Kamala Harris Humiliated Trump
The vice president left Trump looking old, diminished, and utterly unhinged
It is the most important election in living memory, with nothing less than the survival of American democracy and the fate of Western civilization hanging in the balance. The stakes simply could not be higher. But for no one is this election more existential than Donald Trump himself, a man who faces that classic dilemma eventually faced by nearly all dictators: achieve and retain power or find yourself dying in prison.
In an extremely tight race, this debate was a crucial opportunity to gain a competitive edge, and he fumbled the ball. The current vice president mopped the floor with Trump, in a victorious performance widely hailed as revelatory, laser focused, and for many Democrats still stung by Joe Biden’s disastrous campaign-obliterating debate, utterly cathartic. If nothing else, Harris has proven herself to be an agile and worthy adversary, severely disappointing Republicans who have universally cast her as an unserious moron, a mere appendage of Joe Biden’s unpopular administration, a “DEI hire,” and a “dumb as a rock” communist.
To her credit, Kamala Harris has defied the pundits and prognosticators who have so clearly underestimated her, and she showed herself to be skilled and supremely determined to win. She certainly outperformed any and all expectations, to be sure, including my own.
For his part, Donald Trump utterly failed to define Harris nor hone in on her weaknesses, and instead spent much of the debate either lapsing into incoherence, or walking into obvious traps laid by the vice president. Harris knew exactly where Trump’s many psychological soft spots were, and she targeted his fragile ego relentlessly and with surgical precision, as when she claimed that people were tired of listening to Trump ramble on and on about windmills and Hannibal Lector, and were thus now “leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
This was clearly too much punishment for him to bear, and in his righteous fury, Trump responded with something so ridiculously absurd it’s almost hard to believe, spewing a right-wing internet conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are consuming domestic pets.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” This bizarre xenophobic outburst has been memefied, laid on beats and mixed into songs, and is currently spreading like wildfire over the social media landscape. It was perhaps the debate’s most memorable moment, perfectly capturing Trump’s clownish attempts at racist fear-mongering, which is basically the only thing he has on offer for American voters at this point. Meanwhile, in the split-screen the Vice President’s contemptuous laughter conveyed her absolute incredulousness: was he seriously saying this?
Apparently he was. The ABC moderator David Muir quickly fact-checked the former president, saying that Springfield’s city manager denied this outlandish story, to little effect. A deflated Trump limply argued that he saw it on television, as Harris laughed and jeered at him, eventually saying: “talk about extreme.” Ouch. This was perhaps Trump’s lowest point in a debate filled with them.
The reality star
It was fascinating watching Trump almost implode in a medium he intuitively understands, and which he has used to dominate American politics and discourse for nearly a decade: reality television.
It’s the seedy world from which he emerged, though last night’s debate showed that Trump has lost something of the mental agility, dark charisma, and basic rhetorical ability central to his shtick. He looked old, tired, and unsure, certainly compared to his young new opponent, and he seemed utterly diminished in comparison. He was unable to keep himself from getting lost in his own rambling evasions, and betrayed little grasp of his own policies, when he acknowledged them at all. He was thoroughly outmatched by a woman he has characterized over and over as a blathering idiot, merely underscoring his own failure.
For many Democrats, it felt like ecstasy watching Trump get pummeled in his own arena. In my view, Harris clearly delivered the best performance out of any of the Democrats (or flaccid Republicans) to have faced Trump on the debate stage so far. She certainly looked far better than her bumbling boss, an aging President Biden, and outperformed Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she faced a younger, sharper, and far more agile version of Trump.
But if Trump was dangerous and unpredictable back then, he seemed played out now.
Indeed, Trump landed pitifully few good punches, unlike Harris, who landed right hooks and upper cuts in devastating combinations throughout the night. She compared her middle-class origins to Trump inheriting $400 million dollars from his father. She said that the leaders of America’s European and NATO allies are “so thankful that you are no longer president,” which she capped by saying Vladimir Putin “would eat you for lunch.” She explained that global leaders laughed at him, and consider him a “disgrace” and “weak,” turning Trump’s favorite taunts against him, and leaving him looking angry and rattled, face set in a glowering scowl.
Simply put, Trump had no answer for the prosecutor’s barrage. She laced into him for his many legal problems, reminding American voters that he’s due to be sentenced for the 34 felonies he was convicted of in November, right after the election. “He’s been prosecuted for national security crimes, economic crimes, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault, and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing.”
