On Tuesday, Sept. 10, I rushed back to my dorm room to watch the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. While I knew in my heart that it would involve the usual barrage of personal attacks, white lies, fabrications, interruptions and word salads, I didn’t want to miss something historic. I mean, would anyone have ruled out the possibility of an on-stage fight? (I’m honestly not sure who would win.) Or at least the next t-shirt quotation material? Probably not on both counts.
If recent debates were any indication, this one was about to ride the line between painful and entertaining. In 2016, we heard Trump attempt to shut down Hillary Clinton with the line, “because you’d be in jail.” In 2020, we saw the implementation of a mute button. And the final Biden-Trump showdown needs no introduction. The endless supply of Trump and Biden related golf reels should be enough to jog anyone’s memory.
Now add Harris, who is quotable in her own right. I wondered if she would mention a coconut tree again. Before the debate had begun, Harris and Trump shook hands and Trump said the words, “have fun.” As one might have expected, it didn’t look like either of them were having fun throughout the night. In fact, I counted at least 10 times when either Harris or Trump accused the other of saying something false.
It is a sad truth that we now need to fact check essentially everything politicians say in a debate, and it is equally tough to hear two adults blatantly call each other liars on national television. Nevertheless, the most quotable segment came from one of these lies when Trump said, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats.” In response, the ABC moderator called Trump out for this claim.
Aside from the contradictions, it seemed like Harris spent the night on the defense while Trump was on the attack. He brought up immigration directly at least eight times and declared his doubts about seemingly everything Harris said she would do if elected. For example, she said she would not ban fracking, and Trump refuted the claim. She said she would fix the border, and Trump implored the audience not to believe her. Harris said that, as a gun owner, she would not confiscate guns, yet Trump claimed she would. Finally, Trump claimed that Israel would not exist in two years if Harris is elected, but Harris said that she simply wanted the war against Hamas to end. Whoever you’re voting for, these kinds of exchanges made the debate almost hard to watch, and the question of what to do with Harris’s previous political record is a serious issue.
Another theme of the debate was the idea that America is currently in a state of steep decline. Throughout the debate, Trump said that America was “dying,” going to end up being “Venezuela on steroids,” being “destroyed” by immigrants. And Harris, he said, has “gone to hell.” It might be just me, but these seem like slight exaggerations.
For me, this debate was discouraging because it reflected the difficulty of finding truth in today’s political scene. I am sure the majority of Trump supporters claimed that he won the debate while those who have sided with Harris did the same.
