Some Excerpts from the Corporate Media’s Coverage of the Debate
Hint: it’s unanimous-Harris won bigly
For once, corporate media largely got it right. Here are some notable excerpts:
NYT: “Ms. Harris dominated the proceedings from nearly the start. She laid bait. He took it. It began with her needling Mr. Trump that his bored supporters had been leaving his rallies. It continued with her comment that he had inherited riches from his father. And on it went as she invoked his Republican critics, including those who served in his administration.”
Washington Post: “Trump was ill prepared for this Harris. He previously had disparaged her personally, questioning her intelligence and her identity. When cornered at the debate, he used the issue of immigration as his crutch to counterattack, but he also went on numerous flights of fancy and outright lies, without success.”
CNN: “The ex-president’s inability to resist the bait constantly dangled in front of him meant that the most fearsome political performer of modern times spent the evening being more self-destructive than destructive to his opponent. This was never clearer than when he repeated a racist slander about Haitian immigrants eating pets – that even his vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, acknowledged Tuesday might not be true. Harris, after seeing her opponent confirm her accusations about his extremism, just shook her head.”
Fact checker Daniel Dale called it a “staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former president Trump. No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency…a remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true. This wasn't little exaggerations, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality."
However, they couldn’t resist their perennial theme, that she won the debate but might lose the election. This is courtesy of naysayer Stephen Collinson:
“Even if he loses ground after the debate, Trump has long had the advantage on the top two issues in the election – the economy and immigration. With many voters still awaiting the benefits of the post-pandemic economic rebound, it’s not certain that any debate will be a decisive factor in their vote. And Trump’s dark messages on immigration and crime might be hyperbolic, but they’ve proved to be potent in the past. There’s also always the chance that shock events at home or abroad in the next two months could tip the balance.”
(And pigs might fly. Let’s by all means strain ourselves to concoct disasters that would conspire to elect Trump. No mention that Harris might have an October surprise of her own in store. He talked about immigrants eating pets, in heaven’s name! What have we come to when this is treated like a legitimate debate topic? In fact, Trump looked and sounded like Jabba the Hutt on somebody else’s drugs. Just a frightening, sobering performance. Anybody who is still considering a vote for this man should forfeit their right to vote for civic stupidity. (Would that we could do that…))
Back to our media analysis:
USA Today: “Again and again, Trump took the bait when she needled him about the size of his rallies, his criminal conviction on felony charges, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his reputation among world leaders.”
The Guardian: “Throughout his 2024 campaign for president, Donald Trump has avoided giving straight, consistent or accurate answers to questions about abortion – and in his first debate appearance against Kamala Harris, Trump kept up that streak.
Moderators introduced abortion, one of the biggest issues in the election, by asking about the most recent example of Trump’s incoherence on the topic: his position on a Florida ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state’s constitution. Over the last few weeks, Trump initially suggested that he would vote in favor of the measure – which would restore abortion rights in a state that has banned the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy – before quickly backtracking amid outrage from his anti-abortion base.
Asked to explain his flip-flop, Trump said: “The reason I’m doing that vote – because the plan is – you know the vote is – they have abortion in the ninth month.”
One rather dissonant message came from a Reuters survey of ten undecided voters:
“Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.”
Small sample size to be sure, but what could those six people have possibly heard that would persuade them that Trump is worthy of their vote? It is people like these who remind us that we have to keep fighting for every last vote.