Kamala Harris Wanted to Throw Donald Trump Off His Game. It Worked.

“I’m gonna invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” she said. “He talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills [causing] cancer.”

Then, she delivered the final blow: “And what you will also notice is people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about, is you.”

It was that last part — about people leaving Trump’s rallies — that set him off, leading him to not even address what the topic was at that point: immigration.

This wasn’t the only time Harris did that. Throughout the night, she goaded Trump on multiple occasions, throwing him off his game as the two discussed abortion, Israel and Gaza, the economy and more.

She called him “weak” and “wrong,” said that world leaders were laughing at him and military leaders were calling him a “disgrace,” and called out his repeated attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“Clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that,” she said.

To simply say that Harris’ jabs at Trump were great won’t suffice. They were satisfying: a strategy that unraveled whatever plan of attack the former president had, often leading him to go on tangents that didn’t make him look good.

This was apparent when Harris made her remarks about his rallies, with Trump responding: “She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. So she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies.”

He then followed that up by sharing a racist claim about immigrants eating cats and dogs, something that moderator David Muir quickly disputed.

Trump taking the bait on so many obvious attempts to disorient him speaks to his ego. But in a post-“When they go low, we go high” shift for the Democratic Party, it was refreshing to see Harris put Trump on the defensive.

And even when it came to topics meant more for her, she connected them back to Trump in a way that worked to her benefit. Such was the case when the debate touched on Trump’s untrue claim that Harris only recently started identifying as Black, to which she used the moment to bring up Trump calling for the Central Park Five to be given the death penalty, as well as him propagating the birther claims against former President Barack Obama.

“And I think the American people want better than that. Want better than this,” Harris said. “We see in each other a friend. We see in each other a neighbor. We don’t want a leader who is constantly trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other.”

Although Harris’ team has said that she’s already prepared to debate Trump again, it’s unknown if it’ll actually happen. But for their first matchup, Harris did well — all while giving Trump a taste of his own medicine.

And if the night couldn’t get any better for Harris, this happened: Mere minutes after the debate ended, Taylor Swift, arguably one of the most influential pop culture figures in the country, hopped on Instagram to state very eloquently that she’s strongly backing the Harris/Walz ticket.

In a presidential race that has already served up unprecedented twists and turns, last night’s high-stakes debate confirmed that there’ll definitely be more drama coming between now and November.