Kamala Harris made Donald Trump look old, angry, incoherent and crazy in debate | Opinion
In the world of Donald Trump, there are places in America where babies are born and then executed due to lax abortion laws, and where immigrants in Ohio eat cats and dogs and other pets.
Trump’s fictional apocalyptic vision collapsed on Tuesday night under the spotlight of a neutral presidential debate, moderators who pointed out lies and a capable adversary in Kamala Harris.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said about a 2020 election that Trump still does not accept. “He is having a difficult time processing that.”
Opinion
If a successful presidential debate reveals the clear differences between competing candidates, Tuesday night’s event in Philadelphia was an unmitigated victory for the American people thanks to challenging questions and the responses by both Trump and Harris.
It was the same Donald Trump that showed up to debate Joe Biden this June, an angry former office holder whose comments were an unfortunate combination of insults and lies. It took a historically awful performance by a deteriorating Biden for the aftermath to not be all about Trump. That is not about to happen this time around. Kamala Harris proved to be more than Trump’s match on facts, command of subject area and the human temperament necessary to hold the nation’s highest office.
Trump threw everything he had in his arsenal of venom. He called Harris a Marxist. That she has destroyed the country. That she hates both Israelis and Arabs. That she pays voters to attend her rallies. That she wants to do transgender operations of illegal aliens who are in prisons. And that those undocumented aliens who are not in prison have arrived here from mental institutions and insane asylums, but they are somehow smart enough to take jobs from Blacks and Latinos. And as violent crime is rising here (it is not), it is falling in the rest of the world as a result (it is not).
There is no rationalizing any of this.
Harris listened closely. She shook her head no, nearly incessantly, as the onslaught of lies unfolded. She would laugh at times. She was never rattled.
It’s a shame that analyzing a debate is akin to revisiting a crime scene. Some substantive moments came and went. Harris is concerned that Trump’s plan to saddle huge tariffs on imported products from China and other countries will increase the prices of these products in this country, akin to a sales tax. Trump, living in his personal bubble, somehow believes that other countries will shoulder all of the pain.
The clearest difference of all was Trump’s worst issue, abortion, and it is more so now than ever before. Trump’s central lie, an oldie but a goodie, is that “every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican,” wanted to repeal the federal right to abortion (with limitations) affirmed by the Supreme Court 51 years ago in its Roe vs. Wade decision. In appointing a court that repealed a woman’s right to choose, “I did a great service in doing it,” Trump said.
Harris said she would “proudly sign” a bill to reaffirm a federal right to choose. Trump repeatedly ducked the question. “The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with their body,” she said.
If a Republican was running for president who lived in reality and stuck to a platform to improve economic affordability in this country and better manage the borders - two weaknesses of the last four years for various reasons - this could have been an important battle of ideas this campaign season.
But that is not what is happening, and Tuesday night revealed it for anyone who wished to see it. What should have been a debate of ideas was lost in a sea of lies and self delusion. Donald Trump got clobbered Tuesday night in the debate that actually happened. Harris proved her presidential mettle and then some. But it was Trump who did himself in by saying things so outlandish, the moderators in real time had to remind viewers of the actual truth. Trump’s campaign is on a collision course with political suicide.
