Kamala Harris research Donald Trump within the first second of the debate. She herself stepped up to his lectern to extend her hand and greet him diplomatically. “Let’s have a good debate,” he told the Republican. But the diplomacy didn’t last long, and the face-off turned into a muddy conversation about Trump’s personality and intentions. Harris initially responded firmly to his exaggerations, but found herself mired in those same obsessions in a chaotic finale.
“Let’s talk about our programs and compare them! I have a plan!” Harris implored in the final part of the match, after he had spent more than forty minutes discussing his opponent’s abilities and values. She herself seemed to realize that she had lost control of the conversation and tried to redirect it to her repeated “vision of the future” of the country.
Trump, for his part, repeated the same role as during the meeting with Joe Biden. He stuck to his formula of exaggerations about immigration, crime and a grandiose vision of his role in the world. But it resonated differently. This time, he was the one who seemed out of place. Especially at first, when she was facing an opponent who could firmly refute and even laugh at her remarks. But he eventually managed to find his place, especially when more than half of the face-to-face was devoted to himself.
“We are a nation in decline, everybody is laughing at us. (…) We are going to end up being a third world country,” the former president concluded in his final speech, firm in his vision of the United States as a country without a purpose unless he is in power.
For his part, Harris tried to respond to fear with hope: “You’ve seen two very different visions for our country. One that looks forward and one that looks back. We’re not going to go back. I think the American people have more in common than what separates us. We can realize a vision of the future,” he said in his final minute.
First greeting since 2016
In the age of the image, Harris knew from the beginning how to command the stage, a talent previously reserved for Trump. She entered energetically on stage at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia and addressed the former president, extending her hand in greeting. He received her statically behind his lectern, even a little confused at first. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe Biden shook handsIndeed, since 2016, Americans have not seen two candidates for the presidency of their country greet each other politely.
But as luck would have it, it was the first time that the two of them had seen each other physically. They have been criticizing each other for weeks but have never met before.
“How are you?” Harris said.
“Good to see you, I’m fine,” Trump replied.
“Let’s have a good debate,” Harris urged, aware that he was starting the meeting with an argument for moral superiority.
“I am middle class”
Proud of her achievement, Harris answered the moderators’ first question also on a moral level.
“I grew up a middle-class girl, and I’m the only person on stage who has a plan to lift up the American middle class,” she began, avoiding answers about the state of the economy during Biden’s term, during which she remains vice president.
During the first block of the debate, and on countless occasions, Harris reiterated his goal of creating an “opportunity economy”support small businesses and reduce taxes for the middle class and entrepreneurs.
“Trump left us with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, the worst public health epidemic and the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. We cleaned up Donald Trump’s mess and now I want to build on the aspirations and hopes of the people of this country,” he effectively concluded at another point.
However, while in the first few minutes of the debate Harris managed to get his message across, as the show progressed it gradually deflated. He insisted so much on governing for the people and coming from the middle class that at times it seemed false, and he repeated his economic aspirations so much that he lacked more concrete proposals.
“Why hasn’t he done it already?”
Trump found a way to appease Harris. But late.
“She says she’ll do this, she’ll do that… Why hasn’t she done it already? Let her go to the White House and do what she hasn’t done,” Trump managed to say at the last minute, after sharing all sorts of hyperbole and verbal excesses over the previous 90 minutes.
The Republican has been clever at times, as when he shifted the focus of the debate on America’s political division to his assassination attempt, which he blamed on Democrats.
“I almost got shot in the head because of them, because of the things they say about me”he said at Harris’s hieratic expression.
Ukraine and Israel
He also blamed Biden and Harris for high inflation, the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and not doing enough to end the wars in Ukraine and Israel. Even provoking one and helping to end the other.
“I want the war to stop. I want to save lives. (…) This war would never have happened under my presidency,” he said. without explicitly answering that he wanted Ukraine to win at the request of the debate moderators.
Harris, for her part, had a moment of indeterminacy when asked about the Gaza war: “Israel has the right to defend itself, but how it does it matters. Too many innocent Palestinians have died. This war has to end,” she said: maintaining equidistance on one of the issues that most divides Democrats.
But his tendency to exaggerate has sometimes backfired, portraying Trump as a lost candidate, out of touch with reality and with questionable sources of information.
He reiterated that “there are millions of people coming from prisons, jails and psychiatrists who are coming to the United States and taking jobs that were previously held by African-Americans and Hispanics,” and insisted that inflation is “starving people” and “that pro-abortion Democrats are allowing “execution of the baby even after birth”.
Her hoaxes became so blatant that they had to be compared and fact-checked by debate moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir, while Harris did what she has done throughout the campaign whenever she is asked about Trump: mock him.
dogs and cats
One such exaggeration resulted in a surreal moment that would be repeated in dozens of video clips, when Trump claimed that immigrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the pets” of residents, a hoax spread on social networks a few days before the debate and which had to be denied by local authorities.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people who came are eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there, and that’s what’s happening in our country, and it’s unfortunate,” he said earlier. Harris’s look of surprise.
Moderator David Muir immediately checked Trump’s claims, noting that the city of Springfield had said it had no credible reports of pets being harmed or abused by members of the city’s immigrant community.
“The people on television said it,” Trump retorted.
“There is no evidence of this,” the presenter insisted.
“Let’s talk about extreme things!” Harris concluded with a big laugh.
The Democrat tried to appease the Republican by taking his remarks lightly. She got very serious by defending the right to abortion and criticizing laws that prohibit it in some states, even in cases of rape, and asked not to provoke racial conflicts when Trump again insisted that he had only recently identified as a “black woman.”
Kamala and her “changes of mind”
She also responded soberly when the moderators asked her about her changes of mind: “My values remain the same”“, she insisted, before referring to her favorable position on “fracking” (a practice very widespread in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania, which must win), whereas in 2020 she supported its ban.
However, Trump managed to drag her through the mud, and she found herself locked in a protracted fight over the former president’s admiration for authoritarian leaders and his disdain for democratic norms. The chaos was such that even when Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election, the gravity of his claims was overshadowed.
According to the latest survey of New York Times, 28% of registered voters say they need to know more about Harris while only 9% think the same about Trump, well known to all for his third election as the Republican candidate.
Similarly, the survey estimates that 5% of undecided voters have no preference for any candidate. If they had seen the first part of the debate, they would have been captivated by the moral superiority of the Democrat; if they had seen the second part, they might not have dispelled their doubts.
