It was a bad sign for former President Donald Trump when his campaign declared victory while his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was ongoing.
Like his premature declaration in the wee hours after Election Day 2020, it gave off an aura of desperation, not confidence.
By Wednesday morning, there were abundant signs that, frankly, Trump lost his debate against Harris. It might not even have been close.
Despite the reputation he forged in GOP primary debates, Trump has struggled in general election faceoffs. Polls famously showed he lost all three debates against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. His first debate against then-former Vice President Joe Biden in 2020 is widely regarded as one of the worst debates ever.
It remains to be seen how much Tuesday's debate will matter. Research has shown that debates only slightly affect the election, but even in an age of close races, Trump and Harris remain separated by very little in the small number of swing states that will decide the presidency.
Trump, of course, still won the White House in 2016 despite his struggles against Clinton. But once again, he has, largely by his own doing, put his campaign in a difficult spot.
Here are the signs that Trump added to his debate loss total.
The prediction markets gave Harris a slight edge.
Heading into the debate, Trump held a narrow lead on PolyMarket, a crypto-based betting market that counts election forecaster Nate Silver as one of its advisors. By the end of the 90-minute faceoff, Harris emerged as the favorite at the day's conclusion for the first time in over two weeks. Her lead did not last long, though, as by Wednesday afternoon, Trump was narrowly ahead again.
Prediction markets are far from perfect. As Vox reported, in 2020, traders on PredictIt, one of PolyMarket's competitors, gave Clinton, at one point, the third-highest chance of winning the Democratic nomination even though she wasn't running.
Prediction markets operate on shaky legal ground in the US, potentially making their user bases less reflective of the actual populations that control their results. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives, has gone back and forth with PredictIt over its operation. In May, the government regulator moved to explicitly ban defacto betting on politics entirely.
There are some benefits. Traditional, high-quality polling is less responsive to real-world events that shape elections. Such events can bedevil pollsters if they occur while their survey is already in the works, potentially leading to a sample of voters that come to the table with very different experiences.
Trump's beloved stock market isn't any better.
There might be an even better measure than the prediction markets. Due to Trump's willingness to mix his business with politics, his initials are once again a publicly tradeable asset. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, were down on Wednesday.
Traders have shown that they will sell off shares in the struggling company when there's negative news about Trump.
CNN's poll showed Trump lost by quite a large margin.
To compensate for the lag time in traditional polling, TV networks often conduct so-called "snap or flash" polls right after the debates to catch debate watchers. By design, the poll only includes voters who watched the debate — leaving out many Americans who vote but may only watch some or none of the face-off. Historically, such polls also may reflect a bias of supporters who feel like their candidate won the debate.
That being said, CNN's flash poll found that Harris won the debate by a 63% to 37% margin. Likely in response, not long after the debate, Trump began to post on Truth Social various screenshots of unscientific polls conducted on X. Trump has long loved these types of straw poll surveys.
The Murdoch Media Empire also wasn't pleased.
Rupert Murdoch-owned media properties couldn't help but broadcast and air signs of Harris' victory.
In the immediate aftermath, Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume pronounced on the network, "Make no mistake about it. Trump had a bad night."
The New York Post's frontpage blared a headline that described Trump as "rattled."
And the Wall Street Journal editorial board, long considered the voice of the establishment wing of the GOP, deemed Harris the winner as well.
"Ms. Harris, less well known than the former President, had the most to gain and our guess is she helped herself. She clearly won the debate, though not because she made a powerful case for her vision or the record of the last four years," the editorial board wrote.
Instead, the board concluded, Harris won by simply goading Trump.
"Harris set the trap so he spent much of the debate talking about the past, or about Joe Biden, or about immigrants eating pets, but not how he'd improve the lives of Americans in the next four years."
Trump and his allies blamed ABC
Before the debate ended, Trump's campaign officials were lashing out at ABC News over moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis' live debunking of some of Trump's claims.
"3 on 1, just as expected," Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, wrote on X during the debate.
Donald Trump Jr., Trump's eldest son, added: "Weird how the hack moderators at @abcnews are only "Fact checking" Trump and allowing Kamala to lie nonstop. The Fake News is the enemy of the people!"
Their complaints gave the impression of a frustrated coach lashing out at the officials instead of absorbing their team's culpability in a loss.
Look what it made Taylor Swift do.
Taylor Swift, the biggest star on the planet, came off the sidelines and endorsed Harris minutes after the debate ended. Swift's support was always expected, but her silence led some fans to theorize that she might stay out of the 2024 race.
The fact she announced her endorsement right after the debate only added to the narrative that Democrats were ready to spike the football. For what it's worth, Harris' campaign claimed it was surprised by the timing of Swift's announcement.
Trump is backing away from a rematch.
Before Biden dropped out of the race, Trump teased the president for months about debates. Amid a back and forth with Harris over debates, Trump declared that he wanted three face-offs with her. Some Trump allies are still floating the possibility that another debate will happen.
But for now, Trump is running away from his former bravado — boasting like Apollo Creed that there "ain't gonna be no rematch."
"In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, "I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!" Well, it's no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night," Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. "Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why would I do a Rematch?"
To be fair, Creed, the fictional Rocky Balboa's foe, won their first fight. Then again, Creed famously loses the rematch and his title by a decisive margin.
Fittingly, the Trump-Harris debate was in Philadelphia.
