Among the US networks, ABC News is universally regarded as the most hostile to Donald Trump and the most indulging of Democrat candidates. Those expecting that practice to end in this debate were sorely disappointed. As one commentator observed before the debate even ended, in this cycle, President Trump has run against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and ABC News.
The ABC moderators repeatedly challenged Trump’s comments on such issues as the risk of illegal immigrants voting, the war in Ukraine, and the extent of liberal abortion laws.
They never pushed back on anything Harris said. For example, Harris yet again raised the claim that Donald Trump called white supremacists “very fine people” in Charlottesville – a charge that has been debunked as false for many years. Trump had clearly condemned those racists. ABC let it slide.
But this failure to treat the candidates fairly goes far beyond creating a flawed process. This debate was critical to learning the truth about Kamala Harris. Having been president for four years and having now run three times for the office, there is almost nothing about Donald Trump that the world does not know. Just the opposite can be said about Harris.
Kamala Harris did not compete in the Democrat primary. She did not receive a single citizen’s vote, entitling her to candidacy for the highest office in the land. She has not given a single press conference since she replaced Joe Biden unceremoniously after intense pressure from party leaders. The Americans who watched this debate were looking to hear from her, not Trump.
In that sense, Harris was an abysmal failure. Asked repeatedly to explain her recent disavowal of progressive positions on gun control, immigration, defunding the police, energy, health insurance, and Israel, ABC repeatedly allowed her to pivot to meaningless platitudes about her middle-class upbringing and her hopes for the future. We know little more about her now than before.
Not Joe Biden, but part of his team
One telling moment was when Harris exclaimed, “I’m not Joe Biden.” Undoubtedly, she wants to run away from her record of the past three years marked by economic decline, open borders, and conflicts across the globe. However, she was never asked to account for her role as the second most powerful person in the USA during the Biden Administration.
Either she wasn’t involved and needed to explain why she squandered her opportunity and privilege, or she was involved and bore responsibility for some of the greatest domestic and foreign policy failures in our history.
One of the most pointed exchanges between Trump and Harris was with regard to Israel. Trump said she hates Israel, recalling that Harris boycotted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress so she could attend a “sorority lunch.”
Harris denied that she “hated” Israel but did not (and probably could not) respond to Trump’s charge – entirely accurate – that under her administration, the United States stopped enforcing sanctions on Iran, which led to billions of dollars of oil revenue flowing from Iran to the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
Trump’s closing point was his strongest: if Harris had so many good ideas to make America better, where has she been for the last three years?
And that, in a nutshell describes the debate: Lofty rhetoric by Harris promising unity, prosperity and peace, crashing on the shoals of a failed record delivering none of those goals.
Harris offered lots of cliches and platitudes; Trump reminded her that words aren’t enough to achieve results. The respective records are well known to American voters and it is unlikely that Harris has convinced anyone that she has abandoned her far-left radical policies. In less than two months, the voters will decide.
The writer was the US ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021.