Opinion | This should be the end

It should be over for Donald Trump. 

Tuesday night’s debate performance should have sealed the deal. It should be his final moment in the public spotlight, certainly his final moment as a serious political candidate. 

Because Vice President Kamala Harris pulled back the curtain, opened it wide for the world to see, and showed us all, finally, that the emperor is buck naked. 

Over the course of that 90-minute debate, Harris systematically and without mercy took Trump apart, limb by limb. It was, at times, tough to watch. But mostly, an absolute joy to behold. 

This was the utter thrashing that Trump, and his MAGA nastiness, has always deserved. President Joe Biden, even in 2020, didn’t have the debating ability to do it. Hillary Clinton never took Trump seriously enough to adequately do it. 

Kamala Harris ran up the score and left no doubt. 

It was a masterful performance that combined both Trump’s lack of discipline and Harris’s superior ability, honed by decades as a prosecutor, to skillfully drop the bait that lured her prey into a waiting trap. 

What, you thought it was an accident that she kept getting Trump to say things that she was prepared to respond to? Please. She tied that felon up like he was on the witness stand in San Francisco and put a nice bow on his head. 

It doesn’t hurt that Harris wasn’t exactly dealing with a mental giant known for his acuity and discipline. At times, she didn’t even need to speak – just let Trump babble on and on about whatever the hell it was he was talking about.  

Like that time he was basically yelling about immigrants eating “the pets.” Or when he claimed something about making it illegal to kill babies after they’re born, as if that’s not illegal already. Or when he talked about his health care plan – or, rather, his “concepts of a plan” for health care. 

But then, that all pretty much sums up the MAGA platform: Fear mongering that’s grounded in outright lies and a complete lack of policy ideas. 

Wait, that’s not entirely true. There are MAGA policy ideas. They wrote them down in Project 2025, but the general public found them so repulsive that no Republican dares speak of them anymore. 

That leaves Trump very little to work with, especially when debating someone who is prepared and honed in on the topics. All he’s got is taking credit for the Obama economy he inherited and then wrecked and talking about pie-in-the-sky dreams of policies. 

In the meantime, Harris had a plan for everything. A workable, realistic plan that wasn’t basically backed up with “trust me.” 

After it was over, the rightwingers on Fox and the far-right pundits told the story of who won. They attacked the moderators for having the gall to tell people that, no, immigrants aren’t stealing and eating pets in Ohio, and that, no, you cannot legally kill a baby after it’s born. (They let slide Trump’s weird insistence that kids are going off to school and returning home with sexual reassignment surgery. Although, maybe they assumed that that claim is so bonkers that no one needs to be told that it’s complete fiction.)

In a testament to Harris’s preparation, some on the right claimed she had been fed the questions beforehand. And they grudgingly agreed that she won the night. 

And really, that should be it for Trump. Because he’s got nothing left. 

Debating – or, in reality, blowing up debates – was his one strength as a politician. He could motor right through any opponent, using bluster and lies and a level of self-confidence rarely seen outside of a professional locker room. 

He’s never had workable ideas or cared at all about detailed policy. He’s never been able to better the country’s standing around the world or concern himself with global security matters. He’s run roughshod over ethics and morals and common decency. He’s never cared much for the constitution or the least of us it was designed to protect. 

No, his strength has been standing on a stage and tearing down his opponents. Ripping them to shreds in a manner never before seen, and certainly never anticipated as acceptable, in American politics. 

But on Tuesday, Kamala Harris took every punch and every insult, smiled and then pummeled the bully with his own words and reality. She had an answer for everything. 

By the end, Trump was a sad, pathetic mess, left drowning in his own lies about polls showing he won. Which is when Taylor Swift stepped on his head. 

That should be the end of it. A sane, less cult-oriented America would vote for the only qualified candidate, send a clear message to Trump and the MAGAs that it’s over, and we could all move on from this nightmare that we’ll struggle to explain to future generations. 

It won’t be that. But it should be.