I hate to say it, but Kamala Harris won last night’s first and perhaps only presidential debate with Donald Trump. At least after her awkward handshake introduction — “Kamala Harris,” she said as if Trump didn’t know who she is — and her painfully obvious early nerves. She looked at the camera and spoke directly to voters, mostly avoided her typical word salads, appealed to emotion (especially for women), reacted with feeling at the right moments, aimed a well-practiced glare at the former president while he was speaking, and delivered some hard hits. Of course, it’s easy to look good when both of ABC’s disgraceful pair of so-called moderators were piling on her opponent.

And she won Taylor Swift’s endorsement. What a surprise.

[Narrator: Nate wasn’t surprised.]

That doesn’t mean Harris proved herself to be anything other than a propped-up shell of a candidate with sometimes downright immoral and evil policies. She failed to offer much substance or to explain where she’s been and what she’s been doing for three and a half years. She called Trump a liar at least four times, but it is the Biden/Harris/Walz lineup that plays most fast and loose with the truth. The same goes for her accusations that Trump causes division.

Unfortunately, Trump also didn’t have his best night. He didn’t look like he spent five minutes preparing, instead devoting too much time to rehashing many of his familiar grievances, derailing his own effective attack lines with random thoughts and topic changes (squirrel!), and taking the bait multiple times on inane things like the size of his rally crowds or whether people leave early. Let it go, dude.

Harris and the moderators had him on the defensive for most of the night, and he missed some key chances to hold her accountable. He didn’t even hit Tim Walz for stolen valor amidst the military discussion. Big whiff.

Trump did have some humorous zingers. “I’m talking now, if you don’t mind,” he shot back at Harris when she spoke during his turn. “Does that sound familiar?” He also joked that he “was going to send her a MAGA hat” because she’d stolen so many of his policies.

He successfully and repeatedly hit the Biden/Harris failure on the border and the utter disaster of so many illegal alien criminals crossing our borders and committing crimes — that, by the way, otherwise wouldn’t have happened. He generally did well on foreign policy, for example correctly asserting that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine never would have happened on his watch. He began the evening by rightly noting — albeit with insufficient explanation — that cumulative inflation under Biden/Harris is over 20% and, in many cases, 50% or more.

Arguably, his best moment was the beginning of his closing statement: “She just started by saying she’s gonna do this, she’s gonna do that, she’s gonna do all these wonderful things,” he said. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years. They’ve had three and a half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?”

Reminding voters that Harris has been vice president for nearly four years and hanging Joe Biden’s myriad failures around her neck is exactly what he should spend all day every day doing.

Yet he undercut his own point by finishing on an angry and rambling tirade about seemingly disconnected ideas and places. If viewers made it all the way through the roughly hour and 40 minutes, that wasn’t a good taste to leave in their mouths.

It’s also fair to say that few of us would have a great night in a three-on-one debate like last night’s, but complaining about biased and unfair moderators isn’t going to win undecided or uninformed and misinformed voters who don’t realize how awful the moderators actually were. Griping about them doesn’t make Trump look good.

But make no mistake: David Muir and Linsey Davis were atrocious. They made themselves the centerpiece of the debate, “fact-checking” Trump — and only Trump — several times throughout the night, mostly by giving false or distorted information themselves. Muir even “fact-checked” Trump on what Trump said was his own sarcastic tone in a comment. “I did watch all of these pieces of video,” Muir chastised. “I didn’t detect the sarcasm.” Unreal.

And when the moderators weren’t directly fact-checking Trump, they were asking him something along the lines of, You’re terrible and said awful things. Why are you so mean and false?

Or they asked Harris setup questions about his controversies for her to rebuke him. Mr. Trump said this horrible thing. How does that make you feel?

They let her slide on multiple egregious lies, like the mischaracterization of Charlottesville (again) and Trump’s “bloodbath” comment about the economy. They didn’t bother correcting her on crime data, police deaths on January 6, fracking, troops in combat zones, or the Project 2025 nonsense, either, just to pick a few of Kamala’s many lies and distortions.

They also didn’t ask her why she covered for Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline — right up until the moment she undemocratically stole the nomination from him.

By contrast, they even (predictably) “fact-checked” Trump on the story about illegal aliens eating pets in Ohio. Residents say it’s happening, he argued, but Muir dismissed it because a “city manager” denies seeing any evidence. The point shouldn’t be pets but the overrun communities of America.

Inexplicably, the moderators didn’t fact-check Harris when she falsely told Trump that Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch.” There is no evidence Putin is a cannibal. Have they no journalistic integrity?

Fact-check: Putin would NOT eat Trump for lunch. #SpringfieldOhio

— Nate Jackson | Patriot Post (@NatriotJackson) September 11, 2024

Sarcasm aside, no Republican should ever again agree to a debate on ABC.

Harris knew last night was likely her only debate and one of her best shots at drawing a contrast with Trump. Perhaps her best (by which I mean worst) moments were playing to a woman’s disdain for a man who was “held liable for sexual assault” and asserting, “Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”

Fact-check: A baby is not a woman’s body. That’s science.

Nevertheless, Harris clearly rehearsed exactly how she wanted to show her emotion over abortion so that women all over America would identify with her. It was, unfortunately, a skilled maneuver.

The discussion also brought an angry “fact-check” from ABC’s Linsey Davis. When Trump brought up Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s 2019 comments about what sure sounded like infanticide to me, Harris responded with disbelief and Davis said with all the contempt she could muster, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

“Kill a baby after it’s born.” Let that inadvertent admission sink in.

A more helpful fact-check the moderators could have thrown in is that the United States is one of seven nations in the entire world — in the company of China, North Korea, and Vietnam — that allows late-term abortions. Even The Washington Post admits that’s true, and Trump rightly pinned Harris on her extremism.

There’s so much more I could say, but what I hope voters remember from last night’s debate is that Harris is practically the incumbent, and she bears responsibility for the myriad failures over the last three and a half years. Inflation persists, and she ensured the bills that created it passed Congress. She was the last person in the room when deciding the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. And so on.

Will last night’s debate move the needle? We’ll see, but remember this: There are fewer battleground states than in 2020, and, as we have often noted, Trump lost by about 43,000 votes in three states. Biden’s seven million-vote margin was almost entirely in New York and California. No wonder Democrats want to eliminate the Electoral College.

The needle likely won’t move much as a result of this debate, but in an election when the country is split virtually 50-50, small movements win elections. That’s why Democrats are ready with bulk-mail ballots. Early voting starts next week…

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(Updated)