I've written periodically about my friend Treva Silverman, better known (to me…but also a few others) as "TLT," The Lovely Treva.  I first became aware of Treva years before I met her -- watching the credits at home back in Glencoe, Illinois, for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and seeing an uncommon name that stood out over many episodes, 16 of them.  Later, though, after I moved to Los Angeles for UCLA grad school and then sold a screenplay and joined the Writers Guild, I eventually was in a circle of writers that included Treva Silverman.  ("Oh, I knew you!")  The circle may have changed, but not being friends with TLT.

Treva not only was the first female writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but one of the first writers the show hired, period.  She won two Emmy Awards for the series, including "Writer of the Year" regardless of comedy or drama, an award no longer given.  Her career includes writing for such shows as The Monkees, That Girl, Room 222, and one the TV's best, but little-known most-famous flops, He & She, with Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss.  She was writing partners with Joan Rivers, and wrote a superb, though as yet unproduced play, Scandal -- originally intended to be a musical directed by Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line) with a score by Jimmy Webb (MacArthur Park, By the Time I Get to Phoenix).

So, it wasn't a shock to find that when CNN did its series on the History of Comedy, Treva was one of the people interviewed.  And when HBO did its tribute documentary, Being Mary Tyler Moore, Treva was one of the people interview a lot.

And there's much more.  Including that early in the career, she played honky-tonk piano in bars.  (Oh, okay, that wasn't exactly what it was, but I always like to describe it that way.  It adds so much to her character.  Not that she needs much to be added.)

I bring all this up because yesterday -- I'm guessing timed for Sunday's Emmy Awards broadcast -- the Los Angeles Times had a wonderful article and interview with Treva written by Whitney Friedlander.  It focused on this being the 50th anniversary of when she won that rare Writer of the Year Emmy Award, and her memories about the episode.  (How rare was her Writer of the Year Emmy?  It's the only time that the award was ever given!  Meaning TLT is the only person ever to be named Writer of the Year at the Emmys.)

By the way, it should be added that when Treva won her second Emmy Award that night for Best Comedy Writer -- for the episode "The Lou and Edie Story," about when the Grants separate -- it was the first time in Emmy history that a woman won a solo comedy writing Emmy without sharing the credit with a male.

​And here's the episode, "The Lou and Edie Story" --
​

"The conservatives who were skeptical of Trump in 2016 but are all-in in 2024 are the wildest case-studies in self-delusion."
 -- Sarah Longwell, publisher of the conservative news site The Bullwark
     September 13, 2024​

It’s been fascinating, but not surprising, bordering on the edge of reality where the intersection of pathetic and hilarious meet, to read all the various reactions by MAGOPs cornered by Trump's devastating loss at the debate and desperately try to come up with ways to explain it as a win.

It's a loss that a CNN poll had viewers saying VP Kamala Harris won 67-33, and an Ipsos poll had her winning 54-26.  (Many more undecideds, but an even bigger margin.)
 
The MAGOP whitewashing of reality began immediately after the debate with Trump claiming that non-existent polls had him winning with 90% of viewers.  And 71% and 80%.  The only thing surprising is that he didn’t say that it was even over 100% and make it easy on himself by not having to worry about margin-of-error.
 
And yesterday, Trump used this mythical result to defend why he won’t debate again, saying that since he supposedly won the debate all polls have said he was crushed by, only the losers call for a rematch.  Reality aside, he leaves out that this isn’t a boxing event, and presidential races have almost always had multiple debates, not “rematches.”

The problem for Trump in claiming that he is who won, despite all polls saying impactfully the opposite is the punchline of the joke, "Who are you going to believe?  Me, or your lying eyes?"  As former Republican National Chairman Michael Steele put it, "WWhen you come out and try to frame this the way Donald Trump is framing it after we saw what we saw, right. It's not like this was one of those things you only heard on radio or you just didn't tune in and missed it. No, a lot of people saw this."
 
A lot.  Around 70 million Americans saw it.  But because Trump insists he won, the most loyal MAGOP base has had jumped in, as well, despite all evidence that we and they saw, to explain away Trump’s humiliation (some analysts calling it the worst debate performance in presidential debate history) and claim -- like Trump -- that he really won, or at the very least that he didn’t actually lose because (of course) it was all rigged. 

