TRUMP KO'S TRUMP IN HARRIS DEBATE
What Americans learned about both candidates in debate
There has never been anything like the 2024 presidential debates.
In June’s Debte #1, incumbent President Joe Biden performed so poorly that Democratic party leaders and other candidates promptly called on him to leave the race - which he did. That was not only totally unexpected, it was unprecedented.
Then, on September 10 in Debate #2, it was Donald Trump who turned in a debate performance that can only be described, charitably, as a debacle.
Republicans who remain in Trump’s orbit - and that includes Iowa’s entire congressional delegation, House and Senate - despite the clear evidence of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, still can’t bring themselves to call for Trump to join Biden on the path to retirement.
Former Iowa US Senator, Democrat Tom Harkin, had the political insight, courage, and “hard kind of patriotism” to call out Biden’s devastating debate flop immediately. He was one of the first Democrats in the country to call for Biden, the President of the United States, to drop out of his own re-election race.
Iowa’s Republicans in Congress probably do have the political insight to know what happened with Trump in the September 10 debate, but they have none of Harkin’s courage or concern for their country that Harkin demonstrated.
The Iowans now in Congress apparently have no problem with Trump’s descent into lunacy. If they do, they are not saying anything about it.
The MAGA crowd is similarly frozen. The best they can muster now is to make absurd excuses for Trump’s crash and burn debate performance even as they tell obvious lies about how supposedly “well” he did in the debate.
They are dealing in pure fantasy and denial.
Trump partisans ought to be calling on him to leave the race - for the country’s sake, and the for sake of the Republican Party.
Of course Trump isn’t likely to do any such thing. He’s not in this race because he wants to be president again, but because he wants to stay out of prison. He also “laid a trap” for anyone trying to push him out of the race - he picked the single worst vice presidential running mate since Sarah Palin in 2008. Knowing that JD Vance would be Trump’s successor is pretty good insurance for Trump that no one is going to try too hard to get him off the ticket.
What anyone who really cares about Trump should be doing is calling for a full cognitive examination of the man. And then get him the help he so obviously needs. The Donald Trump we saw on the debate stage last Tuesday night - to a dangerous and troubling degree - is definitely not the Donald Trump of four years ago, or even the Trump we saw just a year ago.
Last week I wrote in this column about the “Incredible Shrinking Candidate” - Donald Trump, whose fitness and ability to be president was shrinking right before our eyes.
I listed a number of facts that supported that view, including his light, “lazy man’s” or “tired old man’s” campaign schedule, his inability to keep up with Vice President Harris in fundraising, and his astoundingly poor choice of a running mate.
Then I added this, which in retrospect now seems prophetic:
“When Trump does appear in public at rallies and other venues where he speaks, he often - quite frequently - sounds incoherent, uninformed, unprepared and dangerously way past his shelf date as a serious contender for the presidency.”
Could there have been a more accurate preview of Trump’s September 10 debate performance?
The bottom line is that while Vice President Harris was besting Trump by all measures in that debate, metaphorically, it was Trump himself who delivered the knock out punch that left him lying on the canvass seeing stars.
Trump put it all on display in the debate: his pathological lies; his anger and boiling sense of grievance; his self-described constant victimhood; his incoherence; his fondness for veering off on ridiculous tangents; and his preference for trafficking in debunked right wing internet conspiracy theories instead of facts.
He couldn’t even see the ironic, hypocritical absurdity of him attacking Harris for. not already accomplishing in the past four years as Joe Biden’s Vice President the new things she says she’ll do as President - when Trump himself had four years as President to do what he said as a candidate he’d do and left a trail of broken promises instead.
For example:
The unbuilt “wall” on the US southern border.
Trump’s invisible health care plan which nine years ago, he insisted he had in hand, nine. years ago, never produced, and is now claiming - not that he finally has that plan - but that he now has “a concept of a plan,” which he shared with no one.
A “concept of a plan?”
Yes. A “concept of a plan.” In other words, the dog ate his health plan and has been dining on it every day for the last nine years.
Trump’s much ballyhooed “infrastructure” plan. He announced its pending unveiling almost weekly. But he never produced it. If you want to know why Republicans all over the country are showing up to take credit for new bridges and highways they voted against that were built by President Biden’s “Build Back Better” infrastructure modernization and repair program, it’s because Trump never had a plan, though he promised one repeatedly.
