Harris won the debate, hands down! Trump was mostly confused, spewing his usual unhinged mixed word salads which made little sense!
My favorite part was when Harris said that Trump nixed the bi-partisan immigration bill because he didn’t want to solve the issue, plus he has boring rallies and people leave early!
So what does Trump do? He goes on a two minute winded rant about how his rallies are the most entertaining, and how Harris has to bus in her audience and pay for them to show up. Nothing about Immigration or the bill he nixed.
This just goes to show how inept and incompetent this man truly is and what his priorities are in life!….:)
I really wish that the moderators would have made him answer the question about why he spiked the border bill, or at least asked him the question a second time. They let him off easy on that one.
Her commanding presence from the start put him on the defense, and it went downhill for him from there. She is much more poised and confident and articulate and compelling than he could ever be. It is time to move on from the Trump era, and she made a strong case for that. Fingers cross moving toward the election.
I appreciated Harris spelling out the real world consequences of abortion bans. I’m in Oregon. Idaho is flying patients here & to Washington bc doctors can’t give pregnant women the abortions they need when their pregnancies go south.
Republicans go on tv & talk about post birth abortion. That’s not happening. They’re taking some of the most painful decisions a family has to make regarding end of life care for terminal newborns & twisting it into something horrible.
No one wakes up one day at 7 months pregnant & suddenly decides to have an abortion. By that time, you’ve bought a ton of baby shit! You’re preparing for your baby. You’re having an abortion bc something is seriously wrong. People in situations like that deserve our compassion & empathy. They don’t deserve demonization.
Aaron this is an excellent summary and take on last night. Thank you. Kamala Harris was brilliant and controlled. She knew how to get Trump to unravel and he did. He came off as unfit to lead, a raging dark minded lying idiot. No other way to put it. She is totally ready to take us forward to a much better place. The Republican party, by putting this disreputable character on that stage as a serious candidate for president and again, has let the country down, has failed us. It’s up to us now.
I would also like to mention that Harris got a-lot in last night including her remarks about the Supreme Court justices that ruled in his favor regarding immunity.
Harris clearly won - I think Trump sealed his fate with his nonsense about immigrants eating their neighbour's pets. People were, and are still, laughing at him and that's one thing he cannot cope with. I seriously doubt he will debate her again and in fact I doubt very much his people would let him. I expect he will now focus on increasing the "stolen election" rhetoric, and bank on the support of his white supremacist pals. He will increasingly panic about his looming court appearances, without his plan to confer immunity on himself coming to fruition.
The only thing I would say is that while I am glad that Muir and Davis did literally any moderating/fact checking at all....I don't think I'm alone in being very frustrated with how often they let trump go over in rebuttal and how often he just talked right over them without being muted.
Now, I *know* that the second one was actually a request from team Harris (according to CBC anyway) BUT the caveat was that candidates were supposed to be loudly warned their mic was about to turn back on, making it abundantly clear that they were over time/out of line.
And THEN after all that interrupting and talking over, Davis really just muted Harris the ONE time she interrupted/went over and went right back to trump?????
I think that "operation: let him talk" ended up being in play and all here and his interruptions certainly didn't make him look better, but I've definitely seen corpo media whining that she was "light on policy" and it's just like sure, maybe she could have drilled into a few more things if Trump wasn't given *several* more minutes of talk time 🙃🙃
I agree with that and thought they could have pushed both Harris and Trump to answer the question in a few occasions.
That said I don't think the Harris campaign is going to complain to much since I think all the interrupting only made Trump look worse and worse as the night went on.
Yeah I understood what she was doing but also definitely understand wanting to see more on policy from her.
It was honestly kind of surprising that when both the moderators and trump were trying to press her about why things hadn't gotten done or passed already she didn't just say something like "Why don't you ask Mike Johnson that? Why don't you ask him why bills aren't getting put on my desk? Or would you like me to, in your words, use the "tyrannical executive order" like you did?" And look right at him 😅
Because I honestly don't think the average low info voter understands how the branches work, and I worry that people watching may have thought those questions raised "a good point" about her in a negative way ....
