It’s over for you, Donald Trump. nnAmerica can’t go on like this — don’t you feel it too? The breaking point came during the debate with Kamala Harris. After nine years, your dangerous duel with democracy is done.
Something to do with Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats and dogs was a bridge too far even for your ugly dark vision. The bridge fell, taking you with it.
On the way down, you declared, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” — the act of a desperate man.
In a poetic twist of fate, the Sept. 10 debate did to you what the June 27 debate did to faltering President Joe Biden. Exit stage.
Each debate exposed an absence of mind, to put it kindly, that ruled out governing a country back on its feet after a global pandemic, an economic crisis and a violent attack on democracy. (Thank you, Biden.)
Democrats are not the only ones appalled at the latest claim coming out of your mouth, your tongue like a blade.
Up and down the ranks, Republicans are concerned about the company you keep, and some are running for cover from a candidate more extreme than ever. Arch-conservative columnist George Will endorsed Harris.
The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, and the governor of the state, both Republicans, condemned your racist smear on Haitians, which caused bomb threats to the town.
The immigrants are legal working residents in the community. But your running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, boasted that he “created stories” in his home state.
Back to the debate: The split-screen sight of your contortions next to Harris’ calm and collected manner was a stark contrast. The vice president commanded the fact field and chose her slings and arrows wisely and well. Your crowds leave rallies early out of “exhaustion and boredom”; 81 million Americans fired you in 2020. Ouch!
Sixty-seven million Americans saw your red-faced fury and heard your outright falsehoods (aka lies), Donald.
Did you say one true thing in 90 minutes in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace? The Declaration of Independence’s signers and the Constitution’s framers were a short walk across the courtyard.
Their spirits were there, watching the republic come to this.
So — is nothing sacred to you? Ever get tired of yourself, the town crier peddling insults, hoaxes and witchhunts? Don’t even answer that question.
It’s like Joseph Welch asking Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” That public moment silenced McCarthy in 1954 from further pursuing suspected “communists.” All of a sudden, he lost his power.
That’s what’s happening here, Donald: a showstopper in American politics.
You and McCarthy have Roy Cohn in common — instigator for McCarthy, mentor to you. Cohn instilled his ruthless methods in you, and boy, you were a star pupil.
To their credit, the ABC News debate moderators checked you on key points, like the cat-and-dog rumor.
But they couldn’t catch every breath you took to tell another whopper.
For one, crime is not way up. It’s down — violent crime in cities especially. Inflation is not the highest in history. Actually, its growth is now less than 3%. Harris is not a “Marxist” (shades of Cohn). Nor was her father a “Marxist” economics professor.
One particularly offensive falsehood was asserting that “every legal scholar” wanted reproductive rights to be up to the states. Harris demolished that demeaning statement. We now have pregnant girls and women crossing state lines for medical care, an arc from enslaved people seeking freedom.
Self-determination: just another word for freedom.
And did you expect us to believe you offered to send “10,000 National Guard soldiers” to the Capitol riot that you incited on Jan. 6? You spoke of the mob as “we.”
How brazen to say such a thing, when you deployed — and enjoyed — the largest (armed) crowd of your career: 30,000.
We who were there know the National Guard did not get there for hours, after the smoke cleared and the mob had done its damage. That was the best day of your life.
Last, the best proof that you lost the debate badly is that you insisted, over and over, that you won — after the fall.
Jamie Stiehm is a former assignment editor at CBS News in London, reporter at The Hill, metro reporter at the Baltimore Sun and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is author of a new play, “Across the River,” on Aaron Burr. See JamieStiehm.com.
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2024
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