Trump debate performance panned as well-prepped Harris gets help from ABC moderators: ‘3 on 1’ By Steven Nelson and Diana Glebova
PHILADELPHIA — Former President Donald Trump repeatedly found himself on the back foot Tuesday night during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris — as Republicans seethed over repeated fact-checks of the GOP candidate and a noticeably lighter touch for the Democrat’s own disputed statements.
Harris, 59, arrived well-prepared to rattle Trump by claiming that military leaders had told her that the Republican nominee and 45th president was a “disgrace,” that world leaders were “laughing” at him and even asserting that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom” after he was “fired by 81 million people” in 2020.
Trump, 78, found himself having to answer not only Harris’ repeated and pointed attacks on both his pride and policy, but also a pair of moderators who quibbled with some of his statements despite what his supporters viewed as a lack of even-handedness.
When Trump argued that crime in the US is increasing because of migrants allowed into the country on Harris’ watch, “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir interjected: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down.”
Trump fired back with his own fact check that “they didn’t include the cities with the worst crime,” referencing the omission of data from Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago.
The 45th president also was brought up short when he said that Biden “sent [Harris] in to negotiate with [Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelensky and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and she did, and the war started three days later, and that’s the kind of talent we have with her,” referring to the veep being deployed to Europe in February 2022 to try to prevent the Kremlin invasion of Kyiv.
Muir asked Harris, “Vice President Harris, have you ever met Vladimir Putin?” — with the Democrat duly citing it as one of Trump’s “lies.”
At another point, “World News Tonight Sunday” host Linsey Davis intervened after Trump made reference to former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s 2019 remarks about aborting babies after birth, part of an extended commentary by the former president about his belief in state autonomy and legal access to the procedure in cases of rape, incest and the health of the mother.
“You can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia … he said, ‘the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby,’” Trump said, misidentifying Northam’s state. “The Democrats are radical in that.”
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” stated Davis after Trump concluded, drawing howls from conservatives who noted that six states and the District of Columbia currently do not place any limits on the procedure.
At one point near the end of the debate, a Trump campaign spokesperson texted a Post reporter “3 on 1” in reference to the dynamic on the National Constitution Center stage.
The 59-year-old Harris, meanwhile, delivered a far stronger appearance than the dismal showing by President Biden in June that stoked Democratic fears of a Trump landslide victory — with the former prosecutor avoiding major gaffes and deflecting potentially damaging questions about her record and evolving stances on a range of major issues.
The VP was helped by her opponent, who proved unable to resist when Harris used what she described as Trump’s strategy of “lies, grievances and name calling” against him.
In one illuminating exchange, after Harris accused Trump of persuading Capitol Hill Republicans to kill a border security spending bill, she claimed his signature rallies had lost their action-packed, blockbuster quality.
Rather than responding to the immigration attack, Trump defended his showmanship, saying: “People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there and then showing them in a different light, so she can’t talk about that.
“People don’t leave,” the former president went on. “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation.”
Ahead of the debate, Republicans focused on Harris’ close friendship with Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, and questioned the impartiality of the network.
Those fears appeared justified as the debate gave cursory focus to Harris’ liabilities, including a series of policy flip-flops on stances from her 2019 run for president — such as past vows to eliminate private health insurance, decriminalize illegal border crossings, ban fracking for oil and natural gas, and ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — and her role as President Biden’s designated point person on reducing illegal immigration, which surged to annual record highs in the first three years of her role as the so-called “border czar.”
Comments are closed.
