Highlights: Trump-Harris presidential debate analysis and fact-check

Lawrence O’Donnell speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

I’ve never been impressed by celebrity endorsements. I think they are helpful to the base that you already have. They tend to be people who the base already identifies with.

But Taylor Swift is someone who crosses it all. This is, I think, the most important celebrity endorsement we’ve ever seen in a presidential campaign, especially because it is so close and it can make that kind of difference.

The Harris campaign now has two perfectly timed and important endorsements: Joe Biden’s 27-minute timed endorsement after he stepped down — perfect timing, it just put a rocket on her to the nomination — and now this, about 27 minutes after the end of the debate.

The timing on it is absolutely exquisite. The wording of it is flawless and perfect. Right down to the cat lady stuff. For someone who’s never been impressed by a celebrity endorsement, this is perfect and powerful.

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How well did the debate go tonight in the eyes of the Democratic ticket? In pickup basketball parlance, Harris already wants to run it back.

Chris Hayes speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

I thought it was the best anyone’s ever done against him — both Republicans in Republican primaries and those big group brawls and one on one. Even though I think both Biden and Hillary Clinton acquitted themselves well against him.

The thing that she did — and it almost became like comical at a certain point — was she doing two things every time. Because we’re talking about how you negotiate this: how much him, how much you. What do I want to communicate about what I’m doing? And then in the midst of that, just this little lure for the fish. It could be John McCain. If you bring up John McCain, he’s going to litigate John McCain. It could be “very fine people” in Charlottesville. If you bring up “very fine people,” he’s going to swim upstream to go talk about very fine people. It could be suckers and losers. He going to go talk to go talk about suckers loser every single time.

She would communicate and then she would leave dangling this bait, and he would swim up to the bait. And the bait was always a thing that Donald Trump is obsessed with about himself: a grievance, a thing in the past, the well worn things that we’ve heard him go on and on about. Nancy Pelosi was the reason that January 6 got attacked, yada yada, and every one of them just served to reaffirm the fact that the guy is old and out of it and obsessed with his grievances.

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Joy Reid speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Theatrically, what Vice President Harris did that I thought was very smart, was that when she was saying something about Donald Trump, particularly when she was talking about the way foreign governments that she has interacted with, think about him — she looked at him.

And he would not look at her. He would not look at her. He glowered into the camera. And that two-shot, I think, puts her at a stature so far above him. He looked weak and he looked afraid because he wouldn’t look her in the eye.

She said, you are a disgrace. And I’m not saying that I’m saying you’re a disgrace. I’m saying that the people that I speak with, that are heads of military leaders who have worked with you tell me that you are a disgrace. And in order to say “you” she has to turn to him and he can’t bear it. He can’t bear it.

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My colleague Allison Detzel posted some quick reactions to tonight’s debate from GOP insiders. But the collective conniption that right-wingers are having online right now is one sign that things might not have gone as Trump supporters had hoped.

Whether they’re blaming fellow right-wingers for filling Trump’s head with conspiracy theories or blaming the debate moderators for fact-checking Trump, there’s palpable right-wing agita over how things played out tonight. When Fox News’ Trump-loving Jesse Watters is essentially calling the debate a draw, that should suggest to you that MAGA world isn’t feeling too hot about Trump’s showing.

Trump leaned on a favorite trope of his, calling inconvenient facts fake and fraudulent throughout the debate. His criminal charges? “Fake cases.” The Russia investigation? “Fake.” The number of deaths in the Russia-Ukraine war? “Fake numbers.” The 2020 election? “Fraudulent.” FBI crime statistics? “Fraudulent.” Labor Department statistics? “Fraud.”

Rachel Maddow just said on air that she has never seen a starker contrast between two candidates in any debate in any political contest ever. I thought for a second about whether that’s true and had to agree. When Trump debated Hillary Clinton in 2016, he was definitely still blustering and lying through his teeth at every turn, but he at least managed to have some coherence and landed some sharp digs at Clinton in the process. In contrast, where Harris was poised and on message throughout the entire debate tonight, Trump was falling apart before our eyes, getting more and more upset as she burrowed deeper and deeper under his skin.

Nicole Wallace speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

We all know that maximum humility is required of us, particularly in the next 57 days. We do not know the outcome of the election, but if debates matter at all in the outcomes of said elections, it should be over.

Questions that were deeply personal Harris turned into questions not about herself, not about her campaign, not about the Democratic Party, not even about Donald Trump, but about the country. His synapses did not seem to be firing, but she got out her entire economic agenda.

The Trump campaign is going to plans B, C and D, you know. They’re dark and they’re dirty and they’re going to the types of things that Trump tweeted about: the threats, the retribution, the placement of allies on election boards, as they’ve done in the state of Georgia. Because this did not win Trump any new voters.

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Rachel Maddow speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

You could not have two more different candidates with two more different approaches to the task at hand here.

I had a television executive once tell me that everything you need to know about a live event on television, you can tell with that with the sound off. If you had the sound off for this debate, which I’m sure nobody did, what you would have seen was Trump looking physically hunched, angry, squinting; I never saw the whites of his eyes.

The entire debate, shouting, constantly interrupting himself, not just going down tangents, but being unable to finish a thought, seeming very frustrated, very angry, very negative and very tired. In contrast, Kamala Harris appeared to be sort of light on her feet, quite puzzled by him. The images of him squinting and hunching and having seeming to be having physical trouble squeezing the words out, certainly squeezing the sentences out, while she just looked at him, absolutely puzzled by where it was he was going — I think that visual may be as much of a takeaway as anything that was said.

He said strange things, like all Democrats wanted Roe vs. Wade overturned. He said that it is legal to kill children in the United States. He insisted that he saw something on television about eating dogs. That was one of the weirdest moments of the debate, saying he saw it on television. So therefore he knows it’s true, and so therefore what the police said about it can’t be true. Kamala Harris kept going back to her plan, her campaign, but also kept going directly at him. 

I’ve never seen a starker contrast in presentation from two candidates in any debate, in any type of contest, in any political race.

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