Many people were in quite the rush to harshly criticize former President Donald Trump ’s Sept. 10 debate performance. Comments have centered on him falling for bait and traps set by Vice President Kamala Harris , losing focus, and not providing articulate answers to questions. Others have said he focused on unimportant topics such as crowd sizes at rallies and unsubstantiated claims of pets being eaten by illegal immigrants.
Admittedly, there is much truth to this, and it would be dishonest to claim that Tuesday’s performance was one of Trump’s best. Nevertheless, Harris was far from stellar and deserves just as much scrutiny.
Clearly, finding fault with Trump has become something of a national pastime, a phenomenon that started in 2015. After all, there’s a reason why the former president is regularly significantly behind his political opponents in positive news coverage, including this year against Harris. This recurring theme has reared itself again this year, with a recent report finding a comically startling discrepancy between networks’ positive coverage of Harris compared to Trump. It has become the low-hanging fruit of all political commentary. When in doubt, criticize Trump. It's a consistent media bias .
This isn’t to say the criticism isn’t warranted. However, there should be a similar appetite to criticize the vice president and her performances. Instead, there seems much more of an interest in rehabilitating her image and shielding her from criticism. But an honest and objective analysis of Tuesday’s debate would show that Harris was particularly bad as well. Moreover, her poor performance started shortly after the debate began. Consider many of her flubs that received the Cinderella fairy godmother treatment by much of this country’s political pundits — all without any clock striking midnight.
Early on in the debate, Harris claimed that Trump would implement a national abortion ban and said he was responsible for the much-ballyhooed Project 2025 . Yet, Trump denied and rebutted these claims. Harris responded with a seemingly rehearsed statement that was not grounded in reality and, once again, said Trump would do the very things he just said he wouldn’t only moments ago.
Another example was when Harris chided Trump and said that “he had no plan” to help Americans. However, just a few seconds after making such a claim, she then proceeded to detail Trump’s plan and criticize it. How could Trump’s plan be criticized if only seconds earlier, the vice president of the United States said he “had no plan.”
There was also the time Harris was asked if she favored any restrictions on abortions at all. Harris responded with an answer that completely ignored the question. She also made completely false statements about deficits, immigration, Trump’s policies, and U.S. military engagements. One of the debate’s biggest whoppers saw Harris, again, the sitting vice president of the United States, claiming that no service member was currently deployed in any combat zone.
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And she did all of these flubs with the benefit of sympathetic, biased, and agenda-driven debate moderators. David Muir and Linsey Davis did everything possible to make sure Harris was successful. The only thing that was missing was Muir and Davis holding Harris's hand throughout the debate.
There were many other examples of Harris’s poor performance, of course. But none of these get the kind of scrutiny Trump did. It's wrong, and it should change. There is more of an appetite to bash Trump than Harris. There’s no legitimate excuse to do so, unless such people, publications, networks, companies, and organizations just want Harris to win. But, objectively speaking, let’s start criticizing Harris with the same vigor Trump gets criticized — especially after the kind of performance she had Tuesday night.
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