Trump is such a f—king loser SFGATE columnist Drew Magary recaps one of the biggest debate thrashings ever
By Drew Magary, Columnist Sep 11, 2024
We begin with a friendly wager. I have to watch Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump this evening. In the lead-up to this showdown, both Trump and the Republican Party have latched onto an issue that affects every living American directly: imaginary Haitian immigrants invading a small Ohio town and then eating all of the cats and dogs in that town. If you live in the Bay Area — hell, if you live anywhere — this incredibly false, racist story sent chills down your spine. YOUR town isn’t being invaded, and YOUR dog isn’t being eaten, but Donald Trump is hellbent on doing something about it.
So, in advance of the debate, I bet my SFGATE editors that Trump will mention the dog thing at 6:30 p.m., half an hour into the proceedings. Please note that I deeply resent having to watch this debate, especially given that Trump somehow won the last one. But this is an election that will be decided on pets that have gone uneaten and couches that have gone unf—ked. It’s a bulls—tting contest, so I have to watch to make sure that Kamala Harris has what it takes to bring down the king of such affairs.
We go to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, which is such a nice-looking place that I never would have guessed it was anywhere near Philadelphia. Our moderators are ABC’s David Muir, who looks like a Kilborn-era “Daily Show” correspondent, and Linsey Davis, who looks like she just got here from the boardroom. There is no crowd, which means you won’t get cheers and whoops anytime Trump calls someone ugly. There’s also an opening handshake that registers a solid 9.8 on the awkwardness scale.
Trump wins a coin toss and gets to give his closing remarks last. Harris takes the wind.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Harris’ first presidential debate is displayed on a TV screen in Foster City, Calif., on Sept. 10, 2024.
Davis asks Harris if she thinks Americans are better off now than they were four years ago. Instead of saying the correct answer (“yes”), Harris ignores the question entirely and goes into a truncated version of her stump speech. Her repeating of the phrase “opportunity economy” is giving me unwelcome flashbacks to Al Gore and his lockbox. I was hoping for a smoother opening drive from our veep.
Meanwhile, Trump is already in classic early debate form. He looks tired, like his team shot him up with a barrel of horse tranquilizers. He starts on message, blasting Harris for having no real concrete plans for her administration, which is true only if you don’t bother to click the Issues tab on the vice president’s official campaign site. He tells America that President Joe Biden and Harris brought in millions of people from across the border and, in a racist accusation, claims that many of them are “criminals” and “people from insane asylums.” And where did all of these thugs and villains go after sneaking into the U.S.? That’s right. Springfield, Ohio: strip mall jungle where dreams are made of. Trump doesn’t mention the pet thing explicitly just yet, but we all know he wants to. For now, he’s composed. For Trump, that is. Anytime Donald Trump walks into a room, a double standard in his favor automatically goes into effect. It’s his neatest trick.
When Harris gets the mic back, she serves as a real-time fact-checker on everything Trump just said. I worry that this job will fall solely to Harris, with Muir and Davis allowing Trump to lie all he pleases. My worries will be assuaged in short order, but I am liberal. And to be a liberal in 2024 America is to be afraid. All the time. I’ve seen Trump get away with virtually everything this decade, so I have to account for the possibility that he’ll do so again tonight.
Nick Harrison takes a shot with attendees after buying a large round of shots at a watch party hosted by the D.C. Young Republicans for the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris at Dirty Water in Washington on Sept. 10, 2024.
Trump certainly thinks he will. While Harris cites actual numbers and sources in her answers, Trump is now ready to dig into his bag of straw men. He’s been on script for a few minutes, perhaps a record for him, but now it’s time to give America the classic Trump experience that we all know and love. Trump tells Americans that they can no longer buy “cereal, bacon and eggs” at the store because of Biden and Harris. He disowns Project 2025 when Harris hangs it on him. He says “CHINA!” many times over with both excitement and alarm. All the while, Harris has to bust out a repertoire of visual reactions to all of Trump’s horses—t. She shakes her head. She laughs in incredulity. She rests her chin on her hand, as if to say, “Oh please, do go on.” Which he does.
