Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
After the September 10, 2024, presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the Harris campaign became giddy.
And why not?
Pre-debate conventional wisdom had assured the country that underdog Harris would shock the nation with her endless wash/rinse/spin word salads of repeated phrases and memorized sound bites.
She supposedly would prove as shaky as Trump—the veteran of several presidential debates—would prove merciless in eviscerating her.
That did not happen. Post-debate polls of the first 24 hours showed clearly that the public felt Harris had won.
Why?
She stuck religiously to her pre-debate prep. It was not difficult to anticipate what her tripartite script would be. Joe Biden’s failed debate with Trump offered a model, along with the need to avoid Harris’s own known linguistic and cognitive liabilities:
One, Harris was told to bait the touchy Trump with smears and slights about his failed rallies, his racism, and his shaky businesses. That way she could trigger him to lose his cool, go off-topic, rant, and turn off viewers.
And he did just that and often. Trump clearly did not prepare detailed answers, was not ready to be insulted, and was not reminded to relax—and smile, joke, and in Reaganesque fashion sluff off her certain slurs.
Two, she was not supposed to try thinking on her feet, no matter what the question asked.
Instead, Harris was always ordered to plug in her prepped and canned anecdotes, banalities, and bio-stories regardless of the topic or question. And she followed that off-topic boilerplate to spec.
Three, the campaign apparently knew they could rely on the moderators for four givens:
- they were to fact-check Trump but never Harris. And they did that at least five times;
- they were to demand follow-up answers from Trump to make him specifically answer the question addressed. And they did that numerous times, but not on a single occasion to Harris;
- they were to ask Trump provocative questions to force him to deny that he was a racist, an insurrectionist, and an election denialist. But they were never to do so with Harris, whose many past outlandish statements, prevarications, flip-flops, and padded bio would have given the moderators similar rich fodder for cross-examination;
- they would interrupt Trump to get him off tempo, but never Harris.
The result was that a cool, if not smug, Harris mostly smiled while an irate Trump scowled and raged.
Thus, to the millions who watched the slugfest, Harris seemed more “presidential” and therefore “won” the debate.
When the size of the huge television audience—some 67 million watched the debate—was announced, team Harris naturally assumed her win might bounce her even higher than did her initial July surge after the forced abdication of President Biden from the ticket.
But then strange post-debate developments followed.
Either a Tiny or No Bounce?
Harris did not receive the anticipated large bounce.
In fact, the polls still remain mostly even. She may have arrested Trump’s pre-debate surge a bit, but otherwise, a debate that polled so heavily in her favor oddly still seems to have made little difference in the still up-for-grabs race.
Stranger still, Harris, the supposedly clear winner, almost immediately asked for another debate. Her handlers suggested that this demand displayed newfound confidence from her win—as if an assured, second knockout debate would ensure her permanent pull away.
But Trump and others countered that it might have instead indicated the very opposite: that her pre-debate internal polls had shown the race was even or even had Trump leading and thus she still needed a second shot at derailing him, given her own team was not sure her single and transitory debate favorability would translate into any real lead.
The Debate Reset
Then in a day or two, other and far more significant realities emerged, resetting the debate—like a first date’s favorable first impression beginning to sour a day later upon further reflection.
As the debate clips were endlessly replayed on television, radio, and the blogosphere over the ensuing week, few, if any, favorable Harris soundbites popped up.
Harris, remember, was a veritable political unknown who was running a stealth campaign of media avoidance and running out the clock.
She had never really answered any questions addressed to her in the campaign. And in the debate, she presented her nothingness in confident fashion. But she ignored and snubbed both the toadish moderators and Trump at every turn.
Yet the public had tuned in only to receive just three answers from her that she had never previously offered them since her July anointment:
- Why are you flipping—temporarily or permanently?—on almost every issue from your past positions?
- If you are the candidate of change, why did you and President Biden as incumbents not make these changes the last three years—or at least promise now to make them in the next four months of your remaining tenures?
- And what exactly will be your policies as president and the details of their proposed implementation?
