vinegarHe frowned. She narrowed her eyes. She pursed her lips. She rested her chin on her fingers. She shook her head in disdain, or threw it back. She laughed with a mixture of bewilderment, sulkiness, and contempt.
Lead prosecutor Kamala Harris was trying to put Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement on trial for nearly a decade of crimes against decency, democracy and reason — and she didn’t believe his story.
Trump has been relatively acquitted in his criminal cases so far this year, but Tuesday night’s first presidential debate in Philadelphia found him on trial, with Harris bringing all her legal experience to the table, just as she did in her time as a senator against Brett Kavanaugh and William Barr.
Debates can be raucous, but rules kept the proceedings courtroom-like silent on a stage surrounded by empty seats at the National Constitution Center, with Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump standing in front of a curved blue podium. “This is an intimate setting for two candidates who have never met,” said moderator David Muir, sounding like an unlikely episode of Love Island.
But this turned out to be no love story: In stark contrast to Trump’s violation of Hillary Clinton’s personal space in the debate eight years ago, Harris stalked across the stage and forced the former president into one of the most awkward handshakes in television history since 2016.
“Kamala Harris,” she told him, to which he grumbled back, and she might have added, “I’m now Trump’s destroyer, the Grim Reaper.”
From that moment on, Ms. Harris, in her navy suit, white pussy-bow blouse, pearl earrings and a tiny gold American flag pin, dominated the stage. She was judge, jury and executioner. Her microphone was muted, so she couldn’t interrupt Mr. Trump when he told absurd lies, but she conveyed her displeasure with a kaleidoscope of facial expressions.
Trump, in a blue suit, white shirt, red tie and American flag pin, refused to meet her eye but stared determinedly ahead, both of them far ahead of poor Joe Biden, who stared slack-jawed in June.
After some early back-and-forth on the economy, Harris went on the offensive. “Donald Trump left us with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression,” she said. “Donald Trump left us with the worst public health pandemic in 100 years. Donald Trump left us with the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And what we’ve done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”
He didn’t like it. A little later, he tried to hit back personally: “She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father was a Marxist professor of economics and he taught her well.”
Harris scoffed, rested her chin on her hand and glared at Trump like a principal listening to the lame excuses of a student who burned down his school.
Things got even worse on the former president’s pet peeve, abortion rights, where he argued that the American people wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Harris, who had traveled the country speaking about the issue for two years, had a prepared aria: “You want to tell me this is what the American people wanted?
“A woman who wants to continue her pregnancy is having a miscarriage and is bleeding out in her car in a parking lot because medical personnel are refusing to treat her in an emergency room because they’re afraid they’ll go to jail? She doesn’t want that. Her husband doesn’t want that. A 12- or 13-year-old girl who is the victim of incest being forced to continue her pregnancy? They don’t want that.”
The debate turned to immigration and border security, Trump’s special area of expertise, but Harris, like a prosecutor luring a witness, repeatedly set traps for the witness to fall into, confessing that she was the one who persuaded him to solve the case.
She said, “I’m actually going to do something very unusual. I’m going to invite you all to a Donald Trump rally, because it’s going to be very entertaining to watch. During the rally, you’re going to see him talking about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He’s going to talk about windmills causing cancer. You’re also going to see people start leaving the rally early out of fatigue and boredom. And I guarantee you the one thing you won’t hear him talk about is you.”
That it was clearly carefully rehearsed didn’t matter: It was a clever way to lift the curtain to reveal that the Wizard of Oz is actually a frail old man putting on a contrived spectacle. It was also perfect for getting on a nerve with Trump, who takes more pride in the size of his crowds than he does his kids (well, maybe not Ivanka, but certainly Eric).
He complained, “She said people are starting to leave. People aren’t going to her rallies. There’s no reason for them to go. And she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And showing them in a different light. So she can’t talk about it. People aren’t leaving my rallies. We’re having the biggest, most amazing rallies in the history of politics.”
If you needed evidence of just how upset Trump was, he spread a false rumor circulated by his campaign and right-wing influencers that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were kidnapping and eating pets (officials have said there are no credible, detailed reports of the claim).
“In Springfield, they eat dog,” the former president said. Objection, your honor. The hosts, who had been fact-checking diligently all night, noted that the mayor of Springfield said there were no credible reports to back up Trump’s claims.
Ah, but Trump had evidence! “Well, I saw it on TV,” he blurted out. “They were saying my dogs were taken and eaten. So maybe he said that, and maybe it’s a good thing for a mayor to say.”
The “I saw it on TV, so it must be true” excuse will never hold up in court, even if it comes from a reality TV star.
If this were a real trial, the judge would surely have stepped in and asked Trump if he would prefer to change his plea to guilty rather than prolong his suffering. But under the bright lights of the debate stage, there was no mercy.
“Donald Trump has been fired by 81 million Americans… and obviously he’s having a very hard time accepting that… and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I’ve spoken to military leaders, some of whom served with you, and they say you’re a disgrace,” Harris said.
In the past, candidates might have countered by saying they had Nelson Mandela or some other moral role model on their side. Trump reached out to Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán. “He said the person he most respected and most feared was Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president.”
But Harris had more ammunition: “It’s no secret that he admires dictators and wants to be a dictator from day one. And it’s no secret that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to become president again because they can manipulate you with flattery and favors.”
A dictator like Putin “would eat you for lunch,” she added.
Harris did a good job at that, making her case for why she should be president. The atmosphere in the post-debate spin room was a stark difference from the June debate in Atlanta, where Democrats looked sad and funereal as they tried to defend Joe Biden. This time, it was Republicans who were making weak excuses for the moderator.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas lamented, “Where was the fact-checking of Kamala Harris? Where was the condemnation of Kamala Harris and her false statements tonight?” Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswami argued, “Kamala Harris was all about words tonight, while Donald Trump ran on proven actions.”
Trump himself made a surprise appearance to claim victory, but his claims were as weak as his claims that his inauguration audience was larger than Barack Obama’s, that he beat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and that he has genius sentence structure, and he was swept away by news that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris.
Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director and now a Trump critic, told reporters: “She hammered Trump to the core. She handled him delicately and then she handled him tough. She handled him with a prosecutorial scalpel. She handled him with the presence of the president of the United States.”
“She embarrassed him. As a human being, I felt sorry for him at the end because he is too old and too cognitively inept to run for president and that was apparent throughout the 90 minutes of the debate.”
Trump’s trial is over. The verdict is guilty of American genocide. Sentencing is unknown until November 5th. The court of public opinion is fickle. Just ask Hillary Clinton.
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