On June 27, former President Donald Trump’s nonsensical debate ramblings were overshadowed by an epic meltdown by his successor so bad that the latter was forced to exit the race. Last night, the contrast with a considerably younger, sharper opponent highlighted how little he had to say and how bizarre much of it was. Harris dodged questions about the Biden administration’s record all night, seeking and largely succeeding in making the discussion all about Trump.
WaPo (“Harris crisply attacks Trump in debate; he retorts with fiery rhetoric“):
Vice President Kamala Harris made a sharp, fiery case against Republican nominee Donald Trump during a freewheeling debate Tuesday, blasting the former president’s character and preoccupation with himself while pressing him on issues including abortion, democracy and foreign policy.
Trump used the head-to-head event to attack Harris as a “Marxist” masquerading as a moderate and repeatedly turned the subject back to the U.S. southern border — an issue where polls show voters trust him more than Harris — often straying from the facts to embrace debunked conspiracy theories about immigration and the 2020 election.
Both sides went into their first debate, hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, spoiling for a fight after several weeks of attacking one another on the campaign trail, and they wasted little time launching into harsh attacks. Harris’s barbs landed crisply, while Trump often veered off-message in response to her attempts to bait him on sensitive topics like the size of his rally crowds, his 2020 election loss and his admiration for strongmen.
“In this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” Harris said early in the debate, one of several times that she turned to address viewers rather than her opponent. A few minutes later, she said, “Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Trump dismissed the remark as “just a sound bite” and went on to accuse Harris of misleading the public about her positions.
“Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window — she’s going to my philosophy now,” Trump said. “In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat. She’s going to my philosophy. But if she ever got elected, she’d change it and it will be the end of our country.”
Harris was able to deliver the Democratic case against Trump — that he is self-involved, unfit and consumed with his own interests — in a way that President Joe Biden struggled badly to do in the last debate, a little over two months ago. Her performance, and Trump’s often-frustrated reaction, underscored how much the dynamics of race have changed since Biden stepped aside.
Harris seemed to regularly get under the former president’s skin, sometimes prompting angry or meandering responses. He accused the vice president and the Biden administration of being responsible for inflation, high crime and illegal immigration, but he also went on tangents, such as repeating baseless assertions.
NYT (“In Debate With Trump, Harris’s Expressions Were a Weapon“):
She turned to him with an arched brow. A quiet sigh. A hand on her chin. A laugh. A pitiful glance. A dismissive shake of her head.
From the opening moments of her first debate against Donald J. Trump, Kamala Harris craftily exploited her opponent’s biggest weakness.
Not his record. Not his divisive policies. Not his history of inflammatory statements.
Instead, she took aim at a far more primal part of him: his ego.
At his rallies, on his sycophantic social media network and surrounded by flatterers at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump is unquestioned, unchallenged and never ever mocked.
That changed over the course of 90 minutes in Philadelphia on Tuesday, when the woman who had never before met him succeeded, bit by bit, in puncturing his comfortable cocoon and triggering his annoyance and anger.
Ms. Harris questioned the size and loyalty of the crowds at his rallies. She said world leaders call him a “disgrace.” And she claimed his fortune was built by his father, recasting a business mogul who proudly boasts of being a self-made man as just another nepotism baby.
Then she stood by and watched, as Mr. Trump did himself a whole lot of damage.
In answer after answer, the former president reminded Americans of his role in so much of what many would rather forget: the deadly and devastating pandemic, his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, a bloody siege on the U.S. Capitol and the fall of Roe v. Wade. He lingered on his criminal charges and praised Viktor Orban, the strongman leader of Hungary. He defended a false claim that migrants in Ohio are eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats and recycled years-old anti-abortion attack lines that Democrats supported “execution after birth.”
In such a fractured and polarized country, it remains unclear how the lopsided debate may alter the 2024 presidential race. But the immediate reaction was telling: Mr. Trump led Republicans in attacking the moderators — the debate was “three-on-one,” he complained — while Democrats notched perhaps the most important endorsement of the election cycle with Taylor Swift.
WSJ (“Harris Baits Trump in Fiery Presidential Debate“):
Vice President Kamala Harris put former President Donald Trump on the defensive in their first presidential debate, provoking him over crowd sizes at his rallies and his felony convictions—a sign of how the race has been upended with her ascent to the top of the ticket.
The debate Tuesday, which was hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, came after weeks of bickering over debate rules, which were set before Harris became the nominee. The prior debate, in late June, resulted in President Biden’s exit from the race after his halting debate performance against Trump. Harris, 59, the first woman of color to lead a presidential ticket, presented a starker contrast on the debate stage with Trump, 78, than the octogenarian Biden did.
Trump attacked Harris for the Biden administration’s record on immigration and the economy, and she was also pressed by the moderators on the many issues she has reversed positions on since her unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
The race was essentially tied heading into Tuesday night’s event, polls showed, and it didn’t appear that the debate would shake up the contest, though some Republicans worried afterward about Trump’s performance.
