Mother Jones illustration; Win McNamee/Getty; Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
Kamala Harris came to the presidential debate to invite voters not yet on her side to join her. Donald Trump was there to stoke the fears, grievances, and hatreds of the MAGA Americans already in his corner. She spoke in well-composed sentences, as she tried to persuade voters with her economic proposals, declaring she was interested in what she could do for them and asserting Trump was more interested in himself. Trump, often rambling, stuck to his playbook and described America as a hellhole, accusing Vice President Harris and President Joe Biden of purposefully trying to destroy the nation. She pitched optimism. He peddled darkness. She often smiled (and added several eye rolls). He scowled or wore an expression of condescension for much of the night.
These performances illustrated their differing approaches to politics. Following the traditional rule that campaigns ought to be about addition not subtraction, Harris sought to expand her electorate. Trump, as he has usually done, focused on firing up his enraged base. It was a case of coalition politics versus the harnessing of extremism.
Within this context, Harris slammed Trump for being simultaneously extreme and stale. With a near-perfect blend of sass and derision, she repeatedly baited Trump, and he almost always chomped at the chum. She slammed him for being obsessed with personal grievances and being tied to an old playbook of division and insult. When she pointed out that people leave his rallies before he’s done because they are exhausted by the same-old rhetoric, steam nearly shot out of his ears, and he barked that “people don’t go to her rallies.” (Fact-check: untrue.) She cited top officials from his first presidency who now oppose Trump and brand him a threat to the country, and he responded, “I’m a different kind of person,” and boasted he had fired many of the supposedly best people he had originally hired. He bragged that in 2020 he had received more votes than any other Republican president ever had, not mentioning Biden received seven million more.
Harris succeeded in her two goals: To present herself and her aims in a positive light and to make Trump seem small, vindictive, mean-spirited, and old. For his supporters, he likely came across as vigorous and fervent, and he landed a few punches, blasting Harris for the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and, at the end, asking why she had not yet implemented the economic proposals—such as an expanded child tax credit, a first-time home-buyers program—she was now touting. But mostly Harris succeeded by maneuvering Trump into being Trump.
He tossed out—often in a hard-to-follow jumble of words that probably could only be deciphered by his true devotees—one debunked lie after another. Undocumented immigrants are stealing and eating people’s pets in Ohio. (“I see people on television talking about it,” he said as way of confirmation.) And undocumented migrants are violently taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. Doctors in Democratic states are executing babies after they are born. Crime is down throughout the world but increasing in the United States. Everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and all legal scholars—wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Harris and the Democrats are scheming to confiscate all guns. Joe Biden has pocketed money from Ukraine and China. Harris is a “Marxist” and hates Jews, Arabs, and Israel. He has had no connection to Project 2025. Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the violence on January 6. Top professors at the Wharton School have praised his tariffs plan (which many economists have said will lead to inflation and unemployment). The economy when he was president was the best ever.
It was Trump’s greatest hits of conspiracy theories, fabrications, and disinformation. Occasionally ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis called him out on his false statements. But it didn’t seem necessary for them to interrupt his every lie, especially when they occurred during unhinged jags. No doubt, all Trump’s bunk plays for his people. But how well does this stuff register beyond that, especially when delivered in an irate and occasionally incoherent fashion?
Harris was tough on him, essentially calling Trump a racist and dismissing him as a weak person who admires dictators and who threatens both civility and democracy. Trump helped her out on this front. When Muir pressed him on whether he regrets his inaction during the initial hours of the January 6 riot, Trump refused to answer the question and shifted to his main move of the night: accusing Biden and Harris of allowing millions of criminals to pour into the country. Once again, he refused to acknowledge his 2020 loss.
Trump also declined to say whether he would, if elected, veto a national abortion ban. (His vice presidential pick, JD Vance, has stated that Trump would, but Trump at the debate remarked that he has never spoken to Vance about this.) Harris, expectedly, was clear and fierce on reproductive rights and decried the “Trump abortion bans” that have been implemented in 20 states after the fall of Roe. She described the horrific realities that women have been confronted in these states, as she stared at Trump, who did not return her gaze.
On another key topic Trump would not answer the question. Asked if he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russia, he would only say that the war should end. He claimed he could end this war in an instant, but he would not explain how. (He was not asked about the recent news stories reporting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been mounting covert information operations against the United States to help Trump.)
Throughout the evening, Trump was once again all doom and gloom. The United States is on the verge of total collapse. He is the best, his foes are the worst. And Harris, who came across as a confident normie with a binder full of policy ideas, kept insisting it was time to “turn the page” on Trump and his chaos. She treated him like a loser, jabbing him for having a “hard time processing” his defeat and calling his confusion about such facts “troubling.” Trump’s counter: Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban likes him and…Biden “hates” Harris.
Trump was fully himself, and Harris was in her zone. He was the familiar (though older) blathering MAGA King of Carnage, and she was a fierce former prosecutor who effectively delivered her two-fold case. She did what all politicians should do: She respected the audience, showing that she understood her task was to win them over. He was there to perform a rerun of The Trump Show, with little new material. To call the debate an evisceration of Trump would be going too far. But it did what a debate should do: reveal how each candidate sees the world and make clear the differences between them. As soon as it ended, Harris’ campaign called for another face-off. Trump ought to think twice before saying yes.