Every time these questions in the debate were either stumbled upon by the moderators or demanded by Trump, Harris evaded by plugging in her memorized, smiley, and stonewalling non-answers.
Even leftist media outlets could not find video clips that would show a dominant Harris mastering any of these questions.
Furthermore, in the recycled visuals of the campaign, when Trump blustered and ranted, viewers now noticed that Harris had deliberately turned to him in scripted posturing. She pantomimed as if she were prepped by Hollywood actors—not just on memorizing canned trivialities but also giving fake moves and poses.
At times, Harris was a Rodin-like “Thinker,” looking contemplative with a strutting chin and propping it up with a closed hand. At times, with a wink-and-nod, she privately communicated to the audience their supposedly shared exasperation at her outrageous opponent. And at times she rolled her eyes, batted her eyelids, raised her eyebrows, and lip-synched her cynical disdain to 67 million viewers.
The net result?
The longer the debate was discussed, the more the far larger audience who had not watched the debate heard about it from friends or saw regurgitated media takes, so all the more the public came away thinking Harris was certainly slick and smooth, but otherwise empty, shallow, and smug.
And the more they saw clips of the scowling, snarling, and raving Trump, all the more they heard him blast an unresponsive Harris for the border, crime, the economy, and foreign policy—precisely the issues about which she was now failing to offer any of studied expertise.
The result was Trump, albeit in sometimes obnoxious fashion, reassured the country he could repeat what he did in 2017-21, while Harris confidently and professionally offered them little but sugary bios and platitudes.
Post Debate Meltdowns
After the debate, a now cocky Harris forgot her directions and thus only confirmed her pre-debate no-no’s. So, at a post-debate rally, the recidivist Harris reverted to what her handlers had told her was taboo: cackling and word salads.
In her first solo media interview in over 50 days with a preselected, left-wing local Philadelphia TV anchorman, Brian Taff, Harris actually plugged in her exact memorized debate riffs from a few nights earlier—even when they had nothing to do with the questions Taff asked.
When Harris realized that she could not answer a single one of his questions in the brief 10-minute softball interview, then, in deer-in-the-headlights fashion, she simply smiled, hand gestured, giggled, and sought refuge in her accustomed platitudes and circularities.
The net result was again reminding viewers of her debate inanity a few days earlier.
Yes, Harris has a good memory to recite prepped banalities and to bait and smear opponents while keeping cool with the help of moderators.
But otherwise, she shows no ability to think or speak on her feet—and zero knowledge of the key challenges facing any president.
The Immoderators
It was bad enough that the moderators intervened in the debate—and only on one side—to fact-check. But their fact-checks on at least three of their five occasions themselves needed to be fact-checked for mistakes, especially as the post-debate furor rose.
Moderator Linsey Davis went after Trump for his accurate claim that partial-birth abortions and the killing of a baby as it leaves the birth canal were legal.
Or as Ms. Fact-Checker arrogantly put it, “There is no state where it is legal in this country to kill a baby after it’s born.” That was not true.
At least six states make no restrictions of any kind on abortion, and thus, admittedly, on rare occasions, infants can be terminated who leave the birth canal.
Protection to ensure that such deaths never happen was vetoed by Democrats in Congress. Worse still, Harris’s own running mate Tim Walz as governor stopped Minnesota state legislation that would have outlawed the killing of an infant delivered viable and alive during or after an abortion procedure.
The moderators also fact-checked Trump’s assertion that crime was higher under Biden Harris than during his tenure and his allegation that many large cities do not fully or timely report crime statistics to federal tabulators.
Yet Trump was right on both counts. And only days later, the nation was reminded of just that when the Biden-Harris Department of Justice released recent crime statistics showing crime is still elevated—and still quite higher than when Biden-Harris took office.
The post-debate outrage further increased. It was further remembered that the two fact-checkers sat mum while Harris spun her own whoppers: that no military personnel were posted abroad in combat zones (just ask those often attacked in bases in Syria and Iraq, in Africa, or on patrol in the Red Sea).