I don't understand why these people asking to see "more policy from her" don't just go to KamalaHarris.com, where there are literally PAGES and PAGES of policy points in clear, clean language.
What, you expect people to go do the work themselves?! The bare minimum? What's next, expecting people to understand nuance? The difference between broad economic visions and the realities of working within a broken system?! 😉
I'm in Wales on a vacation and was unable to watch it live, but the clips are gold! (Thank you, Aaron!) After feeling great once Kamala took over the candidacy, I've been wavering a little in my optimism because I let idiots like Ross Douthat, who recently wrote a column predicting a Trump win, get into my head. Too many voters don't seem to know how badly his brain has been fried by every dumb conspiracy theory that emerges from the right-wing weirdo-sphere. Hopefully his confident statements about the immigrants eating animals and the post-birth abortions will get more people to see Trump for the absolute moron that he is. His facial expressions were also deeply unpleasant. Who wants to look at that face for another minute when we have a lovely smiling woman as our option?
Ross Douthat came to my school for an assembly in 2016 and told us Trump would not win. He was wrong then, and he's wrong now. I don't trust Douthat one bit.
To balance complaints about the, totally appropriate, fact checking, I don't see anyone complaining this morning that the moderators frequently turned TFG's mic back on when he was talking out of turn.
Although it bugged me last night, it gave him the opportunity to dig himself deeper into his hole.
Harris also showed about how easy it is to trigger Trump, get him off balance. Attacking or appealing to his ego foreign leaders take advantage.. Orban, Putin, Kim . This is very dangerous for the country and the world. Over and again Harris said, and we know, that Trump is about himself, not the country.
And in that regard he will say anything.
He is so out of touch with reality that he believes his own lies. Some are so ridiculous that even the most vulnerable, uneducated and out of touch, know they are lies.
Trump when talking about Russia, allowed as to how we should be deterred from confronting Putin because Putin has nukes. In other words we should give in to Putin's brutal aggression in Ukraine, taking Ukraine's sovereign land violating international law.. As well Trump passes over the fact that we mutually have our own nukes countering that threat ( MAD). Biden and NATO warned Putin away from his dangerous threatening bluff.
I agree, Harris won the debate no question. It was great to see. She got in many of her policy points that distinguish her from Trump. She baited him multiple times and he bit, sounding nastier and more unhinged each time especially when he spewed his bs about immigration.
But my question is: how many undecideds or Trump-leaners did she persuade? I keep seeing polls that say people think he is better at the economy, inflation, etc. I hear people say "well I don't like the things he says but he will be better with the economy, etc" Everybody already knows his same-old stupid rants and raves. He is a danger and it was good everyone got to see it on display last night but we don't need to hear him try and refute his "very fine people" bs again.
If they do another debate, yes keep talking about Project 2025, talk about how Russia keeps doing things to sway the election to Trump and why, keep mentioning all the Republicans that are endorsing her and saying that "everyone is welcome here" don't just say "Tim Walz and I are gun owners we don't want to take away guns" talk about how the vast majority of people want gun control. Do all those things. But my hope is that next time she will cut down on the slam-dunk baits that get him to babble about his crowd sizes and get more detailed to clearly show people HOW she will "lower food costs," HOW "making housing more affordable" will get done. Most importantly, she needs to hammer home WHY her policies are the better way forward, namely, demonstrating how history shows that when you reject "trickle down" and directly invest in the people as a whole, the country does better as a whole and that the policies she's helped put in place since being Vice Pres are doing just that.
I watched ABC interview their group of "undecided voters" after the debate. I think there were 7 of them. 5 said they were definitely leaning or would vote for Harris after the debate. Two women were still "I need to see more". One seemed clueless, the other was actually a TEACHER, which was unbelievable to me. She needs to turn in her teacher's union card. She should not be influencing our children if she's that dense.
I appreciate your reply! I missed seeing that group of undecided voters, I wish I had. I'm glad that most of them are leaning toward Harris post-debate.
