Ahead of the first and only presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Democratic campaign telegraphed their punches. The vice president planned to rattle the former president, bait him into obvious traps, and exploit his easily triggered temperament.

Harris ended up doing exactly that, at one point inviting people to actually attend a Trump campaign event and notice “that people start leaving his rallies early — out of exhaustion and boredom.” The Democrat assumed her Republican rival would be unable to keep his composure, and she was right.

Nearly eight weeks later, Trump is still talking about this.

“We have big rallies. You know, we have 50,000” the GOP candidate said Sunday in Pennsylvania. “Interestingly, during the debates, she said, ‘Oh, oh, and your debates don’t really draw, and everybody leaves early.’ So then I go, I go, because when somebody says something, I think you have to refute it, right. I said, ‘No. My debates never have an empty seat, and nobody ever leaves early.’ Nobody has ever left early.” (I’m going to assume that when he said “debates,” he meant to say “rallies.”)

A couple of days earlier, at an event in Arizona, he said effectively the same thing. Referring to Harris, Trump declared, “When that sleaze bag said during the debate, ‘Oh, your rallies aren’t well attended and people leave,’ they don’t leave.” He proceeded to say that “nobody leaves early,” adding, “It’s never happened before.”

In other words, nearly eight weeks after Harris triggered him by talking about his campaign events, Trump is still thinking about it, talking about it, and trying to refute it.

Part of the problem, of course, is that this is truly pitiful. But just as notably, the former president is just plainly and demonstrably wrong: His recent events feature all kinds of empty seats and footage of people heading for the exits while he’s speaking.

I’ve lost count of how many videos I’ve seen recently of people leaving Trump rallies during his remarks, in addition to events in which there are all kinds of empty seats.

I’m hardly the only one who’s noticed. The New York Times reported that the GOP nominee “is not quite the candidate he used to be. And neither are his crowds.”

“During the final week of his campaign, Mr. Trump has at times been delivering boasts about crowd size in arenas that are far from packed to the rafters,” the article added. “And when he insists that thousands more are waiting outside, they are often not.”

At one point in late September, the Republicans went so far as to argue that if people see footage of people leaving one of his events early, they shouldn’t believe it because they only appear to be leaving early.

It’s hard not to wonder whether Harris imagined ahead of the debate just how much this one line would rattle Trump for the remainder of the 2024 race.