By Robert REICH
Friends,
To say that Kamala Harris nailed it tonight is an understatement. She knocked it out of the park. She combined civility with firmness. She made Trump look and sound like the blubbering idiot he is.
Tonight’s was Harris’s first presidential debate. It was Trump’s eighth — including his debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. But Trump was worse than he has ever been. All he did was attack. His only weapon was fear. His only means was lies.
Trump claimed that the American economy under him was better than the economy under Biden and Harris, and that under Harris the economy would be ruined. In fact, under Trump, America lost almost 3 million jobs. And Trump’s unforgivable failure to contain COVID as well as other advanced countries did require massive government expenditures that fueled inflation.
Biden and Harris, by contrast, have presided over an explosion of job growth while inflation has been tamed.
READ ALSO: Why Trump lost debate to Kamala Harris – Allies
On the issue of abortion, Trump claimed Democrats want to kill babies after they are born. When questioned about January 6, he charged that Biden and Harris were responsible for the investigations and indictments that targeted him.
Harris, by contrast, answered the questions asked of her — clearly, cogently, powerfully. And she drew sharp contrasts with Trump.
But it wasn’t so much Trump’s shambolic responses that gave Harris the big win tonight. It was her manner, in sharp contrast to his.
She set the tone by walking over to Trump at the start of the debate to shake his hand and introduce herself. He seemed flummoxed.
Throughout the next ninety minutes, she stayed in control. She was the adult in the room. She smiled at his brazen lies, and then scolded him about them. She was in command of her facts and arguments, and refused to stoop to Trump’s belligerence of become rattled by it.
Trump interrupted, even though his mic was supposed to be muted — which is how he managed to get nine more minutes of talk than Harris. Regardless of how much time he had, he filled it with shouts, harangues, and repeatedly bogus claims.
Harris’s most important challenge tonight was to introduce herself…”
