Thoughts on the Trump v. ABC Debate
Thoughts on the Trump v. ABC Debate
Realizing that Vice President Harris wasn't up to debating Donald Trump, ABC decided to do it for her
The corporate media wants you to believe that Vice President Kamala Harris did great at the ABC News Presidential Debate on Tuesday night, and that Donald Trump did terribly. So long as Harris did not open her mouth and poop her pants as President Joe Biden might have done in her stead this was always going to be the narrative. My opinion of the debate is very different, however, and I think more in line with what a regular person—not a partisan hack or corporate media employee (but I repeat myself)—saw as well.
Starting with Trump’s performance, I would say that it is fair to say he did poorly. Most of his answers and rebuttals were rambling without getting to much of a point, even correcting for the usual Trumpian bombast over substance, and he left several potential attacks on Harris on the table. When she went after him for the “Central Park Five” he should have said something to the effect of, “Well, you would know all about convicting innocent people given your record as a prosecutor in California that you’re so proud of. Of course, actual criminals like the ones your running mate let burn down the cities he was governor of you openly supported, but you have no problem sending innocent people to prison and laughing about it.” Given that he was reportedly being coached by Tulsi Gabbard, who used that same point to sink Harris’s 2020 campaign in a debate at the time, it’s doubly odd that he never said anything about her prosecutorial record. His two worst moments were when the moderators went after him for his comments about Harris’s race, which left him a bumbling mess, and when he brought up Haitian immigrants allegedly eating people’s pets in Ohio which he could only justify by saying that he heard it on TV. Those instances could certainly turn off undecided voters, but for the most part I would say his performance was below-average for him.
All of that said, I think the ABC moderators saved the debate for Trump by becoming participants in the debate on Harris’s behalf. That these people support Harris for president was already not in question, but to so blatantly debate Trump for Harris actually made Trump’s performance look better than it actually was and served to make him look sympathetic. People are saying that it was a 3-on-1 debate, but that’s not correct: It was a 2-on-1 debate with Kamala Harris as spectator. Rather than let the two nominees debate, the moderators debated Trump with “fact-checks” that were rarely more than their own partisan opinions and often factually incorrect. When Trump pointed out that him saying he “lost the 2020 election by a hair” was sarcasm, David Muir actually tried to fact-check him by saying “Well, I didn’t detect any sarcasm when you said it.” Trump should have pointed out that nobody cares what David Muir thinks about what Trump said because David Muir is not running for president, but the fact that Muir would say that at all made himself, the debate, and ABC look like a complete joke.
Vice President Harris, contrary to what the corporate media keeps telling you to think, did not have a good night at the debate, she barely had a night at all and certainly did not have a debate. I think most people would acknowledge that her interview with Dana Bash went poorly for Harris, but what they won’t say is that her performance in this debate was exactly the same. The only difference is that, unlike Dana Bash, the ABC moderators did not attempt to hold Harris to account for anything that she said. Kamala Harris refuses to explain her many position changes on the issues from the 2020 campaign to this one, such as fracking and immigration, merely asserting that she’s been clear on the topics without ever having even attempted to provide clarity, and, rather than explain her plans to address important issues today, she simply asserts that she has a plan and moves on. Dana Bash at least tried to hold Harris to a sliver of accountability in their interview, and Harris ended up looking ridiculous repeating “I’ve been clear” and “I have a plan” like a wind-up toy. Harris employed the same tactic here and only came out looking better because the ABC moderators did not attempt to hold her to account at all when they bothered to ask her a real question in the first place. Most of her questions could simply be boiled down to, “How terrible is Donald Trump?”
Dave Smith has made the point on his Part of the Problem podcast that Donald Trump isn’t really running against Kamala Harris, he’s running against the Deep State and the corporate media with Kamala Harris as their avatar. She is in some essence not real, she’s merely whatever she needs to be to try to keep Donald Trump out of power. I think that ABC was clearly under orders to tank Trump in that debate, but they were so clumsy and obvious about it that it will actually backfire and help Trump. The Federalist is semi-jokingly asking if ABC “Will Disclose Its Debate As In-Kind Contribution To Kamala Harris,” but maybe it would be more realistic to disclose it as a contribution to Donald Trump since I believe it will only serve to help him given how ridiculous it made her and them look to anyone who doesn’t expect to benefit from her winning the election.