Kamala’s Campaign Pushes Trump’s Impulse Control Problems
I don’t think that even the outlets that recognize the troll are giving the Kamala Harris campaign enough credit for the jujitsu they’re engaged in with the debate. Before I explain why, though, here’s a video of Barack Obama’s skewering of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. It provides a useful reminder of the kinds of things that scar a racist narcissist like Trump.
The jujitsu on the debate started with Trump whining, two nights ago, about ABC as an excuse to get out of the debate again.
Early the next morning, Politico was the first to report an actual substantive dispute about the debate: whether the candidates’ mics would be on between questions or not. In the story, Jason Miller got an unsurprising dig suggesting that, Kamala “isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize.”
But before that in the story, this Brian Fallon quote appeared.
“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, tells POLITICO. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.”
It was followed by this unattributed quote, digging into Trump’s self-control issues even further.
“She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” one person familiar with the negotiations tells Playbook. “And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and … I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”
Remember that unattributed quotes often come from people who are otherwise quoted in a piece. Remember, too, that Brian Fallon was Hillary’s spokesperson in 2016.
Fallon has a long history of dealing with Donald Trump.
Fallon’s suggestion that Trump has no impulse control was bound to elicit the only kind of response that horserace campaign journalists can muster: a badgering question to the candidate about a dig the opponent made. And sure enough it did. At a campaign stop, someone asked him about it, and Trump said that, “We agreed to the same rules — I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same.”
Having elicited a question that got Trump to admit he would prefer to have a live mic, Fallon immediately declared victory.
Then, someone in charge of Trump’s Truth Social account has released content that conflicts with what Trump said publicly, when none of his handlers could prevent it.
If Trump would prefer a hot mic, then why is Trump’s curated Truth Social account complaining that Harris would prefer that too? Fallon has now created the appearance that Trump’s handlers like Jason Miller believe Trump can’t avoid some kind of meltdown during the debate.
Has Trump been using the N-word behind closed doors to refer to Kamala, or only “bitch”?
Then Kamala’s campaign released a video showing clips showing Trump questioning whether he should debate, with chicken noises in the background.
Whatever happens with the scheduled debate now, Fallon has imposed a cost on Trump’s equivocations, making it more likely he’ll have the meltdown he and his handlers are trying to stave off.
It is absolutely true that Kamala is trying to change the terms of the agreement, even as Trump gets cold feet about participating at all. But this arises, I think, out of the dynamic that has made it so hard for Trump to face Kamala in the first place. He can’t suppress his bigotry, but if he doesn’t, he’ll risk losing to a Black woman. A smart, beautiful Black woman.
There’s a Beltway story that that moment in 2011, when the first Black president used Donald Trump’s racist birther campaign to humiliate the reality TV star in front of the entire press corps, was the moment Trump decided he needed to be President. Whether or not that’s true, it’s fairly clear that kind of public humiliation by a Black person triggers Trump in a way other things might not. Trump’s narcissism requires him to maintain the appearance of superiority over everyone else; his racism makes it even more important that that perceived superiority extends to Black people.
And even if the WHCP did convince Trump to run, after considering it, he didn’t run in 2012, when he would have faced Obama. Donald Trump chose not to risk losing to Obama.
Now, because of a decision Joe Biden made, Donald Trump has lost the ability to choose whether he wants to face someone like Kamala Harris. And he’s stuck: The thing his MAGAts like about him is his spontaneous riffs, many of which rely on the humiliation of others. But if he calls the Vice President the N-word or bitch publicly, it’ll further sink him in the polls.
At least from the moment that Kamala started to put on campaign events that Trump would love to pull off, the campaign has been damaging Trump’s ego. Undoubtedly Michelle and Barack Obama (among others) made that worse at the DNC. And all that makes some outburst that could doom his campaign more likely.
Finally, Democrats who fight hard and mean.
The problem for Democrats when they try to fight hard and mean is that the media civility police trashes them for it. The media would never let a Democrat get away with the nasty things Republicans say.
