NBC’s Chuck Todd applauded Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday for how she handled the presidential debate against former President Trump, arguing she outperformed her predecessor, President Biden.
"It is fascinating to me that how the Harris campaign has — has decided to take Trump on, belittle him, make him small. He’s not this menacing figure that — that is threatening to destroy America the way Joe Biden was painting him or, to a lesser extent, even Hillary Clinton," Todd said on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "Like this is — and this is borrowing a page from how Barack Obama dealt with Donald Trump. Now granted, Obama never actually faced him in a campaign, but it was — it was a belittling. It was the whole Gary Busey shot."
"This stuff does get under his skin," Todd said. "He can’t handle it. And we’re seeing—I mean, this is why I—if I were in the LaCivita/Wiles shoes I would not put him up against her again, because the abortion contrast alone. And that’s the most important thing about this debate."
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"He disagreed with J.D. Vance," host Andrea Mitchell said.
"It is the most important part of this debate. He gave that unforced error in that answer," Todd replied. "Joe Biden could have never done what Kamala Harris did. And that’s why Joe Biden couldn’t win this election" due to alleged discomfort with the abortion issue. "What she said, talking about humanizing it, Joe Biden couldn’t even bring himself to utter the words ‘abortion ban’ and she called them Trump abortion bans."
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Todd also underlined how Harris outperformed Biden on the debate stage.
"I think of all of the back and forth, this was the most substantive, and this was a reminder, I think, of why so many Democrats were convinced Biden didn’t have what it took to win this campaign, because you needed to make reproductive rights among the front and center issues," the political analyst said. "He was uncomfortable speaking about it, you could tell. I mean, I’m just thinking about just the anecdote she shared. Joe Biden never would have been able to bring himself to share that anecdote."
ABC has been widely criticized for how it moderated the debate, in particular Linsey Davis' controversial "fact-check" against Trump about abortion.
Trump had spoken about abortions performed in the ninth month of pregnancy. He referred to former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam's infamous comments on third-trimester abortions.
"The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother," Northam said at the time.
