In one evening, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris eviscerated Donald Trump at the debate, gained the endorsement of the planet’s most popular performer, and collected an enormous burst of fundraising from Democrats enthusiastic over her performance. If that wasn’t the best few hours in the history of American politics, it had to be close.
Twenty-four hours ago, even usually liberal pundits were warning that Harris was “in trouble,” that her momentum had “stalled,” and that Trump was going to “Gish gallop” (the strategy of throwing so much incoherent information the opponent can’t handle it) all over her in the debate.
What a difference a day makes.
In Tuesday night’s debate, Harris might as well have been holding a technical diagram showing the precise location of every one of Trump’s oh-so-sensitive buttons. And she pressed them all. Gleefully.
Or, as The New Yorker put it, “Kamala Harris, veteran prosecutor, proved beyond a reasonable doubt on Tuesday night that her opponent will always take the bait.”
CNN’s flash poll following the debate shows Harris positively romping over Trump with a 63% to 37% victory. That means that while a bitter core of Trump voters stuck by their man, even a sizable fraction of those that went into the evening proudly wearing MAGA hats came out knowing that Trump had been soundly defeated.
CNN’s polling results were not far off the 67% to 33% results that came from the admittedly terrible performance of President Joe Biden during the first presidential debate. It seems unlikely that The New York Times will be calling for Trump to withdraw from the race as they did with Biden, but they should.
How Harris was baiting Trump into one unforced error after another became obvious early on. No matter what the topic, Harris made sure to insert one shiny little nugget certain to ramp up Trump’s ire: Crowd sizes. People leaving his rallies because his speeches were boring. His felony convictions. And every single time, Trump jumped on the bait, losing his chance to respond to Harris’ policy statements, and becoming angrier and angrier as he realized that his golden opportunity was slipping away.
In the aftermath of disaster, Trump surrogates dutifully trudged out to make his scowling snit seem like a win, but even Fox News knows that Harris took him apart.
“It’s pretty clear to me that on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris won what may be the only debate between herself and former President Trump,” wrote Fox stalwart Doug Schoen, before he turned to the excuse that Trump’s campaign has been pushing the most—blaming the moderators from ABC for fact-checking some of Trump’s most outrageous lies.
But the fact that Fox News felt compelled to tell viewers “don't believe this election is over,” is more than enough to signal just how badly the night went for Trump.
Trump and Reince Priebus
Way out on the heartland of Trump, Newsmax matched post-debate statements from surrogate (and former Trump staffer who still somehow supports Trump) Reince Priebus by trying to convince their viewers that Trump's horrible performance wouldn't cost him votes. The debate “won’t move the needle” says Newsmax while Priebus assured Republicans that Trump’s supporters are locked in and being absolutely shellacked in a debate wasn’t going to change that.
Meanwhile, even if The New York Times editorial board was mum, the “paper of record” brought in their whole editorial page team to rate the event. At the end of the night, 13 writers out of 14 handed the debate easily to Harris.
Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of libertarian magazine “Reason,” wrote that “many of Trump’s comments were intelligible only to those who are already heavily invested in the MAGA corners of the internet.”
Republican strategist Liam Donovan wrote that Harris “successfully baited Trump into self-indulgent, spittle-flecked tangents that squandered a prime opportunity to sow doubts about his opponent.”
Even conservative columnist Ross Douthat, always a reliable source of eye-rolling justification for any Trump claim, could only manage to come up with “it wasn’t a rout.”
Douthat is lying to himself. It was a rout.
However, he’s not lying as hard as “Modern Age” editor Daniel McCarthy, who was the only one of the 14 commentators to claim that Trump won. “He emphasized his willingness to fire officials who performed badly,” wrote McCarthy.
Trump didn’t mention that he was also the one who hired all those bad officials, but sure. He can still deliver his punchline from “The Apprentice,” and for McCarthy, that seems to be enough.
But on Wednesday morning, most Republicans aren’t up to McCarthy’s level of lying about what happened Tuesday night. They have to admit that this was simply a “disaster” for Trump and for their party. Such a disaster that even Sen. Lindsey Graham had to drop the act for at least a minute.
As The Bulwark’s Tim Miller reports:
Eventually, Graham offered a fist bump, leaned in, and with an exasperated grin gave me his candid assessment of the night: Trump’s performance was a “disaster,” Trump was unprepared, and his debate team should be fired. I concurred, made one more pass at the podcast invitation, and walked back toward the magnetometers while immediately tweeting this delicious concession. (Not long after, the senator posted a photo of Trump—hunched, tired, stone-faced—shaking Graham’s hand. In the caption, Graham reiterated his “proud” support of Trump.)
The way Trump was looking is the way they are all feeling. But don’t worry. They can always just make things up:
Help Kamala Harris and Tim Walz win the only poll that counts by sending $10 to their campaign today. It’s not like you’re kicking sand at Donald Trump while he’s down … or maybe it’s exactly like that.
