Trump Declares Himself Winner, Undisputed Champion Of His Imaginary Debate With Kamala Harris
MAGA remains the sore loser party.
The reviews are in, and the general consensus is that Vice President Kamala Harris perp-walked Donald Trump across the debate stage Tuesday night. According to a CNN instant poll, 63 percent of debate watchers believe Harris won compared to just 37 percent who thought Trump prevailed. The debate audience was eight percent more Republican than Democratic, but Harris still performed better in the poll than any Democratic nominee coming out of a debate.
Trump did post an emotional support poll from Newsmax that claimed 93 percent of viewers thought he won the debate. This sample of dullards probably also gushed over his rock-hard abs.
The KamalaHQ account posted the entire debate on social media with the caption: “Our newest ad just dropped.” Here’s their highlight reel:
So, wait, debates don’t matter now?
There was predictably a lot of cope from the MAGAverse. Ben Shapiro whined, “This debate won’t matter. It was just eliminated as an inflection point. The American people still know nothing about Kamala Harris’ positions. Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. And the legacy media are still a giant flaming dog turd.”
Shapiro has obviously never recovered from the success of the Barbie movie. However, even the Washington Post asked on Wednesday, “Harris dominated Trump in debate, but will it matter?” The stakes were practically life and death for Harris just the other day! Harris brought the media Trump’s broomstick and now they’re telling her to “Go away and come back tomorrow!” What a humbug.
Obviously, debates matter because Joe Biden is no longer the Democratic presidential nominee. His performance at the first debate in June was so catastrophic, he withdrew from the race less than a month later.
Jonathan Last at The Bulwark praised Harris’s debate performance but urged some caution: “Trump has been massacred in debates twice before,” he writes. “His first debate against Hillary Clinton was a blowout. He completely disqualified himself. Clinton was sharp and disciplined. Trump went on to win the Electoral College.”
Last also reminds us that Biden won both their debates in 2020 and Trump came scarily close to winning re-election. I think the major difference is that compared to Clinton and Biden, Harris is a less defined candidate for key undecided voters. The so-called “double haters” in 2016 broke for Trump because they wanted change. They broke for Biden in 2020 because they wanted change and a decent shot at surviving the pandemic. Harris has change on her side, which is why “we’re not going back” was her debate mantra. Harris made Trump look like old tabloid news, and she proved to any fence-sitters that she has the commander in chief goods.
It’s true that the CNN post-debate polls showed Clinton as the victor, but there was some positive spin for Trump in mainstream media circles. Although they are now firmly on the anti-Trump train, MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski praised Trump’s performance at the second 2016 presidential debate, the one just after the infamous Access Hollywood tape was released.
Scarborough said Trump “dominated” Hillary Clinton, who was “unsure of herself." This was very disturbing imagery to use, considering that Trump boasted on the Access Hollywood tape about sexually assaulting women.
“Donald Trump ... last night turned it up to 11. [...],” Scarborough raved. “For the Republican base, Donald Trump delivered the attack against the Clinton machine that the Republican base in middle America has been waiting for for years now.”
“No Republican in America could’ve done what he did last night,” Brzezinski swooned. “My God, it was epic. It was vintage Trump. He produced a daylong show that rocked the political world.”
“With his back against the wall,” Scarborough added.
Then they showed a clip of Trump vowing to sic a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s treasonous email server. It was quite the Cinderella story.
Morning Joe’s Willie Geist described Trump’s debate performance “as a fantasy come true for people who haven’t liked Hillary Clinton for 25 years.”
Keep in mind that even Clinton’s detractors expected that she would perform well at the debates. That was never the basis of their attack against her. However, when Harris vivisected Trump before almost 60 million people, she neutralized the GOP’s primary narrative that she’s a lightweight.
Another Big Lie
Predictably, MAGA now claims that the debate was “rigged.” The arguments range from the merely whiny — ABC News’ moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis ganged up on Trump when they fact-checked in real time his more absurd lies — to the absolutely ridiculous: Harris was prepared and Trump drooled all over himself so obviously the vice president received the debate questions in advance. That’s the only explanation for why she anticipated questions about Ukraine, Israel, immigration, and abortion.
There’s also the earring conspiracy, which alleges that Harris’s lovely Tiffany numbers contained audio transmitters like a Get Smart gadget. Presumably, Barack Obama was in his Bond villain lair home office feeding Harris the answers.
Mike Lee, a sitting US senator, seized on a social media post from Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy that broke the scoop that Davis and Harris are “sorority sisters,” as if they pledged together and lived in the same house. They are members of the same sorority, but at different schools more than a decade apart.
