Kamala Harris had no intention of stopping at her podium.

As Harris and former President Donald Trump walked onto the stage for their first presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, the vice president walked across her podium to Trump, where she confidently shook his hand and greeted him.

“Let’s have a good debate,” Harris said.

“Good luck,” Trump responded before Harris returned to her podium.

It was an attempt to assert his dominance, a move Trump himself has made regularly in the past.

Follow the political reporting live here

Harris’s immediate attack in that initial exchange was emblematic of much of the next 90 minutes. It was a stunning contrast to the first presidential debate in June, in which Trump beat Joe Biden by such a margin that the president withdrew from the race.

The debate proved to be a missed opportunity for many of Trump’s allies, who had hoped a solid performance would mark the end of Harris’ “honeymoon” period.

Debates spaced about two months apart produced wildly different results for Trump. Some Trump supporters worried that his latest performance could send him into a tailspin, while others defended his actions.

“Kamala had the burden of convincing voters that she could turn around an economy that was failing because of her tie-breaking votes in the Senate,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a longtime Trump ally who helped him prepare for the debate. “She failed to seize the moment, with President Trump effectively reflecting the economic concerns of Americans.”

“Kamala’s joy doesn’t pay the grocery bills,” he added. “President Trump showed he’s determined to fix what she broke.”

Still, there was concern among some Trump supporters that his disappointing performance less than two months before Election Day was a self-inflicted wound.

“I know everyone in the world has said this, but the inability or unwillingness to realize that he’s being baited and not fall for it is continually astonishing,” said one longtime Republican activist.

Others within Trump’s debate camp, who were granted anonymity to speak freely, said they agreed the performance was lackluster and that Harris sometimes misled him. But they were skeptical that the debate could deliver many votes in an election cycle in which both sides are already entrenched in their positions.

“It wasn’t his best performance, no doubt about it,” said one Trump adviser. “But he did enough to get out of it, I think, without really losing any votes. Like anything, the debate will have a short shelf life. People will move on to whatever comes next.”

Trump has participated in 18 debates during his three attempts at the presidency, making him one of the most experienced debate participants in American political history. In nearly every one of those contests, Trump has been a tour de force, using his hyper-aggressive style and willingness to flood the zone with lies to commandeer most of the oxygen in the room and dwarf his opponents.

“This guy doesn’t play by the rules, which means he has more options, and when someone has more options, he’s a harder person to debate,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, told MSNBC before the debate began. “So I’m not suggesting that this is not just a big stake, this is a huge challenge.”

This time, however, those Trump axioms didn’t play against Harris, who spent the night enticing the former president to focus on the kinds of grievances — like the size of crowds at his rallies — that he’s long fixated on, and conspiracy theories — like Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets — that Trump’s advisers had hoped he would avoid in order to focus on a Harris dossier replete with changes to his policy positions.

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said during a response related to immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a disgrace.”

In a brief spin room appearance after the debate, Trump repeated the debunked story started by his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, and refuted by local officials.

In the same discussion with reporters, Trump said it was his “best debate ever.”

The idea that Trump had lost the debate was so overwhelming that even some of his most loyal supporters were unable to articulate the achievement immediately afterward.

“While I don’t think the debate hosts were fair to @RealDonaldTrump, @KamalaHarris exceeded most people’s expectations tonight,” Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X on Tuesday night.

Musk not only supports Trump, but also funds a pro-Trump super PAC.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said Harris “moved the points a little bit in the betting markets,” while three other Republican sources told NBC News that Trump appeared “angry” when Harris pushed his buttons and sidetracked him after questions about some of his key policies.

Christopher Rufo, a right-wing education reformer and prominent conservative activist, said Harris won the night.

“Harris is slightly ahead on points,” he posted on social media. “This shouldn’t change the race significantly by any means, but she was able to de-risk this event and now the right has lost the narrative that Harris refuses media or engagement. It will be interesting to see if she goes silent again.”

Blaming ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis became a common theme for Trump supporters looking to put a positive spin on the night’s events. On a handful of occasions, the two fact-checked Trump in real time, which his supporters saw as evidence of bias — especially since they did noticeably less of it for Harris. She introduced far fewer falsehoods into the debate.

“I still wonder why a Republican presidential candidate would subject himself to activist moderators who are driven by numbers and undermine every conservative Republican in every debate,” said Ed McMullen, a South Carolina-based fundraiser for Trump who served as ambassador to Switzerland during Trump’s first term.

He said there should have been less focus on abortion, an issue that played a major role after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and has so far proven politically advantageous for Democrats.

“People are suffering in this economy and politicians on the left and the right want to talk about abortion,” McMullen said. “The states have a responsibility now to take action — to get this over with. It’s time to move on and face the issues that real people are dealing with every day.”

Others were specifically critical that debate moderators failed to pay enough attention to Harris’ own background, including her own 2020 presidential campaign, during which she took several positions in the Democratic primaries that are now seen as far-left in the general election.

Among those positions, many of which were outlined in recent CNN reporting on an American Civil Liberties Union candidate questionnaire Harris completed at the time, is her statement that she supports using taxpayer dollars to pay for sex reassignment surgeries for immigrants in federal prisons.

“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment related to gender transition,” Harris wrote. “That is why, as attorney general, I have urged the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to inmates in the state.”

It became a much-discussed topic among Trump supporters.

“Does it seem odd to you that someone could support something as radical as sex reassignment surgery, paid for by taxpayers for convicts and illegal immigrants … and not be asked about it?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump in a post-debate interview.

“I brought it up,” Trump responded. “They weren’t too happy when I brought it up.”

Omeed Malik, a veteran Wall Street executive who has pledged to raise $3 million for Trump, said the former president made a “strong case” for his economic message, which includes cutting regulations, lowering taxes, strengthening the border and ending foreign departments.

“In contrast,” he said, “Harris delivered canned, rehearsed platitudes that failed to defend her administration’s failings on inflation, immigration and foreign policy.”

The evening’s chaos was compounded by Taylor Swift’s post-debate endorsement of Harris. The pop star posted on Instagram that she supports Harris because “she fights for the rights and causes that I believe need a warrior to defend.”

Swift has 283 million followers on Instagram, far more than the number of people who voted in 2020.

During an early broadcast of “Fox and Friends,” Trump again defended his debate performance and predicted that Swift would regret her endorsement.

“I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift,” he said, adding: “She’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”