Trump-Harris Debate: A Dogs' (and Cats!) Breakfast

She was playing chess. He was playing Whack-A-Mole.

September 10th's Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was a master class in communications strategy on the one hand, and a textbook example of how to squander major opportunities on the other. You can decide who’s who in the equation.

Harris had two jobs: to demonstrate that she has the right stuff to become President of the United States, and to prove beyond a reasonable doubt (as the former prosecutor knows well how to do) that Trump is unfit to be returned to office. She did both.

Was Harris perfect? Of course not. But she delivered on what she needed to do.

Her messaging was properly balanced between looking to the future (while peppering in just enough policy points to demonstrate that she has a plan as well as rhetoric), and looking back on the litany of Trump’s actions and statements – not just during his time in the White House, but also everything that followed.

And she was strategically on-point: dropping in suggestions and references to things she knew Trump could not help himself from wading into, and getting thrown off his game as a result: large numbers of people leaving his rallies “out of exhaustion and boredom,” to “Donald Trump got fired by 81 million people.” He bit hard on the bait every time.

For his part, Trump started out with a good focus on the issues that work best for him (economy/cost of living, and border security) but quickly degenerated into his standard stump rants – the airing of the grievances: the last election was rigged, the justice system has been weaponized against him by the Democrats.

Then there was the just plain outlandish: crime is down in all other countries because “they’ve taken their criminals off the street and they’ve given them to her to put into our country … all over the world, crime is down — all over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof.”

FBI data shows the incidence of violent crime in the U.S. has been declining. When ABC debate moderator David Muir noted that for the record, Trump called that a “fraud.”

Then came the, uh, pet eating: Trump’s wild-eyed claim that Haitian migrants are eating people’s dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.

"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration.

"They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."

Of course, there’s zero evidence of that being true. Add it to the list, along with the “millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly” – many from “insane asylums.”

Trump had an opportunity – maybe one of his last ones, in the arc of this campaign – to introduce something new into his messaging. He could have surprised us with a pledge to create a new initiative, or to take strong action on any number of issue files that would be bold and fresh and newsworthy.

He could have written a fresh headline for his campaign. And boy, did he ever. He offered up a line for the ages. The memes were everywhere overnight, as the late-night TV hosts thanked the comedy gods for a gift beyond their wildest dreams.

“They’re eating the dogs … and the cats.”

Aside from that show-stopper were the things that Trump WOULDN’T say. He refused – twice – to go on record supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia. “I want the war to stop,” Trump said in his first answer. When asked directly whether Trump believed “it’s in the U.S. best interest for Ukraine to win this war” he responded, “I think it’s the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done.”

Harris pounced, saying if Trump becomes President again, “Putin would eat you for lunch” – and declaring that if he was in the White House at the time Russia attacked Ukraine “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.”

In the end, did this debate matter? You bet it did. The previous debate saw a Democratic nominee who was shaky, unsteady, confused and who certainly did not look like a strong leader for the next four years. This one saw a Democratic nominee who was the polar opposite: strong, competent, forceful and forward-looking.

And, oh yeah, the same old same old Donald J. Trump.