As the night went on, Harris’s “creative” relationship with the truth became the main event. Whether she was discussing Trump’s rally sizes or his administration’s environmental policies, Harris managed to stretch the facts in ways that would make a yoga instructor proud. NBC’s team described it as “an impressive feat of misdirection,” noting that by the end of the debate, viewers were likely too dizzy to know what was true anymore.
Harris’s strategy was clear from the outset: whenever confronted with a difficult question or weak point in her own record, she deployed a mixture of personal attacks, irrelevant anecdotes, and, of course, a few well-placed fibs. It was the political equivalent of tossing a smoke bomb and disappearing into the mist.
Take, for example, the moment when she was asked about her 2019 presidential campaign, particularly her shifting stance on fracking. Rather than give a straightforward answer, Harris pivoted to talking about how she had never taken handouts from her wealthy father. While the fact-checkers noted that this was technically true, they also pointed out that it had absolutely nothing to do with the question at hand. “It’s like she’s mastered the art of answering a question without ever actually answering it,” said one NBC analyst. “It’s impressive in a frustrating kind of way.”