I agree, it's unbelievable that at this point there would still be people who say they "need to see more." Are they just in denial? Who knows. The coalition she's built in such a short time is incredible. But still. The more Harris can find avenues to get in front of folks in more moderate and conservative spaces (not necessarily MAGA spaces), and talk in as much detail as she can about how her platform makes things more equitable, and that has historically helped more people and made our country stronger, the better.
We can all try to help get this message out in whatever way we can. I made a resolution that I was going to do more than vote this year and I'm trying to do my bit. Every little bit helps.
I'm sure most who write in will think Harris won, but start with very unfavourable views of Trump. So their (me included) opinions don't count for much. The snap poll by CNN however is telling. Harris clearly won the debate.
I was actually shocked by how effectively she attacked trump. I did not expect that. She baited him over and over and he bit that worm every time. Amazing performance.
No disagreements with your assessment, Aaron. The debate showcased who they are - she an experienced prosecutor, who can think on her feet and he, a constant liar, who can only follow up one lie with another.
Throughout the debate Trump looked like the schoolkid who hasn't done his homework but uses his facial expressions to give the impression that he knows what's going on.
Harris spent years as a prosecutor, and it showed. When she dissed Trump she looked right at him. That is something all prosecutors do. They face the defendant when they talk about the facts, and describe what the witnesses say. They show their dominance by eye contact.
Trump never looked at Harris when he insulted her or repeated his rally assaults. It felt like he didn't want to acknowledge that she was there in person. He could not say anything to her face.
Then Harris faced the camera when she talked about the future. Trump has a standard body posture, chin tucked, head leaning forward, eyes staring out from under his brows. He seems to think it makes him look manly or perhaps dominant. You can see it in the clips.
Perhaps his fans like being dominated. I don't. I like it when adults talk to me like an equal. That's what Harris did when talking about the future.
Harris won the debate, hands down! Trump was mostly confused, spewing his usual unhinged mixed word salads which made little sense!
My favorite part was when Harris said that Trump nixed the bi-partisan immigration bill because he didn’t want to solve the issue, plus he has boring rallies and people leave early!
So what does Trump do? He goes on a two minute winded rant about how his rallies are the most entertaining, and how Harris has to bus in her audience and pay for them to show up. Nothing about Immigration or the bill he nixed.
This just goes to show how inept and incompetent this man truly is and what his priorities are in life!….:)
I really wish that the moderators would have made him answer the question about why he spiked the border bill, or at least asked him the question a second time. They let him off easy on that one.
Her commanding presence from the start put him on the defense, and it went downhill for him from there. She is much more poised and confident and articulate and compelling than he could ever be. It is time to move on from the Trump era, and she made a strong case for that. Fingers cross moving toward the election.
I appreciated Harris spelling out the real world consequences of abortion bans. I’m in Oregon. Idaho is flying patients here & to Washington bc doctors can’t give pregnant women the abortions they need when their pregnancies go south.
Republicans go on tv & talk about post birth abortion. That’s not happening. They’re taking some of the most painful decisions a family has to make regarding end of life care for terminal newborns & twisting it into something horrible.
No one wakes up one day at 7 months pregnant & suddenly decides to have an abortion. By that time, you’ve bought a ton of baby shit! You’re preparing for your baby. You’re having an abortion bc something is seriously wrong. People in situations like that deserve our compassion & empathy. They don’t deserve demonization.
And unfortunately if something happens in the latter months of a pregnancy, it’s likely due to medical pr.
Aaron this is an excellent summary and take on last night. Thank you. Kamala Harris was brilliant and controlled. She knew how to get Trump to unravel and he did. He came off as unfit to lead, a raging dark minded lying idiot. No other way to put it. She is totally ready to take us forward to a much better place. The Republican party, by putting this disreputable character on that stage as a serious candidate for president and again, has let the country down, has failed us. It’s up to us now.
I would also like to mention that Harris got a-lot in last night including her remarks about the Supreme Court justices that ruled in his favor regarding immunity.
Thank you.