Megyn Kelly, who once challenged Trump at a 2016 Fox News debate before selling her fun-size soul, claimed the moderators “did exactly what their bosses wanted them to do. The person who runs ABC News is a close personal friend of Kamala Harris that is responsible for Kamala Harris and her husband meeting. And they did Dana Walden’s bidding tonight.”
To borrow from Hawkeye Pierce, Megyn Kelly’s theory is interesting to say the least, but to say the most it’s slander. Dana Walden is in fact co-chair of Disney Entertainment, which owns ABC, but there’s no evidence that she ordered ABC News president Almin Karamehmedovic to run the joint like it’s Fox News for liberals. Of course, Republicans strictly define “fair and balanced” as “fully in the tank for Trump.” They can’t cope with actual journalists who won’t sanewash Trump’s blather.
During Tuesday’s debate, Sen. Lindsey Graham whined, “The moderators might as well be on the DNC payroll. This is ridiculous. This is the worst moderated debate in history.” And Sean Davis from The Federalist was so infuriated that he posted on Elon Musk’s Free Speech For Nazis platform, “Remove ABC’s broadcast license and criminally charge the moderators and executives for campaign finance fraud.”
Davis must’ve whispered this nonsense into Trump’s mental earpiece. Retreating to his Fox & Friends safe space, Trump whimpered, “I think ABC took a big hit last night. To be honest, they are a news organization — they have to be licensed to do it — they ought to take away their license for the way they did that.”
Nonetheless, Trump still insists he won, because he lacks the emotional maturity to accept defeat like one of Tim Walz’s former fourth grade students. It’s clear he wants to avoid another ass beating, especially considering how well Harris delivers them, so he’s flying the freaky “Mission Accomplished” flag higher than Willie Nelson. Trump contends that only losers would want another opportunity to pummel their opponent and promote their message in front of millions of voters.
Waving his participation poll trophies from The Daily Caller, Newsmax, and “Wall Street Silver,” Trump ranted, “Comrade Kamala Harris is going around wanting another Debate because she lost so badly — Just look at the Polls! It’s true with prizefighters, when they lose a fight, they immediately want another. MAGA2024”
He wouldn’t let up on the prizefighter fantasy. He posted several hours later:
“In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why would I do a Rematch?”
Trump is a delusional coward. Harris knocked him out, but he hasn’t the guts to get up and face her again. Instead, he curls up into a mental fetal position and denies reality. This is an unfortunate preview of how we know he’ll react when Harris wins the election.
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My unified field theory of current US politics (and a lot of Western politics, alarmingly) is that the right wing is now so reliant upon rampant disinformation that it’s a bit like some self-induced hallucinatory mental illness. And that there’s some kinda cautionary tale here. People who live by lying, there is always this risk: they get pretty confused about reality themselves. Trump’s bizarre otherworldly tirades onstage two nights ago came out in large part because Harris masterfully drew them out, but this has been a problem for them a while. They have enough people who believe them far enough that sometimes they can win, but if too many people not yet inside their bubble are paying attention at the wrong time, it’s a disaster. They look nuts because, well, they effectively are. And they did it to themselves.
This is the kind of lack of attachment to reality only possible when you have a captive rightwing media human centipede. It also helps when this centipede has segments installed in the MSM (of course that is pretty much Republican-owned.)
Therefore, President Klan Robe gets to benefit by virtue of the dark complex of McCain's and Murc's Laws, where even though Kamala Harris had to perform PERFECTLY to get even grudging positive coverage, all Klan Robe had to do was show up.
The Murc's Law dynamic came up in fact because there were people upset that Kamala Harris didn't have *details* for her plans. In a "debate" format that is basically all about speedrunning the Dozens. Now we're supposed to be having serious policy debate in one minute?
Democrats always get dinged for having policy because so much of this news coverage isn't about information; it's about entertainment. And abstracting complex policy into a minute is nearly impossible, because in the real world, shit happens and there are different conditions that may be needed.
And that's where Murc's Law really shines, because even then only the Democrats get held accountable for not only having detailed policy proposals but then they are the only ones held to those promises.
The MSM of course helps this along with their singleminded focus on whatever little bullshit they want to focus on with the Dems, and there is not the same desire to drum President Klan Robe out of the race like they did Biden (this is the source of the consistently low polling which made it untenable for Biden to continue).
All these outlets assert, of course, after Kamala Harris absolutely vivisects President Klan Robe that it won't change anything. And well of course it can't change if you keep asserting that in your coverage. All that and again Harris had to be PERFECT. I think the crowd sizes salvo might have even done psychological damage, and then she laid on tick damage with a Confuse status after that.
But here we are. In the end we all know the job we have to do this November. Bring a friend to the polls, and be sure to check on your registration, friends. Republicans are doing their best to trash it.
www.vote.org, www.iwillvote.com . You know the drill!