I want to turn this off. I have seen Donald Trump on my television for well over a decade now, and I’m very tired of him. And without a boisterous DNC crowd at her back, Harris is in danger of falling into the same trap that Hillary Clinton fell into: lapsing into robotic language and allowing Trump to come off as the more human candidate.
But then we get to the abortion part of the program, and that’s when Harris makes full use of her playbook. She lays out, in grim detail, the horrors that have befallen not just women in all of the states where abortion has been outlawed but also husbands, health care providers and children themselves. Everything Harris says is correct. Ironclad. There’s no disputing it. Trump can’t even look at Harris during this barrage. In fact, he hasn’t been able to look at her all night. His face has stayed scrunched up the whole time, like a stress ball that got put in a trash compactor.
Trump counters Harris by saying that “everyone” wanted states to decide on abortion (no they didn’t), that the six Supreme Court justices who voted to ditch Roe were courageous (no they’re not), and that SCOTUS saved us from babies being aborted after they’ve been born (uhh). That last bit is a procedure known as “infanticide,” and it is not a service that any Planned Parenthood clinic provides. But Trump insists that the last governor of West Virginia openly talked about this being a real thing, even though the governor he really meant was from Virginia and said no such thing. To my great surprise, Harris isn’t the one who has to debunk this lie. Davis is. Watch.
Moderator fact checks Trump’s lies: "There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born." pic.twitter.com/dVDw2pVabB — Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 11, 2024
Harris takes a lead that she’ll only build upon. When moderators tell Trump that veep candidate J.D. Vance said Trump would endorse a nationwide abortion ban, Trump says, “Well, I don’t discuss that with J.D.” To his credit, he probably doesn’t. Then Trump starts mashing all of the buttons on his soundboard to excoriate Harris’ vice presidential record: “a total disaster,” “everybody knows it,” “We had the greatest economy in history, and they ruined it,” blah blah blah. I’m barely listening. Who is?
When it’s Harris’ turn to speak, she tosses out a line that Trump would “prefer to run on a problem rather than fix it,” which is true but still a fairly generic political attack. Then she looks into the camera and sets a trap of her own. Harris invites all Americans to attend a Trump rally sometime so that they can watch the crowd at that rally start filing out midway through, as they’ve been doing all summer long. Harris knows that Trump only cares about his stats and that jabbing him for crowd size will prove to be irresistible bait.
Trump takes the bait. He takes it so fast, it’s like the time I dropped a garlic knot on the floor and my dog snatched it up before I could even bend down. He does the “nuh-uh!” thing and says no, it’s actually Harris who doesn’t get crowds and that anyone who does attend her rallies was paid to be there. Trump then says that Harris will trigger World War III, mostly because this man has spent his whole life imagining himself living inside a movie trailer. He’s getting worked up now. The horse tranquilizers have clearly worn off, and he has concepts of a plan to put this woman in her place. It’s 6:31 p.m. No holding the man back now. It’s time. Roll the tape.
“THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS.” I’m off by a single minute on my bet, but who’s gonna call me a loser? No one. I’m the winner here. Many people are saying it.
It gets worse for Trump. Of course it does. Muir soberly fact-checks Trump on the dog claim, saying that the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, told ABC News, “There have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Trump counters Muir by shouting, “The people on television are saying their dog was eaten!” Which people? Which TV? Which dog? Did the TV also tell Trump that a 15-minute phone call could save him 15% on car insurance? I bet it did!
We’re in garbage time now. Harris has reduced Trump to the sputtering old fool he’s always been. He tries, again, to make our withdrawal from Afghanistan into Benghazi II. He tries, again, to work Hunter Biden into the discourse. He tries, again, to tell everyone that this country is a hellhole. “They are laughing at us in other nations,” he brags(?). That may be true currently but not quite the way Trump is inferring. He’s cooked. The legacy media is already doing its whole “Kamala won, but is that a good thing?” spiel Wednesday morning, but that won’t mean dick. I’m annoyed that I had to watch this whole thing, but I got what I came for. Harris destroyed this weird old man, and I won my bet.
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