Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump created a split screen between the two candidates, one that should give us pause about what each party has to offer us for the future of our country. On the one hand, we witnessed Harris as the adult in the room who, immediately upon entering the debate stage, went up to Trump, introduced herself, and extended her hand to the former president.
Throughout the 90-minute debate, Harris conducted herself in a composed, dignified, and self-assured manner while also displaying a breadth of knowledge about foreign and domestic affairs. From the war in Ukraine to the plight of women trying to get an abortion in various states after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Harris continuously demonstrated a command of the details. Harris alternated effectively between looking directly at the television audience when she was speaking and gazing dumbfoundedly at former President Trump when he went off on one of his many rants.
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Many analysts who watched the debate commented on Harris’s skill at getting Trump to take her bait or noted that she got under his skin when she talked about people leaving his rallies early due to boredom or exhaustion. However, much more important than these facts was that for close to two hours we all witnessed Harris speaking and acting in a presidential manner and offering the viewers a vision for the future based on shared values, opportunity, and bringing people up. One may certainly take issue with her proposals for improving the lives of ordinary Americans, but one cannot deny that Harris presented those ideas without bluster or insults.
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On the other side of the split screen, we saw an angry and defensive former president who traffics in conspiracy theories and lies. For example, early in the debate, Trump claimed that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants were found to be “eating the dogs…They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country.” Journalists who investigated and debunked this fictional and grotesque allegation found that it originated from a member of a Springfield Facebook group who was not an eyewitness, but instead relied on a fourth-hand account.
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During the debate, we witnessed Trump repeat his worn-out falsehoods about Harris and other Democrats supporting abortions in the ninth month of a woman’s pregnancy. Trump even made the wild accusation that Harris’s running mate, Tim Waltz, was okay with “executing” babies after they had been born. Later on, Trump made the outlandish statement that the vice president hates Israel and that if she were to become president, the state of Israel would cease to exist. At the next breadth, Trump pivoted and claimed without a shred of evidence that Harris also “hates the Arab population” in that part of the world.
We all saw Trump still insisting at the debate that he had won the 2020 elections, notwithstanding all the data that shows that he had lost, including recounts in the battleground states and countless legal challenges that had proved unsuccessful. And we all witnessed the former president refuse to take any responsibility for the fact that his 2020 election loss proved to be the first time in our nation’s history that we did not experience a peaceful transition of power to the next administration.
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After the June 27 presidential debate between Trump and Biden, most analysts and political pundits, including those on the left, rightly called on President Biden to drop out of the race. These commentators recognized that Biden showed a lack of mental acuity, ability to communicate effectively, and stamina to continue to serve the country for four more years.
Yet, the Donald Trump that we witnessed on Tuesday night was perhaps even worse than what Biden displayed in June. We need to acknowledge, if we are honest with ourselves, that Trump behaved like a deranged and reckless individual, one that is good at insulting others, but can barely produce a complete sentence let alone a coherent plan to advance America. If we didn’t know his identity and happened to turn on our television this past Tuesday night, we might conclude that the man on the screen resembled not the 45th President of the United States but one competing for the role of a reality show star depicting a ruthless dictator.
Mordechai Gordon is professor in the School of Education at Quinnipiac University.
