Harris laid obvious traps for Trump during the debate. He walked right into them

Around the 24th minute of Donald Trump’s seventh general election presidential debate, he fell directly into a trap Kamala Harris had laid out for him.

The vice president was answering a question on immigration, a subject that has been central to Trump’s political rise and his remaking of the Republican Party, when she noted that he was the one who had pressured his political allies in Congress into killing a bipartisan border security bill. She could have left it there. Instead, Harris did something curious. She invited voters to attend one of his signature political rallies, calling them “a really interesting thing to watch” because many of Trump’s supporters now leave them early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”

It was a calculated line, clearly meant to trigger the notoriously thin-skinned ex-president. And it was one that her campaign had telegraphed earlier in the day by airing a television advertisement that featured Barack Obama needling Trump about his “obsession with crowd sizes”.

Yet it was also a line Trump’s campaign should have prepared him to face. He had one goal that evening: to maintain his cool. With one throwaway comment, Harris got him to fail at that task in the most spectacular manner possible.

As soon as it was his turn to speak once more, Trump took the bait. First, he began claiming — falsely — that supporters “don’t leave” his rallies. He called the campaign gatherings “the most incredible rallies in the history of politics” because his supporters “want to take their country back” and are angry at “what’s happening to the towns all over the United States.”

It got worse for him from there.

The ex-president next turned to a false story his campaign has been promoting about Haitian migrants