Trump-backing conservative melts down on 'incoherent' ex-president after debate fiasco

Joining a chorus of critics on both the left and the right who viewed Donald Trump's debate performance opposing Vice President Kamala Harris as a "trainwreck," longtime National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy pitched a fit on Wednesday morning claiming the former president had "one job" to do Tuesday night and he failed miserably.

Noting that he has gone out on a limb supporting Trump, despite all of his faults both politically and personally, while admitting that he saw this election as an uphill climb for the Republican nominee, McCarthy began his column by slapping aside conservative complaints about biased ABC moderators and stating the author of the debacle was Trump and Trump alone.

Getting right to the point, he griped, "If you’re obsessing over how bad, how in the tank for Kamala Harris, the two ABC news moderators were, it’s because you don’t want to come to grips with the brute fact that Donald Trump was a disaster last night."

ALSO READ: Something broke Trump’s brain

Continuing in that vein, he added, "He was unhinged, often incoherent, incapable of completing thoughts and sentences when he had points to make, and led into self-absorbed rabbit-holes — claims that he won the 2020 election, the size of his rallies, whether 'migrants' are eating stolen pets — that diverted him from opportunity after opportunity to expose Harris as a radical leftist now pretending to be a pragmatic centrist who suddenly loves her some guns."

Noting that the former president failed to turn Harris and her policies into a "punchline", he added "Trump couldn’t do it" and then proceeded to point to the former president's fatal flaw as a candidate this go-around.

"Trump also couldn’t stick to deconstructing Harris’s 'values' bunk because his own values are always negotiable. Because he’s an opportunist with some conservative leanings, rather than a conservative in search of opportunities to advance the cause, Trump often can’t decide whether to deride Harris’s cynical policy shifts or try to get to her left," he wrote before pointing out the warning signs were there when he debated President Joe Biden.

"Trump fans, naturally, spout their man’s delusional version of the first debate, to wit: Trump was a force of nature who annihilated Biden through his dazzling debating skills. The truth of the matter is that Trump was terrible that night," he recalled before adding, "There have always been Trump’s incorrigible problems: his hard ceiling, his unpopularity with suburban voters that Republicans need, his penchant to play to his base rather than build out his support, his bad breakups with former advisers who authoritatively brand him as unfit, and his schtick — more exhausting than ever in Trump Era year nine."

"Can we imagine Kamala Harris — until recently, unpopular but little known or cared about — as president of the United States?" he asked before concluding, "Last night, Donald Trump helped them answer, 'Yes.'"

You can read more here.