3 months ago
31
She turned to him with an arched brow. A quiet sigh. A hand on her chin. A laugh. A pitiful glance. A dismissive shake of her head. From the opening moments of her first
debate
against Donald Trump, Kamala Harris craftily exploited her opponent's biggest weakness. Not his record. Not his divisive policies. Not his history of inflammatory statements. Instead, she took aim at a far more primal part of him: his ego.
At his rallies, on his sycophantic social media network and surrounded by flatterers at Mar-a-Lago, Trump is unquestioned, unchallenged and never ever mocked.
That changed over the course of 90 minutes in Philadelphia on Tuesday, when the woman who had never before met him succeeded, bit by bit, in puncturing his comfortable cocoon and triggering his annoyance and anger. Harris questioned the size and loyalty of the crowds at his rallies. And she claimed his fortune was built by his father, recasting a business mogul who proudly boasts of being a self-made man as just another nepotism baby.
Harris warned that world leaders were "laughing at Donald Trump" and saw him as a "disgrace". And when she referred to his 2020 election loss as the moment he was "fired by 81 million people", he grew visibly angry. Then she stood by and watched, as Trump did himself a whole lot of damage. Trump expressed his feelings by yelling into the microphone.
In answer after answer, the former prez reminded Americans of his role in so much of what many would rather forget: the deadly and devastating pandemic, his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, a bloody siege on the US Capitol and the fall of Roe v. Wade. He lingered on his criminal charges and praised Viktor Orban, the strongman leader of Hungary. He defended a false claim that migrants in Ohio are eating their neighbours' dogs and cats and recycled years-old anti-abortion attack lines that Democrats supported "execution after birth".
When Harris brought up his criminal convictions, Trump accused Democrats of turning the judicial system against him: "I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me." "He is so easy to trigger," Governor Gavin Newsom of California, a Harris ally, said in the post-debate spin room.
From the moment Harris crossed the stage to shake Trump's hand, the Democratic prez nominee made clear her intention to transform a night expected to be about her into a referendum on him. She displayed a composure and tactical restraint that was palpable through the television screen. Equally palpable was his fury, which at times seemed to make him unable to even look at his opponent. "She's a Marxist - everybody knows she's a Marxist," Trump said when Harris accused him of coddling China during the pandemic. "Her father is a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well." Harris looked at him with a condescending smile, performatively leaning in to hear more. He's the former reality TV star, but she clearly understood the power of the medium. Her expression was her rebuttal.
As the governors, senators, activists and political gadflies spun his performance in the post-debate spin room, a surprise guest suddenly appeared and was swarmed by more than 100 journalists. It was Trump. Prez candidates rarely - if ever - spin their own performances in the minutes after exiting the stage. But Trump couldn't let it go. "It was," he said, "my best debate ever." NYT
