Batshit crazy - Trump v Harris TV debate

I sat up until gone 4am this morning watching Channel 4's relay of ABC's televised debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

If, as a result, I'm a bit dazed and confused it's not just through lack of sleep. It was a truly gob-smacking, jaw-dropping televisual experience, part gladiatorial contest, part circus knockabout. From a Western European perspective it offered a fascinating, if disconcerting, insight into the inner workings of US politics at the highest level. This is probably the most consequential political contest in the world and yet my feeling at the end of it was one of perplexity. Is this really the best the richest, most poweful nation on earth has to offer when it comes to its potential leadership?

Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets. Former-President, Donald Trump and Vice-President, Kamala Harris, are the chosen candidates in the 2024 US Presidential election and the vote will be held on 5 November - a date which, in the UK, signifies fireworks. On this morning's showing, I think we can be assured plenty of those - both literal and metaphorical.

We may have thought we knew Donald Trump, whereas Kamala Harris is a bit of an unknown quantity - oddly, considering she has been a heart-beat away from the presidency for the past three-and-half years. It is one of the mysteries of the US system, at least from a European perspective, that someone potentially so powerful and influential can have so low a public profile as to be effectively anonymous. The only reason we know as much about her as we do (and that isn't a great deal even now) is that she has been catapulted into the limelight by incumbent President Joe Biden's shock withdrawal from the presidential contest.

This morning's TV debate, conducted in a closed studio with no live audience and only two moderators, put both candidates in the spotlight for an hour-and-a-half. Harris set the tone of control from the off by crossing the studio to shake Trump's hand and introduce herself (amazingly the two had never met) and, though clearly nervous, she made a strong start. 

We learned more about Harris and her policies but we also saw Trump in a new light. It appeared at first as if he might be more reflective, more controlled, frankly more presidential, than hitherto - either as a result of his recent near-death experience or of some careful prepping - but before long Harris' relentless needling roused the combative, arrogant, insulting, deluded Trump we have all come to know. 

But something else emerged, too, under the unforegiving close-up probe of the camera lens - a rather confused, fuddled, much-diminished elderly man. In fact, very much what he had only so recently been mocking Joe Biden for. This impression was only heightened by the split-screen shots of Harris' reactions to some of his more bizarre behaviour - looks of amusement, bemusement, contempt and maybe a tinge of pity.

Much of what Trump alleged was clearly crazed, bordering on the unhinged, but some of it was simply laughable - and Harris duly laughed at it. Not the cackle she is often accused of by Trump - his misogynist "cackling Kamala" gibe - but more an astonished giggle of disbelief. No doubt Trump's MAGA fan base will have lapped it up - he knows the more deranged his behaviour the more his disciples adore him - but the rest of the country (and some fifty million Americans were tuned in) must surely have looked on in dismay.

His rabid allegations of millions of immigrants, most of them rapists, drug-runners and the criminally insane according to him, may have impressed some but it will have alarmed many more. Given that his ire was mostly directed at Mexico and South American migrants, how does he expect the sizeable US Latino vote to react? But when he spoke of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating residents' pet dogs and cats surely he went too far, even in America? The man is clearly demented, but whether this morning's performance will shift the dial of public opinion remains to be seen.*

Whatever, I rather doubt there'll be another TV debate in this contest.

*A CNN flash poll shows that 63% of voters believe Kamala Harris won Tuesday night's presidential debate on ABC, compared to 37% for Trump.

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