Keep in mind that after President Biden’s debate, he acknowledged he did awful and even subsequently dropped out of the race.  But not in the MAGOP!  No, to them, painted into their corner, Trump didn’t lose the debate because Trump can never lose.  Never.  After all, Trump has said he doesn't go to confession because he hasn't ever done anything that requires it.  Indeed, it appears that in the MAGOP mind, Trump can almost literally do nothing wrong. He says he won the 2020 election, so they still insist he won the 2020 election. He says the only possible way he can lose in 2024 is if it's stolen. And so, that's what they believe to be true, as well.  And despite seeing him with their own eyes get pummeled in a debate, Trump says he won by 90%, and so they dig through the magical mystery toy bin to pull out every possible excuse why losing could not happen.
 
Willful ignorance is no virtue.
 
If you ignore reality, you can’t fix the problem.  If you insist a brick wall looming in front of you isn’t there and speed towards it at 90 MPH, you will crash into it and your car will be crushed.  Probably  you, too.  Not believing the world is round doesn't make it flat.  It only means you will be living in delusion.  And every choice you make related to that will be based on a lie.

The wall of reality always win in the end.
 
Among the more notable efforts to rewrite the debate reality was a conspiratorial-laced article by Matt Taibbi in New York Magazine.  Jonathan Chait of the publication posted a tweet promoting it, “An intriguing theory by Matt Taibbi."
 
Well…not so much.  Matt Taibbi's theories dropped far below "intriguing" long ago. They now generally range between "Got your attention, didn't it?!!" and "Well-typed."
 
Taibbi’s conspiracies to suggest Trump did far better than people think (among them, people who literally watched the debate) include him referencing a news release from the Harris campaign they posted on social media with debate talking points that, to Matt Taibbi, supposedly proved that her responses were prepared ahead of time.  This was an remarkable accusation since it involved twisting the reality of time -- that’s because the news release was posted and time-stamped after the debate, quoting things previously said at the debate.
 
Further, his additional conspiracy-flavored excuses for Trump further claimed that moderators rigged the debate by not bringing up a range of topics he listed – topics which had literally nothing to do with being President of the United States.  Subjects like that moderators never brought up “speech panic” (whatever on earth that is) or that Dick Cheney “suddenly” (Taibbi's word) endorsed Kamala Harris.
 
Then came the news story that one of the ABC moderators, Linsey Davis, was in the same sorority as Kamala Harris, and this therefore rigged the debate.  To be clear, the story didn't say that the two women had lived in the same sorority house and at the same time, and were close friends or even knew each other.  It just hinted that, or hinted at some double-secret sorority cabal.  In reality (that pesky reality again), Alpha Kappa Alpha is a national sorority founded 114 years ago, and has several thousand local chapters, with 360,000 members who live across 12 countries.  And in this reality, VP Harris and Ms. Davis went to completely different colleges, were in different chapters and did so in totally different decades, 13 years apart. 
 
In fact, I would suggest that in every presidential debate there has been some connection of some sort between moderators and the candidates, and arguably much closer than this.  Perhaps the same political party.  Or same college.  Or have had a friend who knows the same friend.  Or, very likely, that they’ve actually even met and did an interview together.  (Or, even more directly, are -- like ABC moderator David Muir and Trump -- both white men who've had careers on television.)
 
But there was Mike Lee (R-UT) outraged.  Mike Lee, who was profiled in this week’s The Atlantic for an article, “Why Mike Lee Folded,” noting he changed so much that by 2020 "he was trying to help Trump overturn the election". Mike Lee, who went from being outraged by Trump’s Access Hollywood “Grab them by the p*ssy” tape and calling for Trump to drop out of the race to now becoming full-MAGA and all-in on Trump, to the degree that he's considered a possibility to be Attorney General if Trump wins.  Mike Lee, who now tweets, “We are not a democracy.”  Outraged by two people who were in the same 114-year-old sorority 13 years apart among 360,000 members across 12 countries. Calling it “shameless.”  And decrying how “The left’s near-complete domination of broadcast TV couldn’t be more obvious.”

Fun Fact:  Broadcast TV is how Trump came to national fame by hosting The Apprentice over 14 years. 
 
