Yes, the moderators of ABC’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were egregiously biased in favor of Harris. Yes, Harris recycled patent lies about Trump without the slightest pushback from the referees—that Trump has embraced the supposedly infamous Project 2025, that he supports a national abortion ban, that he called the anti-Semitic and racist demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2019 “fine people,” that he refused leases to black would-be renters. (The New York Times lauded the ABC team as a “model for real-time fact-checking.”)

But a low-information voter who, incredibly, still has not made up her mind about the election could easily decide for Harris on the basis of Tuesday’s debate. Trump put all his worst traits on display—his narcissism, his gratuitous nastiness, and above all, his penchant for using hyperbole as a substitute for argument.