Republicans may have tried to defeat it, but with few accomplishments of their own - especially regarding roads and bridges construction projects - taking credit for what Biden and the Democrats in Congress accomplished is the only game for them in town. Trump gave them nothing.
As it is always with Trump, you can’t list all the crazy things he says and does in one column. There’s too much. You inevitably have to leave out more than you have space to include. I will, however, mention here the nuttiest of Trump’s meanderings from the September 10 debate:
The mass of “illegal” Haitian immigrants flooding into Springfield, Ohio, to steal family pets - cats and dogs - and eat them. No one in Springfield, Ohio - Mayor, Police Department, average citizens, even the person who started that internet rumor says anything remotely like what Trump claimed, is happening now or has ever happened in Springfield. Or anywhere else.
Those supposed “illegal immigrants” from Haiti? They are not in the US illegally. They were recruited to come Springfield in full compliance with immigration laws to help fill a local labor shortage. Springfield residents, officials, and even Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine say that the Haitians have proven to be not only high quality workers but also great friends and neighbors.
None of which, of course, stopped the Republican nominee for President from spreading his dehumanizing big lie about them in a TV debate watched by more than 67 million Americans. It doesn’t appear he even checked to see if his lie was true.
Now, I’m not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV or Substack. But if someone can’t see that Donald Trump’s mental decline is well underway and is now accelerating to dangerous levels, they aren’t looking at him.
This is not a matter of whether you agree with Trump or disagree with him on public policy or politics. It’s become a matter of safety for our democracy, our country, and those of us who live here.
Trump’s mental decline has clearly reached the danger point for someone in a close race for the presidency who could possibly - God forbid - win.
Of course, millions of Americans already knew that. Others still don’t - more accurately, perhaps, won’t - see that.
But it was on full display at the September 10 debate, before the biggest audience in this campaign yet. It was far bigger than the audience that tuned in for the Biden-Trump debate on June 27: 67 million (9/10/24) vs 51 million (6/27/24).
What did Americans learn about the candidates in the September 10 debate besides that Donald Trump is in the grips of a dangerous cognitive decline?
They learned this:
About Kamala Harris: She’s strong, tough, and able to strategically dominate in an adversarial match up. She’s well informed, smart and has policies, plans and programs of her own which are aimed at strengthening democracy and helping all Americans, but particularly middle class Americans. Those plans and programs are real. They exist today. She is capable of discussing them accurately and in some detail. She relies on facts to make her case, not fear, lies and internet conspiracy theories. She will fight to preserve the rights and freedoms of every American.
Finally, like millions of Americans, she is sick of Trump’s non-stop bickering and whining, and is ready to turn the page to a new era where Americans can focus on strengthening America, Americans, and America’s democracy - and stop making everything about Donald Trump and his endless grievances.
About Donald Trump: He’s crazier, angrier, and more incoherent when he speaks than most of us thought he was. He is easily manipulated, uninformed, and his main talent is in lying about plans he claims to have but does not have, and lying about about plans he does have but denies he has because most Americans don’t support them. He will strip Americans of rights and freedoms - particularly women - wholesale.
Trump’s campaign has little to do with average Americans. It is focused on keeping himself out of prison, giving tax breaks to the super rich, and helping end democracy, not just here, but around the globe. He pointedly declined - twice - to say he wants Ukraine, a democracy and American ally, to win the war forced on it by an invading aggressor Russia, ruled by the anti-democracy dictator Putin.
Harris says she wants another debate with Trump. For his part, Trump says he wants no part of another debate with her. I can understand why. Who wants to sign up for another whupping? Especially one where the fight turned out to be two against one - Harris and Trump vs Trump.
Like most bullies, Trump talks tough when standing in front of his MAGA rallies, but when it comes time to accept the Vice President’s call to “say it to my face,” he’s leaping over fences in a single bound, running away as fast as he can.
No matter what your view used to be on Trump’s fitness for the presidency, the only rational view on that question today, based on the evidence, is that he is no longer - if he ever was -presidential “timber.” Not even close these days.
More than 67 million Americans saw the clear and stark evidence of that on September 10.
Think what a different, better world this would be if it was . . . . .Harris v. Hailey!
I pray for the day when we won't have to give this man even a passing thought along with the Heritage Foundation, the NRA, this republican party..................