ON SEPTEMBER 10, the Washington Post headline read, ‘Harris crisply attacks Trump, prompting retorts with fiery rhetoric.’
The New York Times wrote, ‘In Fierce Debate, Harris Baits a Defensive Trump. The debate was expected to centre on defining Kamala Harris. Instead, with words and with body language, she turned it into a referendum on Donald Trump.’
The Times also reported that the biggest news from the entertainment world came ‘five minutes after the debate, Taylor Swift, calling herself a ‘Childless Cat Lady,’ endorsed Kamala Harris.’ Swift’s endorsement language had a swipe at Trump’s idiotic claim during the debate, which I will explain below.
On September 9, pollsters reported that the critical state of Virginia is going to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. However, a few other essential states show that Georgia’s voters are split 48 per cent–48 per cent, Pennsylvania voters 49 per cent–49 per cent, and Wisconsin voters 43 per cent–43 per cent between Democrats and Republicans. The most significant question remains: will the voters in these states move towards Democratic candidates when they cast their votes?
Trump, who was cornered by Harris, at one point finding nothing worthwhile to say, made a bizarre, racist, and demented claim about the immigrants, ‘They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,’ Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration. ‘They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.’
The ABC news anchor of the debate, David Muir, immediately corrected Trump’s baseless lies and put him in his place, ‘…immediately fact-checked Trump’s claims, saying that the city manager in Springfield, Ohio, told the network there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by people in the city’s immigrant community,’ reported NBCnews.com. If the anchor had to correct all the stupendous lies Trump said, there would be no debate. While vice president Harris laid out the Democratic plan for the country’s future, item by item, Trump kept clamouring about immigration until the end of the debate.
On September 7, Trump commented at a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. The GOP’s plans for America after a Trump victory include aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportations, and that’s when Trump talked about the blood. Trump said, ‘And you know getting them out will be a bloody story... [undocumented immigrants] should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.’ By bloody, maybe he referred to something like Hitler’s gas chambers!
In her closing statement of the debate, vice president Kamala Harris appealed to the citizens of the country in this language, ‘I think you’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country: one that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past and an attempt to take us backward. But we’re not going back… I’ll tell you, I started my career as a prosecutor. I was a DA, I was an attorney general, a United States senator, and now Vice President. I’ve only had one client, the people. And I’ll tell you, as a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness. Are you a Republican or a Democrat? The only thing I ever ask them, ‘Are you OK’?’
While Kamala was standing as the leader who had a plan and vision for the country, Trump regurgitated his complaints about the immigrants.
One of Trump’s websites put an AI-generated image of Tylor Swift endorsing Trump without Swift’s permission, and the September 10th endorsement came with this language to her 283 million followers: ‘I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election, …Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most,’ Swift wrote. ‘As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.’ Maybe all of her 283 million followers are not from the US, but a better portion is, especially for the younger voters who would be voting for the first time.
VP Kamala Harris has another constituency that the Republicans fear: women voters. Trump’s misogynistic stance and his scandals, particularly in the case where he was found guilty in May of this year, Trump was found liable for sexually abusing columnist E Jean Carroll in the mid-90s and later defaming her. The nine jurors delivered their verdict and awarded Carroll $5 million. Furthermore, Trump supports a complete ban on abortions without any exceptions. VP Harris brought that fact to the point on September 10 and explained that Trump had appointed three conservative judges to the US Supreme Court who overturned the Roe v. Wade verdict. Decided on January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade was a historic decision in the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. In June 2022, the current Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade.
Will the women voters come together and support the Democratic ticket of Harris and Walz?