An upside to the last decade: Trump has pushed the Overton window for political trash-talking so far into “uncivil” territory that there’s a wide swath of effective attacks that the Harris/Walz campaign can deploy while still seeming civil by comparison.
Corporate media’s bifrucated handling of left vs right has become so apparent that I think we’re at an inflection point in their influence. The Harris campaign hasn’t only made a concerted effort to de-legitimize Trump, they are blatantly taking no guff from corporate media either.
Of course it’s not just Fallon and his team. Independent voices on the left (ex: Marcy) have been taking corporate media to task for a while, observing that a generation of conservative whining about the “liberal media” has always been an influence campaign that has only been accelerated by the monetization of the newsroom and industry consolidation.
The key moment here, I think, is the embracing of “creators” (aka, independent journalists) at the DNC. There is a recognition that corporate media no longer has a monopoly on the attention of so-called “low information” voters, and taking those steps adds more legitimacy and credibility to all of those new voices.
The media has trashed its brands to the point where there’s a lot of value for Democrats for using the media’s concern trolling as an argument not to do what the pundits say.
The old claim that the press is out for ratings and clicks is easily refuted by the trendlines over the past decade – there are too many bankruptcies and job cuts to back that up. They don’t know what they’re doing.
It’s a good question what media execs are thinking. No matter who wins in November and in following years, it’s hard to see who will care about the political press unless they fix themselves, and fast.
So what? They seem to have figured out the 4th estate has sold its soul. Why pander? We all get one vote.
I’m in Georgia, I hope I get a vote that’s counted.
@Patrick Carty (and everyone else in the US): Make sure you’re still registered to vote as this years tactics seems to be centered on purging the voter rolls. If you’re denied at the polls, insist on casting a provisional ballot and challenge it.
Time for Dems to stop worrying about the corporate media and FOXnews, and play to their actual voters.
“Finally, Democrats who fight hard and mean.”
GTFO. No, you have it all wrong. Democrats do “fight hard and mean”, but that ends up being no so “hard and mean” when our opponents break all the rules as well as use shame as a superpower. Rules are for suckers, dontchaknow? Just like the death penalty does squat about murder, but let’s just keep doing it anyway!
What they are actually doing is gaining awareness of Trump’s knack of gaslighting and projecting everywhere he goes to evade responsibility for anything and everything he does. Once you figure that out, it might be very easy to set landmines for him to step on.
I think this is an invention. He had already tried to run before. He has been desperate to be president for a long time. That humiliation story makes it look like whenever he wants something it happens, and is a quintessential Hollywood American resolve story, we all have seen hundreds of time. That’s nonsense.
I think you may not be grasping just how deeply-rooted Trump’s pathology is.
I’m not sure what “this” is, but I’m guessing you missed Marcy’s point.
Yes, it does seem nonsensical to miss that Donald Trump is excruciatingly racist, misogynistic, and addicted to dominance, as a way to show his daddy he’s not weak. Nobody made up his track record regarding the Central Park Five, for example. He wanted them dead, even after their convictions were vacated, because Donny can never be wrong.
Plucking Donny’s ego strings is easy peasy. But it takes work to make electoral hay out of it. Kudos to the Harris campaign for doing it.
More like “He has been desperate to be a mob boss for a long time.”
Ewan, your post is nonsensical and weird.
The reason clichés persist is because there is usually some truth in them; not that they’re true, but that there is truth in them. Trump talked about running before, but he never seriously tried. With a successful TV show bringing in money and fame, why would he? And as Marcy points out, he could’ve run in 2012, but he didn’t, most likely because he desired a weaker opponent. We could as well assert that he ran in 2016 because his TV show was on its last legs.
I should have explained what I thought was nonsense, sorry. Not Marcy’s post, of course. What I call nonsense is this fable that “because he was humiliated he decided to run (and won)”. I am not in his mind, but I do not think that being put in his place by Obama would decide him to become run for president. I think this is an invention, to make him look good.
No idea, but it’s certainly plausible. I also took that claim with a grain of salt because it sounds exactly like the kind of thing the beltway media would put out there on the thinnest whisper of a source.
