Kamala Scrambled Trump’s Brain

The plan worked even better than she seemed to imagine.

Two months and one political lifetime ago, Donald Trump’s supporters rushed to the cameras gathered in Atlanta after his debate against Joe Biden to crow about his obvious victory. For a while, there was no Biden representation in the spin room at all as the president’s morose surrogates like Gavin Newsom and Raphael Warnock hung back, caucusing with campaign officials about how on Earth to paint the night as anything other than a catastrophe for Democrats. On Tuesday night in Philadelphia, however, the spin room lit up before Trump even finished his closing statement. Out first was Pennsylvania’s hyped-up Democratic governor Josh Shapiro, there to declare the debate a resounding success for Kamala Harris.

For the second debate in a row, everyone with eyes and ears could interpret for themselves what had happened on stage. ...

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...Lindsey Graham had already started suggesting that he fire his debate prep team after the evening’s “disaster”...

 The former president appeared a few minutes later...As Trump spoke, the room’s attention drifted. About half of the people left opened Instagram to see Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris.

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 One top Democratic operative, who’d been basically comatose at that point early in the first debate, started texting me “YES” “YES” “YES” every few moments as Trump preached to the far-right corners of X more than persuadable voters in swing states.

 “Talk about extreme,” Harris began after Trump’s claims about pet-eating...Her biggest accomplishment, the top operative told me, was making Trump look exhausted, exhausting, and out of touch with regular people...

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...when Trump refused to answer directly whether he wanted Ukraine to beat Russia...Harris...specifically brought her answer around to “the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania.”