MSNBC guest singles out 'panic moment' that showed Trump knew he lost debate with Harris

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday, Democratic campaign strategist Jim Messina claimed Donald Trump likely knew his 90-minute debate confrontation was a disaster for his campaign the moment he stepped off the stage if not sooner.

Speaking with hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist, Messina singled out what he called Trump's "moment of panic."

Unsurprisingly, Messina began by praising the performance of Harris, telling the hosts, "She did two other things last night that I think were more crucial. The first is she passed the commander-in-chief test, she had to pass that test. After Barack Obama had his first debate with John McCain, people saw him as president and the race was over after that."

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"The second thing was she [Harris] was able to frame this race in future versus the past and where voters want to go," he continued. "When I was running Obama, Bill Clinton would call me up in the middle of the night and say all elections are in the future; win the future and you win the election and he played into that. He played into the past and anger, continuing to litigate the 2020 election — voters hate that!"

"It's not about them, that's about him," he elaborated. "He just continued to double down on it over and over and doing himself damage that even he couldn't get out."

"You know you're in trouble on the campaign when you have to put the candidate in the spin room just being himself," he pointed out. "That is a panic moment."

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