He is very petty. The insult may have been enough to set off his impulsive behavior but also decisions are often the result of converging motives. It’s unlikely he is consciously aware of the factors that drive his decisions.
Michael Cohen has said many times in podcasts and media appearances that Trump decided to run in 2016 as a marketing gimmick.
But then his shtick attracted media attention, his campaign gained traction, and he started going up in the polls. That’s when the narcissist decided, since he was enjoying the crowds and adulation, why not make a serious go for it.
Now there is an interesting premise: Would DJT have declared to run again if he knew how the opponent was?
Part of him running in 2024 was a chance to avenge himself on Biden, the guy who (goes the story in Trump’s brain) stole the WH from him in 2020.
When Biden decided not to run again, it had to have set Trump off bigly. Now the guy who conquered him 4 years ago gets to ride off into the sunset, and at the same time, a powerful intelligent biracial woman steps up to take his place. For 3+ years, Trump has been seeking vengeance on Sleepy Joe, and now it’s not going to happen. Trump’s not going to get the big concession speech out of Biden that he’s been dreaming of all this time.
Watching the polls — and you Trump’s been watching the polls — has to make him even sadder. Not only will he not get the triumph he had been convinced was inevitably going to happen, but now Harris has everything he wants: rising poll numbers, larger and more vocal crowds at her rallies, and youth.
He may not admit it, but he is scared right now. Angry and scared.
Oh, while unprovable, that certainly does have the ring of truth.
Yes, he would’ve run again, regardless of opponent. It’s the only way he can avoid all the consequences of his first term.
He had a plan for Biden, and invested a lot in that plan, and is now butthurt that he can’t use that plan — and is now vulnerable to that same age-based plan being run against him.
Is there a narcissistic, ego component? Of course, there always is. But I still believe his campaign is primarily about avoiding accountability for 2016-2020.
Oh, I’m not saying he wouldn’t have run if Biden declined to run last year. You’re right, that this is his stay-out-of-jail card, and he want it.
But Trump is so driven by revenge and a need to be the biggest/richest/most powerful/most successful/etc. that NOT being able to wreak destruction on the guy who drove him out of the WH is a wound to his ego that will never go away.
I’m not sure he fears jail, and with the Supreme Court in his pocket, he doesn’t have to.
He’d be in jail very quickly if he didn’t have a lot of lawyers working very hard to keep him out of it. Don’t be fooled how much he fears being convicted of a felony. There’s a lot of things you can no longer do in business, etc, if you are convicted of certain financial or other felonies. Plus, once you are convicted of a felony it’s easier to be sentenced to much longer prison terms if you are subsequently convicted of more felonies…or substantial misdemeanors, etc.
Yes, he would have run again, regardless of opponent. He has engaged in serious criminal behavior, allegedly. So winning the presidency again would keep him out of jail.
Plus he can’t stand being a loser, he lost in 2020. So he needs a win in 2024 to erase that (in his own mind).
Michelle’s “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” jab at the convention last week had to have been at least as painful to Trump as Barack’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner remarks.
And the question above about what language Trump used behind the scenes about Kamala could easily be asked about Michelle and her speech.
There’s a great remix of it.
https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1827866330042671474
OMG! That is epic.
I think I finally get TikTok!
Welcome to 21st century:-) The world communicates via short videos. Tiktok etc is simply them going to where the customer currently is.
And yet here you are communicating with one of our regular commenters in an ancient social media platform called a “blog.”
Welcome to emptywheel.
Thanks so much umichvoter and Marcy! That’s fantastic. Would have been fun to see at the DNC, too. It’s classic. Full of joy, hope and promise.
Oh, this is just SO WONDERFUL! Thank you, Marcy. This song and the images will be playing in my head & heart all day.
Fantastic!!
We white folks are being taught a little bit about “The Dozens”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dozens_(game)
Wonderful!!
Ewan Woodsend, I think it’s more than just a story, as is Harris’s surge in popularity and her fundraising. Donald Trump’s public behavior makes the story entirely believable and his public decline in self control also makes stories about his handler’s fears believable.
