Trump or Harris?

The pundits and so-called political experts in the liberal and conservative media are still arguing over who won Tuesday’s presidential debate.

They’ll never agree. And they’re all so biased and partisan, they can’t be trusted to be honest anyway.

But both sides did seem to agree on one thing — ABC News was the biggest loser. By far.

Whatever shred of legitimacy ABC’s news-gathering operation had left, which wasn’t much, it was destroyed in full public view during the Trump-Harris debate.

For 90 minutes millions of potential voters watched David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly help Harris and hurt Trump.

As we all know by now, the duo “fact-checked” Trump five times — often unfairly or inaccurately.

They fact-checked Harris zero times. Plus, they never pressed her to explain her socialist-lite economic plans or how she changed from being a San Francisco progressive to a Biden centrist on every major issue.

And without a single challenge, they let her spew a handful of old, fully debunked Democrat Party lies about Trump.

For example, Muir didn’t say a peep when Harris repeated the lie that Trump said neo-Nazis and white supremacists at Charlottesville were “very fine people.”

Meanwhile, every direct question put to Harris was dodged and left unanswered, starting with the first one: “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

That question and others merely served as jumping off points for Harris to unleash a string of personal attacks on Trump to make him angry and defensive.

She painted him as a wannabe dictator, a multi-felon and an embarrassment to America.

She poked him with claims that his MAGA rallies were boring and said foreign leaders told her all the time that they didn’t respect him.

The rest of the time Harris recited empty platitudes and cliches about how she’s going to save the middle class from the economic problems that she pretends she and her boss Joe Biden have not created.

ABC disgraced itself with its shoddy and dishonest journalism, but what Muir and Davis did was nothing new or surprising.

In our presidential TV debates, it’s always three liberals against one conservative Republican. You’d think after four decades or so, the GOP would know that by now and plan accordingly.

Trump certainly knew he was going to be on an unfair playing field. But he was woefully unprepared for a serious, issue-packed debate.

He should have concentrated on slamming Harris for her terrible record on the border and attacking her for the radical positions on immigration, abortion, fracking, taxes, defunding the police and gun rights that she held until about 15 minutes ago.

And it would have been very simple at the beginning of the debate for Trump to say to the moderator, “Can you please have her answer that question?”

Instead of going on offense, however, Trump was goaded into going on defense.

A victim of his own ego, he took Harris’ bait almost every time, reacting to her personal attacks and rehashing his personal grievances about the 2020 election. He answered angrily, not presidentially. He even yelled.

As my son Cameron said during the debate, it seemed as if Trump was delivering two-minute excerpts from one of his big outdoor rallies, where he can riff for two hours in front of an adoring mob of MAGA heads.

I agree with those who say Trump won on substance and Harris won on style — if you can call her fake laughs and vague non-answers “style.”

Except for his opening and closing statements, Trump clearly did not have a good night.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter who won the debate — which is now old news. It was not intended to persuade the voters who already blindly love or hate Trump or Harris.

It was intended to persuade the undecideds — the independents, the Nikki Haley lovers. And on that score, Trump blew it by being Donald Trump.

Copyright 2024 Michael Reagan