Commentary
Opinion: In First Presidential Debate, Harris Exposes Trump’s Inadequacies
She’s still calling herself the underdog, but the biracial woman from Oakland, half Black and half Asian American, just changed the race for the presidency of the United States. If you ever doubted Kamala Harris’ ability to be our nation’s leader, everyone who watched Tuesday’s debate saw how fully capable she is of the job. She belongs in the White House.
By Emil Guillermo
She’s still calling herself the underdog, but the biracial woman from Oakland, half Black and half Asian American, just changed the race for the presidency of the United States.
If you ever doubted Kamala Harris’ ability to be our nation’s leader, everyone who watched Tuesday’s debate saw how fully capable she is of the job.
She belongs in the White House.
Harris not only bested Donald Trump in arguing the facts; she showed how totally inadequate Trump is to again be our country’s Commander-in-Chief.
Harris deftly made her case on issue after issue, while baiting and manipulating Trump on the economy, on abortion, and on immigration.
Imagine how Putin and other world leaders play Trump. Harris exposed Trump for all to see. It wasn’t exactly an “emperor has no clothes” moment. It was more like “the twice impeached, convicted felon on 34 counts” has no business running for president. Trump is unfit mentally for the job, if not unfit morally.
It must have been a disappointment for deep MAGA to see their candidate so incapable of holding his own against Harris. At one point, she had him defending the crowd size at his rallies after she said people were leaving because he was boring.
And then instead of real policies that impact our lives, the former president spoke passionately about… his crowd size.
When that happened, I think everyone could see: Harris ate his lunch.
Going into the debate, the consensus in this tight race was that it was a virtual tie with Trump one point ahead.
But after their first meeting ever in a head-to-head-match up, CNN’s instant poll showed Harris winning the debate well beyond any margin of error, 63 percent to 37 percent.
There’s more distance between the two than previously understood. The debate exposed that.
TRUMP’S LIES
At the beginning of the week, I said the only way Trump could win the debate was if he “played nice.”
But the bully just couldn’t do it.
Acting presidential was just one lie Trump couldn’t pull off in another debate night mired in Trump lies.
Did his administration really do “a phenomenal job in the pandemic” when over a million Americans are dead? Is Kamala Harris “a Marxist and everybody knows it”? And what about those cat-eating immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, where every local official confirmed to news organizations that the story was false. There was even a lie on that Trump lie, when the former president said the immigrants were eating cats AND dogs. No, it’s just one lie. Just cats is enough.
And all that was just a fraction of the lies Trump told in the 90-minute debate.
Still, even with all that, I wouldn’t say Kamala Harris “whooped” Donald Trump.
It was more like general domination.
In fact, she had him at “Kamala Harris.”
When Trump seemed to dismiss the possibility of an opening handshake, Harris forced the issue. She walked toward Trump’s podium, reached out her hand, and introduced herself by name.
That gesture put Trump on the defensive all night.
About the Author
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See his micro talkshow on YouTube.com/@emilamok1