And the two partisans kept silent when Harris repeated the long-ago fact-checked lies about Charlotteville, “bloodbath,” Project 2025, and Trump’s supposed support for a federal abortion ban.
Journalists after the debate tried to rescue Harris by jumping on Trump for other supposed lies, such as alleging Harris had supported government-provided transgendered conversion treatments for illegal aliens and prisoners. But then, post-debate, Harris’s own prior written endorsements for just that appeared.
While Harris’s campaign and liberal influencers were claiming that the moderators were not fact-checkers, one of the two, Linsey Davis, admitted she was not only a proud fact-checker, but along with her co-moderator David Muir had become one.
The reason was because of ABC’s desire to not let Trump supposedly promulgate falsehoods as he had in Joe Biden’s disastrous and career-ending June debate.
ABC apparently felt the earlier CNN moderators on that occasion were seen as too neutral and that being disinterested was a bad thing. Instead, in the Muir/Davis warped view, Biden lost that debate not because of his visible dementia but supposedly due to Trump’s exaggerations (which Biden himself matched if not exceeded).
In other words, Davis inadvertently admitted that after Democratic nominee Biden had crashed his career in a debate with Trump, ABC would now correct CNN’s supposed laxity in being too disinterested.
So, ABC’s moderators would become actively involved in the debate—and did so as the debate postmortem showed in clear partisan fashion.
Translated? One could take the Davis confession to mean the Democratic-Media fusion lost one debate by playing by traditional debate rules of moderator non-interference—and learned from that loss never to be so fair again.
Debate Incest?
The post-debate detritus mounted.
Senior Disney executive Dana Walden—who helps oversee ABC—is known as one of Harris’s “extraordinary friends” and, as reported, has been for at least 30 years. Their respective husbands have been close pals for even longer. Walden has been a steady contributor to Harris’s state and federal campaigns for over twenty years.
And it was disclosed that Harris and moderator Davis were national sorority sisters, a connection that sounded terrible, but after a fair debate, no one would have known what to make of it.
So, in normal times, no one would have noticed these conflicts of interest. After all, in the incestuous corporate/politics/media ecosystem of the bicoastal left, everyone either went to school, knows, does business with and profits from, dates, or is married to everyone else.
But given the clear bias of ABC in the post-debate environment, these relationships only further tainted the debate’s credibility.
Prairie-fire Madness
As the embarrassments of Harris’s debate and her post-debate evasions became better known, the moderators’ bias more fully exposed, the incest of ABC aired, and the lack of a debate “victory” bounce acknowledged, the irate right-wing blogosphere struck back.
On the rationale that if the left-wing network had “rigged” the debate and the moderators tipped the scales, then it too would reply in like kind. The result was a barrage of post-debate rumors, conspiracies, and false revelations—the discredited fact-checkers be damned.
Within days, fables floated by bloggers and often Trump himself that Harris was wearing high-tech receiver-earrings to facilitate stealthy prompts and directions from her off-stage handlers. Other rumors spread that her calmness was only a symptom that she had been given the debate questions in advance, or so an anonymous source claimed. Trump and his supporters then insisted that he was widely recognized by the public as the “winner” of the debate.
No evidence has yet emerged to prove any of these allegations.
Harris was likely wearing earrings that only remotely looked like a brand that doubles as a receiver.
There is no proof, at least yet from ABC or the Harris campaign, that Harris, in Donna Brazile/Hillary Clinton/CNN fashion of old, had received either the topics or the general outlines of the debate questions in advance.
And the polls uniformly really did show that Trump was felt by the public to have lost the debate—even though Harris had not really profited much from it.
But what was missed by the left’s outrage over the swirling rumors of conspiracies was that its own behavior had seeded such hysterias.
When moderators are not just biased but proudly explain why they are biased, and when such favoritism does demonstrably warp a presidential debate, then those on their receiving end naturally fire back with conspiracies of their own.
