host Andrea Mitchell said.
“That's the most important part of this debate. He made a self-destructive error with that answer,” Todd responded. “Joe Biden could never have done what Kamala Harris did, and that's why Joe Biden didn't win this election,” she said, citing her discomfort with the abortion issue. “What she said was, when we were talking about humanizing it, Joe Biden couldn't even utter the words 'anti-abortion,' and she called it Trump's anti-abortion.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (R) and former U.S. President Donald Trump attend the second presidential debate at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, Tuesday, September 10, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Todd also highlighted Harris' superiority over Biden in the debates.
“I think that was the most substantive part of the exchange, and a reminder of why a lot of Democrats thought Biden couldn't win this election, because he needed to put reproductive rights front and center,” the political analyst said. “It was clear that Biden wasn't comfortable talking about it. I mean, I'm just thinking about the anecdote that she told, that Joe Biden would never have been able to tell that anecdote.”
ABC has been widely criticized for the way it moderated the debate, particularly for Lindsey Davis' controversial “fact check” of Trump on abortion.
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Trump was speaking out about abortions occurring in the ninth month of pregnancy. He was referencing infamous comments made by former Democratic Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, about late-term abortions.
“The infant will be delivered, the infant will be kept comfortable, if the mother and family so desires, the infant will be resuscitated and then a discussion will take place between the physician and the mother,” Northam said at the time.
