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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump praised their respective running mates — Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance — as their campaigns worked to spin how well they performed at Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate.

Despite several missteps from both candidates over the course of the debate, Harris said in a fundraising email Wednesday morning that Walz “offered a powerful showcase of the kind of leadership we deserve,” and Trump said in an interview Wednesday there was “brilliance” in Vance’s debate performance.

With just over 30 days until Election Day, the debate stage offered both candidates an opportunity to appeal to undecided voters and share their running mates’ visions for America — and now the Harris and Trump campaigns and surrogates are working to smooth over any moments where the vice-presidential candidates stumbled.

Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told CNN Wednesday morning that the campaign is “excited” by Walz’s performance.

“I think Vice President Harris’ reaction is the same as voters across the country, independent voters in particular, and those undecideds who saw Gov. Walz lay out a very clear vision for where he and the vice president want to take this country,” Tyler said.

Tyler called Vance a “slick debater,” but said “Gov. Walz clearly articulated the case in a plain-spoken way.”

But Walz struggled to explain why he had in the past “misspoke” about being in Hong Kong and witnessing the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, despite the weekslong protest concluding in June, months before he traveled there.

Walz argued “my community knows who I am” and that he’s “not been perfect” and can be “a knucklehead at times.”

“No, I think he was pretty clear,” Tyler said when asked if Walz needed to go further than his comments during the debate in clearing up his misstatement on the protests.

“He said he misspoke. He was there in August. I think he’d earlier said it was June. This is a matter of months, 35 years ago. He was there during the summer of protests,” Tyler added.

In a play-by-play live commentary on social media, Trump painted Walz as appearing “nervous,” incompetent and even “weird.” Trump in particular seized on Walz struggling to answer for the alleged discrepancy in his visit to Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, portraying him as a liar.

Walz’s performance at times was shaky, with some suggesting if Walz did more news interviews since becoming the vice-presidential pick, he’d have been better prepared. When pressed on that, Tyler said “no,” it would not have helped, before pointing to a more aggressive strategy in campaign’s final weeks.

“I think what you will see him and the vice president continue to do over the course of the final month of this stretch is use every tool that we have at our disposal to continue to reach the voters,” Tyler said. “Yes, that will be inclusive of more media appearances, more interviews.”

On the campaign trail on Wednesday, Walz graded his debate performance: “Not bad for a football coach,” he said at a York, Pennsylvania, rally.

“I did not underestimate Sen. Vance as a slick talker,” Walz said. “But I also called out there — you can’t rewrite history. You can’t rewrite history.”

Trump, who said in a video posted before the debate that he planned to call out his own running mate if he made a “mistake,” praised Vance’s performance throughout Tuesday night.

“JD crushed it!” Trump posted on his social media following the conclusion of the debate.

And on Wednesday morning, in a phone call with Fox News Digital, Trump doubled down on his praise, saying Vance’s performance “reconfirmed” his choice of vice-presidential candidate.

“JD was fantastic last night — it just reconfirmed my choice,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “There was a brilliance to what he did.”

Trump campaign’s senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita immediately claimed victory following the debate, saying in a statement that Vance “unequivocally won tonight’s debate in dominating fashion,” and claimed “it was the best debate performance from any vice-presidential candidate in history.”

Walking into the spin room right Tuesday night, the former president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., who had strongly supported Vance as Trump’s running mate, told reporters that “there’s nothing to spin.”

Asked about the moment when Vance refused to say if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that the American public are “not worried about that.”

Yet the Harris campaign was quick to zero in on the exchange.

A Harris campaign official claimed a focus group of undecided battleground-state voters they conducted said this back-and forth was the “biggest gap” between the two candidates. The campaign clipped the exchange for a new ad released Wednesday morning.

Jason Miller, senior Trump campaign adviser, in the spin room Tuesday night said, “JD’s a very likable guy. I think his life experience connects with voters.”

“I think Sen. Vance helped us win today because he had a tremendous performance,” Miller said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Wednesday unveiled a vastly expanded $50,000 tax benefit for new small businesses and a lower long-term capital gains tax than that was proposed by President Joe Biden in his budget blueprint, one of her clearest breaks yet with Biden.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Harris said, “And while we ensure that the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, we will tax capital gains at a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators, founders, and small businesses,” before proposing a 28% long-term capital gains tax on people making $1 million a year or more.

Biden previously called for a 39.6% tax rate on capital gains. It is unclear where Harris stands on the additional 5% tax. While Harris’ presidential rival former President Donald Trump has not explicitly outlined a position this cycle, in 2016 he supported capping capital gains taxes at 20%, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for a 15% capital gains tax.

A source familiar with the plan told ABC News that Harris believes a more moderated approach toward capital gains taxes will balance with other measures she supports to crack down on billionaires and big corporations. Harris said on Wednesday that she supported a minimum tax rate on billionaires. The source said she also supports raising the corporate tax rate and quadrupling taxes on stock buybacks.

However, the move comes as Harris and Trump seek to sharpen their economic messages to voters before facing off in their first debate on ABC News in Philadelphia next week. Trump is scheduled to give his own economic policy address on Thursday.

Harris’ announcement is part of a broader effort to generate a record-breaking 25 million new small business applications in her first term if elected, and her tax plan would represent a tenfold expansion of a $5,000 deduction already available to entrepreneurs to help cover startup costs.