Harris clearly won - I think Trump sealed his fate with his nonsense about immigrants eating their neighbour's pets. People were, and are still, laughing at him and that's one thing he cannot cope with. I seriously doubt he will debate her again and in fact I doubt very much his people would let him. I expect he will now focus on increasing the "stolen election" rhetoric, and bank on the support of his white supremacist pals. He will increasingly panic about his looming court appearances, without his plan to confer immunity on himself coming to fruition.
The only thing I would say is that while I am glad that Muir and Davis did literally any moderating/fact checking at all....I don't think I'm alone in being very frustrated with how often they let trump go over in rebuttal and how often he just talked right over them without being muted.
Now, I *know* that the second one was actually a request from team Harris (according to CBC anyway) BUT the caveat was that candidates were supposed to be loudly warned their mic was about to turn back on, making it abundantly clear that they were over time/out of line.
And THEN after all that interrupting and talking over, Davis really just muted Harris the ONE time she interrupted/went over and went right back to trump?????
I think that "operation: let him talk" ended up being in play and all here and his interruptions certainly didn't make him look better, but I've definitely seen corpo media whining that she was "light on policy" and it's just like sure, maybe she could have drilled into a few more things if Trump wasn't given *several* more minutes of talk time 🙃🙃
I agree with that and thought they could have pushed both Harris and Trump to answer the question in a few occasions.
That said I don't think the Harris campaign is going to complain to much since I think all the interrupting only made Trump look worse and worse as the night went on.
Yeah I understood what she was doing but also definitely understand wanting to see more on policy from her.
It was honestly kind of surprising that when both the moderators and trump were trying to press her about why things hadn't gotten done or passed already she didn't just say something like "Why don't you ask Mike Johnson that? Why don't you ask him why bills aren't getting put on my desk? Or would you like me to, in your words, use the "tyrannical executive order" like you did?" And look right at him 😅
Because I honestly don't think the average low info voter understands how the branches work, and I worry that people watching may have thought those questions raised "a good point" about her in a negative way ....
I don't understand why these people asking to see "more policy from her" don't just go to KamalaHarris.com, where there are literally PAGES and PAGES of policy points in clear, clean language.
What, you expect people to go do the work themselves?! The bare minimum? What's next, expecting people to understand nuance? The difference between broad economic visions and the realities of working within a broken system?! 😉
CBS** lol I sure wish substack would let us edit comments 😅
Do what I do, copy delete paste fix and re post.
I actually seem to be unable to copy comments on the mobile app lol 😓
You can only edit comments while accessing Substack in a web browser. Editing is not possible on a mobile device.
yes.. frustrating
100%
I'm in Wales on a vacation and was unable to watch it live, but the clips are gold! (Thank you, Aaron!) After feeling great once Kamala took over the candidacy, I've been wavering a little in my optimism because I let idiots like Ross Douthat, who recently wrote a column predicting a Trump win, get into my head. Too many voters don't seem to know how badly his brain has been fried by every dumb conspiracy theory that emerges from the right-wing weirdo-sphere. Hopefully his confident statements about the immigrants eating animals and the post-birth abortions will get more people to see Trump for the absolute moron that he is. His facial expressions were also deeply unpleasant. Who wants to look at that face for another minute when we have a lovely smiling woman as our option?
Ross Douthat came to my school for an assembly in 2016 and told us Trump would not win. He was wrong then, and he's wrong now. I don't trust Douthat one bit.
To balance complaints about the, totally appropriate, fact checking, I don't see anyone complaining this morning that the moderators frequently turned TFG's mic back on when he was talking out of turn.
Although it bugged me last night, it gave him the opportunity to dig himself deeper into his hole.
Yes, I hear 5 extra minutes he got, all to dig himself in a deeper hole!
Harris also showed about how easy it is to trigger Trump, get him off balance. Attacking or appealing to his ego foreign leaders take advantage.. Orban, Putin, Kim . This is very dangerous for the country and the world. Over and again Harris said, and we know, that Trump is about himself, not the country.
And in that regard he will say anything.
He is so out of touch with reality that he believes his own lies. Some are so ridiculous that even the most vulnerable, uneducated and out of touch, know they are lies.
