Kamala May Have Just Ended Donald’s Political Career

Harris's debate performance proved she is the only candidate who knows exactly how to deal with Donald Trump.

Image via ABC

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – Donald Trump has been a presidential candidate for nine years. In that time, he’s participated in 19 debates against both Republicans and Democrats. This week, Vice President Kamala Harris became literally the only candidate of either party who knew exactly how to deal with him on a debate stage, and it was one for the history books.

Long time Republican strategist and current Lincoln Project co-founder Stuart Stevens said it was “the best debate performance we’ve seen in modern politics.” He was correct, of course. The vice president owned Donald from the moment she shook his stumpy hand at the outset, invading his space and then commanding the room, along with the attention of 67 million television viewers.

She was in the pocket the entire night, comfortably weaving policy with her personal values, folding in attacks on Donald’s record, and most importantly baiting him into acting like the unstable shrieking eel we normally see at rallies and during his cringe phone appearances on Newsmax.

I’ve said for months that future political scientists and historians will be writing about this Summer for centuries to come, and this debate won’t be excluded from memory. Kamala Harris handled this unserious dictator exactly the way he should be. Normally, I step away from a debate thinking about missed opportunities. Not this week, at least not when it came to her performance. Like a skilled and conscientious hunter, she used the entire animal carcass. Nothing was left over for the vultures.

So, of course, the MAGAsphere of Russian propagandists and incel men’s rights grifters are completely losing their shpadoinkle in the aftermath of their messiah being carved up – by a “girl.” (Their interpretation, not mine.)

In particular, the circus clowns on Fox News are currently risking explosive double hernias struggling to hoist Donald into the winner’s circle. Many Red Hat pundits today are predictably blaming the moderators. Donald himself called for Disney to lose its broadcast license for ABC News. The Federalist’s Sean Davis demanded that David Muir and Linsey Davis (no relation) should be brought up on criminal charges. Podcast munchkin Ben Shapiro had this to say:

ABC News put a stake through the heart of presidential debates last night. Any Republican who acquiesces in his/her own forced euthanasia is a fool. Trump should absolutely not accept another debate unless the moderators are approved by both parties.

Elsewhere, Jonah Goldberg said: “I think the moderators put their thumbs on the scales for Harris.”

The Republicans don't have a moderator problem, they have a lying fraud candidate problem. They’re just not self-aware enough to realize that if they had been smarter about who to nominate, they would’ve chosen someone other than a serial liar with zero impulse control as their standard bearer. Now they have no choice but to sit in their own orange doody. Yes, Kamala Harris wasn’t fact checked as often, only on her a couple old policy positions from half-a-decade ago, but perhaps that’s because she refused to sabotage herself by losing control and blurting stupid shit.

Did David Muir force Donald to start screeching about immigrants eating dogs? Nope. Did Linsey Davis force Donald to lie about tariffs, the Biden economic record, or infanticide? No, that was all him.

There weren’t any thumbs on the scales for Kamala. It was just that Donald was so unhinged, so divorced from both factual reality and how to behave like a normal, stable leader that it was impossible to not correct the record. Or are we supposed to just accept his racist myth about Haitian immigrants eating dogs in Ohio; or the egregious lie about how Democrats want to murder infants; or the blindingly false claim that foreign nations, not U.S. importers and consumers, pay tariffs? 

Shapiro and Goldberg seem to think this sort of drivel should just exist as a real thing in the minds of voters. It’s a remarkably brazen example of blaming the refs instead of pushing back against or even eliminating the core problem: Donald Trump. 

Authoritarians require deception. 

The undermining of factual reality is one of several ways tyrants rise to power because the truth will inevitably undermine them. Voters tend to not support dictators-in-waiting unless the would-be dictators provide plenty of bread, circuses, and bullshit to vote them into office. After all, admitting that they intend to grapple onto permanent control of a nation and pillage the national treasury, as Putin and others have done, while erasing civil rights isn’t really a winning platform. Hence, the constant geyser of lies and fraud from Donald and the subsequent requirement to fact check him.

Be very suspicious of the liars, but just as suspicious of the supplicants who say the liars should be allowed to deceive with impunity.

Lawrence O’Donnell tweeted Tuesday night: “We may have just watched the last debate of Donald Trump’s life.” I’m still not getting happy, but I feel like this debate went a long way toward burying Donald’s political career at long last, protecting our democracy and allowing us to begin curing the societal rot that helped him rise to prominence.

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The Bludgeoning of Donald Trump

Kamala Harris didn't just beat Donald Trump in the debate last night, she humiliated and destroyed him.

by Ben Cohen

Earlier this week I wrote that I expected a draw between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris at the debate in Philadelphia this week. Based on Trump’s performance against Biden in June, I thought the ex-President would be able to hold his own with Harris and score enough points to keep the MAGA cult happy.

Harris’s performances in debates previous to last night have always been quite average, so I was hoping for a good enough showing to keep her campaign momentum going. I believed Harris would be drastically better than Biden, but not good enough to take Trump to the woodshed and give him the drubbing he deserved. I thought Harris gave a once in a lifetime performance at the Democratic National Convention, but wouldn’t be able to repeat it in an unscripted environment.

Boy was I wrong.

Enter the prosecutor

What transpired last night was one of the worst political beatdowns I have ever seen…

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