An interesting question arises over which is worse: the founded and proven conspiracy of the moderators in undisclosed but preplanned determination to hammer only Trump, or the frenzied reaction to believe fables consistent with the demonstrable bias of ABC and its moderators’ intention to warp the debate?
The Way Not Forward?
What is the result of this debate mess?
No sane conservative will or should ever do another national debate on any ABC venue.
If they were wise, Republicans should never agree to any televised debate moderated by ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, NPR, or CNN again, given the history of liberal moderator bias. The names of Donna Brazile, Candy Crowley, David Muir, and Linsey Davis should serve as sufficient warnings.
If the presidential candidates still insist on debating their opponents, they then should agree only to the classical rules of debating—and with only mute timekeepers present instead of loud-mouth, egocentricmoderators in the following fashion:
An opening 5-minute statement;
A 3-minute rebuttal of opponent’s similar statement;
A 2-minute rebuttal of the rebuttal;
All to be repeated over eight or nine topics in a 90-minute debate, with mouth-shut timekeepers keeping each candidate within his time limits.
So, no more of these televised travesties, even when, as in this case, they boomerang on their fixers.
I wondered if the debate would mean much as everyone knows what we’ll get with either of the candidates. As to who won, winning or losing generally means defining winning. If winning was making the media swoon, then Harris won. If winning meant persuading the general public as measured by polls, then Harris may have won by a nose as there was a slight poll bounce. Despite Trump’s poor performance, it appears to have actually been a close run thing.
In the en,none of this crap will matter…minds are already made up.
“When moderators are not just biased but proudly explain why they are biased, and when such favoritism does demonstrably warp a presidential debate, then those on their receiving end naturally fire back with conspiracies of their own.”
So, what is troubling to me is when Trump or his (ugh) supporters exposes the 8-year odyssey of lies and conspiracies of the Left, as VDH has thoroughly debunked in previous posts — starting with Russia collusion, fake impeachments, a variety of personal slanderous and libelous smears — all obviously predicated on falsehoods and lies, the Right is automatically and asymmetrically accused of spreading conspiracies.
To me Trump is ironically being persecuted like the great character Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird: “Scared of arrest, scared you’d have to face up to what you did?” “No suh, scared I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do.”
So where is the Commission on Presidential Debates?
What are they saying?
You have to look at who Trump was trying to reach… the independent undecideds. The “rants” of which you speak were for them, not you. These were things about Kamela that had to be said for those who didn’t know. Am I one of those who think Trump is playing 5D chess? Yes.
Trump won with ease because he finished with a knockout-he seems to be the man for the masses that will help lower crime and pay the bills
After hearing Kamala won, I watched the debate myself. The praises for Kamala were not warranted. It was confusing to me so many could be provably wrong. Anyone could watch for themselves. Trump clearly won the debate IMO. So I’m still confused. Perhaps Kamala as an unknown was so underestimated that merely performing and speaking made people think she won.
So, you’re saying it would be better to have… an actual debate? Instead of the ridicuolus dog-and-pony shows that we have been force fed by the TV media? How very rational of you, dear doctor. I second your motion.
I would support the concept that each candidate select a moderator of choice, that way both candidates would be tested severely. Won’t happen, but one could hope.
Thank you for this fantastic analysis. Your debate suggestion would work.
You’re right that not only the moderator bias but also the visuals hurt Trump (hence, as you’ve also pointed out, Trump is stronger if you just read the transcript).
Yes, he seemed oblivious to the split screen and her rehearsed visual antics. Another ABC trickeroo?
Our reality is not a new one: “Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice.”
She is fake and phony and a total idiot!
I, like most, watched an angry Trump almost from the beginning, so I wondered what he knew that we didn’t know. I do believe he knew she had pre-knowledge of the questions and understood very quickly it was rigged in other ways. Likewise, I would have liked to have seen him just address that immediately with the moderators a couple of times, then just stop the debate format until they followed the rules they claimed they would abide by. Wishful thinking, I know, but it would have been great television.
You might say that Harris was not fed questions in advance, but she was allowed to dictate what questions would *not* be asked. There is documentation of this.
