Who won the day? Trump

In a campaign where the closing days have been more shaped by remarks from the surrogates than the principals, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have faced obstacles posed from within.

For Trump, that’s meant trying to find a lifeboat — or, today, a garbage truck — away from his racist and misogynistic Madison Square Garden rally where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, among other surrogates, poleaxed Trump’s closing message by calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

For Harris on Wednesday, that meant contending with President Joe Biden’s controversial comments that the “only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” according to a White House transcript, which included an apostrophe in “supporter’s” — while Republicans accused Biden of saying “supporters.”

Harris spent much of the day playing cleanup, saying she disagreed “with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.” It stepped on her closing message she delivered the night before to a crowd of 75,000 supporters at The Ellipse.

“You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career,” she said. “I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”

Trump’s campaign spent much of the day kindling outrage, going so far as to take reporters’ questions in a garbage truck — itself an underscoring of Hinchcliffe’s racist joke. “How do you like my garbage truck?” he said. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

Biden isn’t running for president, of course. And the outrage poses a tension with both Trump’s comments that the nation suffers from “enemies within,” and his running mate JD Vance defending Trump’s rally by saying “we have to stop getting so offended” just days earlier.

But for Trump, the controversy allowed him a pressure-release valve to change the subject from his rally. He won the day.

We ask ourselves every night: Who won the day? Now we’ll tell you — every day. Last night, it was Bad Bunny.