Harris pressed her case, and kept the former president on defense much of the night. She had him explaining himself and his long list of failures and foibles, something which the ABC moderators sometimes assisted in. He was asked about January 6, the violent culmination of his months-long coup d’etat, when he falsely convinced his supporters that he won an election he lost. His response was perfectly typical and cynical: he had nothing to do with it, it was Nancy Pelosi’s fault, all he did was give a speech.
It was a laughable, pathetic response that Americans know is rubbish.
Liabilities
Harris really hit her stride after getting into abortion, a topic Trump has struggled mightily with in recent months, as he’s veered and flip-flopped between various positions. When pressed on it, Trump lamely tried to deflect what is a major political liability for Republicans, claiming that “everyone” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and returned to the states.
It’s a ridiculous answer, frankly, and Trump appeared to be running away from one of the GOP’s central political planks. Harris immediately responded with a long, impassioned soliloquy about women being forced to have babies resulting from incest and rape. “The government, and Donald Trump certainly, shouldn’t be telling women what to do with their bodies.”
She spoke about pregnant women “bleeding out in the car in the parking lot” because doctors are afraid of being arrested for treating them, “survivors of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term, they don’t want that.” She accused Trump of wanting to have women arrested for seeking health care, or crossing state lines to get an abortion. The Harris campaign said that her remarks on abortion tested extremely well with swing state voters, among the best of the night.
Trump tried to respond by calling himself a “leader on fertilization,” despite the GOP’s ardent desire to ban the IVF procedure because of the use of human embryos. Likewise, Trump insisted that doctors are “executing babies” in states with legal abortion, accusing the governor of Virginia of killing newborns. “He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.” The ABC moderators fact-checked him on this absurd notion, one of Trump’s many routine falsehoods, though that didn’t stop him from repeating it.
Ultimately, though, it was a sloppy, muddled response to a major political vulnerability for Republicans. Certainly, nobody is likely to forget that Trump appointed the Supreme Court who struck down Roe, that he celebrated its demise, and that his party would impose a federal abortion ban if given the chance, as J.D. Vance has explicitly stated. His response: “I didn’t discuss it with J.D., in all fairness.” He was trapped, and he looked cornered as he tried to weasel out of his own radical policies. As for the infant executions he claims are happening across America, this kind of unhinged rhetoric might appeal to far-right pro-life activists and QAnon types, but it’s unclear how many independents and moderates are going to believe this nonsense, much less be won over by it.
Similarly, Trump had difficulty squirming out of yet another political liability: Project 2025, the sinister right-wing authoritarian blueprint drawn up by his allies at the Heritage Foundation, and endorsed by his extremist running mate, J.D. Vance. Again, Trump ducked, and claimed he had nothing to do with anything, that he hadn’t read it, literally saying “I don’t want to know.” It was classic Trumpian hot air, and entirely unconvincing: “I have nothing to do with project 2025.” Sure, Donald.
Indeed, Trump seemed to be running scared from many of his own policies, hardly a confident or rational way to run for president. At best, he offers more of the same rancid stew of lies, hate, extremism, xenophobia, and evasions Americans know so well by now. At this point, it’s all a bit tired and stale, well-worn from years of endless repetition.
If nothing else, this debate should have reminded everyone that Donald Trump is a dangerous, uniquely unfit, and psychologically unwell individual, an aging autocrat and an existential threat to American democracy and the world at large. Obviously, the question of Trump’s fitness was settled long ago, but for those who haven’t been paying attention, this debate demonstrated it once again, unambiguously. Trump is a dangerous, innately dishonest con artist, and 67 million Americans saw that in stark relief last night.
Of course, no one ever accused the American electorate of being overly intelligent or perceptive, and the fact that this is even a competitive election at all, that Trump somehow seized the Republican nomination yet again, tells the story of the danger this country is in, and will be in, until Trump is soundly defeated and exiled from American politics, permanently. With about 8 weeks left until this election, I’m hoping that day is nearly here.
I agree, I find it distressing millions of people find Trump a viable candidate. He reeks of incompetence and evil intentions - as does the GOP and it’s fascist leanings.
Alexander you are a marvelous writer- it’s always a pleasure to read your work.