How you can tell Kamala Harris absolutely cleaned the clock of Donald Trump in last night’s debate: he ran to his buddies on “Fox & Friends” this morning to complain about being unfairly tied to Project 2025.
I mean, Project 2025 should have been the least of his worries, honestly, given the number of self-owns and own goals.
Seriously, “They’re eating the dogs.”
He didn’t even get the made-up story on that right.
“Look, they should have corrected her six or seven times,” Trump complained, mentioning specifically the issue with Project 2025, the 922-page blueprint for a second Trump administration that was authored by a group of former top Trump advisers, and which he praised at a 2022 event, saying the people working on the plan were “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
Donald Trump and Project 2025
- Lawrence Wittner: Project 2025 provides a blueprint for destroying labor unions
- Project 2025: The impact of the Trump blueprint on international trade
- Project 2025: The damage that Trump could do to the environment in a second term
- Project 2025 promises authoritarian rule, foreign policy mayhem
- Project 2025 and some poison gas for the future
- Project 2025: Youngkin thinks Virginia federal employees can just find new jobs
Project 2025 became a dirty word in political circles after Kevin Roberts, the president of the far-right and Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation, which oversaw the drafting of the massive and quite detailed planning document, revealed on a podcast back in July what the motivation behind Project 2025 was.
“The left has taken over our institutions. The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily, is because our side is winning. And so, I come full circle on this response, and just want to encourage you with some substance. That we are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
“They know it has nothing to do with me,” Trump complained to the friendly folks at “Fox & Friends,” continuing his recent efforts to disavow the document, in spite of his fingerprints being all over it.
“She mentioned it all night long, and they refused to correct it. And everybody, you know, I haven’t, I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump tried, again, to claim.
Problem being, Trump and his inner circle do have something – actually, a lot – to do with Project 2025, though no one would doubt what Trump said during the debate, that he has “not read it,” and that he’s “not going to read it,” given what we know about Trump’s disdain for reading anything that is longer than a page and doesn’t include a color chart.
There’s a Streisand Effect aspect to Trump going on “Fox & Friends” and even mentioning Project 2025, but that’s just more evidence of Kamala Harris setting up residence rent-free in Donald Trump’s head.
We had been led to believe by the Trump surrogate stooges in the days leading up to the debate that Harris was going to be in over her head, that she had flailed miserably in debates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, that the lack of sit-down interviews leading up to the debate was a sign that her handlers thought that she would wilt under the glare of anything resembling the spotlight.
The supposedly shrinking-violet Harris set the tone for the debate night as the two walked onto the stage.
Trump, nearly a foot taller and easily a hundred and fifty pounds heavier, skulked in a rumpled suit in the direction of his podium, and tried to avoid Harris, who confidently made her way to him to introduce herself, reaching out to shake his hand, her eyes trying to make contact with his, as Trump did what he could to avert his eyes.
It was already over at this stage – the lithe 5’4” prosecutor standing up to the 6’3”, 300-plus-pound bully, staring him down, and putting him literally in his place – but we still had the actual debate still to go.
Video: Kamala Harris cleaned Donald Trump’s clock
The vice president set the first trap for Trump in her answer to the first question, on the economy, bringing up Trump’s ridiculous tariff plan, which she called “the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20 percent tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month.”
This put Trump on the defensive.
“First of all, I have no sales tax. That’s an incorrect statement. She knows that,” he said, though a tariff is, yes, a sales tax.
He went on to defend the scheme: “We’re doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world. And the tariff will be substantial in some cases. I took in billions and billions of dollars, as you know, from China,” Trump claimed, which, no, not the case.
Before this exchange was over, Harris had Trump on the defensive on Project 2025, where he tried to pivot, for some reason, to patting himself on the back for the “phenomenal job with the pandemic” that he, and he alone, thinks he and his administration did.
The next Trump trap was self-inflicted.
Moderator Linsey Davis, incidentally, a 1999 UVA alum, asked Trump about his flip-flop on the Florida referendum on the state’s six-week abortion ban, which led to Harris suggesting that Trump would sign a national abortion ban, Davis pressing Trump on that issue, saying that his running mate, JD Vance, had said he would veto a national ban, and Trump declaring, awkwardly, “Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD. In all fairness. JD, and I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I think he was speaking for me, but I really didn’t.”
Trump never did say one way or the other whether he would sign a national abortion ban or not.
Expect this to be front and center in Democrats’ messaging going forward.
On the next topic, immigration, Harris, after blasting Trump for blocking the bipartisan border-security bill, baited Trump into going off-topic by telling viewers that they should attend a Trump rally, where 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.”
Trump ran right through the image of the road painted on the wall.
He actually said all of what follows all in one breath.
“Let me respond as to the rallies. 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. That’s because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War 3, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk, not going to be Aurora or Springfield, lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Ring the bell.
Seriously, if this was a prizefight, you don’t even give Trump a standing eight-count.
Trump himself conceded as much.
During a commercial break, according to the media pool report, Trump, as soon as the stagehand said they were clear for a four-minute break, “turned towards the exit, gave a big sigh through closed lips, and walked off stage without looking at Harris.”
This is what the guy in the prizefight who just got it handed to him in front of God and the world does.
Well, that, and then he calls up his friends the next morning to whine about the refs.
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Chris Graham
