OPINION:
While Vice President Kamala Harris dished Trump trope trash and repeatedly clutched her abortion lifeline during last week’s debate, former President Donald Trump relentlessly hammered her on the top issues salient to swing voters—inflation, border chaos, potential endless wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and law and order. Among swing voters — the only debate watchers who mattered — the result was a Trump TKO over Ms. Harris.
Here’s how I scored it.
Ms. Harris first argued she had an economic plan. Mr. Trump counter-punched with, “She doesn’t have a plan. She copied Biden’s plan. And it’s like four sentences, like run-Spot-run.” Funny. To the point. Mr. Trump 1, Ms. Harris 0.
Mr. Trump followed with this jab: “I had no inflation, virtually no inflation, [Biden-Harris] had the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country …. People can’t go out and buy cereal, bacon or eggs or anything else. … They’ve destroyed the economy.
When Ms. Harris argued Mr. Trump would inflate the inflation problem by imposing tariffs – Ms. Harris ignorantly called it a sales tax — Mr. Trump simply noted: “If [Kamala Harris] doesn’t like [the tariffs], they should have gone out and … immediately cut the tariffs, but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration.” Mr. Trump 3, Ms. Harris 0.
Even as Kamala Harris offered no defense of why she and Mr. Biden waited so long to take any action on the border crisis, Mr. Trump hit her with this one-two punch: “What about all the people … pouring into our country and killing people that she allowed to pour in. She was the border czar. Remember that. She was the border czar,” and “when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly …that’s bad for our economy too. … bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy.” Mr. Trump 4, Ms. Harris 0.
With foreign policy, Mr. Trump had his finest moments, first with Israel/Iran/Gaza and then with Russia/Ukraine: Jabbed Mr. Trump, Kamala Harris “hates Israel. She wouldn’t even meet with Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech. She refused to be there because she was at a sorority party of hers. … If she’s president … Israel will not exist within two years.” Mr. Trump 5, Ms. Harris 0.
Mr. Trump further highlighted Ms. Harris’ supreme culpability in Gaza on fire by noting: “Iran was broke under Donald Trump. Now Iran has $300 billion because [Harris] took off all the sanctions that I had. Iran had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah or any of the 28 different spheres of terror. … Now they’re a rich nation. And now what they’re doing is spreading that money around. Look at what’s happening with the Houthis and Yemen. Look at what’s going on in the Middle East. This would have never happened [if I had been president].”
Mr. Trump 6, Ms. Harris 0.
On Russia, Ms. Harris offered Mr. Trump the perfect setup for her own demise: “I met with President Zelenskyy. … Days later, I went to NATO’s eastern flank, to Poland and Romania.” Mr. Trump responded with this comic uppercut: “They sent her to negotiate peace before this war started. Three days later [Putin] went in and started the war because everything they said was weak and stupid.” Mr. Trump added: “[W]hy is the whole world blowing up? Three years ago, it wasn’t. Why is it blowing up? … We had no problems when Trump was president.” Mr. Trump 7, Ms. Harris 0.
On law and order, when Ms. Harris predictably played the felony card, Mr. Trump jabbed back: “She went out to Minnesota and wanted to let criminals that killed people, that burned down Minneapolis… out of jail. She did things that nobody would ever think of. Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this. She wants to confiscate your guns, and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania. If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.” Nice pivot, Boss. Mr. Trump 8, Ms. Harris 0.
Mr. Trump also noted (notably without any rebuttal from Harris or the ABC moderators): “She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well.” Mr. Trump 9, Ms. Harris 0.
Both the ABC moderators tried to make much of the one lower-tier issue, abortion, that Ms. Harris leads Mr. Trump in the polls – we’ll give her a couple of points for that. However, most swing voters care much more about the economy, the border, a world on fire, and rapists and murderers running free.
In addition, Ms. Harris is perceived among moderate Democrats as extreme in her support of late-term abortions. When Mr. Trump noted Ms. Harris supports “abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month,” Ms. Harris responded: “That’s not true.” But we all know that it IS true. Mr. Trump 11, Ms. Harris 2.
As for all the trope trash bait Ms. Harris would throw at Mr. Trump – Charlottesville, McCain, daddy’s money, Project Twenty-something, the Central Park Five, fired Trump officials, rally size, et al. – it is a massive strategic error. Rather than move the needle, this trope trash bait just wasted words Ms. Harris might otherwise have used to make her case.
On my card, the final score was Trump 12, Harris 2, and a big TKO win for Trump among swing voters.
Ultimately, the only thing the debate revealed was Ms. Harris’ arrogance and, with all her childish facial features and over-animation as Mr. Trump spoke, her immaturity. This is not a politician ready for the Oval Office. This is a shape shifter ready for the dustbin of history.
* Peter Navarro served as manufacturing czar in the Trump White and is the author of The New MAGA Deal: The Unofficial Deplorables guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Policy Platform.
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