Yes, I followed my thought and skipped the first part, sorry. The post is not nonsense at all. See my above explanation for what I meant.
i have zero doubt he lets the N-word fly freely and often. sadly, a lot of that generation just throws it around like it doesn’t mean anything. which can’t be anything other than a piddly-ass excuse. that’s my parents generation, and while my dad never said it that i recall, my egg donor did freely. my maternal grands too, as we all cringed and shook our heads. in the South, it was all too frequently just another word to many.
I’m not so sure that the “N”-word was “just another word” to people of a certain generation or region. I grew up in Northern Virginia in the 1970s, hearing the word on a daily basis. It never struck me as just another word for “neighbor,” “colleague,” or “person.” Even when it was uttered without any particular malicious intent, it was nonetheless tinged with an implicit sense of superiority and dominance, and loaded with all of the nasty, dehumanizing stereotypes of the day.
my experience in rural NC was quiet broad, with friends not noticing color. the older folks just outright said it, and nobody paid it much attention. nobody got called out for it, because we didn’t feel the hatred. even if they meant it, it didn’t go far.
Groving up in Northern Europe in the 80s, the less-offensive N-word (with a soft G) was in pretty widespread use as a matter-of-fact description of melanin-rich people. There’s a song by a local country band from 1996 titled “N at the train station” which tells the story of a local yokel’s wonder at meeting something strange and foreign. The band has since stopped playing it since the word has started to take on a negative meaning even here.
I also grew up with the Nordic version of The Phantom superhero, which had a very explicit anti-racist messaging while still managing to step in a lot of racist tropes. (I believe I’ve mentioned this here at some point before)
Pretty sure it’s always had a negative meaning, even for those who don’t know it.
certainly. we took away the power by ignoring it. as kids, it was about all we could do.
What “less-offensive N-word (with a soft G)” are you talking about? Niger?
“Neger” which is similar to “Negro” in it’s initial meaning, describing the skin tone. It was not considered offensive but just a literal description. Also keep in mind that diversity here wasn’t really a thing until the first wave of Pakistani men arrived in the 70s, and even then it was limited to the capital.
I am almost dump’s age. There is no way the N word would be ‘thrown around’ in the NYC of my youth. We need to situate our observations in time and place. Whatever was happening in the South, dump’s hatred cum language was way out of the norm among educated New Yorkers, no matter what their race.
I have no real experience of the South of that time, but I do know how my generation spoke on campuses, in the streets and even, by implication, inside halls of power.
dump knows he couldn’t use that language in public anywhere in the tri-state area. It must have really cramped his style to have to watch his public language for all this time.
Poor, poor donny having to self censor all during the backend of the 20th century.
I grew up in NYC at just about that time and N was definitely a problem.
I went to a citywide all-boys high school where ethnic slurs were used among close friends as terms of endearment and I never heard N used for our (back then) Negro school friends.
My Dad said it once when I was maybe 5 and my mother instantly rose to the occasion. I think it’s the first time I realized “Randolph!” was my Dad and “Gudrun” was my Mom.
I think the word in question has been a negative among black people for at least the last hundred years. Was it a negative in 1850? I have no idea.
That said, within my father’s lifetime it was used in some completely benign situations. For instance, I recall him pointing to a bowl of Brazil nuts and saying, “we used to call those -toes, but we can’t now.”
Not saying he wasn’t racist in some ways (what white person isn’t?), but he was very much not into racial slurs and insults.
Oh lort.
Indeed.
Oddly, the little story I related above happened while my Dad was teaching me the names of the nuts we were setting out for some guests.
This discussion is 15 minutes long. It’s a perspective that I found persuasive. It may be helpful in explaining how cultural influences like minstrel songs, Disney films, hip-hop and gangsta rap have added some confusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aur2noLmDq8
“Dr. Neal Lester on the Power of Words and the Danger of Slurs”
Tow things occur to me:
1) At least the one best looking candidate WILL show up to the debate on ABC even if there is no opponent.
