Trump lost. In the words of his acolyte Senator Lindsey Graham: the debate was a “disaster.” Not surprisingly, Trump has refused to debate Kamala Harris again, making it one of the few times that he has turned down the opportunity to blow his horn.

The former president did land a few punches in Tuesday’s verbal brawl. In fact if you listen to the first and last ten minutes then you might come away thinking that Trump won.  But the political theatre will be remembered for how he was mocked, rattled and lied, lied and lied.

Millions around world sniggered or guffawed when the former president claimed that immigrants were eating the pets of the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

He was clearly rattled when Kamala Harris invited viewers to attend one of his rallies and added the pointed observation that numbers of attendees are dropping and people are leaving early, bored with his rambling monologues. Rubbish, he retorted, and then falsely claimed that Kamala Harris paid people to attend her rallies.

The lies came fast and furious – Millions of criminals are flooding across America’s borders. In reality, of the 1.4 million illegals who entered the US in the past year, 14,700 were found to have a criminal record or .01 percent. They were immediately deported. Among native-born Americans there were 16.5 violent crimes for every 100,000 in 2021.

Violent crime, claimed Trump, was going through the roof (again, he said, because of immigrants). Wrong. According to the FBI homicides were down 26 percent in 2023 and violent crime as a whole is at its lowest level in 50 years.

Abortion is a hot election issue. Trump claimed that the Democrats want abortions in the ninth month of pregnancies and are killing babies after they are born. This earned a gawp of disbelief from Kamala Harris and was quickly corrected by moderator David Muir.

Inflation, according to the former president, “is the worst in US history.” It was bad. It reached 9.7 percent. But it has been higher five times since they started keeping records.

“Crime,” said Trump, “is down in Venezuela because they are sending all their criminals to America.” The chaotic state of Venezuela means that any figures produced by the government lack credibility. But those that are produced say that crime is down because there is very little left to steal.

Repeated, again and again, was Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election. ‘Nuff said. He lost.

Obamacare is the closest America has to a national health service. Trump claimed that he saved it when he was president. He tried to kill it.

The big question in post-debate America is whether Trump’s lacklustre performance will weaken his power base. Probably not. Lies have never damaged him. They reinforce his dominance by forcing subordinates to agree that the person in charge owns the prize of dictating reality.

The victims of the lies – the supporters – have a stark choice: surrender their integrity, the ownership of their beliefs or their own perceptions. In either case, once they have agreed to a deliberate lie, it becomes harder to challenge later ones since that means acknowledging all the lies that went before it. They are caught in a downward spiral of lies as they double down, down, down….

Taylor (single cat lady) Swift’s endorsement is likely to have a bigger impact then the debate. In the 24 hours following her public backing of Ms Harris, 377,821 people registered to vote. They were overwhelmingly in the 18-25 year old category. As with most elections, the key to victory is dragging your supporters off the sofa and down to the polling station. In the last election 74 percent of young voters cast their ballot for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain". To subscribe to his email alerts on world affairs click here.