And then there was dear Megyn Kelly, as well, who wrote yesterday about the “absolute gall” of the two women being in the same 114-year-old sorority, 13 years apart.
 
In fairness, Megyn Kelly’s standard for "absolute gall" is significantly lower than people would think, so that's important to know for perspective here. For instance, she also just wrote -- within hours of being "galled" -- that it was "disgusting" how Taylor Swift endorsed the Vice President of the United States.
 
Should ABC not have had a moderator from the same sorority as one of the candidates?  Tempted as I was to initially say "perhaps not" – I can’t say that because I doubt it would have even been a hiccup of an issue in any other non-Trump presidential debate in history, and because I doubt there haven’t been moderator/candidate connections in other debates that were far closer, and since I’m sure there would have been not a single peep of "outrage" if Trump had swamped VP Harris, rather than the other way around. 
 
But much, much more to the point, left out of these wounded cries by those trying to explain away Trump’s devastating losing performance, was how did Linsey Davis actually bias the debate???  And how did she make Trump say that he had no health care plan, but only a “concept of a plan”???  And how did moderator Davis make Trump bring up the fake, racist, ludicrous story about eating pet dogs and cats??  And how did she make Trump take credit a year ago for overturning Roe v. Wade and now claim that doing so was what “everybody” wanted???  And how in the world did Ms. Davis make Trump glower and refuse to look at Kamala Harris all night??
 
Y’know, pesky questions like that.  And many, many more.  But when  you find yourself cornered and trying to find any excuse for Trump being pummeled in the debate so that you can pretend he really was the winner, you grasp at anything.
 
Like when podcaster David Sacks wrote –
 
“If the debate was truly fair & impartial and revealed Harris to be a much deeper and more confident candidate than previously thought, why doesn’t she press her advantage and do all the press interviews & podcasts she can over the next month? She would win the election easily.”
 
Back in reality, Trump and MAGOPs have been saying for the past months VP Harris was "stupid" and "dumb" and that she would collapse at the debate without a script.  Well, oops on that, right?  And contrary to this very same reality, the cornered Sacks keeps up with that utterly foolish suggestion here, as well – totally oblivious that as the elected Vice President, U.S. Senator, Attorney General (twice) and District Attorney, she's done debates and countless interviews in the most populous state of the country – and across the country -- for 20 YEARS.
 
And, wait, before we go further:  he thinks Trump is deep???!
 
Further, while there’s far too much to choose from online, this one tweet speaks for much of the pure fantasy about what has become the MAGOP’s standard cry, contrary to everything they and the 70 million saw, that Kamala Harris was, as they've been told, "stupid" and incompetent and that therefore she did terribly, which means that Trump actually demolished her --
 
“If you haven’t noticed by now, Kamala Harris’s debate performance was scripted to the last word.
 
“Check her social media—every line, every pause, pre-planned for the perfect clip.
 
“This wasn’t a debate and Kamala didn’t treat it as such; it was a performance, with Harris delivering taglines, not thoughts.
 
“She was about as authentic as a three-dollar bill, she sticks to script because off-script is off-limits for her.
 
“No interviews, no podcasts, just the safe, rehearsed echo of her political persona. Everything about Kamala Harris is fraudulent.”

I have to admit, as far as unwarranted, fanciful complaints of her go, this one puts Kamala Harris in a truly great light.  After all, considering that apparently everything she said during the debate — every line, every pause, every thought pre-planned for the perfect clip, all of it there already posted on her social media site for anyone to see ahead of time, everything scripted to the last word, even every response to whatever unknown answers Trump would give -- all of that fully written out beforehand, and still Trump wasn't able to prepare ahead of time, despite knowing exactly what she would say, that is a seriously impressive skill of legerdemain to pull off.  To bamboozle your opponent totally even when he knows everything that is coming. 

It is a skill at a level akin to the great baseball pitcher Satchel Paige, who would sometimes tell the batter exactly what he was going to throw him, and then tell all the players on his team behind him in the field to sit down, because they wouldn't be needed -- and finally, he'd face the batter again and strike him out on three pitches.

It turns out that, according to so many MAGOP supporters, that was what Kamala Harris did to Trump.

