Perhaps Animal Planet can broadcast the next debate.

You can change the opponent, but you can't change the truth—the person with the least to say interrupts the most and has a tangent for every occasion. We all know that from our own experiences, of course, but in case we've excluded people like that from our circles of friends, every four years Donald Trump reminds us why.

During last night's debate with the newly minted mute buttons in full vigor, his interruptions had to be modified, coming not while his opponent spoke but after the rejoinder had been...uh....rejoined. Getting the last word was paramount, even when the last word was predictable—bad people are coming to America and my opponent brought them here.

Bad people have always come to America...and left America...and never heard of America. Just like good people. Of course, a race-baiter like Donald Trump has an advantage over the rest of us: he can recognize bad people by the way they look and/or the language they speak. It's a gift—one that Mr. Trump would like to share with us; and unfortunately, he has been effective in resurrecting his brand of prejudice and bigotry in a country that had seemed headed in the right direction over the previous 60-odd years.

And he was at it last night, painting the picture of a nation overrun by black and brown people speaking a language that he can't understand. Even if it isn't true, the dismal picture Trump was creating played into the hands of every MAGA racist cheering him on. It was all going so well until, of course, he felt the necessity of jumping the shark: newly arrived Haitians were murdering dogs and cats for food.

I'm not much of a conspiracy nut, so I'll admit I was not aware of this little Trumpian factoid. Turns out he heard about it on television. (So much for fact-checking in the world of pizza-shop pedophilia.) Even so, if he had made the statement sympathetically to show the plight of families facing starvation—if he had stated it as a plea to support local food banks—if he had shown one scintilla of empathy for the suffering of fellow mortals and pride in the fact that he lived in a country that was the envy of the world—if had done any of that, he would not have looked as pathetic and callous as he did—and as he is.

What's more, his having torpedoed a bipartisan agreement to shore up the border made his accusations even more cynical, as was blaming the situation on Kamala Harris—who was never the "border czar" but only the person Biden tapped to address the root causes for why residents from the "Northern Triangle" countries—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—were immigrating to the U.S. in the first place. It was busy work. Who doesn't want to come to America? Besides, since when have VPs done anything of consequence or got blamed for anything?

Repartee experts like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would have had great fun with the "cats and dogs" tale (sorry, couldn't resist), and even Joe Biden might have protested that no one was eating his dogs; in fact, quite the opposite was true. But Kamala Harris is running for president, not workshopping a new bit at a comedy club. Besides, the ammunition Trump provided last night will have a long shelf life as the campaign pushes on, especially now that the dog days of summer are past.