An official familiar with Harris’ plans said the $50,000 benefit would help offset the $40,000 it costs on average to start a small business. The terms of the proposal would also allow eligible enterprises operating at a loss to delay utilizing the benefit until they turn a profit.

Some profitable businesses could also defer the full benefit, opting to instead use it across multiple years by deducting only earnings from the first year of business and utilizing the remainder of the total $50,000 in future years, according to literature circulated to reporters from the Harris campaign.

Harris said her administration would also seek to develop a standard deduction for small businesses to reduce the burden and cost of filing taxes, and remove barriers around occupational licensing, which inhibits workers from working across state lines.

While the literature circulated to reporters did not estimate the program’s cost, Harris told the crowd that the the plan would provide access to venture capital, support “innovation hubs and business incubators,” and increase the number of federal contracts with small businesses.

Many aspects of Harris’ proposed tax program would likely require congressional approval. The current 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law by Trump, is set to expire next year.

Harris also said that her administration would provide low- and no-interest loans to already existing small businesses. The campaign’s literature detailed a fund that would enable community banks and Community Development Financial Institutions to cover interest costs as small businesses expand in historically underinvested regions.

“We will have a particular focus on small businesses in rural communities, like right here in New Hampshire,” she said.

Both Trump and Harris have repeatedly sought to strike populist economic tones in their messaging, promising to provide relief to middle-class earners and even finding agreement on a proposed phase-out of federal income taxes on tipped wages.

Under pressure to define aspects of her policy agenda, Harris unveiled a slew of additional economic priorities last month that included, among other policies, restoring the American Rescue Plan’s expanded Child Tax Credit, proposing $25,000 in down payment assistance to qualifying first-time home buyers, capping prescription drug prices and a federal ban on price gouging in the food sector.

Meanwhile, Trump has advocated for broader reforms to U.S. economic policy, which have included tax cuts for businesses and wealthy individuals alongside an across-the-board tariff hike on imports to the U.S., generally, with tax rates as high as 60% to 100% on Chinese goods.

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(WASHINGTON) — Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., on Wednesday introduced a privileged resolution on the House floor to censure Rep. Clay Higgins. R-La., over his now-deleted post on X in which he called Haitians “thugs” and called Haiti the “nastiest country in the western hemisphere.”

Higgins was apparently reacting to reports that the leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, invoked a citizen’s right to file charges against Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, over threats and disruptions the city has experienced since Trump and Vance spread unsubstantiated claims about legal immigrants there.

“Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP,” Higgins wrote. “All these thugs better get their mind right and their a– out of our country before January 20th.”

Trump claimed in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that Haitian migrants in Springfield were eating residents’ pets and animals from city parks. The city’s 15,000 Haitian immigrants — most of them who are in the country legally — have filled manufacturing, distribution and warehouse jobs but have put a strain on the city’s resources.

In the wake of Trump’s comments, the city has received more than two dozen bomb threats that have caused evacuations of schools and government buildings. The state has sent in additional state troopers and installed surveillance cameras to deal with the threats.

By its rules, the House must take up a privileged resolution within two legislative days, but that won’t happen until after the November election when the House returns from a long recess.

Horsford spoke on the House floor on Wednesday and said Higgins’ post was inciting “hate and fear.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the post after votes on Wednesday and called Higgins a friend “and a very frank and outspoken person. He’s also a very principled man.”

“He was approached on the floor by colleagues who said that was offensive,” Johnson continued. “He went to the back. I just talked to him about it. He said he went to the back and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. That’s what you want the gentleman to do. I’m sure he probably regrets some of the language he used. But you know, we move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”

But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in a statement, wrote: “The disgusting statement by Clay Higgins about the Haitian community is vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the United States House of Representatives. He must be held accountable for dishonorable conduct that is unbecoming of a Member of Congress.”

“Clay Higgins is an election-denying, conspiracy-peddling racial arsonist who is a disgrace to the People’s House. This is who they have become. Republicans are the party of Donald Trump, Mark Robinson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Clay Higgins and Project 2025. The extreme MAGA Republicans are unfit to govern,” Jeffries said.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he spoke to Higgins and urged him to take the post down.

“Clay and I had a conversation about it, and I said I think it’s a bad statement – you should take it down,” Donalds said. “He came back a minute or two later and said he was going to remove it.” 

Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost said he believes the post breaks the House code because it came from Higgins’ House social media account.

“It’s completely disgusting,” Frost said. “And a racist and bigoted tweet and I think it shows a lot about the Republican Party – the Republican conference – that they can’t just step up say, ‘You know what? That is wrong that he shouldn’t have posted it,” but yet their best defense is that he deleted the tweet.”

Donalds and congressional sources said a group of Democratic CBC members, including Reps. Frederica Wilson and Sheila Cherfilus McCormick, discussed the tweet with Higgins on the floor.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said she was frustrated that Republicans initially blocked Horsford’s motion to censure Higgins.

“It’s despicable. It’s outrageous, and to see Republicans go along with it means that you’re known by the company you keep — they’re complicit in this,” Lee said.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., said she wants Higgins to be punished.

“It was hateful and he meant it,” she said, adding, “He needs to be censured.”

When reached by CNN about the post, Higgins told the news outlet it was “free speech.”

“It’s all true,” Higgins said. “I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want.”

He added: “It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”

ABC News has reached out to Higgins for comment.

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