If there was a point in which Donald Trump lost Tuesday’s debate to Kamala Harris, it was when he veered off — among many of his exaggerations about the dangers posed by illegal immigrants — to amplify an outlandish and debunked rumor that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating residents’ cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” the former president and Republican nominee said.
Harris could only laugh at the ludicrous claim, which was quickly refuted by one of the moderators as having been fact-checked and found to be untrue.
Although the late-night TV comedians are having a field day with this, the not-so-humorous point of the pet-eating whopper is that it exemplifies how low Trump will go in order to try to regain power. It was the same characteristic he showed when he refused to gracefully relinquish the presidency, following his defeat in 2020. He was willing to stoke anger among his disappointed supporters with incessantly repeating false claims that the election had been stolen from him, contributing to the volatile atmosphere that eventually led to the siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
There is no lie too outrageous that Trump won’t peddle if he believes it suits his purpose. It’s that well-documented propensity for fabrication that makes those who are not already in his corner uncomfortable with taking the chance on awarding him another term. He is not just a danger to democracy. He is a danger to the idea that truth matters.
It’s not that Harris was a paragon of forthrightness during the debate. Rather than spew outright lies, though, she did what presidential debaters have traditionally done. She dodged the questions that put her on the spot.
The vice president didn’t answer what restrictions if any on abortion she would support. She did not explain why she has changed her positions on issues such as fracking, decriminalizing illegal border crossings or mandatory buy-back programs for assault weapons. She did not say what regrets the administration had over the military’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
She also missed an opportunity to change the narrative on inflation, which is one of Trump’s main lines of attack against his Democratic opponent. She should have pointed out that the high inflation was largely the result of massive government pandemic relief efforts, carried out during both the Trump and Biden administrations, and that inflation, while unpleasant, was better than an economic collapse. She also could have mentioned that inflation has largely been tamed without a recession, a remarkable achievement, and that interest rates are expected to soon be coming down as well. The economy is not the total disaster that Trump claims it is, as evidenced by the strong job and stock markets.
But other opportunities Harris did not miss, including baiting Trump to get worked up about crowd sizes at his rallies, his inherited wealth and the former aides who have become some of his harshest critics.
She made him focus on his own oversized ego, which is not too hard a task, and in the process made herself look like the more presidential of the two options.
It would be helpful, though less entertaining, if these debates focused more on policy than personality. That’s not, however, what most voters desire. They want to see to which candidate they can best relate.
If Tuesday’s debate were the sole determinant of that among the still undecided, the nod would go to Harris.
