(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) The big winners from Tuesday night’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris were the fact checkers.
Sure, there may have been a few whoppers, exaggerations and omissions from either podium, and one’s perception of who had the most lies—or at least the most egregious ones—is, no doubt, directly proportionate to one’s perception of how many biological genders exist in nature.
Nonetheless, enterprising fact checkers who thought to cut and paste the previous copy from their June 27 editions may have been able to call it an early night since many of the responses, attacks and evasions coming from both sides seemed essentially the same as in Trump’s CNN debate against President Joe Biden.
By and large, despite what the mainstream media is likely to claim, that plays to Trump’s favor. Having spent the better part of the past four years on the campaign trail, and making his record seventh appearance on the presidential debate stage, the onus was not on Trump to present anything fresh and new, as much as it was on Harris, who is not even two months into her campaign.
Not only has she been accused, however, of plagiarizing large parts of her platform directly from Biden, it became clear on Tuesday that she was even recycling some of the same stale attacks used by the senile 81-year-old.
Harris carped on readily debunked falsehoods about Charlottesville and Project 2025, while repeating blatant mischaracterizations of Trump’s stated policies on areas like abortion and in-vitro fertilization.
Trump parried back by reminding Pennsylvania voters that she was for a fracking ban before she was against it, and that she recently admitted her positions hadn’t changed.
Trump ably defended his positions on several areas, such as the stolen 2020 election. As for other topics, he showed yet again that he would not be baited into gotcha questions on bogusly framed issues about climate change and Jan. 6—redirecting his responses back to his preferred topics, including illegal immigration, when they arose.
The moderators gently nudged, but knew better than to turn it more adversarial than it already was. While the questions may have been largely loaded against Trump, the actual moderation thus favored him, often allowing him to have the last word.
Trump mostly maintained his discipline in not interrupting Harris, and was even able to zing her twice for interrupting him, appropriating her own “I’m speaking” attack line and using it against her in an effective flex of authority.
There may have been a few moments where Trump, had he done some homework, might have spent more time putting Harris on the defense—for example, when posed with a question over his role in fomenting Jan. 6 rallygoers to enter the U.S. Capitol, he might have specifically slammed the insurrection-like disruption that Harris encouraged during the Senate Judiciary hearings for future Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Overall, though, the strategy of tying Harris to the Biden administration and emphasizing that there was nothing new about her campaign demanded that his line of attack stay largely the same from one debate to the next.
Only once did Trump miss a crucial opportunity to strike at Harris where it mattered, by potentially turning her repugnant identity politics back against her.
When he was asked why he believed it was “appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity” of his political rival, Trump seemed uncharacteristically stumped.
The question from moderator David Muir was a gutsy one, given that it referenced a hostile exchange between Trump and another ABC News correspondent, Rachel Scott, during a convention for black journalists in July.
In both cases, it was ABC News, not Trump, that appeared to be preoccupied with racial politics and with pinning down Trump’s opinion of Harris’s racial identity. Trump’s broader point during the exchange with Scott was that Harris has spent her career as a sort of political chameleon, changing her persona to fit the audience.
In responding to Muir, however, he simply punted on it altogether, deferring to Harris, who clearly had a rehearsed response teed up attacking Trump for his racial rhetoric.
Yet, it was a golden moment to expose just how radical Harris really is, particularly after a viral video recently showed her agreeing with a group of black men in a barbershop that laws should be written specifically addressing the wants and needs of black people—in potential violation of the equal-protection clause in the 14th Amendment.
🔥🚨BREAKING NEWS: Footage has been released of Vice President Kamala Harris being confronted by a Black man when she visited a barbershop. Harris attempted to host a barbershop conversation with Black men and ended up getting criticized ‘for her noticeable lack of policies for… pic.twitter.com/GRuFMpRSGp
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) September 6, 2024
Trump’s answer to Muir’s question should have gone something like this:
“Frankly, David, from where I stand it seems like ABC News is more preoccupied with Vice President Harris’s race than anyone. You are the second reporter from your network to ask me that, and as you mentioned, I noted in my response to the first that she has, throughout her career, benefited from a chameleon-like ability to change her identity, her beliefs, her accent and everything else based on the audience she is performing in front of.
“I, for one, couldn’t care less about her race. It makes no difference the skin color if you see yourself as an American first—and I believe that is why many traditionally Democratic voters in the black community, the Hispanic community and other groups have embraced the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, because they aren’t expected to conform to something that does not speak to their fundamental values, for a party that has a long track record of exploiting and then forgetting about them.
“But, if pretending to be something other than a Berkeley-born Marxist helps Vice President Harris to win votes, that’s understandable. Let’s face it, you didn’t write this question for me, you wrote it for her to spout off some attack that she’s been holed up in her hotel room rehearsing, because other than ABC News, it is Kamala Harris who is most interested in talking about racial divisions. So let’s talk.
“Kamala, you have a track record of supporting radical social-justice movements like the Minnesota Freedom Fund. You have indicated that you supported slavery reparations—something so controversial that even your old friend Gavin Newsom had to pull the plug. You sided with Jussie Smollett in his notorious race hoax. And you agreed in a recent barber-shop forum that you would support writing separate laws for black people. So, given your obsession with racial identity, why should white voters trust you not to implement an extreme and divisive agenda that would give preferential treatment to minorities?
“Barack Obama, Joe Biden, both promised to bring unity, and both lied. Instead, they sowed partisan and racial divisions for their own political and financial benefit. Given the number of lies you’ve told onstage here tonight, why should anyone buy into your phony promise of bipartisanship, which goes against every indication of who you really are?”
Pouring cold water all over Harris’s race-baiting talking points undoubtedly would have left her melted into a cackling puddle on the floor like the wicked witch she is.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
