Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump was like watching Socrates debate Scooby-Doo

Donald Trump once said nobody understands television like he does.
On Tuesday, the former reality star now unhinged from reality absorbed a humiliating lesson: Kamala Harris understands television better than he does.
Going into the debate, MAGA operative Corey Lewandowski predicted Dear Leader would come out swinging like Floyd Mayweather or Muhammad Ali. He was right. The problem? Trump spent 90 minutes punching himself in the face.
This guy wants to lead the free world? He is not fit to lead a flea market.
Even before the yapping started, Ms. Harris signalled her intent to be the apex predator on that Philadelphia stage. She ambled past her lectern and went into Trump’s corner to shake his hand. He looked taken aback. He never came back.
Ever since the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, television has played a crucial role in American politics. Ronald Reagan, an actor, was hypnotic when the cameras were rolling. In 1992, Bill Clinton captivated young voters after playing the sax on “The Arsenio Hall Show.” In 2004, Barack Obama, then a senator, delivered a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention that electrified viewers and, four years later, propelled him into the White House.
TV is rocket fuel in politics. It can make or break ambitions.
Trump understands this cathode power. It’s why he is addicted to airwaves. But on Tuesday, Ms. Harris weaponized his favourite medium to crush him like a bug as the world watched.
It’s not surprising that she won the debate on substance. She is a former prosecutor who is detail-orientated. He is a mendacious blowhard who wedgies the “truth” to soothe his fragile ego. When she spoke eloquently about NATO, he looked as baffled as a third-grader trying to grasp string theory. When she hammered him on reproductive rights, he looked like a castaway in a lifeboat encircled by shark fins. She had him dead to rights.
Years ago, a mouse got into my house and one of my cats toyed with it until I noticed and humanely intervened. On Tuesday, there was no intervention. Kamala Harris toyed with Trump like he was a cornered rodent, pawing him, baiting him, biting him, goading him, leaping on him as his tail flickered in the merciless attack.
Trump looked disoriented, like a lobotomy patient having an out-of-body experience. His usual fear-mongering and rusty lines of attacks — on illegal immigration, crime, inflation, world disorder — did not land because television betrayed his obvious misdirects and lack of enthusiasm. TV exposed him.
Even he looked like he wasn’t buying his lies anymore.
The split-screen is a window into real-time biofeedback. This is especially true when you focus on the debate participant not talking. When Trump was rambling, Harris grinned, smirked, rolled her eyes, shook her head and mouthed “that’s not true” theatrically enough for non-lip readers to discern.
On TV, she was in total control.
It was like watching Socrates debate Scooby-Doo.
Meanwhile, when Harris was talking, Trump was dour, cantankerous, dazed. His lips pursed. His eyes were downcast. He was pained, the worst emotion to telegraph in prime time. You couldn’t tell if he was in a presidential debate or his nutsack was under savage attack by fire ants during a picnic gone wrong.
Harris won the debate by triggering him, by knowing Trump gonna Trump.
How is this election still “too close to call”? This guy literally does not understand his own policies. A tariff does not generate revenue from foreign countries — it’s a regressive sales tax on American consumers. No, Haitian immigrants are not eating cats and dogs in Ohio. That was an internet hoax the Liar-in-Chief repeated on TV.
You know Dear Leader had a rough night when MAGA bootlickers are stunned into silence the morning after. When Lindsey Graham, a suck-up with the backbone of a jellyfish, deems Trump’s debate performance a “disaster,” that’s a wrap. A photo of red hat lieutenants Matt Gaetz and Stephen Miller leaving the debate made me laugh out loud. They looked like pallbearers at a funeral. Their beloved Trump myth had died.
Then to top off his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night, Taylor Swift watched the debate and promptly endorsed Kamala Harris with a thoughtful Instagram post that she hilariously ended by self-identifying as a “Childless Cat Lady.” Sick burn, Tay-Tay. The Swifties are now mobilized.
So in about two months, we will see if our southern neighbour is led by a competent woman who cares about others or a narcissistic charlatan who only cares about himself. We will see if light triumphs over darkness. This election is ultimately about freedom versus oppression, compassion versus corruption, problem-solving versus problem-making.
All of this was clear on Tuesday night thanks to television.
Kamala Harris grabbed the remote and adjusted the contrast.