A Pet in Every Pot! The Debate in Review

Harris did more than win; she humiliated Trump in a way no one has done before. The handshake filled his Depends...

I wrote a column on deadline for the San Francisco Chronicle, where I am employedish as a fancy San Francisco columnist. That column will post tomorrow. This is a more candid take on the debate/Trump catastrophe last night.

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As I wrote a few days ago, Kamala Harris would win the debate with Donald Trump.

What I didn’t anticipate was the massive margin by which she would win the debate. Look, I know that Trump is mentally ill, and I write that as a cut-and-paste at this point, but I had no idea it was this bad.

No idea.

Let’s skip through some of the highlights/lowlights:

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—The handshake was epic.

Kamala Harris didn't come out swinging; she came out with a handshake.

Brill.

I’d feel sorry for Trump if he wasn’t a convicted rapistliarelectionmanipulatorrioter—but she definitely owned his white ass with that one.

Trump, a coward, couldn’t muster a handshake for the incumbent president of the United States, so her move was a masterstroke.

This will move the needle for her.

Trust me, as he says. My guess is he won’t debate again, and if he does, it’ll be a similar or worse result, because she will come up with more ways to make sure he won’t breathe for 90 minutes.

As I noted, he’s a coward, and he can’t even take a handshake.

Trump freely admits he’s going to be an authoritarian dictator. As per usual, the NYTWAPOCNNMSM blows it again, focusing on OMG! THEY’RE EATING PETS IN SPRINGFIELD instead. I was absolutely open-mouthed aghast when I was furiously (note-taking is always furious—why the anger?) taking notes as Trump said he was officially endorsed by Viktor Orban, the quasi-fascist leader of Hungary.

(Speaking of that end of Europe, the former Nutbag First Lady of the United States posited a day or so ago that the Trump shooting was probably a conspiracy).

Lady, I mean, First Lady, come the hell on. This kid who shot him and the others is right out of Central Casting for the type of guy who does this. He’s just Lee Harvey Oswald with an AR.

Naturally, this leads us to…

—Trump alludes to his assassination attempt’s cause as…drum roll… divisive rhetoric as put out by people who oppose him.

Does it now. OK, then. Let’s go to the instant replay.

This madman was elected on violent rhetoric.

The most violent political thing Joe Biden ever said was, “C’mon, man! Gimme a break!”

Hey, “sir”, Trump says they always call him “sir”, lemme tell ya a thing: have you reviewed any of your transcripts recently? I mean, they’re like a teenage boy (13, barely) learning dirty words. You started this stuff, and NOW you’re afraid that the rhetoric is contributing to an atmosphere of violence?

Hey, now.

Sir, did you know Thomas Crooks was also stalking Biden online? Like Oswald, he didn’t care.

Some conspiracy.

—Harris looked like a president and a sane person.

As I noted early, all she had to do was show up. She showed up, baby, on time and under budget, in an agile devops environment. I know these things are heavily memorized, and it shows when either of them try to remember their talking points. The beauty of Harris is when she’s passionate about something, she is beyond good. Ruthless, one might say. This is a District Attorney’s job: get the conviction.

I was also impressed with her reactions, which aren’t practiced. She just looked natural. I loved the hand on the chin bit, which no male politician could pull off, but she did. Epic.

And her smile was devastating. A big smile is better than a head-shaking accompanied by a frown any day. She’s a natural.

She made her points effectively, without being a jerk about it. She was extraordinary in her segment about young women “bleeding out in a car in a parking lot”.

She was also amazing when she talked about NATO and U.S. foreign policy, which is always the part of the job that can baffle a junior senator or a midwestern governor. She’s been in the paper flow for four years, and it shows.

Harris also spoke far less than Trump, but it didn’t matter. I think I saw he had 43 minutes and she had 37 minutes. As previously brilliantly observed by me, visuals are everything, and she looked like the president. He looked like a drunken slumlord who had taken Adderal, or the non-prescription speed med he stashes in his desk (there are photos).

Trump’s facial expressions were childish. Scowling, weird lipless smile, pouting, but here’s best part: the color of his face.

Usually, the orange bondo/spray-on tan block any actual face color (dig those purple eyebags), but his face gives a new meaning to “florid”, “magenta”, and “beet-red”. Trump was literally yelling for last half of the debate. Always a good look on the cool medium.

—Trump’s embrace of Orban led to his bromantic waxing about giving Putin the store.