2) Must get well known people of all “colors” and “races” to publicly humiliate Trump. I’m thinking the likes of Beyonce, but even Ms Swift. It does not have to be a humiliation – it can be just a factual statement of candidate preference and support. The humiliation would be baked in.
LeBron James. Steph Curry, and any number of athletes comes to mind.
The men’s and women’s Olympic basketball teams, front row, center. Britney Griner, alone, snearing at Trump would crush his jibblets.
Megan Rapinoe and a non-trivial number of her USWNT colleagues share this sentiment. “Triumphant WH celebration visit while Trump is there? Nah — we’re good.”
I understand the strategy being walked out regarding the debate. And it’s fair to shine a light on the impulsive behavior. However, there is one “fact checked” point that remains undisputed which was made at the convention that is clearly eating at Trump right now. It is Bill Clinton’s, “What’s the score? 50 to 1!” on jobs gains. The Democratic historic jobs record has been playing on replay in Trump’s mind. I’ve yet to see the Harris-Walz campaign amplify this point in a strong fashion. I’m seeing content creators amplifying it, but not Harris-Walz ads. Perhaps the strategy is to amplify it through content creators?
It is an amazing data point. The info graphics out there proving Clinton’s point are amazing to view. And it is not the first time Clinton has brought this point up. However, after the Biden presidency, the data has become a more drastic contrast since the 2012 convention where he mentioned it:
https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/07/politics/fact-check-clinton-jobs/index.html
Trying to create a setting for Trump’s impulsiveness and unpresidential behavior to erupt is a fair strategy. Voters deserve to see it because character qualities such as self-control are vital in a president.
But 50 to 1? Damn, you don’t even need to “pretty up” that jobs data point! The best part of infographics out there is the Trump to Biden jump. It is truly, in the words of Barack, a “crowd size” info graphic moment!
(Tried to get one of the jobs graphics to post here but removing the tracking breaks the link.)
Happy to have your description of it instead of a link with embedded tracking. Many thanks.
Going back to WWII, Democratic presidents created 88 million jobs to 32 million for Republican presidents according to this WaPo article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/22/clinton-dnc-jobs-created-since-cold-war/
Rayne, please delete any tracking if I have not done it properly. Thanks.
Trump: And my administration will continue this track record of job creation!
The entire metric of tying jobs to administrations is not without its hazards. There is the Congress (and its purse) to consider, and sometimes it’s divided, sometimes it’s unified, and sometimes it’s unified for, and sometimes it’s united against an administration. So there’s a case to be made that who controls/doesn’t control Congress might be just as important as who the Presidency is held by, when it comes to job creation.
Actually, that’s an even better reason to tie the jobs numbers to DP Presidents. You have just said that it’s a trend no matter what the political situation is in the Congress.
Two Xitters for the win today. So great! Thanks, Marcy!
Trump’s impulse control problems are well documented. So, too, are the facts that he is a malignant narcissist and pathological liar.
That being said, like Brett Kavanaugh and Bill Barr who, I believe, are also pathological liars (Barr is also a malignant narcissist like Trump), Trump is now ripe for being interrogated on stage by a precise interrogator like Harris who managed, during her Senate questioning of both Kavanaugh and Barr, to make Kavanaugh and Barr, respectively, look like evasive, bumbling, muttering fools. This is why Trump is afraid to appear on stage with Harris.
My fear, however, is that after Trump has spent the past thirty days whining and crying about how ABC management and its event moderators are biased against him, ABC management and its moderators will intentionally structure the debate/event to limit Harris’ ability to excoriate Trump on stage.
The intersection of the psychology of personality, and social psychology, may generate focused efforts to destabilize a target’s mood or real-time disposition. This raises intriguing questions. How do opposing sides conduct interpersonal relations in a goal-driven political context?
Does Harris/Walz have access to superior “applied psychological” expertise? Trump’s feral (and practiced,) sense is performative with respect to the MAGA horde, but might not be very effective at this late date at recruiting new adherents. ‘Unhinged’ is an acquired taste.
