The New Yorker:

Kamala Harris, veteran prosecutor, proved beyond a reasonable doubt on Tuesday night that her opponent will always take the bait.

By Susan B. Glasser

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump by now, nine years into his career in public life, it’s that his ego invariably gets in the way of what others might consider political good sense. Before the start of his first and likely only debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris, the former President posted a video clip on his social-media feed, along with a quote from an admirer: “Donald Trump is probably the greatest political debater we’ve ever had in American History.” So much for expectations-setting.

But it took only a few minutes into Tuesday night’s face-off at the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, for it to be clear that greatness was not in reach for the ex-President. To be fair, Harris started out a bit shaky, launching into a canned speech on her first answer about her plans to boost small business rather than addressing a straightforward opening question from ABC News’s David Muir about whether Americans are better off today than they were four years ago. From that point on, however, the debate stage was all hers. Who says a petite woman in a pants suit can’t own a six-footer with a hundred pounds on her? For someone like Trump, whose entire public persona has been an exercise in projecting dominance—physical and otherwise—it must have been more than a little humiliating. He even seemed flustered by Harris’s opening gambit of coming over and shaking his hand.

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