When I was a kid, I went to the zoo and saw a gorilla eat his own feces. I didn’t see that again until last night.

In truth, this “presidential” “debate” was worse than the zoo. This time, the gorilla sprayed his feces on everyone who watched. It’s not enough to say it was a disgrace. It was a fitting metaphor for the entire MAGA malignancy.

Donald Trump came not to debate, but to desecrate. Whether his behavior will save his job and keep him out of jail is highly debatable.

It’s arguably impossible to pinpoint his lowest moment. Perhaps it was when he refused multiple opportunities to exude a scintilla of empathy for the 200,000 Americans who’ve died from Covid. Joe Biden said, “You folks at home. How many of you got up this morning and had an empty chair at the kitchen table because someone died of Covid? How many of you are in a situation where you lost your mom or dad and you couldn’t even speak to them, you had a nurse holding a phone up so you could in fact say goodbye?” Trump’s response: If Joe was in charge, he’d kill “far more people.” And when Biden said that “people want to be safe,” this was Trump’s response: “I’m the one that brought back football. By the way, I brought back Big Ten football. It was me and I’m very happy to do it and people of Ohio are very proud of me.” (The latest Fox News poll shows Biden leading by five points in Ohio.)

Or perhaps his lowest moment was when he refused to condemn white supremacists and right-wing militias – which the FBI director has called the biggest threat to domestic peace. Trump’s answer: “I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem this is a left wing.” And he blew this dog whistle to some of his right-wing thugs: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” (Stand by?)

Or perhaps it was his refusal to say that he will accept the results of the election, instead smearing feces on the entire democratic process. Mail ballots, by definition, are supposedly “a disaster.” An election with lots of mail balloting is, by definition, “rigged.” In truth (a concept alien to Trump), during the last 20 years there have been a grand total of 143 criminal convictions for mail ballot fraud – which is .00006 percent of all the votes cast.

Or perhaps Trump’s lowest moment came when Biden mentioned his late son Beau. By that point in the shitshow, it’s a good thing that most viewers had probably fled to Netflix.

Biden said, “The way you talk about the military, the way you talk about them being ‘losers’ and just being ‘suckers’. My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got the Bronze Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser. He was a patriot and the people left behind there were heroes.” To which Trump retorted: “Are you talking about Hunter? Are you talking about Hunter?” as he segued into a blizzard of lies about Hunter, none of which are worth repeating here.

Actually, Trump’s worst moment was every moment that he rampaged through the proceedings, fuming, bullying, interrupting, crapping on civility. That’s what tinpot authoritarians do. They flood the zone with falsehoods and create so much chaos that citizens tune out for the sake of their sanity. Trump can’t defend his dystopia – much less offer any kind of affirmative agenda for another four years – so his only play is to ruin the night for everyone else. When Biden surrendered to exasperation and said, “Will you shut up, man?” he spoke for the America that yearns to turn the page.

It’s hard to fathom what Trump hoped to accomplish. He’s losing badly in the polls – even red states like Texas and Georgia are virtually tied – largely because women detest him. In pivotal Pennsylvania, he’s currently losing women to Biden by 23 points. Yet there he was last night doing everything possible to alienate women further. He’s the quintessential guy who bulldozes women, nonsensically man-splaining when they try to talk. He’s the classic abusing ex-husband that they managed to get away from.

Suburban women, in particular, are turned off to Trump – who thinks he can win them over by scaring them with demagoguery about “radical left” minorities bringing in crime. He floated that con again last night, but Biden retorted at his best: “(Trump) wouldn’t know a suburb unless (he) took a wrong turn. I was raised in the suburbs. This is not 1950. All these dog whistles and racism don’t work anymore. Suburbs are by and large integrated. There’s many people today driving their kids to soccer practice and/or black and white and Hispanic in the same car as there have been any time in the past. What really is a threat to the suburbs and their safety is his failure to deal with Covid. They’re dying in the suburbs. His failure to deal with the environment, they’re being flooded, they’re being burned out because his refusal to do anything (on climate change). That’s why the suburbs are in trouble.”

Trump can’t win unless he expands his appeal beyond his suckered cult. Ask yourself whether he did anything last night to accomplish that. Ask yourself whether you want to spend a second or third “debate” night – much less another four years – listening to this broken grifter.

At one point, amidst all the cacophonous cross-talk, Biden addressed the audience cringing at home: “Folks, do you have any idea what this clown is doing?”

I suspect they do.