NewsNation host Chris Cuomo suggested during a Thursday podcast that his audience should be critical of the way former President Donald Trump shook Vice President Kamala Harris’ hand during their debate.
When Harris and Trump took the stage for the ABC News debate on Tuesday night, the vice president approached Trump to shake his hand and introduce herself. On “The Chris Cuomo Project,” Cuomo claimed that Trump’s demeanor during the handshake came across as off-putting to viewers.
“From the first moment, it was exactly what Trump should have never allowed it to be. When Kamala Harris walked over — ‘Yeah, hello Kamala, Kamala, hi’… from that moment, it was a, ‘What the fuck are you doing? What are you doing?’ Just forget politics,” Cuomo said. “Forget politics. Imagine what your wife, what your husband would say if you were in a situation like that, and the woman came up to you to shake hands, and you treated her like that. From that jump, you’re giving it away. You know the idea of ‘fake it till you make it’? You want to be president of the United States? Nobody wants someone representing them who’s going to treat that woman like that in that moment. We both know it. Why? From the moment it started, he allowed it to be the only thing that he could not let it be. Shocked me.”
Pollster Frank Luntz commented on Wednesday that the “contempt” former President Donald Trump displayed toward Vice President Kamala Harris during their debate could have alienated enough female voters to seriously harm his campaign. Luntz pointed out that Trump rarely looked at Harris throughout the debate, a gesture that may have come across negatively to many viewers, particularly women.
'Forget Politics': Chris Cuomo Really Wants You To Be Offended By Trump-Harris Debate Handshake pic.twitter.com/I481JgTkwV
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 12, 2024
“For every woman, that reminds them of their husband or their boyfriend simply ignoring what they have to say, having disrespect and contempt,” Luntz said. “And it’s agitating to women watching. Trump can’t just win with men, he’s got to get women … Donald Trump reminds women of their first husband’s divorce lawyer. That is just absolutely disastrous. Right now, the gender gap is roughly even. She’s up 15, 17 points among women, he’s up 13, 14 points among men, and that’s who you get the gap that there are more female voters, but it is this mirror image of each other … And you’re going to see this in the polls, take about four or five days to show up, but I do think that this has the potential to be a fatal mistake on Trump’s part.”
During a Tuesday episode of his podcast, Chris Cuomo defended the motivations of Donald Trump’s supporters, arguing that they back him not because they are “like Trump,” but because he serves as “a disruptive force of what they want changed.” Cuomo suggested that Trump’s appeal lies in his ability to challenge the status quo and represent the changes his supporters seek rather than a reflection of their personal traits.
