Kamala Harris Debates Rapist Felon With Shaky Grasp Of Non-Coup-Related Policies
Has Trump finally lost the Viktor Orban vote?
Tuesday night in Philadelphia, a crazy old man yelled at clouds, and a sane woman laughed at that man.
Vice President Kamala Harris confronted active national security threat Donald Trump at their first and likely only presidential debate. It was the first time they’d met face-to-whatever that is covering Trump’s skull. This is because Trump attempted a coup and blocked the peaceful transfer of power. When that failed, and he finally left the White House, he skipped his successor’s inauguration out of petty spite.
It’s an insult to Harris personally and democracy in general that she even had to participate in the farce of debating Trump, who should be in prison or staining the inside of a bus station toilet as God intended. However, Harris put all that aside and delivered one of the best presidential debate performances in modern political history. Trump was not a strong second by any measure. He clearly struggled against an opponent who was both conscious and present with him on the same dimensional plane.
Harris took control of the debate almost immediately when she walked over to Trump on the stage, introduced herself, and shook his diseased hand. (I assume she had a gallon of Purell behind the lectern.) After demolishing the self-proclaimed IVF expert on abortion, Harris rattled Trump completely when she invited people to check out his rallies and witness their weirdness firsthand. (Debate clips courtesy of Aaron Rupar from
.)“You’ll see during the course of his rallies, he’ll talk about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter,” she said. “He’ll talk about ‘windmills cause cancer’ and what you’ll also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
We were barely a half hour into this, and she’d already dismissed him as basic. There was no recovery from that point.
She did it, Joe
The expectations for Harris prior to the debate were astronomical. An early CNN headline from Tuesday blared, “Harris face a nowhere-to-hide moment in upcoming debate, and the price of failure is enormous.” I know that the media is annoyed that Harris won’t give them hourly interviews, but that classic Martha and the Vandellas song applies more to Trump. He’s the one who ghosted on the Republican primary debates. The media mostly spun Trump’s cowardice as a savvy political move. CNN’s Stephen Collinson, who wrote the piece cited above, noted in 2023 that “Trump can get away with skipping a debate but can’t evade legal consequences.” Well, he was right about the debates, at least.
CNN’s Harry Enten furthered this “do or die for Harris” narrative when he posted on social media, “Tonight is pretty much all about Kamala Harris. Undecided voters dislike Donald Trump and have made up their mind on him. About half of undecideds, on the other hand, want to learn more about Harris. Can Harris seize the opportunity with these folks tonight?”
So, Harris must prove herself to people who already know that Trump’s a crawling piece of slime. They are apparently the type of people who can’t choose between Domino’s and the new pizza joint that just opened. Sure, a Domino’s pizza tastes indistinguishable from the box it came in, but the new pizza joint owner needs to sit down and explain their dough recipe in detail before undecideds can make a call.
The idea that there are no stakes for Trump because he’s so awful ignores that Trump is the Republican presidential nominee and his actions reflect on the entire party. When Barack Obama delivered a lackluster debate performance against Mitt Romney, the press coverage focused on how Democrats were in full panic mode. Also, Romney didn’t win that debate because he pummeled Obama with a nonstop barrage of brutal “yo mama” jokes. He appeared engaged and thoughtful, even when listening to Obama’s answers, while Obama seemed sullen and bored. Somehow though, the media doesn’t think Trump saying he heard Harris “put out” won’t have a negative down ballot effect.
Well, if Harris entered the debate under tremendous pressure, you can now call her “Diamond Kamala.” She hit every point she needed, presenting herself as a calm, collected leader in stark contrast to the mad MAGA king. She called Trump for what he is early on, making it clear she expected him to lie non-stop and resort to ad hominem attacks. “Stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,” she said at one point.