Unlike the Biden-Trump debate, this one began on a civilized note, with the vice president initiating a handshake with the former president. Their exchanges grew progressively more combative, with the candidates shaking their heads at each other’s answers. Trump at one point grew irritated when the vice president suggested that people leave his political rallies early out of boredom. He responded by attacking her rally turnout and touting his own, and by claiming that America is on the verge of World War III and its citizens are living in squalor under the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump, who at times meandered off topic, repeated an unfounded social-media claim—previously amplified by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance—that Haitian migrants are traveling to places like Springfield, Ohio, and “eating the dogs…They’re eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Harris from the start contrasted her economic agenda and middle-class upbringing with Trump’s, calling the former president’s proposal to raise tariffs a “Trump sales tax” and criticizing his plans to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
“I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America,” she said, adding: “Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he’s more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Later in the debate, Trump was asked about his repeated criticism of the Affordable Care Act and whether he had an alternative plan to offer. “I have a concept of a plan,” he said.
The former president painted a picture of a nation that has plunged into chaos and despair since he left office. He aggressively pinned Harris to the Biden-era migrant crisis, reiterating his unsupported claim that the administration is allowing people from prisons, mental institutions and “insane asylums” to enter the country illegally.
“They’re coming in, and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African-Americans and Hispanics and also unions,” Trump asserted. “They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country, and they’re destroying our country.”
The WSJ Editorial Board (“Trump Lets Harris Off the Debate Hook“) grudgingly concedes that Harris won the night.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debated each other with the skill, knowledge and dignity befitting a great democracy on Tuesday—well, at least they appeared on stage together. Americans were able to see the candidates their two parties have bequeathed for President, for better or (mostly) worse.
Ms. Harris, less well known than the former President, had the most to gain and our guess is she helped herself. She clearly won the debate, though not because she made a powerful case for her vision or the record of the last four years. Though she kept talking about her “plan” for the economy, she largely sailed along on the same unspecific promises about “the future” that she has since Democrats made her the nominee.
She won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity that left her policies and history largely untouched. He always takes the bait, and Ms. Harris set the trap so he spent much of the debate talking about the past, or about Joe Biden, or about immigrants eating pets, but not how he’d improve the lives of Americans in the next four years.
The Vice President had help from the ABC News moderators, who were clearly on her side. They fact-checked only Mr. Trump, several times, though Ms. Harris offered numerous whoppers—on Mr. Trump’s alleged support for Project 2025, Mr. Trump’s views on in-vitro fertilization, and that no American troops are in a combat zone overseas.
Tell that last one to the Americans killed by Iranian proxies in Jordan this year or the U.S. Navy commanders tasked with intercepting Houthi missiles in the Red Sea.
But Mr. Trump didn’t help himself because he let Ms. Harris put him on the defensive. We don’t have the transcript as we write this, but it’s safe to say he enjoyed talking about Mr. Biden more than he did Ms. Harris. That let the Veep keep saying she isn’t Joe Biden without having to explain how, or whether, she differs from Mr. Biden’s policies. Mr. Trump didn’t press the point.
He also fell into the trap of saying the last election was stolen, that the rioters on Jan. 6 were mistreated, and that the courts had ruled against him in 2020 on a “technicality.” Does any undecided voter worried about the price of groceries care?
We almost laughed out loud when Mr. Trump even fell into a debate about the size of his rallies and whether people leave early. All of this played into Ms. Harris’s hands as she portrayed the former President as a man of the past and asked voters to “turn the page.” She took the mantle of the “change” candidate, though she has been in power for the last three and a half years.
Mr. Trump also let Ms. Harris off the hook time and again on her policy views. One of his weaknesses is that he can rarely marshal policy details or arguments that explain an issue beyond a slogan. He resorts instead to over-the-top claims like she’s a Marxist, or the “worst Vice President in history.” He didn’t even say she wants to raise taxes by $5 trillion, which happens to be true.
If Mr. Trump won on any topic, it might have been foreign policy, where he contrasted as he always does the current world disorder with the relative peace of his four years. Ms. Harris didn’t offer much more than Biden Administration talking points.
Whether any of this will be decisive for swing voters, we don’t know. The electorate is closely divided, and most voters already have a firm view of Mr. Trump. The wild card is whether Ms. Harris made a strong enough impression to persuade the undecided that she is worth a risk. If she did, she will owe her success to Mr. Trump’s lack of preparation and discipline.
But, of course, lack of preparation and discipline are hallmarks of who Trump is. They characterized his term as President and would almost certainly do so again in a second term.
Where I absolutely agree with the WSJ gang is that Trump missed easy chances to score points. For example, the opening question was:
Vice President Harris, you and President [Biden] were elected four years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?
She dodged that question entirely, going into her “middle-class kid” schtick and shifting to her own policy proposals:
Because here’s the thing. We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children.
The obvious retort here was that the Biden-Harris administration has had four years to address that problem and that, by any reasonble measure, things are worse on this front than they were when Trump left office. Rents are way up. Mortgage interest rates are through the roof. Grocery prices have skyrocketed.
That was obvious to me in real time despite zero debate prep. But, instead, he took the debate on her nonsense about a “Trump Sales Tax” and missed his opportunity.
Harris clearly came in to the debate seeking to exploit Trump’s ego and self-absorption and he regularly fell into the predictable traps. Because that’s who he is.
