The initial reaction to last night’s debate is that Kamala Harris held her own, albeit with the help of two ABC moderators, and that Trump was “rattled” and on the defense more than he needed to be. Generally, the debate is being cast as anything but the overwhelming victory for Trump that many predicted.
But my guess is that both the dejection from the right and the perceived victory from the left will fade almost immediately as people have a chance to take in everything that really took place.
For starters, the times when Trump looked “the worst,” like when moderators tried to debunk him on the Springfield, Ohio, animal/pet killings that were confirmed by 911 calls minutes before the debate, will once again be proven to be factual and on point. The delivery wasn’t fantastic, but over the last three years, the country’s tolerance for being lied to by the media has shrunk significantly, so it won’t take as long as it normally would for people to see past Trump’s delivery. People are thinking critically now more than ever and doing their own independent fact-checking more than ever.
In short, people will quickly realize that Trump’s comments sounded justified.
And if Americans need a reminder as to why doing their own fact checking is so important, they only need to look at Kamala Harris’s near admission that COVID came out of a lab in China early in the debate. 3 years ago her side of the aisle would have called you a conspiracy theorist and banned you from social media for saying so.