Days after his debate drubbing by Harris, Donald Trump is still flailing

Days after a debate that he hoped would restore his 2024 election lead over Vice President Kamala Harris, former president Donald Trump has found himself digging deeper and deeper into a hole of his own making.

He is trailing Harris in fundraising, in most polls taken following their face-off in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and now in the poll-of-polls averages that political forecasters look to when making their predictions of who will win the November presidential election.

Perhaps most importantly, he is beginning to fall behind Harris in nearly all of the key states where voters will, under America’s byzantine electoral system, determine who shall serve atop the country’s executive branch for the next four years.

It’s a stunning and quick reversal of fortune for the former president, who has spent most of the time since he announced his third presidential campaign leading in those same polls.

Despite the candidate’s messaging troubles, the Trump campaign still believes they are ahead.

A polling memorandum released by the campaign on Thursday states that the campaign’s internal surveys found he has gained ground against Harris in the wake of his debate performance.

That’s at odds with most public polling, which shows Harris tied or ahead in battleground states and opening up a lead nationally that is exceeding the margin of error. Either way, Trump doesn’t seem to be changing his course or focusing on policy.

At a press conference in California on Friday, he devoted much of the time he spoke to repeating baseless racist smears of pet-eating by Haitian immigrants, which not only have drawn condemnation from the White House but have resulted in credible bomb threats against schools and municipal buildings in Springfield,