Inside the media circus that still surrounds America’s presidential debates

This is what it’s really like to be in the “spin room,” the anachronistic institution that — aside from 2020, for obvious, COVID-related reasons — has existed as a parasitic outgrowth of America’s quadrennial presidential debates since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign. Each campaign trots out a variety of surrogates, the bulk of which are high-profile governors and members of Congress, to proffer talking points to reporters before and after the debate.

It’s a cheap production as far as political theatre goes, despite the considerable resources invested by both campaigns and media organizations.

More importantly, it’s probably the only scenario in which you could place six governors, nine senators, roughly a dozen House members, and a host of other political celebrities before hundreds of reporters in the same room, and still somehow manage to generate almost no newsworthy information.

That’s largely because, as media critics have strenuously argued for decades, it’s an environment where candor and honesty are in short supply. There’s a message to deliver, there’s a victory to declare, and the events of the debate itself often have a strikingly limited bearing on what any surrogate says. Before the onset of Twitter (now known as X), one could still argue that that the spin room played an important role within our conflict-driven media ecosystem: In such an environment, it’s crucial to get each campaign’s perspective, and there’s no better way to do that than putting everyone in one place.

But these days, there’s a zombie-like quality to it. You’re here because everyone else is here, and this is how we’ve run debates since 1984. We’re going through the motions. If you’re a reporter looking to “get the perspective” of a campaign, just check your email inbox. Over the course of Tuesday’s debate, I received 16 “fact check” emails from the Trump campaign, eight such emails from the Harris campaign, and dozens more from members of Congress and downballot candidates congratulating Harris and Trump on their respective “wins.”

“I mean, it’s a media construct,” Rep. Robert Garcia told me ahead of the debate. Don’t blame me for participating in the game you all have set up, in other words. This was the media-friendly California Democrat’s second time spinning for the top of the ticket this year. In June, he was part of the team that was forced to explain away President Joe Biden’s debate performance, indisputably the worst in American history. Tonight, his job would undoubtedly be easier, but I wondered: Was he prepared to declare Harris the victor, no matter what happened? “What I’m going to say is the truth, which is that she’s going to perform great tonight, because she always does,” Garcia said. “I have like, zero doubt.”

Ultimately, the most “newsworthy” thing that took place in the spin room was Trump’s surprise arrival, which triggered something of a stampede of reporters toward the cordoned-off bubble erected around him. Conventional wisdom would tell you that his decision to show up is a sign that he lost the debate — why bother to spin if you won?

But even the former president, larger-than-life as he is, was often drowned out by the overlapping screams of the hundreds of reporters hoping to get his attention, and the only noteworthy tidbit he offered was a noncommittal answer on whether he would agree to another debate.

“They want a second debate because they lost,” he told reporters before claiming the moderators were working against him. “It was obviously three on one.”