Was hoping VDH would comment on the undecided reaction that was reported pretty quickly after the “debate-struggle session”
It was reported that 2:1
Undecided’s real time sample was that Trump was able
To tip their scale toward him as a result Of the ABC Harris infomercial- Hollywood produced debacle.
Alas, Donald Trump should never have debated Joe Biden, until after the Democratic convention.
Trump may have lost by a hair but he missed a MASSIVE opportunity to end her. He can’t stick to the topic. He should have hammered her record. Instead he bragged about the crowds at his rallies. Just stupid, waste of time stuff.
If Harris is such a leader and can work with Congress and the American people to chart a new way forward, why was she unable to get Biden to chart a new way forward over the last four years.
The right wing blogosphere is full of left wing saboteurs and agent provocateurs, as well as unhelpful true believers and dolts.
It’s getting hard to find a truthful footing anywhere. Your assertion that “the polls uniformly really did show that Trump was felt by the public to have lost the debate” seems the crumbliest brick in the edifice.
Love your erudition and insight regardless.
K Mos
In these debates, each candidate should bring one moderator. Tucker Carlson meet Dana Bash. Try rehearsing answers to HiS questions .
Is the ABC News whistleblower affidavit the Hunter laptop of our day?
1. The 1960 debates were not great. JFK used them to try to be more warlike than Nixon, and to show off his drug-induced appearance of vigor.
2. Will Haitian consumption of small animals alienate the cat ladies? The Democrats’ fact checking about dead cats also exposed large numbers of low info voters to the fact of thousands of illegals invading small cities.
IMO this is an uncannily accurate summation of the debate, and post-debate controversies.
IMO however, it also highlights something more.
“At least six states make no restrictions of any kind on abortion” – “Protection to ensure that such deaths never happen was vetoed by Democrats in Congress” – Trump was not prepped with those two facts to support his correct assertion.
“Trump’s [correct] assertion that crime was higher under Biden Harris than during his tenure” – Trump was not prepped with facts to support this.
Trump’s [correct] assertion that “Harris had supported government-provided transgendered conversion treatments for illegal aliens and prisoners” – Trump was not prepped with facts to support this.
Did Trump have the facts, and just forgot them during the debate? More likely that a little debate preparation would have gone a long way.
We know that left-wing debate moderators have been heavily biased since the 2012 Candy Crowley days. That’s 12 years – have “wise” Republicans had any thoughts, any strategy, to take the debates away from heavily biased moderators over those 12 years? I haven’t seen any.
Hopefully, those “wise” Republicans will read this excellent analysis.
ABC Whistle Blower went public on 9/15 possibly after you had penned your latest essay. May want to review and update.
https://www.wnd.com/2024/09/bombshell-abc-news-affidavit-released-exposes-disturbing-pro-kamala-debate-scheme/
Along with the opponent’s mike being muted while the other is speaking, the camera should only be on the one speaking. No more split screen with the opponent making faces (horror, disbelief) while the other is speaking.
Trump had one term and Harris is having one. Unless someone was not conscious during either, do we need a debate to decide who to vote for?
It cannot be easy hunting up a stooge to be your public whipping-boy.
The qualifications for such a position present some formidable challenges – – .
For instance – to mindlessly follow orders without much consideration of
their consequences requires nearly sub-human intelligence.
Dogs are good at it. The ‘smarter’ breeds can learn and react to a few commands.
They wag their tails, and catch their treats in midair when they have pleased their
masters by jumping through flaming hoops, and lay down with their heads between
their paws looking mournful when scolded for peeing on the carpet, but none will ever
write a poem.
Consider the challenges faced by the evil geniuses who consider themselves Gods, when
they take on the task of teaching Joe Biden or KamMAHala Harris to play surrogate-chess
against the world’s chess-masters. Given enough time, to learn tricks such as “ stay silent
as much as possible, and when you must speak, say nothing of substance” and given a
support team of specialized useful idiots, we see it is possible to put on a show that appeals
to the citizens of Rome as the Christian enters the colosseum to be mauled by the jackals.