Trump when talking about Russia, allowed as to how we should be deterred from confronting Putin because Putin has nukes. In other words we should give in to Putin's brutal aggression in Ukraine, taking Ukraine's sovereign land violating international law.. As well Trump passes over the fact that we mutually have our own nukes countering that threat ( MAD). Biden and NATO warned Putin away from his dangerous threatening bluff.
I agree, Harris won the debate no question. It was great to see. She got in many of her policy points that distinguish her from Trump. She baited him multiple times and he bit, sounding nastier and more unhinged each time especially when he spewed his bs about immigration.
But my question is: how many undecideds or Trump-leaners did she persuade? I keep seeing polls that say people think he is better at the economy, inflation, etc. I hear people say "well I don't like the things he says but he will be better with the economy, etc" Everybody already knows his same-old stupid rants and raves. He is a danger and it was good everyone got to see it on display last night but we don't need to hear him try and refute his "very fine people" bs again.
If they do another debate, yes keep talking about Project 2025, talk about how Russia keeps doing things to sway the election to Trump and why, keep mentioning all the Republicans that are endorsing her and saying that "everyone is welcome here" don't just say "Tim Walz and I are gun owners we don't want to take away guns" talk about how the vast majority of people want gun control. Do all those things. But my hope is that next time she will cut down on the slam-dunk baits that get him to babble about his crowd sizes and get more detailed to clearly show people HOW she will "lower food costs," HOW "making housing more affordable" will get done. Most importantly, she needs to hammer home WHY her policies are the better way forward, namely, demonstrating how history shows that when you reject "trickle down" and directly invest in the people as a whole, the country does better as a whole and that the policies she's helped put in place since being Vice Pres are doing just that.
I watched ABC interview their group of "undecided voters" after the debate. I think there were 7 of them. 5 said they were definitely leaning or would vote for Harris after the debate. Two women were still "I need to see more". One seemed clueless, the other was actually a TEACHER, which was unbelievable to me. She needs to turn in her teacher's union card. She should not be influencing our children if she's that dense.
I appreciate your reply! I missed seeing that group of undecided voters, I wish I had. I'm glad that most of them are leaning toward Harris post-debate.
I agree, it's unbelievable that at this point there would still be people who say they "need to see more." Are they just in denial? Who knows. The coalition she's built in such a short time is incredible. But still. The more Harris can find avenues to get in front of folks in more moderate and conservative spaces (not necessarily MAGA spaces), and talk in as much detail as she can about how her platform makes things more equitable, and that has historically helped more people and made our country stronger, the better.
We can all try to help get this message out in whatever way we can. I made a resolution that I was going to do more than vote this year and I'm trying to do my bit. Every little bit helps.
I'm sure most who write in will think Harris won, but start with very unfavourable views of Trump. So their (me included) opinions don't count for much. The snap poll by CNN however is telling. Harris clearly won the debate.
I was actually shocked by how effectively she attacked trump. I did not expect that. She baited him over and over and he bit that worm every time. Amazing performance.
It all started with the Harris introduktion and handshake.
That shook him. 😁
No disagreements with your assessment, Aaron. The debate showcased who they are - she an experienced prosecutor, who can think on her feet and he, a constant liar, who can only follow up one lie with another.
Throughout the debate Trump looked like the schoolkid who hasn't done his homework but uses his facial expressions to give the impression that he knows what's going on.
Harris spent years as a prosecutor, and it showed. When she dissed Trump she looked right at him. That is something all prosecutors do. They face the defendant when they talk about the facts, and describe what the witnesses say. They show their dominance by eye contact.
Trump never looked at Harris when he insulted her or repeated his rally assaults. It felt like he didn't want to acknowledge that she was there in person. He could not say anything to her face.
Then Harris faced the camera when she talked about the future. Trump has a standard body posture, chin tucked, head leaning forward, eyes staring out from under his brows. He seems to think it makes him look manly or perhaps dominant. You can see it in the clips.
Perhaps his fans like being dominated. I don't. I like it when adults talk to me like an equal. That's what Harris did when talking about the future.