The best summation I heard of Tuesday night's debate came just moments afterward from MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, who described Donald Trump as an abuser who abused the process, the debate moderator, and tried to abuse Joe Biden.
"It felt like an assault on our senses," she said. "It felt like an assault on our presidential campaign process. It felt like another assault on our politics, because that's what it was."
Wallace was convinced Trump had prepped for the debate, despite his own claims to the contrary, and that his wackadoodle performance was all part of the plan.
My guess is that she's partially right—that him going in and dominating and not allowing Biden to get a coherent thought in edgewise was the plan, but Trump over-executed—and not in a good way. He literally lost control of himself because, to his core, he's an unhinged tyrant who's enraged that he has to answer to anyone, let alone the massive majority of American voters who are very publicly and humiliatingly about to fire him for the very first time in his miserable life. Daddy can't bail him out this time, and coming face to face with his own inescapable failure is a reality he simply cannot compute. So like a caged animal, he's lashing out at everyone and everything in his sight.
In fact, here's one of Trump's debate preppers, Chris Christie, effectively admitting Trump botched the plan:
"I think on the Trump side, it was too hot. ... I think that was the right thing to be aggressive, but that was too hot," Christie told ABC News following the debate. "That potentially can be fixed. Maybe, maybe not."
Not. Though we don't have official numbers yet (Update: down 36% from 2016), Tuesday night's debate viewership will undoubtedly be the biggest audience of any of the three debate nights. And given Trump's onstage man-tantrum, an ever-dwindling pool of viewers are going to be willing to sit through his cringeworthy assault on our democratic norms, such as having a civilized debate of the issues.
Case in point: In a post-debate panel, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell told a story about receiving a personal message from a mom who lives in Washington, D.C. but doesn't do political work. Under an image of her 11-year-old daughter watching the debate, she wrote: "My soul hurts."
If Trump had any daylight whatsoever to woo back the suburban women who defected from Republicans in droves in 2018, that's gone. He crashed and burned. Nothing but toast left now, with $70,000 worth of tax deductible golden wisps glued to it.
But Trump, blissfully prattling away in his unreality bubble Wednesday, doesn't quite seem to get it. "Biden REFUSED to use the term, LAW & ORDER! There go the Suburbs," Trump tweeted. Actually, Biden did clearly say the words "law and order," but that's a much less consequential part of the equation than the fact these white college-educated women watched a sweaty old man-child come unglued before their very eyes and, in some cases, the eyes of their children. It was indeed soul crushing. That's not the future they want for their kids. And as Wallace pointed out, suburban women overall were surely grateful Biden didn't escalate the situation into a pandemonium of violence—a literal World Wrestling Federation brawl between two American presidential candidates on the world stage.
Trump's performance was so bad, in fact, that Wallace was sort of baffled by what the end game was. If this was the debate plan for Team Trump, "The question now becomes, why?" she asked.
Rachel Maddow responded: "Well, it's a display of disdain and abuse for the system, because [Trump] thinks the system is about to turn him out of office. So he's running not against Joe Biden—he's running against the election."
That’s true and it’s been true for months now. Trump hasn’t lifted a finger to win over any new voters. His main goal has been to ensure confusion and chaos erupts in the aftermath of the election. From the debate stage, Trump went so far as to tell the extremist group the Proud Boys to “stand back and standby,” and they are celebrating the order from their commandant.
Unfortunately for Donald Trump, he and a faction of his followers—however violent—don’t get to dictate his fate. We, The People, do. And we don't have to suffer his petty thin-skinned remorseless abuse any longer.
Trump has spent the past four years abusing the system entrusted to him along with the public he was supposed to be serving, and now the system, fortified by that very same public, is about to fight back.