The Harris-Trump Debate

In Tuesday night's presidential debate, Kamala Harris established her dominance from the moment she walked onto the stage. While Trump was slowly, almost aimlessly, meandering onto the stage, Harris stode purposefully across the stage and extended her hand to Trump, whom she had never met face-to-face. Trump seemed taken aback and reluctantly, almost sheepishly, shook her hand. This dominance prevailed throughout the debate. Indeed, had we watched the debate with the sound off, it would have been obvious that Harris won. She was expressive and looked at Trump frequently, while Trump refused to look at her, instead looking straight ahead with a scowling, strained expression on his face. His face looked like a prision mug shot.

With the sound on, we saw Harris articulately and eloquently destroying her opponent. She exposed him as an old, decrepit, uninformed fool, while she came across as presidential. Her stated pre-debate strategy was to get under his skin, and she accomplished this brilliantly. He took the bait every time, looking more and more ignorant and out of touch with reality as the debate went on. Harris came across as thoughtful and serious, while Trump appeared increasingly deranged.

I had maintained that Harris's courtroom experience was more signifcant than Trump's prior experience with presidential debates. There was a school of thought that downplayed the significance of Harris's courtroom experience, but my viewpoint proved to be the correct one. In a courtroom you are trying to communicate and tailor the facts so as to convince a judge or jury of the rightness of your position. In the debate you are doing the same thing, except that the "jury" consists of the millions who make up the voting public.

A fact-check of Trump's many misstatements reveals a total of 33 lies. It would be pointless to cover all of these, but I will highlight a few of Trump's lies and outrageous claims which stood out for me.

Abortion. Trmp repeatedly said that "everybody" wanted Roe overturned. This is laughably false. The fact is that most Americans, including most legal scholars, are in favor of some sort of middle road betwween an abortion ban and no restrictions, which is the Roe approach.

Trump claimed to be in favor of leaving the issue of abortion up to the states, and yet he refused to say that he would veto a national abortion ban.

Trump repeated the false claim that Democrats are in favor of full-term abortions, which are illegal in every state. Further, he gave this as the reason for voting against the Florida abortion referendum, which would revoke the six-week ban. Trump claims that he thinks six weeks is not enough, yet he refuses to support revoking this horrible Florida law, which prohibits abortion before many women even know they are pregnant..

Immigration. Trump repeated the debunked claim that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. When the moderator corrected him, he interrupted him and said he saw it on TV.

Trump claimed that Democrats favored illegal immigration because the illegals will vote Democratic.

Trump repeatedly claimed that the crime rates in other countries are going down, because those countries are sending their criminals to the U.S. This is an absurd claim that Trump has been making ever since he came down the golden escalator in 2015 and announced his candidacy.

Trump repeated the lie that Harris was "the border czar".

But the big lie at the heart of Trump's xenophobic anti-immigrant rants is that immigration is ruining this country. Quite the opposite is true; immigrants add economic strength to our country with their hard work and entrepreneurial spirit, and they commit crimes at half the rate of citizens. And they are absolutely necessasry to saving the social security system, as we need more young workers to finance benefits for our aging population.

Crime. Trump said that “crime in this country is through the roof.” This is false, as FBI stats show that both violent crime and property crime rates have gone down under Biden.

Harris's prior run. Trump stated, as he often has on the campaign trail, that Harris was the first person to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. This is false. A check reveals that all of these candidates dropped out before Harris: Richard Ojeda, Eric Swalwell, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Seth Moulton, Kirsten Gillebrand, Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Beto O'Rourke, Mark Sanford, Wayne Messam, Joe Sestak, and Steve Bullock.

Inflation. Trump repeated the falsehood that inflation was the highest ever under Biden. The facts are that inflation was considerably higher during the Carter years of 1979 and 1980 than it ever was under Biden.

Implicit in all of the inflation talk is that the Biden administration is responsible for inflation. The factually correct answer to this is that inflation is a world-wide phenomenon, and the U.S. actually has had less inflation than other developed countries, which is to say that Biden has been doing a good job in combatting inflation. But the Democrats never mention this, apparently feeling that this explanation will not resonate with the ignorant U.S. voters.

Obamacare. Trump now claims that he wants to improve Obamacare, not end it. What this means is not clear. The moderator got Trump to admit that he still, after nine years, does not have a plan to replace Obamacare. Trump lamely claimed that he had the "concepts" of a plan.

Israel. Trump falsely claimed that "Harris hates Isael", and said Israel would cease to exist in two years under a Harris presidency. A similar lie was the accusation that Harris is a Marxist.

Crowd sizes. Trump's latest lie about Harris's crowd sizes is that she is busing people in and paying them to attend her rallies. Previous lies are that she has crowds only because of the entertainers, and that she is using AI to create false pictures of her crowds.

Tariffs. Trump repeated his long-time lie that tariffs are paid by the exporting countries. This is totally false; the facts are that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, and ultimately by the U.S. consumers. Harris is correct in saying that Trump's proposed tariff increases would be equivalent to a national sales tax on U.S. consumers, a "tax" which analysts say would cost the average family about $4,000 a year.

The Ukraine war. Trump refused to say that he wanted Ukraine to win the war. He repeated his absurd claim that he would end the war within 24 hours. When pressed for details, he said he would talk one-on-one with Putin, and then with Zelensky.

The 2020 election. Trump repeated his frequent claim that the last election was stolen. When the moderator brought up that Trump had seemed to admit he lost with his recent statement that he "lost by a whisker", Trump claimed he was being "sarcastic", even though there was no hint of sarcasm in his prior statement.

Trump's inheritance. When Harris referred to Trump's $400 million inheritance, he claimed his actual inheritance was only a "fraction" of this. As documented by investigative reporters, Trump did in fact receive over this amount, much of which was in the form of gifts from his father disguised as "loans". His six bankruptcies are stark evidence of Trump's total incompetence as an entrepreneur.

The 1/6 insurrection. Trump refused to admit he had done anything wrong on January 6th, and instead insisted that Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Hill security, and that she had turned down an offer of 10,000 National Guard trooops. Both of these are complete lies.

Harris had many highlight moments during the debate. Here are a few of them.

She said that Trump was "fired by 81,000,000 voters, and he's obviously having a hard time processing that."

Harris said that both she and her running mate were gun owners. I think this went a long way toward debunking the notion that Democrats are anti-gun. The idea here is that you can be in favor of sensible gun safety legislation, without being against the second amendment.

The NRA fanatics who insist otherwise should consider the free speech provision in the first amendment. Even though that amendment says the government shall make no laws infringing on free speech, there are in fact hundreds of laws limiting free speech.

One of Harris's best lines was that there are 800,000 Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania who have reason to be concerned about Trump's attitude of letting Putin do whatever he wants in Eastern Europe. This was effective in several respects. First, it dramatized the real world danger of letting Putin run wild in Eastern Europe. Second, it brought the issue home to the state the debate was happening in. And third, that state just happens to be what most analysts say is the most important state for each candidate to win in November.

But the best reaction from Harris was totally nonverbal. This was when she was seen laughing hilariously at Trump's nonsensical claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets. Her reaction was perfect, and no words were needed.

Conclusion: Trump was so thoroughly trounced that now, like Roberto Duran in 1980, he is crying "no mas".