Presidential Debate TV Review: Kamala Harris Baits Raging Donald Trump Into His Worst Self In Face-Off

Dominic Patten and Ted Johnson

September 11, 2024 at 12:09 PM·7 min read

From the start, when Kamala Harris walked over to Donald Trump’s side of the presidential debate stage to introduce herself tonight and offer a handshake, the vice president proved to be a very different sort of Democrat than her opponent had ever faced before.

“It is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy,” she exclaimed in what might be a pivotal exchange in a faceoff that saw the former president unable to sidestep his own worst tendencies again and again.

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Coming into Tuesday’s much hyped ABC News-hosted event in Philadelphia as the underdog, Harris repeatedly used the word “weak” to describe the scowling Trump. It left the three-time GOP candidate with little more than a grimace on his face and non sequiturs coming out of his mouth. In contrast, doubling down on phony social media fueled tales of Haitian immigrants “eating the pets” in Ohio and more, Trump didn’t have much to say about his much promised alternative to Obamacare. Well, when pressed, the anti-wonk former president admitted he had “concepts of a plan.”

Unlike Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, the loaded-for-bear vice president knew exactly where to aim and what the reaction would be. By the end of the 90-minute debate and its closing statements, Trump looked haunted and, frankly, old.

Unlike the 81-year-old Biden, Harris in prime time hit back at the 78-year-old Trump over and over as he tried to bluster, BS and bully his way through the audience-free debate.

“You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” Harris stated, blunting Trump’s attack lines with his own language and barely containing her contempt. Democrats must be ecstatic with their candidate exceeding all expectations as Trump almost encouraged the veep to do.

The most remarkable part of it in an election cycle that has been so unpredictable and remarkable is that Trump should have seen Harris’ tactics coming from a mile away. The VP has been saying the same stuff ever since she took over as the Democrats’ standard bearer back in late July. Yet, in what has been a distinctly unpredictable White House race, Trump’s predictability to still lose his sh*t is something you can count on like pyrotechnics at a Kiss concert.

Rarely taking her eye off the former president on the split screen, pronouncing early on that Trump will spew “lies” and giving little quarter on matters large and small that her GOP rival brought up in a string of attack lines, the 59-year-old former prosecutor was a study in offense instead of the typical defense of her party.

Caught in ideological leg-hold traps on Project 2025, his pandemic mismanagement, the 2020 election, the overturning of Roe v Wade and abortion bans, Trump clearly got rattled in the first 15 minutes and never was able to shake it over the whole debate. All of which made it easier for the TV-ready VP to flip the script on the insult-spouting Trump. Going for the soft underbelly, Harris mocked Trump for “bored” attendees at his rallies and his references to “fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” and how “windmills cause cancer.

As predictable as the sun rising in the east and certainly to the head-banging frustration of his advisors, the former Celebrity Apprentice host took that bait — and others again and again. Rambling, visibly irritated with the occasional fact-checking from ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir, and bellowing over everyone on and off the mics, the Trump of the second POTUS debate of 2024 was a clone of the off-the-leash Trump of the first POTUS debate of 2020. The latter debate went off the rails, largely because of Trump’s interruptions, to the point where Biden told him to shut up.

Seemingly coming to life for the first time, Trump rambled about the numbers at his rallies in what was a defining point in the debate. “People don’t leave my rallies,” Trump insisted as Harris looked on, smiling at him for the cameras. “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” Trump went on to say, neglecting to mention the crowds the likes of JFK and Barack Obama have attracted and dismissing Harris’ crowds as made up or filled with paid participants.

While the Veep didn’t hit Trump below the belt like Obama did at last month’s DNC, her barbs about world leaders “laughing” at the 45th POTUS — which was a spin on his own words that a sweating Trump tried to resurrect at the end — military leaders considering him a “disgrace” and his intelligence saw her opponent blowing his own script with raw rage. The candidate was so off his game that he fumbled a clearly practiced retort of “wait a minute, I’m talking now — that sound familiar?” that was intended to turn Harris’ own words against her.

All of which is to say, it was a very different debate than the Biden crash and burn of June 27, when the incumbent seemed incoherent and slack-faced throughout his matchup with a far more vigorous Trump. The disaster of Biden’s performance in that CNN-hosted debate saw calls online and elsewhere for POTUS to step aside before he even stepped off the stage. Less than a month later, after D.C.-held NATO Summit was concluded, the president took to social media to say he was dropping out. Minutes after that bombshell, Biden publicly put his name and weight behind his vice president.

Tonight it looked like Biden made a good bet with Harris’ repeated bait-and-slap.

The vice president even played the muted-microphone rule to her advantage, mouthing, “Not true, not true,” when Trump went after the Biden administration over America’s relationship with China and computer chips. Later, Harris pulled the same move, quietly saying “Not true” as Trump declared that America had lost a swath of manufacturing jobs under the Biden-Harris administration.

“Let’s turn the page,” Harris said of Trump’s near-decade dominance of American politics. In a microcosm, tonight’s debate, which might be the only time the candidates meet up before Election Day, was all about turning the page to make this Kamala Harris’ campaign.

Now, on topics like the incompetence and tragedy of America’s retreat from Afghanistan, Harris clearly was vulnerable. But after citing the 13 American troops killed along with 170 Afghans at Kabul Airport in August 2021, Trump fumbled his own sword. For the most part avoiding the subject of economy, where her poll numbers are unsteady, Harris pounced on her winning issue of abortion rights. With practiced soundbites, the VP went straight for the undecided voters of suburban women as Trump seemed to go out of his way to mangle the matter and alienate his own base and others in the process.

Tonight’s debate couldn’t be watched on ABC by DirecTV subscribers because of Disney and the cable satellite company’s ongoing carriage debate. The matchup was simulcast almost everywhere else including CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Fox, Fox News, C-SPAN, the BBC, Univision, NewsNation and others. To compensate for the DirecTV blackout of Disney channels, the media giant’s streamers Hulu and Disney+ showed the debate live, as did ABCNews.com.

Earlier in the day, various Trump surrogates fanned out to slam the VP as avoiding hard questions and the media since she ascended to the top of the ticket. On CNN, Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) used Trump attack lines that Harris would be adrift without notes or a teleprompter.

Tonight was just one debate, and there are under 60 days until the election and a lot can happen in that time, but it sure looked like Trump found himself on defense on Tuesday.

Soon after it was over, Trump showed up in the spin room, something that few if any other presidential nominees ever do. The ex-POTUS visit was to frame the debate as his victory — but also to lay some blame on “unfair” moderators. Based on what we saw tonight, it was a hard sell.

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Presidential Debate TV Review: Kamala Harris Baits Raging Donald Trump Into His Worst Self In Face-Off