ABC News hosted the first presidential debate between Democratic candidate Ms Kamala Harris, sitting Vice-President, and her rival from the Republican Party Donald Trump, the former President. It ran for about 90 minutes, hovering around key issues such as immigration, abortion rights, foreign policy, etc.
The split screen view of the candidates on TV—Donald Trump on the left with his lips pursed and gesticulating, with Kamala Harris on the right, leaning slightly back with her hand on her chin, and watching Trump in amusement— was pretty impressive to watch besides being highly communicative. For, the contrast between the two tells viewers so much: Kamala Harris’s facial expression—in-between a grimace and a half-incredulous smile—resembles that of an exasperated audience of a political speech, while Trump, being repeatedly provoked by Harris and succumbing to them again and again, wallowing in his delusions.
Unlike Trump, she was never furious, rather aired her arguments freely, confidently, and mostly with a smile. She triggered Trump Psychologically by repeatedly calling him weak, mocking him, acting bemused by him, and merrily laughing at him all through. For instance, she said, “I have travelled the world as Vice President of the United States, and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump”. She didn’t stop there. She even said, “I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you’re a disgrace”.
Obviously, enraged by such needling, his face turning orange, Trump roared incoherently. His ability to adopt to new issues emerging in the debate with suitable vocabulary, and verbal and logical coherence appears to have been clouded by Harris’s repeated provocations. The result is: “he lost his cool over and over” said, David Frum in The Atlantic. And, his repetitive speech was more on the known patterns.
During the course of debate, Trump yelled that immigrants are eating people’s pets. While Harris was laughing on the other side of the screen, one of the ABC moderators said that there had been no “credible reports” of immigrants harming pets in Springfield. Caught off the guard, Trump’s response was: “I have seen people on television”.
Watching the debate, Richard A. Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College, said: “If the debate was a cognitive test, the former president failed”.
As against this, Kamala Harris, though portrayed some rigidity and repetition, she, like most of the politicians, mostly harped on her favourite topics but coherently and with a smiling face. Intriguingly, she didn’t talk much about her performance as Vice-President or about her policies. Instead she focussed more on needling Trump on his record, his vanity, etc., and thus she put Trump on the defensive. Watching her style of articulation and her facial expressions on the split-screen, reporters have termed it as her psychological win over the former President.
Immediately after debate, CNN conducted a flash poll among debate viewers and it revealed that 63% of registered voters who watched the event declared Kamala Harris as the winner.
Of
course, it is too early to say whether a lead in the debate will have any
impact on the neutral voters and on her prospects. But one thing is certain:
Trump appeared to have sensed the outcome of debate rightly, for he wrote on
Truth Social, “I thought that was my best Debate, EVER, especially since it was
THREE ON ONE!” — By three he meant the two ABC moderators and Kamala Harris. He
even said, that he is “not inclined to do any more debates”. Let’s wait and see
what’s going to unfurl!
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