A win
Kamala Harris. Throughout Tuesday's debate, the vice president looked poised, qualified and presidential — and that's without comparing herself to the clearly frustrated former president with whom she shared a stage. Harris baited Donald Trump repeatedly, and mostly easily. She needled and poked him on crowd size, his rallies, his racist and easily debunked lies about Haitian immigrants and his flip-flops on abortion.
In the process, she exposed both moments of incompetence and the reality that her opponent is concerningly easy to manipulate. If she can do that in front of the entire country — and, indeed, people around the world — it's not a stretch to imagine how he might get rolled by the world's autocrats and dictators.
She pushed hard to lay out her policy highlights and pushed back on Trump's various anti-immigrant rants and obfuscations. She humanized issues like abortion and spoke clearly and calmly about the ongoing war in Ukraine, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the need for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Harris' performance, with its forceful eloquence and emotional resonance, spotlighted the stark difference between the candidates. And it also contrasted dramatically with the first presidential debate, just a few months ago in June, when Trump was able to overpower a seemingly tired and confused President Joe Biden.
A loss
Donald Trump. Let's put it this way: When you find yourself onstage ranting about people "eating" dogs and cats, you're not winning this debate. That's a literal quote, by the way: "They're eating the pets of the people that live there!" As moderator David Muir noted, there is no evidence that any migrants are eating pets. Obviously. But that didn't stop Trump.
Even in today's "unconventional" political environment, the man insisting that migrants are eating domesticated animals in middle America isn't winning over those key undecided voters.
And that's what Trump was supposed to be doing tonight: making the case that he is presidential. That his cognitive health isn't an issue. That he has a plan to improve the economy and make the lives of individual Americans demonstrably better. This performance, with its grumpy asides and meandering monologues, won't quiet the growing criticism of his age — at 78, he's now the oldest presidential nominee in history. And it won't make him seem presidential. When asked about his plans to replace Obamacare, he said he has "a concept of a plan." Whatever that means.
A lie
It's easy to mock Trump's embrace of the conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants are eating pets, but it's also critical to point out this well-documented lie is intended to demonize a subset of the population for political gain. Trump clearly hopes that promoting racist myths about Black and brown people will appeal to the Republican base. It's disingenuous, disgusting and completely baseless.
And to be fair to these ABC moderators, they did a very good job pushing back on Trump in real time, including a strong debunking of the pet-eating myth. "We checked with the city manager" of Springfield, Ohio, Muir told the candidate, even as Trump doubled down with an odd point about seeing "people on television talking about it."
This will most likely be one of the most viral moments of the debate — Taylor Swift's endorsement notwithstanding. And that's not going to make Trump's night much better.
