OPINION:
Several people have asked what I thought of Tuesday’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Well, I didn’t watch it. Frankly, I decided well in advance that it would be a waste of time. Here’s why.
I didn’t watch the debate because it didn’t matter. Everything was as predictable as the sunrise. Mr. Trump would be Mr. Trump, the media would be biased and Ms. Harris would lie — end of story.
Think about it. Everything about this circus was predetermined. Anyone who hasn’t been sleeping through the last eight years knows what Mr. Trump is like. He’s gruff. He’s bombastic. He speaks in generalities. He is hyperbolic. He says what’s on his mind, sometimes without much filter. This is who he is. There are few, if any, surprises with Mr. Trump. What we have seen is what we will get. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In other words, Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
As for the media, if there is anything less surprising than Mr. Trump’s performance last Tuesday night, it was ABC’s bias. Everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows that establishment media talking heads are liberal. They are not objective. They have an agenda. They loathe Mr. Trump. They despise him. They hate him and everything he stands for. Their behavior in this debate was guaranteed. The media are in the tank for Ms. Harris, and everyone knows it.
As for Ms. Harris, she is a shameless, power-hungry politician who will say and do anything to gain power (ask Willie Brown). Ms. Harris is not an honest person. Everyone knew before this debate that she would lie.
She would lie about abortion and deny that she supports terminating a baby’s life up to and even after the point of birth. Proof? Ms. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have refused to support the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would protect the life of a newborn that survives a botched abortion.
She would lie about the economy and claim that Mr. Trump “left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression” when unemployment was 6.4% (not far from full employment) when Mr. Trump left office in January 2021.
She would lie about guns and say that she has no intention of taking anyone’s guns away when she has repeatedly called for banning all guns that she decides are “assault weapons” via a forced “buyback program” like Australia’s.
She would lie about prioritizing federal money to sexually transition children. She would lie about supporting Black Lives Matter and its rioting, looting and pillaging in cities across the nation. She would lie about her support of cutting funding to police departments. She would lie about her desire to decriminalize illegal immigration and thus, by default, give those here illegally citizenship and the right to vote.
We all knew Ms. Harris would lie.
She would lie about Jan. 6 and ignore the fact that Mr. Trump implored his supporters to be peaceful.
She would lie about fracking, claiming that she has never called to ban it when she has repeatedly done so as recently as 2019.
She would lie about Afghanistan and even blame her and President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal on Mr. Trump.
She would lie about Charlottesville and claim that Mr. Trump called White supremacists “good people” when everyone knows that fact-checkers have repeatedly noted that this is not true.
She would lie about Mr. Trump calling for a “bloodbath” if he loses this election when it is clear he was referring to the unavoidable economic collapse of our auto industry if it is forced to comply with the lunacy of the Green New Deal.
The list could go on.
Everything in this debate was predictable. We knew it would happen.
We knew the vice president would lie, and we also knew the establishment media would not call her out one single time for doing so.
We knew they’d fact-check Mr. Trump on every point but not say anything to rebut Ms. Harris’ dishonesty.
We also knew that all Ms. Harris needed to do was show up and perform slightly better than an Alzheimer’s patient, and the establishment press would fawn over her every word and declare her the winner.
It was all baked into the cake. It was all just theater.
And here’s something else we all knew and know: Anyone who casts their vote based on this last-minute debate is an idiot. Intelligent, informed voters know that none of Tuesday’s staged events mattered. The needle won’t move, and it shouldn’t. Our mainstream press guaranteed it won’t. They have made exercises like this a waste of time.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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