For  utmost of the 90-  nanosecond debate between former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the former  chairman bellowed into the microphone,  virtually  sticking at moments as he took the bait time and again and got knocked off his  pretensions.

rather of  constantly tying Ms. Harris to President Biden and forcing her to  enjoy their record, Mr. Trump came off as angry and scattered as he painted a dark  portrayal of an America destroyed by crime, overrun by dangerous undocumented emigrants who eat  faves  and at  threat of falling into the hands of an opponent he falsely called a Marxist.   “ Our country is being lost, ” Mr. Trump said, timing its  rearmost decline to the moment he left the White House. “ We’re a failing nation. And it  happed three and a half times agone . And what, what’s going on then, you’re going to end up in World War III. ”

He brought up Springfield, Ohio, and reiterated a debunked claim that his  crusade has been pushing that Haitian emigrants there have been eating  faves . “ In Springfield, they’re eating the  tykes , ” he said. “ The people that came in. They’re eating the  pussycats. They’re eating — they’re eating the  faves  of the people that live there. ”

And during a discussion of  revocation, Mr. Trump claimed, falsely, that some  countries with Popular governors favor being  suitable to “ execute ” babies after they're born. “ In other words, we’ll execute the baby, ” he said. No state allows infanticide.

Fear- mongering, and demagoguing on the issue of emigrants, has been Mr. Trump’s  favored speed since he  blazoned his first training for the administration in June 2015, and he has  frequently  set up a  open  followership for it. He won his first election in 2016, and lost his alternate, without dramatically changing his approach; both races were decided in three battlefield  countries by smaller than  100,000 votes. At his  induction in 2017, he spoke of “ American  holocaust. ”

But since he left office, after  falsehoods of  wide election fraud  going  him the 2020 race and a mob of his  sympathizers attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump’s public  commentary about the state of the country have grown only darker.

Numerous of the lines he delivered at the debate were straight from his rally speeches, but they landed  kindly  else on the debate stage with no live  followership at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and with millions of people who do n't routinely follow his  crusade appearances tuning in. And they  substantially demanded the accompanying beats Mr. Trump tries to deliver at rallies — the moments when he mentions his own  term or pivots to a  pledge to bring substance to choosers.

Mr. Trump needed to hold Ms. Harris responsible for the pain that voters have felt. Instead, he described a dark America and talked about himself.

Mr. Trump did  sometimes sprinkle in references to his time in office, and he tried to bring the  discussion around to the frugality and immigration, two issues where his  counsels believe, and  pates show, that he has an advantage. After  floundering at first when pressed about his position on  revocation and his  part appointing  judges who helped capsize Roe v. Wade, he pushed back in a way his  counsels liked by questioning how late into a  gestation Ms. Harris allowed  revocations should be allowed( she did n't answer). And he pressed hard on the chaotic  pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, which  rained Mr. Biden’s drop in support.

He mocked her for flip- flopping on positions, saying “ Everything that she believed three times agone  and four times agone  is out the window. She’s going to my  gospel now. In fact, I was going to  shoot her a MAGA  chapeau. She’s gone to my  gospel. But if she ever got  tagged, she’d change it. And it'll be the end of our country. ” And  also he blew past the stop sign “ She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he  tutored her well. ”

One of his stylish lines came only when the debate was nearly over, in his  ending statement, when he asked why Ms. Harris had n't  fulfilled all of her  pretensions during the three and a half times she has been in office.

It was the same argument that Mr. Trump's advisers coached him to make in a handful of debate prep sessions that he studiously avoided calling debate prep sessions, calling them "policy time." It was preferred to be described as They hoped he would look directly into the camera and ask voters if they were better off than they were four years ago.

Rather, for the  utmost part, Mr. Trump was rattled by Ms. Harris as she took  lodgings at people leaving his rallies beforehand, his inherited wealth and his felonious  complaints and legal troubles to describe him as interested only in himself. 

He grew visibly angry and, to his  counsels’ dismay, shambolic, as he tried to rebut her attacks  rather of answering the  chairpersons’ questions or pressing the points he'd set out to make. When he did respond to questions posed to him, it also did n't go especially well. He again litigated his false claims of  wide election fraud, defended his extensively blamed performance during the coronavirus epidemic in 2020, refused to rule out  subscribing a  public  revocation ban and repeated his questioning of Ms. Harris’s  ethnical identity( she is Black).

Harris, who has been trying to project an auspicious communication grounded on freedom — including reproductive freedom and  profitable freedom — did n't join Mr. Trump in his description of what the country needs.  

“ The people of our country actually need a leader who engages in  results, who actually addresses the problems at hand, ” Ms. Harris said as she blamed Mr. Trump for his  part in killing a bipartisan bill that she said would have addressed border crossings. “ But what we've in the former  chairman is someone who would prefer to run on a problem  rather of fixing a problem. ”