So, a one-sided battle has come and gone and we have had time to reflect. What was learned?
The Christian survived. He figured out, “I am not going into that colosseum again. It is a rigged game,” and returned to his message;
“Citizens of Rome, the Barbarians are at the gate!
If you love Rome, prepare”
I would add, “ – – and if your vote is stolen, I refer you to the closing line of the Declaration of Independence. We owe a great debt to those who wrote and signed that document, as well as those who preserved it for us. Accepting our blessed life as citizens of this country, obligates us to preserve it for future generations. Never forget that.”
I wonder if VDH wrote this analysis – himself – or if subordinates or hired help contributed? Listening to him speak on video is quite different than reading what is purported to be his writing on subjects.
Are Republicans puttin themselves into a corner by falling to the level of what they accuse the Demolcrats of?? Both are lying to the American people. Our elections for POTUS are “south (american)” …sadly. How can you call that a debate on issues? As debt climbes (1 read today) “a trillion dollars every 100 days and not one mention of the debt Congress AND 4 Presidents have bobbed the futures of our grands AND our greats! I am ashamed of what media does to politics.
Theron Few, Unaffiliated in Raleigh NC
So this is what “Going to Hell” looks like.
VDH,
One still has to remember that to favorably stack the deck for you is called, “cheating.”
How about when Kamala said “I am not Joe Biden”, okay, then tell us who the hell you are, what you stand for, and can you please answer my first question. Are the American people better off today than four years ago?
Well, I am a middle class kid …….
Doing my Reagan imitation “there she goes again.”
What a train wreck she is.
I want to see Muir and Davis and ABC/Disney exposed and ridiculed… I want to see the recordings the supposed WHISTLEBLOWER has which supposedly reveals questions being given to Harris in advance and her insistence that Trump be fact-checked during the debate…
Your analysis of the debate is very, very insightful… Well done Victor!!
Her smug, exaggerated, and condescending facial expressions, along with the rehearsed body language, were obvious Vaudevillian pantomimes.
Good on ‘ya!!!
Not that long ago, if you were standing in line at the check-out and a person skipped everyone in line to be next, the people in the line would confront them. Voices would ring out, “Hey, go to the back of the line and wait your turn!”
Cheating has been around forever. Calling out the cheaters resulted in embarrassment. It’s why we have laws, the police, the courts, and prisons. The media used to help expose it.
HOWEVER, it has never been more obvious to me with our current media, corrupt judges and political elites, if you cheat and you are on the right team you get a pass.
Now the biggest lie comes from our own AG, Merrick Garland.
“We do not have a two-tiered justice system.”
Nobody says anything when the person jumps the line, more people do it without consequence.
Trump says, “I will bring back law and order.” I believe him.
It is what we sorely need now along with about a hundred other corrections!
One cannot be stupid and pass the California bar exam, so give Komrad Kamala credit for not being stupid. She’s an actress and can memorize her lines, display convincing facial expressions. postures and poses, and be swept along by adoring media, mega donors, big tech and all her other witting or unwitting accomplices. Whatever talent she possesses or has demonstrated leave her dismally short of being qualified to be President and Commander in Chief of this Great, but momentarily sidetracked, America.
We must not underestimate the ability of a large segment of the American voter to be duped. Couple that with strategically positioned fraudulent voting cabals from the evil party and we have never been in more danger of losing the election in November.
Thank you, Dr. Hanson, for your thoughts regarding the aftermath of the debate. You have put a glimmer of hope in my rather dismal outlook for the future. Maybe, just maybe, enough voters will see through the duplicity of the evil party and vote MAGA.
No mention has been made of the commercial break that featured Muir as a courageous but kind saint as he went in with the combat troops but was sensitive to children. How could he be anything but a humble and honest man? He is above the post-debate criticism that would come from the right. I think the left foresaw this and planted the commercial to leave a place in our hearts and mind for Muir.
Trump never mentioned the billions of dollars that have been going to Ukraine, billions that are not accounted for. 10% for the big guy.