About the Other Night...
How Kamala Harris destroyed Donald Trump and what a pathetic sap the man is...
I’ve watched the Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump January 10th Slam-O-Rama two-and-a-half times. Once in real time, again to confirm what I saw and to see a master at work, and in bits to figure out how Harris baited Trump and reeled him in over and over and over again like the dumb bloated fish that he is. Part of my viewing was research, but a lot of it was a combo of admiration and fascination of someone cruising in their prime, pretty much the same reasons I’ve watched Marvin Hagler vs Tommy Hearns over a dozen times.
That 1985 Hagler vs Hearns fight is considered one of, if not the greatest boxing match in history. It only lasted two and a half rounds. The first round was brutal, a street fight that seemed pretty even at the time. Repeat viewings show that Hagler had a plan, which was to soften up and rattle Hearns with relentless violence, violence that he was willing to receive in return.
The second round had Hagler poke poke poking Hearns, pushing punishing punches that threw off Hearn’s balance for the remainder of the fight. While Hearns cut Hagler’s forehead, the effect was more dramatic than substantial (the forehead bleed a lot when cut). Top of the third round, Hagler’s torrent turned into a flood. At the halfway mark, Hearns was on his back, struggling to get up. Once on his feet, it was obvious that Hearns would not be able to take an unassisted step without falling. The ref called the fight and Hagler won by TKO.
Tuesday night’s debate started pretty even. Harris ignored the first question for a statement. Trump ignored the first question and jumped into immigration paranoia and dark fantasy. It was pretty much what everyone expected. And then Harris landed the first blow, one that very few people saw as a blow at the time. In an aside, referencing Trump, Harris said, “I'm going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”
Harris’s preemptive strike did several things: It established Trump as a liar right off the bat, which freed Harris from having to respond to each and every Trump distortion, hyperbole and lie, which allowed her to take command of the pace and tone of the debate. It also put the moderators on notice, informing them that Trump is a known liar and should not be allowed to turn on the “firehose” without consequence. Harris’s strike also told Trump that she knew his game and was not going to let him play it, which was another way of taking control of the debate.
I am pretty sure that every lawyer reading this is nodding their head, thinking, “That’s how it’s done. That is how a good lawyer starts every trial. Establish the ground rules. Expose your opponent. Demystify their tricks. Own the forum.” Then you build your case while easing your adversary into a false sense of security. Poke poke poke to soften them up and put them off balance and then unleash and destroy, all the while building your case with evidence.
When Trump pushed the debate into tariffs, trying to dominate the topic with loud ranting, Harris let go with a 1-2 combo of needling and ego-trolling, countering that economists at Goldman-Sacks (punch one: Trump hates G-S) and the “Wharton School” (punch two: Trump’s alma mater) said that his tariff plan is a disaster. Trump staggered and started to flail.
Moments later, when the topic turned to abortion, Trump ranted about how “everyone” likes that Roe is gone and that abortion is now a “state issue,” stuff we know is nonsense but which Trump uses to dominate the debate. Though moderator Linsey Davis corrected him on his absurd post-birth abortion crap, Harris let it pass and instead spoke the truth about what “Trump abortion bans” mean for everyday people and she did it powerfully and in very plain language. Then she did what tens of millions of Americans have been wanting to see for the last nine years, she turned to Trump and let him have it. And, from Trump’s point of view, he wasn’t just being attacked by Harris. He was being told off by a Black woman immigrant. Unable to respond, Trump stood their fuming, not realizing that the rage building inside of him was further eroding his balance.
The topic moved to immigration, the one subject which Trump thinks he has an edge, but which shows him at his most unhinged. That is when Harris went in for the knock out. Twenty-eight minutes, eleven seconds into the fight, she let go with:
And I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires. And I'll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.
And that is when Trump started raving about people eating cats and dogs. Harris lean back and let Trump go full Dwight Fry. When moderator David Muir fact checked Trump, saying that the city manager of the town in question says that the pet eating claim was a hoax (David Frum on how the slander spread), Trump’s response was:
But people on television say…
If Harris vs Trump was a boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight. But a debate is a debate and the combatants had an hour-and-a-half to go. At no time during the remainder of the duel did Trump regain his composure. Rather, Harris alternated between rope-a-dope, well placed jabs, a few haymakers, and the kind of shit that older siblings subject their kid sibs to: Grabbing the younger kid’s hand, forcing them to hit themselves, while saying “Stop hitting yourself”; getting the kid to look down at the finger on their chest so you can flick the finger in their face; mercilessly prodding and poking to elicit a tantrum, and while everyone looks at the enraged little kid meltdown, the older sib sits there, hands in lap, projecting pure innocence. That is what Harris did for over an hour, and it would have been sad and shocking and subject to recrimination, but the “little kid” here was Donald Trump, a spoiled brat bully who deserved everything he got.
I wrote elsewhere, that if I was teaching debate, I’d have my students study Harris vs Trump, so they can see why you prepare and never wing it, why you go in to a debate with a strategy, why timing is extremely important, how you let your opponent screw themselves while you hang back, and what to do once you have control over the proceeding. I would instruct them to watch Trump and document when he went from semi-coherence to ranting, how he was unable to regain his balance, and how much he damaged himself with his lack of preparation and discipline.
While there’s been a lot of focus on Trump’s Pet Eating outburst, one of the two most important phrases spoken by Trump was “But people on television say…” The other important statement was “I have concepts of a plan,” Trump’s answer to what he would replace the Affordable Healthcare Act with.
But people on television say…
I have concepts of a plan.
Everything you need to know about Donald Trump is in those two statements. Donald Trump has no ideas or policies. He has “concepts of a plan.” And where do those “concepts” come from? What people say on television. So, Donald Trump wants to be president because his is thinking about thinking about thinking about something some rando on Sean Hannity’s show said to Hannity on TV. Beyond that, all Trump does is turn up the volume and wave his arms frantically.
Occasionally, I get in mild social media scrums with Tender Folk, people who still believe that Trump is a formable monster. It’s like reality hasn’t debunked the Trump-era liberal pants-peeing over Trump the 4-D Chess Master, Trump the Gargantuan Gaslighter, Trump the Heir to Rasputin, Trump the Supreme Communicator – all total bullshit which would be laughable if the fearmongering didn’t keep people from half-assing the fight against someone who is little more than a buffoon bolstered by wealth and celebrity.
Certainly, Trump is dangerous, but his danger comes not from his native talents – all of which we saw Tuesday night – but that he is an evil motherfucker who is so lazy that his governing philosophy is a combination of thinking about thinking about thinking about TV and getting even. Trump, like every bully, feeds off of fear, fear that the Tender Folk continue to project.
In his rant about Hungary’s Victor Orban, Trump admitted that his prime attribute is that he can put fear into people. In the past, he’s stated how instilling fear into people is how he gets what he wants. And, in his history, we see how Trump has used fear, whether it be in Trump’s many sexual assaults, family separation and caging babies, or everything leading up to and around January 6. Donald Trump thrives on people fearing him and only when people fear him.
Don’t fear Trump. Be like Kamala Harris and have no fear. Without fear, Donald Trump is reduced to his true self, a lazy, pathetic, dim-witted asshole whose only talent is being loud and who got to where he is thanks to daddy’s money and what it buys. That’s it. Forget the MAGA cult, forget the sycophants and media that needs him and props him up. Forget whatever “Trump” Trump is pretending to be. What you saw Tuesday is Donald Trump as Donald Trump. Donald Trump at his worst and Donald Trump at his best. Kamala Harris savaged Donald Trump and there is absolutely no reason we cannot do the same.