Harris Wins Debate, Battering Trump’s Ego

By any reasonable metric, Vice President Kamala Harris soundly beat former President Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Zack Beauchamp reported for Vox.

Harris manipulated Trump into spiraling at several points during their first debate. I Photo: RF Stuff (she/her) X

She achieved this by demonstrating superior knowledge not only of policy but also of her opponent’s psychology.

Harris figured out exactly how to make Trump angry, trick him into veering off course, and keep the debate on favorable ground. To put it bluntly, Harris manipulated Trump into spiraling at several points during their first debate.

Early on, the moderators pressed Harris on President Joe Biden’s unpopular immigration record, asking her if she would have done anything differently from her current boss—a topic favorable to Trump.

Harris answered the question but then took a seemingly unrelated shot at Trump’s rallies. “I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch.

During the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about how windmills cause cancer. And you will also notice that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” she said.

This gave Trump a choice: prosecute Harris on immigration, an issue where she’s weak, or go on a rant defending his rallies. You can guess what he chose.

“Let me respond to the rallies,” Trump said. “She said people start leaving. 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.

”This began a tailspin of weird tangents, including a rant about the non-existent problem of Haitian migrants supposedly eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio.