Logan Church: Inside the Harris-Trump debate spin room

They came in marching with their security and staffers, their names emblazoned on banners for the hundreds of reporters and camera crews to see.

Within minutes of today's debate finishing, the spin room leapt into life.

It's called such as it's traditionally where allies of the presidential candidates, other politicians, campaign members, or — in today's case — a candidate themselves, talk to the media to defend their side's performance.

Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth told me there was a clear victor.

"Obviously Kamala won, and I'm going to encourage her to do another debate.

"She reached the American people tonight — she laid out a plan for how to move us forward," the Illinois senator said.

"He [Trump] just continued to just spiral out of control, he became more incoherent as the night went on. You could see him start to sweat."

Conservative activist and former deputy Trump campaign manager David Bossie strongly disagreed.

"Donald Trump spoke clearly to the undecided voters out there," he told me, before saying he believed the two debate moderators were biased against Trump.

"The world was at peace four years ago, the world is on fire today … Donald Trump did an awesome job against a three-on-one debate trying to get that message out."

Former Trump opponent in this year's election Vivek Ramaswamy was also convinced the debate wasn't fair.

"I think this was a disgrace, and I think this was unprecedented to see a three-on-one debate. I do trust the voters to see through that charade that was that debate," he said.

One of the most interesting conversations I had tonight was with Anthony Scaramucci. He formerly served as White House communication director for Trump, before he was dismissed. He's now a vocal anti-Trump voice in the US.

After some small talk about New Zealand — he was in Auckland last week — I asked him what he made of his former boss' performance on the debate stage.

"[Trump] was out of sorts tonight, he was not prepared for the vice president Harris that showed up," he said.

"He had in his mind this stereotype of her that he has been describing to others.

"And so I think he was preparing for someone who had less intellectual depth, less stage presence, less force of personality, and less knowledge of policy."

He didn't think Trump was well prepared.

This was shown, he said, by the fact the Republican candidate only arrived in the city on his plane just over two hours before the debate.

"He wasn't prepared for it and I think it was an ego thing … he's a bit of a sexist, a bit of a misogynist, he said, 'this is going to be no problem.'"

There were two big surprises in the spin room tonight.

Firstly that Trump came out, himself, to front hundreds of reporters — all of whom sprinted across the room en masse, like bees to honey, when he entered the room.

"We thought it was our best debate ever — it was my best debate ever, I think, and it was very interesting," he said to us.

Unfortunately for Trump — and the second surprise — his appearance came only minutes before Taylor Swift posted on her Instagram account to her 238 million followers that she had watched the debate and would be voting for Harris.

It certainly wasn't the line of questioning that Trump was hoping for, as he ignored repeated attempts by journalists to ask him about it.

At the end of it all — as we were all rushed out of the room ahead of the construction crews coming in to dismantle all the tables, chairs and banners — it was clear that, while there were certainly fireworks tonight, the political needle won't have changed much.

Most people who were planning on voting for Trump this morning will likely still be voting for Trump tonight. By the same token, most people voting for Harris this morning will still be voting for Harris tonight.

The fight now will be to convince the small number of people who might be open to changing their mind, as well as those who consider themselves to be independent.

This race is so close the election is entirely in their hands.

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