And after striking out Trump on three pitches...so many of the other MAGOP supporters stumbled around, caught off guard by what they just saw, knowing it isn't supposed to be able to happen, until they realized they were just blinded by reality and cried out in joy -- "We won!!"  Explaining to everyone that when the other side does things you don't approve of, like embarrass and crush you on the facts because they were prepared and very smart, it doesn't count.

Self-delusion is a poor standard to live by.

But then, being told to ignore reality and then creating your own comforting, alternative facts are really the only way to actually get through life in MAGOP World.

When Mike Nichols got the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, I’ve previously posted the hilarious speech that his longtime partner at the start of his career Elaine May gave.  (If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching it here.)   At the same event, his longtime close friend Norah Ephron (who wrote and directed such films as You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie & Julia) gave a speech that is almost equally a joy, though far more brutal – and as with May’s, some of the fun is watching Nichols’ reaction of laughter – he’s one of the great laughers -- and utter embarrassment.)
​

 
There were two different stories coming out of the MAGOP yesterday after the presidential debate.  One was an acknowledgement that Trump did horribly, the other that he did great and won the debate.  Both are problematic for the party.
 
MAGOP officials and people on Fox who went around raving about how great Trump did, and that he won the debate (including Trump who claimed that unnamed “polls” had him getting 90% of the votes and 71% as winning) are either self-delusional or trying to trick the base.  And operating under the umbrella of delusion is never a good way to campaign.
 
(For the record, the CNN poll had Kamala Harris winning the debate by 63-37%.  This is huge in a race that is close enough to be considered basically tied.  Further, in presidential debates, poll analyst Nate Silver wrote that when there’s a winner, the average is usually by 18 points.  So, winning by 26 points is significant.)
 
When you go around believing or trying to convince others to believe that your guy did tremendously, when reality is the polar opposite, you not only create a false sense of security, but you become unable to address whatever problems that exist and can’t fix them.
 
On the other hand, the acknowledgement that Trump did horribly is problematic in its own way.   There are three hurdles here.
 
First, of course, is the reality that admitting you have a problem means…you have a problem!  Now, normally, admitting a problem is a good thing because, as noted above, it means you can try to fix it.  But that’s where the second hurdle here comes in.
 
Most of the acknowledgements that Trump did so poorly came from off-the-record comments (which makes it harder to address and fix things), though surprisingly there actually was a bit of honesty on-air, as well.  Even on Fox.  In fact, when Trump called in to Fox the morning after, he was so upset about the commentary right after the debate the night before that he told the morning hosts that if there was ever a debate on Fox (which he also said he was not inclined to do), he said that he didn’t want to the two people who have been mentioned as possible debate moderators, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who had been critical – and accurate -- about his performance.  Instead, Trump said he would accept Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters or Laura Ingraham.  Which pretty much nails down that there won’t be a Fox debate. 
 
By the way, while Jesse Watters did his best Jesse Watters imitation after the debate and said how well Trump did, even he was aghast at Trump’s performance and let some of that slip through, saying “This was rough,” and adding that anyone who actually had watched the debate wouldn’t think “any of these people won.”
 
The problem with this honesty is that nothing will likely be done about it.  So, you’re left with public criticism and nothing else, and so the only thing that criticism can do is linger, fester and feed on itself.
 
Compare this to the reaction among Democrats after President Biden showed his 81-year-old age at his debate and had disastrous results.  No Democrats claimed that he won – even when polls showed that Trump didn’t do especially well either.  While many Democrats did want the President to stay on the ticket, they didn’t delude themselves into thinking he did well.  They just thought he still had more to offer than other possible replacements and would do better than Trump in the campaign.  But more were outspoken in their concern – in public and (importantly) to Biden directly.  And in the end, after much external and internal discussion, President Biden concluded that it would be best for him to, unprecedentedly, drop out of the race.  He endorsed Kamala Harris, the party coalesced around her, and the Democratic campaign was revitalized.  For the presidential ticket and down-ballot races.
 
You don’t see that same dynamic happening with Trump.  And you won’t see that happening with Trump.  It’s hard to imagine that anyone in the MAGOP is going to suggest publicly that Trump should drop out.  It is even more improbable to think any MAGOP official would suggest such a thing even in private to Trump.
 
Now, to be clear, Trump still has massive support in the MAGOP, he is still basically tied with Kamala Harris – ahead in some polls, behind in others – and could very well win.  The problem is that they don’t know how he will be a week or month from today, but right now he’s still their beloved convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.

