For the second time this summer, Americans have witnessed a presidential campaign debate unlike anything we’ve seen since the dawning of the Television Age.

Oddly, those unprecedented yet quite different debates ended with a common result: Both times, it was the old guy who did himself in.

Last June’s debate was the saddest in presidential history. We watched President Joe Biden, who brought America back from the pandemic, succumb to his octogenarian years. He was unable to finish sentences, thoughts and, inevitably, his reelection campaign.

Last Tuesday’s debate produced the most stomach-churning, race-based attack in presidential history. We watched former President Donald Trump, a near octogenarian at 78, suddenly lose it. He angrily erupted in a claim that Haitian immigrants are slaughtering and eating Ohio family pets – but provided no verifying fact.

Foreshadowing alert: Trump may have been misled into thinking his political rookie running mate, Ohio Sen. J. D. Vance – author of the best-seller and movie, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis” – saw at least a bit of proof.

Meanwhile, frustrated Republican Party leaders saw way too much proof of how easily Trump could be goaded into coming unhinged by his new generation opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. She knew when to look at Trump, talk to Trump, and how to push Trump’s buttons. So she warned us that Trump dangerously craves the “flattery” of dictators such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

“If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now… with his eyes on the rest of Europe,” Harris said. Then she turned toward him: “Why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up, for the sake of… a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”

Harris was impressively presidential – and creatively got to his panic button by inviting us to attend a Trump rally: “You will see …he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills (causing) cancer.”

Then she pushed his biggest button: “What you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

Boing! Trump’s squinty eyes shot wide open; they looked like two white flying saucers in an orange colored sky. His eyeballs consulted his forehead as Harris added: “The one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.”

Lamely and reflexively, Trump began defending his rallies. Then out of nowhere, he loudly launched his mondo bizarro attack: “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats…. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.”

He was talking about Springfield, Ohio, a struggling blue-collar city that advertised available jobs. Springfield officials had gratefully welcomed 20,000 Haitians, most legally documented, and working.

But weeks ago, rightwing conspirators began flooding the Internet with fake visuals and claims that Black people, allegedly Haitians, were slaughtering and eating pet cats, dogs and local pond waterfowl.

Vance pushed the baseless claim online, while Springfield officials and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine firmly insisted no evidence supported the claim.

So how did the horrific claim originate?

Authorities think an online visual from a faraway city may have inspired MAGA conspirators to fake their news. It featured a Black U.S. citizen, Allexis Telia Ferrell, 24, born 170 miles from Springfield in Canton, Ohio. Today she’s a troubled American with a police rap sheet. On Aug. 16, Canton police arrested her and online police cams and chatter convey that she killed a cat and ate some of it. All far from Springfield.

But she’s Black. So perhaps that inspired the racist rightwing news fakers to phony up videos of Blacks, claiming they are Haitians in Springfield, where a Haitian driver’s fatal traffic accident had sparked some anger. And lo, soon their baseless online cat and dog eating rumor was all the rage – recklessly pushed by the rookie winger, Vance.

By midday Tuesday, Vance had shifted into rethink and begun backtracking. “It’s possible of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he moonwalked on X. But at the debate, a panicked Trump seemed clueless that his veep just labeled it “rumors.” Awkward.

Not a problem. Vance just began backtracking his backtracking. He lamely suggested to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins his false words weren’t a lie, just a meme: “The media didn’t care about this carnage… until we turned it into a meme about cats…. We’re going to keep on doing it…”

Just call fake news a “meme” and Vance considers it moral, ethical, presidentially pure, journalistically noble and probably non-fattening. In his conclusion to “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance writes: “We don’t need to live like the elites of California, New York, or Washington, D.C. (where he now lives).… I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.” Vance has started by blaming Biden and Harris.

Now’s the time to order next season’s still-unwritten best-seller: “Trumpbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a MAGA Family and Culture in Crisis.”

Who knows? Something in it may be true. Or at least a meme.

_____

_____

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.