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I watched every minute of the debate. The video package I had available for Wednesday morning’s Hugh Hewitt Show and my Duane’s World podcast included over 50 video clips. My original conclusion was that nobody won the debate. Trump wasn’t at his best, Kamala Harris was an A.I. cyborg reciting memorized answers to issue sets, not specific questions. And David Muir and Linsey Davis, Kamala’s sorority sister, set a standard for bias in a debate moderator that will never be equaled. I’m not sure it’s physically possible to be more partisan and one-sided than what we saw Tuesday night in Philadelphia.
Donald Trump was effective at redirecting the conversation repeatedly throughout the debate on the border crisis, and all of the manifest problems we’ve seen over the last four years, whether it be on jobs, crime, drugs, national security concerns, education, or strains on the health care system. But there were at least a dozen opportunities for the former President to put this race away for good. He had multiple chances to do what Ronald Reagan did to Walter Mondale in 1984 — use a meme from his opponent he knew was coming and turn it around, erasing any doubt as to who is going to win the election. Trump didn’t do that. I’ll give you just two examples of a rhetorical checkmate Trump left on the board.
Kamala Harris launched into her ‘Trump is the worst ever’ routine at one point, making the case that the events of January 6th constituted the biggest threat to democracy since the Civil War. On 9/10, she said that. In real time, my eyes bugged out. I was ready to pounce. I certainly expected Donald Trump to pounce. At least, he could do a little seizing. He could very easily have said, «Tomorrow, I will be in New York at Ground Zero, and at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to remember the nearly 3,000 Americans that lost their lives in a terror attack on U.S. soil that attempted to decapitate the government. The plane that crashed into the fields of Shanksville was inbound to Washington, D.C. Its primary target was the White House. Its secondary target was the U.S. Capitol. Thanks to the first combatants in the War on Terror, American patriots on board bull rushed the cockpit and ended that threat, even if it meant sacrificing their own lives.» And you’re telling the American people that J6 was worse? Really?
Another layup was when Harris claimed that there are no U.S. troops currently serving in a combat zone. We have troops at al-Assad in Iraq that constantly comes under attack. We just lost 7 servicemembers to an ISIS attack on August 31st. U.S. troops are stationed in a combat zone in Syria. There are hot spots all around the world where we have troops deployed. This was an easy way for Trump to show Harris as clueless, unmoored from reality, and recklessly stupid on the commander-in-chief question.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally of the former President and surrogate in the Spin Room Tuesday night, thought Trump’s performance was disastrous. ‘Damage control’ was the phrase thrown around conservative media circles for the first 24 hours afterwards. But a funny thing happened. For a debate that Donald Trump seemingly lost, there seems to be movement in his direction since the debate.
David Chalian, one of CNN’s political analysts, brought up comparable polling from before and after the debate on the subject of the economy. The specific question is ‘who would be better on the economy.’ Trump enjoyed a comfortable lead going into the debate, and afterwards, increased his lead on the issue.
Nate Silver, who is one of the nation’s preeminent pollsters, and who is a Democrat openly supporting Kamala Harris, has been under withering, relentless attacks from the far left because his forecasting has increasingly shown Donald Trump with at least a 60-40 or better chance of winning the Electoral College in November.
