Trump Took the Bait. Harris Kept Her Cool.

For MAGA diehards, Tuesday’s debate provided the kind of transgressive catharsis they have come to expect from their favored candidate. All taboos were violated: The 2020 election was stolen. Illegal immigrants are stealing pets and eating them. Joe Biden isn’t even the real president. 

But for the minority of undecided voters who tuned in to watch the two major candidates vying for the White House, Kamala Harris was the normie and Donald Trump was the madman. 

The debate started with cordiality. Harris walked over to Trump’s side of the podium, met her opponent for the first time, shook his hand, and introduced herself. Then after some initial jitters, she zeroed in on her prey. 

She was strategic. Around the half-hour mark, she invited the television audience to attend Trump’s rallies where “he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter.” Then, she laid the bait, landing a blow about the passion of his crowds, stating: “People leave early out of boredom.” 

This was the moment that Trump began to unravel. He shot back with a retort: “People don’t go to her rallies,” before going on to assert that she had to bus in her supporters. But then his words sprawled. Millions and millions of illegals are coming into the country. The current administration is risking World War Three. “In Springfield they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said of migrants moving to the city. Then he repeated a line from his convention speech. If Harris wins, “we will end up being Venezuela on steroids.” 

What? 

That response earned him a rebuke from one of the ABC moderators, David Muir, who said the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, has stated there have been no reports of illegal immigrants eating the pets of residents. Trump then insisted that he saw people talking about it on television. 

Even when Trump had the facts on his side, his answers were delivered in such disjointed staccato that his message was lost on the listener. Consider his response on Afghanistan. This should have been a layup, given the fact the Biden-Harris administration presided over a humiliating withdrawal that left our Afghan allies behind and culminated in a suicide bombing attack that killed 13 U.S. service personnel. But Trump, instead, rambled about the detailed sequence of the withdrawal in the agreement that his administration had originally negotiated, and then pivoted to complain about the $85 billion worth of “beautiful military equipment” left on the battlefield. 

When Harris turned to the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, where young bigots bearing tiki torches chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” she repeated an out-of-context line from Trump’s initial remarks about the rally, making it seem like he believed these marchers were among the “fine people on both sides.” That is not what he said, and in those same remarks he made it clear that “white nationalists” and “neo-Nazis” should be “condemned totally.” This should have been an opportunity for Trump to clap back, but instead he sputtered about how the claim was debunked by—wait for it—Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. 

And that’s how the debate largely went. Harris would attack. When Trump countered, he couldn’t stay on message, usually preferring to bring things back to the border crisis and the millions and millions of illegal immigrants coming into the country. But even this line of attack, which should have been a kill shot given Harris’s status as the nation’s actual border czar, didn’t stick. This is because Trump couldn’t get beyond his hyperbole and lay out a clear argument, such as pointing to the Biden administration’s decision to reverse his border policies on day one. 

“The latest national polls still say the race is a toss-up, with Trump in the lead in key swing states. But if an election this close is decided on style over substance, Harris has the edge—for now.” (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Toward the end, it seemed that Trump forgot he was even debating Kamala Harris. Indeed, his best zinger of the evening was directed at Joe Biden, when he asked Harris to wake him up at four in the afternoon. 

None of this is to say that Harris was able to offer substantive explanations as to why so many of her positions in 2024—from fracking to defunding the police—are the polar opposite of what she claimed to support when she ran in 2019 for her party’s presidential nomination. And Trump can also credibly claim that the moderators were willing to fact-check him in real time, while letting Harris slide. They didn’t, for example, offer any real-time reproval for Harris’s line about Charlottesville, while Trump’s assertion that some pro-abortion states would allow a mother to “execute” a baby right after she had given birth was quickly corrected. 

That said, Trump offered little substance himself. When asked about what his plan would be to replace Obamacare, he gave zero details and said he had “the concepts of a plan.” 

Debates are not elections. The latest national polls still say the race is a toss-up, with Trump in the lead in key swing states like Pennsylvania, and the result could come down to turn out. But if an election this close is decided on style over substance, the cool, in-control Harris has the edge—for now.

Arguably, the greatest damage Trump did to himself involved the 2020 election. Last week, in an appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast, he finally acknowledged that he had lost “by a whisker.” It’s what he should have said after he lost a slew of court challenges at the end of 2020. But, during the debate, he was back to insisting that he had won, claiming he had spoken “sarcastically” on that podcast. 

“There is so much proof, all you have to do is look at it,” he said of his supposed victory, before going on to add there was no way he could have lost in 2020. 

If he keeps this up, there may be no way he can win in 2024.

Eli Lake is a Free Press columnist. Follow him on X @EliLake, and read his piece “Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting.”

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