(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Kamala Harris fared better in Tuesday night’s debate than expected, according to Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald LP chief executive who co-leads Donald Trump’s transition team.
“Kamala Harris did outperform her expectations, I think she did a nice job,” Lutnick said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “But Donald Trump, he hit every point,” the executive said.
As to whether Trump will debate Harris again before the November election, that’s down to Trump, according to Lutnick.
“We all have our opinions, but obviously I love when Donald Trump debates,” Lutnick said. “I’d be happy if he did it again, but he knows better and he understands, and I’m on his side.”
Lutnick criticized Harris for not doing more media appearances and said she didn’t engage in questions on inflation. He also said “it’d be nice” if the debate moderators hadn’t gotten involved and only made comments “against Trump.”
“I wish Kamala Harris would give press conferences and answer questions and show the country who she is,” Lutnick said. “It’s important for people to hear what she has to say, to hear her out and to have her be out there and stop hiding in the basement.”
Lutnick also said his futures exchange FMX will launch Sept. 23 to create “a break in the monopoly” built by CME Group Inc. It will kick off by trading SOFR futures in September and will roll out Treasury futures in the first quarter of next year, he said.
“We’re going to bring competition to the market and I am jazzed, jazzed, jazzed,” he said.
Lutnick spoke from his firm’s New York office during the company’s annual charity day to partly commemorate the 658 Cantor employees lost in the September 11 terrorist attacks. That experience has shaped his support of Trump, who has taken a hard line on Islamist extremism.
“We’ve got to take out terrorism and we’ve got to take out Jihad,” Lutnick said.
--With assistance from Sonali Basak, Matthew Miller and Katie Greifeld.
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