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Comity and comedy are too much to ask for at this fraught moment. And at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner — a traditionally bonhomie-fueled event where presidential candidates trade jokes sometimes at their own expense and frequently at their rivals’ — both were in short supply.
So, too, was one of the two candidates.
Fresh off of winning the biggest single-candidate television audience of the campaign season with a Fox News interview drawing more than seven million viewers, Kamala Harris ditched the campaign mainstay. She chose to hold a battleground rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, opting to send a video message instead.
Trump pounced. And then he won the day.
“Kamala should be there like almost every other Presidential Candidate in their history, except Walter Mondale, who lost 49-1,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “They didn’t give me the option of a video message nor would I have done it. This is very disrespectful to everyone involved. She should be here, or lose the Catholic Vote!”
Harris got roasted by Jim Gaffigan — who plays her running mate on NBC’s Saturday Night Live — as the first candidate to miss the event since 1984. Harris’ advisers likely saw the harshness Trump subjected Hillary Clinton to when they got together in 2016.
“These days it’s really a pleasure anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance,” Trump ribbed himself in his remarks. “Anytime I don’t get a subpoena I’m very happy.”
Sure, Harris’ absence from the dinner comes as Trump has canceled at least two cable news interviews this week, both with CNBC and NBC News, and has dodged a 60 Minutes interview and a final debate with Harris.
And it’s unclear just how far such an insidery, old-school event will reverberate beyond the bowels of Manhattan. But the Catholic vote is certainly going Trump’s way. Catholic voters in all seven battlegrounds back Trump over Harris, according to a new poll this week conducted by the National Catholic Reporter.
For all of the advantages Harris brought to the table when President Joe Biden yanked his presidential campaign off stage left, Democrats lost a steady performer and devout Catholic who had a history of doing well in northeastern Pennsylvania.
At a moment when voters say they are eager to learn more about Harris, she instead left the stage to Trump.
We ask ourselves every night: Who won the day? Now we’ll tell you — every weekday. Yesterday it was Harris.