And further, it’s myopic because their concern is only on Trump, and not how the down-ballot races are impacted by how he is perceived by the public, even if he’s able to win.  Because if he does win, it’s not a result of his “popularity” (since, after all, he’s always lost the popular vote), but due to the Electoral College.  So, how he’ll be in a week or month from today is meaningful for that, as well
 
And that leads to the third hurdle among those MAGOPs who acknowledge Trump did badly.  It’s that they pretty much are acknowledging the wrong thing.
 
Trump didn’t have a horrible debate just because he had an off-night, or got triggered by Kamala Harris and took the bait, or is old.  All that is true.  But the problem is that a great many psychologists and psychiatrists have written that Trump shows signs of early dementia.  And it’s degenerative.  As psychologist Dr. Jack Gartner from Johns Hopkins has said, he tells people to look at Trump today, because it’s the best they will ever see him.  Trump is not getting better.  And not acknowledging that in the MAGOP – even while admitting he had a terrible night and is old – is putting a Band-Aid on a person with pneumonia.
 
A RawStory headline yesterday said that GOP operatives are now, after the debate, trashing Trump behind his back as being "old."
 
Note to GOP operatives: Trump has been "old" this entire campaign, and his main problem isn't being "old", but early dementia. "Old" is normal. Dementia is not.

(Furthermore, “behind the back” is exactly part of the problem as I noted above.  Doing it up front is attempting to resolve the problem.  Doing it behind the back is gossiping at a dinner party.) 

Trump could still win.  But last night at his horrible debate, unlike President Biden who has cognitive issues from being old, we were seeing Trump at the best he will ever be.
 
MAGOP can pretend Trump did great, or admit he did terribly and do nothing about it.  It’s a problem for them, either way.  Including if he wins, because dementia is degenerative.
 
At which point, if he wins, it’s a disastrous problem for all of us.

Jon Stewart moved his usual Monday hosting of The Daily Show to Tuesday so that he could cover the presidential debate live.

The first part was clearly written ahead of time, since it's about the election in general, not the debate.  When they got into the debate, I found it a bit forced, trying to find things to joke about Kamala Harris in order to be fair.  I was thinking, "Wait, you guys actually saw the debate, right??"

But then, it finally because clear that they let the reality of the debate to sink in.  And what deserved to get ridiculed...got ridiculed.  Wonderfully.
​

 
For months, I’ve been saying to friends who’ve called me up with news about polls – as well as writing here – that no polls really matter until after the presidential debate.  Last night was why.
 
I’ll have some thoughts on specifics, but they’ll be random for what stands out.  But it’s the larger, general view that I think is most at issue.  And it’s a view, as admittedly biased as I am, that I often tried to watch from the perspective of an undecided voter.  So, I tried to balance the two perspectives together.
 
And that larger view is that throughout the evening, Kamala Harris presented her ideas of what she wants to do.  Whether or not one agreed with those positions, let alone would be able to accomplish them, is a separate matter.  But she generally let voters know where she stands on them.
 
And when letting voters know, she spoke directly to them, at times turning away to address Trump to his face when challenging him, occasionally looking almost bemused by the bewildering things he was saying.
 
By contrast, Trump scowled all night.  In fact, 30 seconds into the debate, I noted that if he was that dour this early, he was in for a rough evening.  Further, I don’t think he looked at her once.  Perhaps worse, when he spoke it was generally to the moderators, not viewers.  And he spent the night criticizing – not just Kamala Harris,  but pretty much everyone.  And that included top people in his own administration who had left, as well as Kamala Harris’s father.  Now, of course, some watching might like his criticisms, but they were solely about the past and had next to nothing to do with plans for the future (at one point, even admitting that he didn't have a plan) and attracting new voters.
 
Further, being Trump, he was unfocused and jumped all over the place.  When asked about how he’d try to end the Israel-Gaza War, he not only didn’t offer any suggestion, but talked mostly about Ukraine.  When asked if he wanted Ukraine to win its war, he didn’t answer.  When asked if he regretted anything about any of his actions on January 6, not only didn’t answer, but talked about immigrants crossing the border illegally.
 
