Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met for their first presidential debate on Tuesday night. While Harris' performance was hardly masterful, it didn't matter, as Trump was too consumed by conjecture and fake stories from social media to make an effective case for himself.
Harris had arguably the tougher job of the night—to make a positive case for her candidacy while somehow also distancing herself from the unpopular Biden administration in which she has served as vice president—and it's hard to argue that she did so effectively.
For example, on the very first question of the night, moderator David Muir asked Harris, "When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?"
Harris then gave a discursive two-minute response in which she never managed to use the word yes. Given the opportunity to make an affirmative case for President Joe Biden's administration and her role in it, Harris instead gave a meandering answer in which she touched on her upbringing and her policy proposals while never explicitly defending her record since taking office in 2021.
But instead of capitalizing on any of her stumbles, Trump proved unable to overcome his preoccupations with long-disproven claims more suited to your uncle's Facebook page than a presidential debate. Muir asked why Trump helped kill a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year.
Biden and Harris are "allowing…millions and millions of people to come into our country, and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States," Trump replied. "In Springfield, [Ohio,] they're eating the dogs, the people that came in; they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."
Trump was regurgitating an allegation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating people's pet cats. The claim originated on social media as a third-hand account from an anonymous Facebook post but was picked up by right-wing commentators earlier this week. Even Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), Trump's running mate, repeated the claim on X. ("It's possible, of course," Vance admitted in a later post, "that all of these rumors will turn out to be false," but nonetheless, "keep the cat memes flowing.")
The rumors did, in fact, turn out to be false, and Muir pushed back on Trump's claim: "You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community."
"Well, I've seen people on television, the people on television say, 'My dog was taken and used for food,'" Trump retorted, doubling down. "So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager, but the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there."
For much of the time since Trump left office, there has been a surge of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. (In fairness, the number of crossings plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic). Springfield, in particular, has struggled with the large number of Haitian migrants who have come to the city since 2020. Gallup polls indicate that over the same period of time, Americans have soured on immigration, with 55 percent of respondents saying in June that migration into the U.S. should be decreased.
Muir's question was a perfect opportunity for the former president to contrast himself with the Biden administration on immigration, one of Trump's favorite topics. Instead, Trump meandered through an unfounded conspiracy theory he had likely seen online and refused to back down when pressed on the specifics, a process that repeated throughout the evening.
It wasn't just that Trump lied, which is to be expected—saying that crime rates are up, when they are down, or claiming yet again that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It's that he seemed so incapable of living in reality that he couldn't even make an effective case for himself or against his opponent. And that seemed to be exactly how his opponent preferred it.
"It was clear she did not want to talk about inflation—not wanting to get drawn into a discussion about Biden's record, in contrast to her own tax plan," wrote Vox's Andrew Prokop. "Asked why she no longer supported some very progressive positions she took while running for president in 2020, she really didn't give a clear answer on why." But given Trump's tendency for incoherent rambling, she didn't have to.
"A similar back-and-forth happened time and again in the debate," noted Reason's Christian Britschgi. "Harris would offer a rudimentary defense of her record, perhaps engage in some pablum about Americans' hopes and dreams, and then bait Trump into going on extended 'too online' free association that's hard to follow for all but the most dedicated Truth Social users."
Given the weakness of the affirmative case she made for herself, the outcome was as good as Harris could have hoped for: watching, bemused, as Trump continually spun up conspiracies and tall tales that only the most perpetually "online" viewers had any hope of understanding.
In a segment on foreign policy, Muir asked about Russia's war in Ukraine, "Do you want Ukraine to win this war?" Trump replied, "I want the war to stop," before then saying, "People [are] being killed by the millions. It's the millions. It's so much worse than the numbers that you're getting, which are fake numbers."
Both the Russian and Ukrainian casualty numbers are disputed, but it's hard to see where Trump gets the idea that the casualties are in fact in "the millions," nor how he feels that he alone possesses the correct figures.
While Russia's actions in Ukraine are indefensible, there is room to criticize the way the Biden administration has provided aid in the conflict and the potential lack of effective oversight—in January, Ukrainian officials were caught embezzling $40 million of U.S.-provided aid.
Instead, Trump couldn't help but spout meandering conspiracies, getting lost in the weeds of his own bizarre claims rather than taking a swing at Harris' policy glass jaw.
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