Trump gets explosive during presidential debate, just as Harris planned

Former President Donald Trump slowly but surely built up his temper during the first hour of Tuesday's debate. He started relatively quietly, but when Vice President Kamala Harris grilled him about his rallies, his world view and his legal troubles, he finally exploded.

As the debate neared its conclusion, he showed no sign of calming down, and his answers became increasingly shaky, degenerating into the same incoherent, incoherent babble that Harris was pitching to people at his rallies.

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It's a credit to the Democratic candidate that her team has been telling the press for days that her strategy is to provoke Trump to the point where he loses concentration. That's exactly what we saw during the debate, when she kept her composure — aside from a fleeting grin or a stunned face — and stuck to her arguments and jibes. In contrast, Harris brushed off all of the Republican candidate's attacks, allowing him to lash out even harder at her and the moderators.

It's also exactly the scenario his advisers reportedly feared: their boss showing up angry and ranting when you hoped he might actually focus on Harris's policies. Even when he tried to do so on Tuesday, you just couldn't follow his train of thought, lacking a theme to address them.

Harris called him “weak and wrong on national security,” thereby blaming the numerous people who worked for and supported him. And as I wrote, even when he had muted his microphone when it was not his turn, wild things kept coming out of his microphone when it was his turn to speak.

For anyone who was still unsure whether he had what it takes to return to the White House, this was probably the worst performance Trump could have delivered.