Important, too, Trump and MAGOP operatives went into this debate lowering expectations for Kamala Harris.  Saying that she was “dumb” and “stupid”.  And that she wouldn’t be able to talk without a script, that she would collapse on the debate stage.  So, his base was anticipating that.  Even during the debate, huge Trump supporter Elon Musk tweeted that she was beating expectations.  (But not my expectations, certainly, nor those of probably most Democrats, just those of MAGOPs only who had bought into the flim-flam they were presented, contrary to the reality of Kamala Harris being a former U.S. Senator, Attorney General, District Attorney and career prosecutor who had been doing debates and interviews for 20 years.)  And so that foolish positioning by Trump and his allies profoundly backfired.  How much did it backfire?  In what is a very close general race with voters divided, a CNN poll reported that viewers said VP Harris won the debate, 63% to 37%.  (To add perspective to this, poll analyst Nate Silver wrote that when someone wins a presidential debate, it's usually on average by 18 points.  So, winning by 26 points is especially significant.)
 
By the way, I don’t necessarily think Kamala Harris was “great” in all that she said, but (more importantly) she was “great” in triggering Trump and baiting him to respond as horribly as he did.  To be clear, I think she was very good in many of her responses, and great in some of them, but there were places I’d have loved to have heard her go further or ask moderators if she could respond, and so she let some important points pass.  But I got the sense that her strategy was what I was hoping for, and she pulled that off impeccably – to get enough of her policy points across and also trigger Trump throughout the night, to get him to show himself horribly.  And in most ways, that latter was the most important thing.  And she was excellent at that.
 
I was pleased (and not surprised) to see that she hit many of the anticipated trigger points throughout the night.  Especially the most simple, basic ones. And notably the most basic one of all:  at the very beginning, coming on stage and just being who she is, a Black woman, as visceral a trigger as there is for Trump. She walked directly over to him (clearly uncomfortable, refusing to meet her in the middle, almost trying to avoid her) and firmly shook his hand, pointedly introducing herself with her name, “Kamala Harris,” pronounced correctly.  When it came to telling Trump he was wrong, she handled it smartly -- making it more generic, pointing out a few times that he wouldn’t be telling the truth all night.  And choosing specific moments to be brutal in explaining why he was wrong, a figure of ridicule.  I was glad, too, to see that she did indeed laugh at him several times, something he's said he "really, really, really hates."  And although she didn’t call him just “Donald,” like she does on the stump, she usually made it “Donald Trump,” never once “President Trump” which he dearly loves and prefers.
 
Overall, I thought the moderators were excellent. I know that many MAGOPs were upset with them correcting Trump, but in fairness (and very importantly), they did not do it as traditional “fact checks” (where you correct what was said and then move to the other person for a response).  Rather, they would provide Trump with a follow-up question to give him a chance to respond to what was inaccurate.  And the reason they did that with Trump and not VP Harris was not bias, but because…well, he was the one saying things that were untrue.  Also, in doing so, the moderators were giving Trump much more time to talk, something most candidates prefer.  In fact, MSNBC noted that he got many more questions than her 23 and five more minutes.  In part, too, Trump often asked for a chance to respond, while she didn’t.
 
That extra time for Trump was not necessarily a bad thing for Harris.  After all, one of her strengths in the debate was letting Trump dig his own holes, and she may have figured it was better to let his rants stand as the final word remembered.  The downside is that she didn't give many follow-up responses to his criticisms, and so some important points went unaddressed.  But since some of those corrections were made by the moderators in their follow-up questions to Trump, and since I suspect she was just fine letting Trump look bad on his own, it wasn’t a problem.  It just left a few things without a response to that, in a perfect world, I wish had been answered.
 
Which finally gets us to the specific moments of the evening.  And among the most galvanizing were  –
 
I think Trump's refusal to still admit that he lost the election (a question I've been long hoping would be asked) was deeply troubling for him.  And he made it worse by denying that just days before he actually, finally acknowledged barely losing -- and at first feigned ignorance of what he'd said and then switched to say he was supposedly just being sarcastic.  To the credit of the moderator, he said he'd watched the video and it didn’t look like sarcasm.  And then VP Harris took it to a higher level by saying Trump was not only confused by the issue of the election results, but how troubling it was he couldn’t seem to process that.
 
