John M. Crisp: What I wish Kamala Harris had said during the debate

The left gushed over Kamala Harris’ performance during last week’s debate with Donald Trump. The enthusiasm is largely justified.

But I’m having trouble suppressing a feeling of mild disappointment. Could a better debater have more effectively called out Trump on some of the things he said during the debate that are simply not true? In fairness to Harris, could anyone?

I’m reluctant to call Trump a liar. One can’t know how much of what he says he actually believes. On the other hand, it’s hard to think of other terms to accurately describe persistent declarations that simply are not true.

Consider a couple of these, uh, misstatements: During the debate, Trump said that inflation is skyrocketing and crime is through the roof. Or maybe inflation is through the roof and crime is skyrocketing. Trump makes both of these statements often; neither is true.

The current inflation rate, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics among others, is 2.5%, a half-percent above the arbitrary ideal goal of 2%. In short, inflation is neither skyrocketing, nor through the roof. It has been declining throughout President Joe Biden’s administration.

The same with crime. Violent crime has been declining for at least a couple of decades.

Against this trend, according to FBI statistics, murder surged 30% during Trump’s last year in office, and violent crime overall was up 5%. This probably wasn’t Trump’s fault; a more likely culprit is the pandemic. During Biden’s administration, however, violent crime has continued to drop. Crime analyst Jeff Asher says that the murder rate dropped more than 12% in 2023, and other violent crime rates were down as well.

Statements such as these are often fact-checked after the fact, but by then it’s probably too late. Most people hear what they hear, and thus much of America thinks that crime is rampant and inflation is through the roof.

Still, I wonder if Harris could have called Trump out more effectively on the Small Lie and the Big Lie that book-ended the whoppers in between.

The Small Lie: Trump said that immigrants in Ohio are abducting pets and eating them. I call this lie “small” because it seems trivial compared to inflation and crime. Still, it’s part of the “othering” of immigrants that’s essential to the open border lie and the migrant crime lie.

Moderator David Muir pointed out that officials in Springfield, Ohio, say that no evidence indicates that immigrants are dining on cats and dogs. Trump said he saw it on television. And then they moved on. Could Harris have informed Trump, emphatically, that everything on television (and the internet) isn’t true?

The Big Lie: The debate moderators asked Trump if he had any regrets about Jan. 6. Trump’s answer was, essentially, “Who, me?”

Trump said he had nothing to do with Jan. 6. He said that he was asked to make a speech. As Trump tells it, he just dropped by and made a few remarks.

But doesn’t Trump’s eagerness to distance himself from Jan. 6 confirm how bad it really was?

And shouldn’t someone say, in real time: “Mr. Former President, what the h*** are you talking about? Jan. 6 would have been impossible without you. It required your public disparagement of the election before it even occurred and then two months of your post-election contention that it was stolen from you.

“You invited a large crowd of your riled-up supporters to Washington, promising that things would be ‘wild,’ and you encouraged them to march to the capitol and ‘fight like hell’ or they would lose their country.

“Granted, you threw in the word ‘peacefully’ at some point, but did you think the mob was going to make speeches and collect signatures on petitions?

“No, Mr. Trump, you are solely responsible for Jan. 6, which was part of your systematic, if inept, attempt to overthrow what your sane advisers told you was a legitimate election. You should be subject to criminal liability for subverting the Constitution and permanently barred from holding any office.”

Someone needs to say this out loud. Unfortunately, Trump has had enough debating.

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