Donald Trump takes victory lap after vice presidential debate
While both sides claimed victory in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence say they got the bigger boost, CBS News’ Nancy Cordes reports.
Or at the very least, it’s a psychological advantage for the Trump campaign after one of Trump’s roughest weeks.
In Nevada, Trump said Pence’s performance showed how great his own judgment is for choosing Pence as a running mate.
“Didn’t Mike Pence do a great job?” Trump asked the crowd at a Reno, Nevada rally Wednesday.
In Grantville, Pennsylvania, Pence had this to say about his own performance: “Some people think I won...From where I sat, Donald Trump won that debate.”
Pence and Trump took their victory lap through three battleground states Wednesday, with Trump praising both his running mate and himself.
“Mike Pence did an incredible job and I’m getting a lot of credit because that’s really my first so-called choice, that’s my first hire as we would say in Las Vegas,” Trump said at another Wednesday rally in Nevada, this time in Henderson.
In Philadelphia, Tim Kaine laughed off critics who said that his performance was a little too fiery.
“The debate was a little feisty,” Kaine said Wednesday. “I mean, I gotta admit -- I am Irish.”
He admitted, however, that he might have gotten a little carried away.
“I got dinged a little bit even by my wife for like interrupting too much,” Kaine said.
Kaine acknowledged that Pence’s smooth style helped him dodge many of Kaine’s attacks, but noted that the Republican VP candidate refused to stand up for Trump’s positions.
“At some points, I felt like both me and Mike Pence were debating Donald Trump,” he said.
And Hillary Clinton chimed in from a fundraiser in Washington, D.C.
“When your own running mate won’t defend the top of the ticket, I think that tells you everything you need to know,” she said at a Women’s Leadership Forum event.
Clinton campaign aides say there’s no second-guessing about Kaine’s aggressive strategy.
They argue their main goal was to show that Trump’s own running mate can’t back his views on Muslims, on women, on foreign policy -- and they feel that Kaine achieved that.