Join us for a short walk around the battlefield and see the smoking ruins, the shattered artillery pieces and the tattered flags of the MAGA armies.

1) The Caudillo of Mar-a-Lago’s The post-debate visit to the spin room was a real clue. Usually candidates avoid the spin room like it’s a cholera ward. The spin room is a vice presidential job at best. (J. Divan Vance did show up, but mostly to defend the dog-eat-dog fantasy.) But usually you bring in pundits or famous senators to make your case. You don’t let the walking carcass of the former candidate come out and blather on to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins after the debate about how he “won all the polls.” That was pure desperation with a fine layer of sweat over it.

2) The ABC moderators did a mediocre job and missed out on an impeccable performance only because they kept turning the former president’s microphone on when it was supposed to be muted. To mute or not to mute was the main controversy before the debate, and it turned out to be no big deal. Of course, one could argue that the more time the former president had on the mic, the better it was for the vice president.

3) At this moment I burst out laughing. The topic was health care and the future of the Affordable Care Act:

LINSEY DAVIS: So just yes or no, you don’t have a plan yet?

TRUMP: I have ideas about a plan.

4) From a climate perspective, fracking remains a terrible idea. Just by the way.

5) There is no Taliban leader named “Abdul.” He has not met with “Abdul.” He has not shown “Abdul” a picture of “Abdul’s” house to warn “Abdul” not to mess with the US military during the Afghanistan withdrawal. I don’t know who he thinks “Abdul” is.

6) Did you know that he is the only president* about whom a book has ever been written? The Vice President mentioned the number of former members of his administration* who have criticized his leadership.

“So if someone does a bad job, I fire them. And take a guy like Esper. He wasn’t good, I fired him. So he writes a book. Someone else writes a book. Because with me they can write books. They can’t do that with anyone else.”

(“Esper” is Mark Esper, his Secretary of Defense, who broke with him because Esper opposed the use of the military against protesters in Washington and who later vocally voiced his opposition to the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.)

7) No moment illustrated the Vice President’s excellent preparation more clearly than her long reply to the former president’s argument that “everyone for 50 years” has wanted the abortion issue “sent back to the states.” He had set it up perfectly, and she let it go.

“And now over 20 states have Trump’s abortion bans, which make it a crime for a doctor or nurse to provide medical care. In one state, that’s a life sentence. Trump’s abortion bans don’t even make exceptions for rape and incest. They understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, of an injury to her body, has no right to decide what happens next with her body. That’s immoral. And you don’t have to give up your faith or your deeply held beliefs to agree that the government, and Donald Trump certainly shouldn’t tell a woman what to do with her body…

….I’ve talked to women all over our country. Do you want to talk about what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term and have a miscarriage, who are denied treatment in the emergency room because doctors are afraid they’ll go to jail, and she bleeds to death in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12 or 13 year old incest survivor forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that.

I almost called 911 to report a murder.