Vice President Kamala Harris began the debate Tuesday night with a power move—walking right up to a befuddled Donald Trump and shaking his hand. It signaled who was the boss, and she took command of the debate from the start. For 90 minutes, Trump was forced to respond to Harris’ attacks while she ignored his.
In question after question, Harris took hard, focused, and effective swipes at an increasingly agitated Trump. Increasingly rattled, Trump’s voice sped up, louder and louder until he was yelling into his microphone, sounding hysterical, repeating lies like “after birth abortions”—provoking a rare fact-check from the moderators. In fact, more than one.
“I’m not in favor of an abortion ban,” Trump barked, which will set off the right wing after he flopped all over the place on whether he’d vote for the Florida ballot initiative legalizing abortion in the state. (Trump ultimately said he will vote against abortion rights in his state.)
He said he didn’t talk to his vice presidential nominee, which doesn’t speak well for either him, Sen. JD Vance, or the ticket overall. Then he claimed he has been a “leader” on IVF, which will further enrage his evangelical foot soldiers.
And to what end? No one who believes in choice is going to believe Trump is their friend.
Forty point difference with undecided voters on their abortion answers. Widest gap I’ve ever seen in debate dials.
— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) September 11, 2024
Harris hit Trump for sabotaging the bipartisan immigration deal in Congress, and then mocked him for his boring rallies, inviting viewers to actually attend a Trump rally to see for themselves for his nonsense. Trump took the bait, saying crazy things like “Harris pays people for her rallies”—something easily disproved by the eye test.
Moderators couldn’t help but offer a forceful and repeated fact check when he insisted the racist lie that “Haitians are eating dogs and cats”—pushed by his own running mate—is real. Harris burst out laughing. It was next-level unhinged, and will almost certainly feature prominently in post-debate clips.
YOU STUPID MF’ers JUST GOT TRUMP TO REPEAT YOUR LIE ABOUT THE PETS. CONGRATS ON SETTING THE NEWS STORIES TOMORROW BY LYING SO TRUMP PICKS IT UP AND SAYS STUPID SHIT.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) September 11, 2024
Trump also attacked the FBI; claimed he was shot because of Democrats, even though his assailant was a registered Republican; insisted Democrats are a threat to democracy; cried that he wasn’t given enough credit for his disastrous COVID response; sputtered Harris is “against the defund the police”; claimed solar farms are a problem because they take desert soil; demanded all sorts of people be prosecuted; claimed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was supposed to bring in the National Guard during his Jan. 6 insurrection; claimed that it was a good thing that Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban is called a “strongman”; yelled “our country has gone to hell” and that he could’ve “let [the country] rot”; and flubbed the name of the top Taliban leader—and flubbed it confidently wrong.
He claimed in nearly every answer that the Biden-Harris administration was the worst in the history of the world. His sophomoric hyperbole doesn’t play in his own rallies anymore, and it certainly wasn’t playing Tuesday night. It was repetitive, rote, tedious, and boring.
And for all the media hysteria about Harris’ policy plans, when asked by moderators about Trump’s Obamacare replacement plan, it was clear he had none. Pressed for a plan, he stuttered, "I have concepts of a plan."
In a just world, Trump’s utter inability to have an answer should be the end of his charmed media coverage and campaign.
He also talked. A lot.
The ABC moderators have let Trump speak for 9 minutes longer - roughly 30% more - than Harris. The way they've "rigged" the debate is by letting him hang himself with his own stream-of-consciousness rambles. pic.twitter.com/QWkHCE6L7K
"Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people," she quipped, sticking the shiv in. "Clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.”
She ignored his attacks (beyond laughing or looking on bemused—fertile territory for a million TikToks). And by ignoring his attacks and launching her own, Trump couldn’t help but take the bait every single time. She landed hits on his crowd obsession, his anti-choice record, and his love for dictators.
“It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on Day One,” she said. She slammed his desire to give up Ukraine to Russia.
“If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv,” she said. “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”
She was human, with personal anecdotes and heartfelt appeals to her work for the American people—a stark contrast to shouting, angry Trump.
And she landed perhaps the best blow of the night when she asked people to pay attention to Trump’s rallies, and how he never talks about what he will do for voters, focused instead on conspiracy theories and personal grievances. Or was it her brilliant soliloquy on Trump’s history of divisive racism?
Trump never made eye contact with Harris. Meanwhile, Harris would look right at Trump when ripping him apart. That, in itself, was as much a power move as her initial handshake.
The moderators, David Muir from "World News Tonight" and ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, were perfect. No nonsense. They followed up when Trump wouldn’t answer a question. They fact-checked Trump’s nonsense multiple times, on everything from abortion to the 2020 election.
Believe it or not, the first debate between Trump and President Joe Biden barely budged poll numbers. The pre-debate narrative was “Trump lies and Biden is old,” and that’s exactly what people saw. It was baked in.
For this debate, it was “Trump lies and Harris doesn’t have any ideas.” And yes, people saw Trump lie, but they also saw him lose his composure, spittle flying as he screamed about dogs and cats getting eaten and other nutso conspiracies.
As for Harris, they saw her in prosecutor mode, knowing her shit, and dominating Trump. She began the night with a power move handshake, and she ended it with another one: moments after the debate ended, she called for a second debate.
Will it move numbers? Who knows? Voters are weird. But if conservatives truly do hate weakness, they will be profoundly shook at how weak, small, and old Trump looked Tuesday.
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