It was ugly, stupid, insensitive and rude.
And that's just a brief summary of Donald Trump's performance in Tuesday night's debate.
The big question ahead of his showdown with Kamala Harris was which version of the perpetually aggrieved, perpetually prevaricating former president would emerge.
The one who manages to contain himself long enough to convince at least some of those who don't follow politics much that, hell, he's not everything. that unreasonable?
Or the full-on, unhinged, uncensored Trump who believes facts can be molded like pottery, that reality is what he says it is, and that no insult is too low to hurl at his opponent?
It was undoubtedly the latter that made its way onto the stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where Trump stoked the passions of his fervent MAGA supporters but did little to reach beyond his unwavering political base.
The January 6 insurrection? It wasn't Trump's fault.
“I had nothing to do with it other than making a speech,” he said, lamenting the fatal shooting of rioter Ashli Babbitt for trying to break into the House chamber, and without saying a word about the police officers killed and injured in the illegal attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump insisted that he had, in fact, won the 2020 election. There was “so much evidence,” he claimed, even though dozens of courts and his own administration’s election security experts repeatedly dismissed his claims of widespread fraud as nothing more than hot air.
As for his insistence that Harris — who is black — had recently “turned black,” Trump explained: “I read that she was not black … and then I read that she was black, and that’s fine, either way is fine with me. That’s up to her.”
Which was incredibly magnanimous.
And so it continued.
President Biden secretly hates his vice president, Trump claimed. Immigrants in Ohio are kidnapping their family pets so they can eat well (which is as absurd as it sounds). Harris hates Jews and The Arabs, which is supposed to be a way of not taking sides in their millennia-long conflict, although that was not the point Trump was trying to make.
All that bluster overshadowed Harris’s vague response to questions about her positions on issues like fracking and eliminating private health insurance, which have shifted since she leaned farther to the left during her failed 2020 presidential campaign.
Trump couldn't help it, even when his bad behavior didn't help him.
The vice president, who finally appears to be settling down to Earth after the meteor ride that followed her installation as the first Democratic nominee, landed in Philadelphia with a need to get some things done.
One of them was to subtly distance herself from President Biden, which she attempted to do by pointing out — irrefutably — that she is, in fact, not President Biden (but it's not that simple).
Another was to build out his policy portfolio, which he did, to some extent, by talking up proposals like expanded housing subsidies, a $6,000 child tax credit and a $50,000 tax break for small businesses.
Above all, Harris had to prove — as a woman, and one with a slight build — that she possesses the strength and character to lead the country. One way to make her case was to show the strength and character needed to stand up to the brazen, bullying Trump, something she accomplished with ease.
It was Trump who ended the night with a bead of sweat on his upper lip and the irritable demeanor of someone whose antagonist had clearly gotten under his skin.
A comment about crowd size, which seemed to trigger the former president in a deeply Freudian way, prompted Trump to sputter that “nobody” goes to Harris’s rallies and vehemently deny her claim that her rally and audience were declining.
“People don’t leave my rallies,” Trump stammered, insisting — despite ample evidence to the contrary — that his crowds are the largest in American political history.
She scoffed at his Midas businessman claims, pointing out that Trump inherited a fortune from his father, a real estate developer, and has filed for bankruptcy a half-dozen times.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said of the 2020 election, “and he’s clearly having a very hard time processing that.”
She continued.
World leaders, Harris said, are laughing at Trump behind his back and military leaders are calling him an embarrassment.
It's hard to imagine the last time Trump, who surrounds himself with a retinue of sycophants, was spoken to in such a manner.
People tend to forget, because of Biden’s terrible performance, how poorly Trump performed in their June debate. Once again, he unleashed a torrent of lies: about crime rates and illegal immigration; about Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s support for Harris; about China building “massive” auto plants in Mexico and stealing a torrent of American jobs; about “postpartum abortions” being carried out with the support of Democratic politicians.
(For anyone wondering what's up with this, Harris made a dubious claim about there not being a single active-duty U.S. soldier in a combat zone, which overlooks those in harm's way in Iraq and Syria, among other countries. She also took out of context Trump's comment about “a bloodbath” starting if he loses the election. She was talking about the economic impact on the auto industry.)
Biden’s dismal performance will knock him out of the presidential race. Harris’ strong debate performance won’t have such a dramatic outcome. It’s hard to see her winning a huge surge in support. The country is simply too divided along partisan lines for that to happen.
But Harris certainly didn't hurt her candidacy and probably benefited herself on Tuesday night. In a close race, that should be considered a victory.