He simply could not say he wants Ukraine to win; that’s his KGB handler’s fondest desire: get a negotiated settlement. Trump will hand it all over, and more. Harris was obviously very well-prepped and knew to roll out the 800,000 Polish-Americans who live in THE CRITICAL AND PIVOTAL SWING PURPLE COULD GO EITHER WAY COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSUHVANIA (she’ll win by 4…write it down).

Harris went full decapitation on his glutes.

She ripped into how easily he’s manipulated by flattery, and Putin’s good at that. Everyone wants to know what Putin has on Trump, but let’s expand it to the Trumps: they gave these clowns millions to build Trump properties, and they want the ROI. That’s collusion, bribery, a smart bidneth play, whatever you want to call it, but they have the Trumps by the short hairs.

—Unlike last time, the ABC moderators did a solid job.

David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked Trump as best they could, and they should have. Of course, the fellow traveler to the NYT, The Formerly Fantastic Washington Post, had yet another headline putting Harris on the same factual playing field as a convicted rapist and felon:

“Climate Alert: At the debate, Trump ignored the question and Harris hedged”

I’m sorry, but bullshit.

He says it’s a hoax, while building sea walls around his golf course in Scotland. She fully addressed climate change as well as anyone could in a two minute answer. So, come the eff on.

—Trump goes to the Spin Room, which demonstrated that he blew it.

Enough said, but Trump is always convinced that more exposure to him leads to popularity. Au contraire! If Trump holed up for the next six weeks, he might pull it off.

Oh, and if he debates again, this will further demonstrate how out of it he is. Trump going to the Spin Room is on par with going to Arlington: what are you doing here? Are you crazy?

Yes. Yes, he is.

—The Pet Thing And Post-Natal Nine Month Abortions, Which We Call First Degree Murder, Actually

Speaking of easily manipulated, Trump seizes upon any tweet as gospel and sends it out from Elon Musk’s (a South African wannabe Nazi) X-platform. Apparently he saw this sixth-hand social media post about the Haitians Eating Your Pets in Springfield story. So he tosses this one off, and, my God, Harris’s expression was brilliant. The smile.

Turns out it didn’t happen.

I think the title of Trump’s presidential memoir should be: PERHAPS APOCRYPHAL: Mein Struggle/Kampf.

Of course, Trump is a complete idiot, and couldn’t sign his autograph without paying someone to do it.

He decided that Gov. Tim Walz was murdering nine month fetuses right out there in Mankato for fun, and said something to that effect.

Trump’s decision to tell the The Pet Restaurant of Ohio anecdote made him Memebait for today, anyway.

—World War III!

Trump said we’d be in World War III under Harris, which is certainly always a possibility given the situation in, well, many regions.

But does anyone really think that Trump and his obvious mental debility is going to be the guy to assuage Putin, Xi, and Kim’s warlike tendencies?

I remember a story Gen. John Kelly told about Trump.

TRUMP: “I don’t get why we’re in Korea permanently”.

KELLY: “To prevent World War III”.

So this is the guy who’s going to save us from World War III? I’d trust Johnny Knoxville to do a better job on that one.

(I love Johnny Knoxville).

Ask John Bolton about that. Or, well, any of his former aides, who all say he’s a 12 year old in a blue suit. Harris rolled that one out to great effect.

There would no place to defect under Trump, so I do worry about WWIII—if he’s president.

—Harris is a gun owner, and so is Walz.

Walz is a well-photographed avid hunter, but I was genuinely surprised by Harris’s admission she’s a gun owner. For the life of me, I couldn’t guess what kind of weapon she has. Maybe a 9 mm? Personal protection?

I know what Walz has: all the guns my dad had, which I now own. a low-end Charles Daly side by side, a Remington 30.06, an Ithaca 12 gauge, a Colt .38, a Ruger .22 pistol, and a .44 Ruger rifle (heavy brush), and a modified .44 rifle from an M-1 body. I’m ready for the deer attack! Yes, they’re locked. I never use them. Not into it. I’ll write more about guns soon.

I’ve never seen any photograph of Trump holding a gun, but I have seen many photographs of his recessive gene sons standing in front of dead elephants. Yuck.

—Addenda: a whack job acquaintance of mine posted on Facebook his theory that Harris had an earring that served as a microphone/earpiece.

This is where we are.

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That’s all for the moment. I’m wiped. I’ll post the Chronicle piece tomorrow morning sometime.

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