Prosecutor Kamala Harris put Trump on trial, but the court of public opinion can be fickle

She frowned. She narrowed her eyes. She pursed her lips. She rested her chin on fingers. She shook her head or threw it back with disdain. She laughed with a mixture of bemusement, peevishness and contempt.

Chief prosecutor Kamala Harris was putting Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement on trial for nearly 10 years of crimes against civility, democracy and reason. And she wasn’t buying his story.

Trump has got away relatively scot-free with his criminal cases so far this year but the first presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night put him firmly in the dock. Harris brought all her lawyerly experience to bear, just as she did against Brett Kavanaugh and William Barr when she served in the Senate.

Related: Fact-checking Trump’s debate claims: from abortion to Project 2025

Debates can be raucous affairs but the rules permitted no audience, ensuring a courtroom-like hush on a stage set surrounded by empty seats in the National Constitution Center. Harris and Trump stood at curving blue lecterns. “This is an intimate setting for two candidates who have never met,” said moderator David Muir, making it sound like a very improbable episode of Love Island.

But then it became clear this was no love story. In a neat reversal of Trump’s invasion of Hillary Clinton’s personal space a debate eight years ago, Harris zipped across the stage and forced the ex-president into one of the most awkward handshakes in television history – the first at a presidential debate since 2016.

“Kamala Harris,” she announced, as he mumbled a reply. She might have added: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Trumps.”

From that moment, Harris – wearing navy suit, white pussy-bow blouse, pearl earrings and small gold American flag pin – owned the stage. She was judge, jury and executioner. With mics muted she was unable to interject when Trump told ludicrous lies, but conveyed her disapproval with a kaleidoscope of facial expressions.

Trump – wearing blue suit, white shirt, red tie and American flag pin – refused to meet her gaze but determinedly looked ahead. Both of them were miles ahead of poor old Joe Biden’s gazing and gaping in June.

Related: Harris’s powerful abortion stance and Trump’s fact-checks: key takeaways from the debate

After some early exchanges on the economy, Harris went on the attack . “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression,” she said. “Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”

He did not like that. A little later, he tried to fire back by going personal. “She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well.”

Harris laughed derisively and rested her chin on her hand, glaring at Trump like a principal listening to the lame excuses of a student who burned down the school.

There was worse to come for the ex-president on his weakest issue: abortion rights . He claimed that the American people wanted the overturning of Roe v Wade. Harris, who has been touring the country and talking about it for two years, had an aria ready: “You want to talk about this is what people wanted?

“Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that.”

The debate moved on to Trump’s supposed strong suit: immigration and border security . But Harris was like a prosecutor baiting a witness, setting traps that he kept walking into, talking himself into a case-closed confession.

She said: “I’m going to actually do something really unusual and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.”

No matter that it was obviously carefully rehearsed. It was a smart way to lift the curtain to reveal that the wizard of Oz is actually a feeble old man operating a contrived spectacle. It was also the perfect way to get under Trump’s skin. Trump is prouder of his crowd sizes than his children (well, maybe not Ivanka but certainly Eric).

He whined: “She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

If proof were needed how agitated he was, Trump amplified false rumours , pushed by his campaign and rightwing influencers, that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets (officials have said there have been no credible or detailed reports about the claims).

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” the former president said. Objection, your honour. The moderators, who did a decent job of fact checking all night, noted that the city manager of Springfield, said there had been no credible reports to support Trump’s claim.

Related: ABC News hosts of Harris-Trump debate praised for keeping candidates on-topic

Ah, but Trump had evidence! “Well, I’ve seen people on television,” he blurted. “The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”

The “I saw it on TV so it must be true” defence will never stand up in court, even coming from a reality TV star.

If this had been a real trial, the judge would surely have stepped in and asked if Trump wanted to change his plea to guilty rather than prolonging the agony. But under the bright lights of the debate stage, there was no mercy.

Harris said: “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people … And clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that ... And world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace.”

In the old days candidates might have riposted by saying Nelson Mandela or some other moral paragon was on their side. Trump reached out for Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. “He said the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president.”

But Harris had more ammunition: “It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself ... And it is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favours.”

A dictator like Putin, she added, “would eat you for lunch”.

Prosecutor Harris had done a decent job of that while also making a case for herself to be president. In the post-debate spin room, the mood was a world away from the Atlanta debate in June, when Democrats looked forlorn and funereal as they tried to defend Joe Biden. This time it was Republicans making feeble excuses about moderators.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas bleated: “Where were the fact checks of Kamala Harris? Where were the calling out of Kamala Harris and all of her false statements tonight?” Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy insisted: “Kamala Harris tonight was about words, Donald Trump was about running on a record of action.”

Trump himself made a surprise entrance to claim victory, which was about as convincing as his claim that his inaugural crowd size was bigger than Barack Obama’s, or that he beat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, or that he can weave sentences together like a genius. And he was upstaged by the news that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris .

Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director turned Trump critic, told reporters: “She dismantled him. She handled him delicately and then she handled him firmly. She handled with a prosecutorial scalpel. She handled him with the presence of an American president.

“She embarrassed him and, as a human being, I actually felt bad for him towards the end because he’s too old to be running for president and he’s not cognitively there and you could see that in the 90 minutes of the debate.”

The trial of Trump was over. The verdict: guilty of American carnage. The sentence: unknown until 5 November. The court of public opinion can be fickle. Just ask Hillary Clinton.

Read more about the 2024 US election:

• Fact checking the presidential debate

• Trump rambles falsely about immigrants and fumbles question about Harris’s race

• Taylor Swift endorses Harris in post signed ‘childless cat lady’

• ‘Maga mad libs’: How the debate played out on social media

• ABC News hosts praised for keeping candidates on-topic

• Presidential poll tracker