She baited Trump at every opportunity and he couldn’t stop reaching for the cheese. This is what happens when your debate prep team consists of Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard. Mocking his low-energy rallies rattled him so much that he lost it completely and started ranting about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating people’s cats, like they’re all Gordon Shumway. She laughed in his face, which is her version of Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again,” except Jimmy Carter was discussing health care not feline homicide.
She set out more traps for him regarding his coup-plotting, criminal indictments and convictions, as well as his extensive history of racism. Not content to let Harris make all the history as the first Black woman presidential nominee, Trump became the first presidential nominee of any race to boast at a debate about how he’s “winning” all the criminal cases against him — sexual assault, defamation, business fraud, espionage, and conspiracy to steal an election, he’s confident he’ll bet those charges like Rocky.
Trump predictably refused to take any responsibility for January 6. He claimed that “no one on the other side” (i.e. American democracy) was hurt, and Harris had to remind everyone about the hundreds of cops whose Trump’s mob seriously injured. He lamented the loss of insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who he claims was murdered by an out-of-control cop. (This thug has the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of the Police union, which is perhaps a birds of a feather situation.)
Trump admitted that he’ll turn over Ukraine to Putin in exchange for a lollipop and a smile. When Harris mentioned that most world leaders think he’s a bad joke, Trump brought up his soul brother Viktor Orban, who isn’t the ideal LinkedIn testimonial.
She perhaps wounded Trump fatally when she declared, “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. Clearly, he is having a difficult time processing that.” She suggested that he was “confused” on the basic reality of the 2020 election, like an elderly man wandering the supermarket produce aisle and complaining about the fruit.
Trump was soon flailing so desperately he started asking for a Joe Biden lifeline. “Where’s Biden?” he asked more than once, almost at the point of tears.
Harris made the choice in the election clear — she wants to move forward and Trump wants to dwell in the past. “We won’t go back,” she said repeatedly. “Make America Great Again” was hardly a forward-looking slogan, but it had the veneer of Reagan-esque optimism. Now, Trump is far more bitter and angry: “We’re a nation in decline” has replaced “morning in America.” He has no real solutions (not that he ever did). He rails against the Affordable Care Act, but when asked how he’d improve it, he has no actual plan. “I have concepts of a plan,” he answered because his only real second term agenda is dodging criminal prosecution and making life miserable for his enemies.
ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis did a decent job moderating the debate, fact-checking at least some of Trump’s most egregious lies. (Republicans of course whined that the debate was “three against one.”) They did let Trump frequently talk over his allotted time and have the last word on topics, but that didn’t actually do him any favors. He usually sounded like the creepy guy on the subway who stinks of urine and thinks the government tapped his phone. Harris offers Americans the chance to dash across the platform at the next stop and catch the express to a better destination.
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A fantastic capsule of the debate. Kamala Harris beat the brakes off this pricktator, as they say.
President Klan Robe got NINE extra minutes of speaking time, in fact. That was a great gift. And of course the McCain's Law-based coverage came out as expected, "Oh this won't change anything ho hum" because the Republican-owned media keep minimizing Democratic successes and Klan Robe's dissembling, and maximizing scrutiny on Democrats. Same old shit as in 2016 and 2020.
I knew Kamala Harris would do well, but even I was taken back by how thoroughly she post-turtled him. She brought up so many things and this ought to be ad fodder for all the way through Election Day. The laughing was devastating, but it also put into stark view (for those who cared to look) that this racist carnival barker is the most easily manipulated, credulous, gibbering poltroon ever. She played him like he was a rubber band on a matchbox. It was amazing seeing in clips how she baited him and he took the bait every time. President Klan Robe is and always has been completely unfit for office.
But the elephant in the room is he has millions of supporters that want his ethnic cleansing. This is why their only play now is to go 110% on the blood libel against Haitians. That's the only thing Republicans offer you: dead bodies and hatred.
That was a freaking masterclass in how to debate that guy. He stepped right into every trap she laid for him. I could swear I saw a bomb go off over his head when she said people leave his rallies out of boredom.