When it came to health care, it was devastating for Trump when he said -- after having been in office for four years and almost another four years since -- that he still had no health care plan to replace Obamacare, but only had a “concept of plans.”  Despite, when in office, repeatedly saying he had a big, beautiful health care plan coming in two weeks.
 
And it was ghastly when Trump not only brought up the “immigrants were stealing and eating pet dogs,” and then kept arguing the point after the moderator corrected him.  It made him look borderline loony.  As did Kamala Harris's expression of near-disbelief.

(Coming in second place for his most-unhinged statement of the evening, and admittedly that covers a lot of ground, was when Trump said that "Joe Biden hates you.")
 
I also think that for all her triggers and baits during the evening, her best was when she listed all the people high in his administration who didn't support him and thought he was a danger to national security, and when she said, as well – turning to his face to say it – that “military leaders have told me you’re a disgrace.”  And that “World leaders are laughing at you.”  Getting laughed at being something, as I noted, that Trump has said out loud at his rally that he “really, really, really hates.”  And he then made it worse by pointing out in his defense that Viktor Orban – Viktor Orban!  The authoritarian despot -- says he was great.  The only person Trump brought up.
 
As for other random thoughts --
 
Not surprisingly, her response on abortion was withering.  She didn’t refute Trump ludicrously saying that “all Democrats have wanted to send Roe to the states for 52 years” -- though on the upside, I’m sure that all people who didn’t want that (which is a majority of Americans) actually know that they don’t want that.  I also was sorry that she didn’t follow-up on Trump refusing to say he would veto an national abortion ban bill if was elected – but it was likely clear that he had refused to say so.  And I wish, too, that VP Harris had refuted Trump saying he was a leading champion for IVF.  Though given her undermining his position on abortion, and her look of ridicule when he said it, responding to his claim about IVF wasn't as necessary as it might have been otherwise.
 
I was glad she explained that Trump’s tariff plan was disastrous, and that many economic experts were saying so, although she didn’t get into it nearly as much as I thought the subject deserved.
 
Trump not only never answered about ending Gaza-Israel War, but veered off into talking about Ukraine.  I wish she called him out on it, though she didn’t get a chance to respond.
 
But also very troubling for Trump was that he wouldn’t say he wanted Ukraine to win.  And worse for him, VP Harris made an extremely important comment about how if Russia defeated Ukraine, it would be their first step to going into Poland, a critical issue in the highly- important swing state of Pennsylvania with 800,000 Polish-Americans.
 
I was also very glad that VP Harris brought up the deal for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan was set up between Trump and the leaders of the Taliban terrorist group, who he invited to Camp David, a deal that included releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners.  And, by the way, Trump made up the name of the Taliban co-founder he dealt with!  (Something unfortunately not noted during the debate.)
 
Which only leaves the candidates’ final statements.  Kamala Harris used hers for giving the vision she had if elected.  Trump spent his time looking back and repeatedly asking if she wanted to do such great things, why didn’t she already do it?  (Never mind that she was vice president, and also that immediate problems -- like recovering from a pandemic -- often take precedence for resolving first, which is why Administrations want a second term.  Never mind, too, that many things didn’t get done because Republicans blocked them.  And that the whole concept of growth is building on what you have with expanded plans.)  More to the point, however -- there wasn’t a word from Trump about what he wants for the future.
 
But then, that was something Kamala Harris brilliantly dealt with when she invited people to attend a Trump rally.  Saying that you’ll hear him talk about Hannibal Lecter.  And windmills giving you cancer.  But the one thing you won’t hear him talk about is…you.

Last night did not remotely end the race.  It’s still extremely close.  But when 63% of viewers saying Kamala Harris won the debate, to just 37% for Trump, if that shifts votes only two percent…it is significant.  Because that also adds to momentum and is something that can be expanded on. 

And further, after having been ridiculed and raked over the coals, laughed at, and called a disgrace to his face by Kamala Harris (sorry, I mean, a Black woman...), I suspect we may see an even angrier, more unhinged -- yes, that's possible -- Trump, especially since dementia is degenerative.
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The one thing I don't believe we'll see anymore is Trump and MAGOPs saying that Kamala Harris is "stupid" and "dumb."  Though, if we do -- and this being Trump, who knows? -- it will be really "stupid" and even more "dumb."