A post-debate con job in real time

Trump won the debate like he won the 2020 election, and he's handling it the same way.

Hannah Beier/ Bloomberg via Getty Images

Trump won Tuesday’s debate like he won the 2020 election. And he’s handling his debate loss the same way he handled his 2020 loss: by lying about it.

Trump's post debate spin alternates between “I won” and “the debate was rigged,” as if people won’t wonder why he’d say it was rigged if he’s also saying he won it. Is he saying it was rigged so he won it? Or does he not understand basic logic, that winning a rigged contest isn’t really winning at all and it’s not in his best interest to claim it is?

To be fair, Trump was up against a master, intellectually outmatched from the jump. When Harris named Trump’s military advisors who called Trump “a disgrace,” a threat to democracy and the military, including General Mark Milley, who Trump wants to execute, she looked directly at him. She landed her punches unflinchingly, sometimes laughingly, clearly unafraid of the man who would follow his mentorand execute rivals. Mike Johnson and other GOP toadies should take note of how it’s done.

Meanwhile, Trump kept his eyes down when Harris spoke and did not look directly at her throughout the debate, like the true beta bully he has always been.

Trump blames the moderators for fact checking him

Trump’s self-indulgent, grievance-laden bloviations were so pathetic that even Fox News is reporting it. 

House Republicans, according to Fox, have privately expressed “frustration” about how Harris repeatedly outsmarted him during the debate.  “Several House GOP lawmakers … acknowledged Trump ‘missed’ opportunities during the debate, and it is the “prevailing sentiment of the House Republican Conference that Harris successfully baited him on multiple occasions” during the debate. 

"It was terrible. I think you’re seeing that comment from everybody," one senior House Republican told Fox News Digital. "He had so many opportunities to come after her and he didn’t. He got bogged down on the hook she was dragging through the water." Another GOP lawmaker told Fox the debate was a "dumpster fire" for Trump. "It was one of the worst bloodlettings I’ve ever seen."

Still choosing between his contradictory “I won” and “the debate was rigged” spin, Trump is now wailing that moderators factchecked several of his lies, but didn’t do the same with  Harris. His aides are probably afraid to tell him that Harris did not spew any bilious material on par with Trumps’ post-birth abortion and immigrants-are-eating-your-dog lies that would have merited an equal, quick and easy fact check.

It’s not like moderators fact-checked his serial falsehoods on crime, abortion, or the broken economy he left for Biden post-covid; they only checked him when it was so painfully obvious he was lying they’d have lost credibility as journalists if they didn’t.

Still, Trump is claiming to millions of voters that, “It was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything (I said) and not correcting (Harris) … It was a three-on-one… They’re dishonest. I think ABC took a big hit last night … They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.”

If Trump were a smarter man, he’d know not to follow his own ignorant admiration during the debate of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s ruthless dictator who took control of the media, with threats about taking away ABC’s media license.

Harris made Trump look stupid

Republican outrage over the debate, and Trump’s ongoing, badfaith sales pitch about what a great performance he gave, are tacit admissions that Harris outsmarted him. 

She dangled the bait, and he went for it, even when it was sophomorically and plainly just a hook, like her crowd size comment. That he so obviously swallowed it spoke volumes about what matters in a president, including intellect. One of them has it, the other needs a guardian.

That Harris effectively baited Trump throughout the 90 minutes, trigger after trigger, left few viewers wondering which candidate could checkmate the world’s authoritarians who would do harm to America. The other candidate demonstrated on live stream how easily he can be manipulated, angered, and triggered. No one should overlook the national security implications.

Trump has been lying about his disastrous debate ever since it ended, citing nonexistent polls to Fox, citing made-up statistics in the spin room, and appearing on any news outlet that will have him, claiming both that the debate was “rigged” and that he outperformed Harris, overwhelmingly. The opposite is so obviously and painfully true-- even to Fox News and his sycophants in Congress-- that his attempts to save face are an obvious con job in action, in real time, on national television.

Voters who haven't been paying attention are getting their first reveal, their first proof of the hoax Trump has been all along.