9-10-24

1. Trump's voice and facial expressions displayed high stress levels. Kamala did not. Trump stooped. Harris was firmly upright.

2. Trump kept referring to Biden's screw-ups, and Harris rightly told him he's not running against Joe Biden.

I cringed every time he brought up Biden. Trump should have tied Biden's fails to Kamala by saying, 'and you're his sidekick vice president. You never said or did anything - to stop him’ and so on. Whatever...Trump was castigating.

Regarding the Ukraine question. He should have said to Harris, "You were an emissary who made your first trip ever to the Continent.” and "You own the Ukraine debacle.” Instead, Trump gave her a free pass…when he could have nailed her and shown she's has zero experience on the world stage. She'd never even been to Europe before that trip.

3. He answered the 'Kamala is black' question in an appalling manner. He should have said that her color isn't important. It's about her lack of stability and propensity to change what she projects from day-to-day. That would speak to her credibility. One day she's black, one day she's Indian and the next day she wears no make-up and we don't know what she is! Injecting humour would have taken any meanness out of his response.

4. There is no question that Kamala was given the questions in advance. She even knew the population of Philadelphia off the top of her head. That's impossible if she didn't have the questions in advance. She referred to 800,000 as the specific ethnic population in Philadelphia. I don't recall the ethnicity right now.

In summary, Trump rambled. He should have kept it tight and spoken in sound bites against the clock. He didn't. His voice pitch was elevated. He needed to speak a few octaves lower to take the stress out of his voice.

He spoke too much about his past achievements rather than his bright new future plans. Kamala DID focus on her future plans…even if they are lies. Trump should have said, "What are you going to do that you could have done in the last four years and didn't do?" He said it only once in his closing statement by which time the viewers had made up their minds about the debate. If he'd said it earlier and kept hammering it, anything Harris said she would do as President would have been diminished.

All Trump had to say once he'd anchored the point early was, “Here we go again with 'gonna, gonna' when you didn't do it over the last for years. You're all talk, no action". All he had to say from them was, "more gonna". Trump missed the opportunity big time.

Trump couldn't even give his Obama care health plan details replacement when asked. He was badly prepared.

Kamala was able to put figures to her plans for first year child assistance, housing down payment grant, and business start-up tax assistance. She actually gave dollar amount to each.

Trump also should have deflected the Climate Change question by redefining the term and called it responsible 'ecological stewardship' for clean air, water, and the food we harvest from a more pristine environment and underscoring real health dividends. Robert Kennedy has a policy on it. He should have referred to Kennedy's well-known climate credentials and followed up with a stab at Harris' whack job vice-president nominee Tim Walz. Trump missed a free kick. The technique is called reframing. Redefine the terms of reference and definitions of words during a conversation.

Trump gave Harris far too many free kicks and free passes. Whoever ‘prepared him’ failed miserably. The debate was Trump's to lose and not Harris' to win. He handed it to her.