She turned to him with arched brows. A silent sigh. Hand on his chin. Laughter. A pitiful look. A dismissive shake of his head.
From the opening moments of her first debate against Donald Trump, Kamala Harris slyly exploited her opponent’s greatest weakness.
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Not his record. Not his divisive politics. Not his inflammatory statements.
Instead, he aimed at a much more primal part of him: his ego.
Surrounded by sycophants at his rallies, his sycophantic social media network and at Mar-a-Lago, Trump is unquestioned, unchallenged and never mocked.
That changed over the course of 90 minutes in Philadelphia on Tuesday, when a woman who had never met him before managed to slowly puncture his comfortable shell and unleash his irritation and anger.
Harris questioned the size and loyalty of the crowds at his rallies. He said world leaders call him a “disgrace.” And he claimed his fortune was built by his father, reshaping the business mogul, who proudly boasts of being a self-made man, into the new baby of nepotism.
Then he stood by and watched Trump do a lot of damage to himself.
In response after response, the former president reminded Americans of his role in what many would rather forget: a deadly and devastating pandemic, his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, the bloody siege and fall of the US Capitol. Roe v. Wade. He stayed on his criminal charges and praised Viktor Orban, Hungary’s strongman leader. He defended the false claim that immigrants in Ohio eat their neighbors’ dogs and cats, and recycled years-old anti-abortion attack lines that Democrats supported as “execution after birth.”
In such a fractured and polarized country, it remains unclear how the lopsided debate could change the 2024 presidential election. But the immediate reaction was telling: Trump led Republicans to attack the moderators — the debate was “three to one,” he complained — while Democrats got perhaps the most important endorsement of the election cycle with Taylor Swift.
“He’s so easy to trigger,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Harris ally, said in the spin room after the debate.
Since making a head-turning run on the Democratic ticket in July, Harris has faced a race focused on his record, history and seat changes. But from the moment he took the stage to shake Trump’s hand, the Democratic presidential nominee made clear his intention to turn a night about him into a referendum on Trump.
He showed composure and tactical restraint that was palpable through the television screen. Equally palpable was his rage, which at times seemed to render him unable to even look at his opponent.
“He’s a Marxist — everybody knows he’s a Marxist,” Trump said when Harris accused him of appeasing China during the coronavirus pandemic. “His father is a Marxist professor of economics, and he taught him well.”
Harris looked at him with a condescending smile and bowed suggestively to hear more. He’s a former reality TV star, but he clearly understood the power of media. His expression was his protest. And when his turn came, he focused not on rebutting attacks on his character and ideology, but on the much more politically powerful issue of abortion rights.
He accused Trump of banning abortion nationwide and monitoring women’s pregnancies to make sure they carry the child to term. Current restrictions in some states, he told viewers, do not make exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
“It’s immoral and a person doesn’t have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government and Donald Trump should certainly not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she said.
Instead of attacking Trump as an existential threat to democracy, as President Joe Biden so often did, Harris called on voters to judge the former president himself. He urged them to attend one of his campaign events, hear his references to “fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” and his claim that “windmills cause cancer” and watch his followers leave early.
“The only thing you can’t hear him talking about is you,” she said to the camera. “You’re not going to hear him talk about your needs and your dreams and your hopes, and I’m telling you, I think you deserve a president who really puts you first, and I promise you that.”
Trump was quick to respond, but not to negate her criticism that he was out of tune with voters’ needs. Instead, he defended his mobs.
“People don’t leave my rallies,” Trump said. “We have the biggest demonstrations, the most incredible demonstrations in the history of politics.”
By the end of the debate, Harris turned one of the worst moments of Biden’s presidency — the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — into an attack on Trump, saying he “negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine” with the Taliban. invited his leaders to Camp David.
Even Trump’s allies grudgingly acknowledged that Harris’ strategy of trying to throw Trump off balance was effective.
“He spent 90 minutes attacking Donald Trump, trying to get under his skin, doing everything he could to get rid of his record as vice president of the United States,” Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said. “He defended himself like any human being.”
In recent weeks, as enthusiasm for Harris’ candidacy has died down, questions about his policy positions and plans have grown. Very few were answered on Tuesday evening.
In addition to immigration, Trump did not effectively attack her because of the high cost of living. His attempts to paint him as a flip-flopper on energy policy and other key issues and too liberal for voters in swing states largely failed to gain traction as he focused on rehashing old grievances.
Instead, Harris used the opportunity to appeal specifically to moderate voters and anti-Trump Republicans who helped hand the White House to Biden in 2020. Harris has struggled to win by the same margin and could play again. in a decisive role in November.
As governors, senators, activists and political pundits spun his appearance in the post-debate spin room, a surprise guest suddenly appeared, mobbed by more than 100 reporters.
It was Donald Trump. Presidential candidates rarely – if ever – spin their own pitches within minutes of leaving the stage. But Trump couldn’t let it go.
“It was,” he said, “the best conversation I ever had.”
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