On Wednesday, on the anniversary of the attacks, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris clasped hands at the 9/11 monument in New York, momentarily putting politics aside hours after sparring in a heated presidential debate.
The somber show of solidarity stood in sharp contrast to the previous evening, when the Democratic vice president brutally confronted the Republican former president, shocking him and making him go on the defense.
Even though polls indicate that Harris won the debate handily, any sense of unity that resulted from the commemoration of the 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks is probably going to be fleeting, given how close the US race is with fewer than eight weeks remaining.
The 78-year-old Trump came out swinging even before the ceremony, claiming — without evidence — in an interview with Fox News that the ABC News debate in Philadelphia was “rigged” against him.
“It was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything and not correcting with her,” he complained — referring to pushback from the moderators to some of his brazenly false statements.
57.5 million Americans watched the debate, more than the 51.3 million who watched the disastrous performance in June that pulled President Joe Biden out of the race, according to early numbers from ratings agency Nielsen.
Regarding the Harris campaign’s demand for a second debate, Trump seemed undecided. He initially said on social media “why would I do a rematch?” but then declared he would be prepared for two more.
