Trump Won the Debate

A confession: I didn’t wake up at 4:00 am here in Israel in order to watch last night’s Republican presidential debate. A further confession: I can’t say I regret that decision. But it does mean my judgment of the debate, which follows, is based on reading the transcript rather than watching and rather than seeing others’ immediate reactions to the debate.

On the other hand, there’s perhaps a compensating advantage in a little geographical and temporal distance. It means I’ll ignore the theater critic aspects of the evening—”A won this exchange with B,” “that was a great comeback by X against Y”—which can seem interesting and important in the immediate aftermath of debate, but usually end up not mattering much over the longer run.