Is this sort of like psy/ops?
Don’t forget that the trump campaign has access to one of the biggest egg-heads in the psy-ops business: Stephen Miller. Goebbels would be jealous.
Historical analogies are important, but often inaccurate. Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels was an egghead, with a doctorate from Heidelberg, a top German university. Stephen Miller is a capable propagandist. He seems to work toward similar ends, but hasn’t the same means.
I couldn’t find a captioned version of Obama’s correspondent’s dinner speech but his speech at the Chicago DNC convention was a HOOT. His comparison of Trump to the neighbor’s leaf blowers that gets run every day will live in my head for all time. I talked on a telephone this morning for the first time in 40 years because somebody made a phone app that instantly transcribed the voice of the person I’m calling. It allows me to just talk normally like everyone else does. In the middle of the conversation a gardener in the neighborhood revved up his leaf blower. I can’t always tell what the sounds were though my hearing aid so I thought an airplane was flying over my head. But this sound would not stop and fade away like airplanes do. I looked up from my phone and the gardener was right behind me in my neighbor’s yard about 15 feet away. He killed my phone call but I got an excellent example of what Obama was comparing Trump with. I’m still chucking.
This C-Span version is captioned
Hope that helps
https://youtu.be/n9mzJhvC-8E
On November 3, 2020, the majority of US voters FIRED
Donald John (« Little Johnny ») Trump.
Why would they rehire him on November 5, 2024?
This is not an Intro to U.S. Politics site. We should not have to explain how the Electoral College works in relation to the popular vote.
If you are European, please read up why the popular vote for president doesn’t necessarily yield a win before making rather uninformed comments. https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about
If you had thought twice before misreading my comment, you would have easily recognized the old saying I was referring to: NEVER LET THE SAME SNAKE BITE YOU TWICE.
When, and if, I would comment on the Electoral College, I will specifically refer to it.
[Thanks for the advice. I’ll deal with a snake RTFN. /~Rayne]
Notwithstanding Rayne’s reply I thought your summation was a good way to frame that for the average US voter – “If you kicked him out 4 years ago, why would you want him back now?”
The first comment was a word jumble, unworthy of someone who claims to hold a Master’s degree in law. Your interpretation of it as a summation and a “good way to frame” the issue of Trump’s unfitness for office for the average voter is worthy of Ken Dilanian.
Your comment (Lepulcher) was perfectly reasonable. Not sure why its getting shade. Hopefully Obama is right about Americans knowing the sequel is usually worse than the original …
“Not sure why its (sic) getting shade.”
Because this is Emptywheel, and we expect more than one-liner platitudes.
We also question closely relatively new commenters who:
– use European VPNs;
– use punctuation not common to US keyboards but common to EU keyboards;
– use names most Americans might not interpret/translate on sight from Latin or French.
Not to mention the wording used in their comment. A “majority of voters” chose Hillary Clinton in 2016 but the Electoral College went to Trump. A “majority of voters” can’t fire anybody but Electoral College can elect a POTUS. This is literally the reason why Trump tried to obstruct the certification of the vote in 2020. Regular readers at this site grok this key point — and an expert in U.S. constitutional law certainly wouldn’t make this mistake.
Signed,
A member of the friendly neighborhood moderation team
Trump’s running for a third time after being defeated in 2020; the political norm in the US has, for a long time been, that defeated Presidential candidates (in the general election) do not run again. This norm doesn’t apply to candidates who lose in party primary contests–Vice-President Harris ran for POTUS in 2020 and got nowhere, but is now the Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, likely would not consider another run even if she were younger. Defeated candidates still often maintain political careers in other offices–John McCain remained in the Senate until his death; Mitt Romney went to the Senate, John Kerry later served as Obama’s secretary of state. But the last time a major nominee party who lost in the general election ran again was Richard Nixon in 1968; he had previously been beaten by JFK in 1960, in a very close election. And Nixon was not the incumbent when he lost (Eisenhower was the incumbent but was term-limited and ineligible to run again).
My understanding is that it’s the common custom in much of Europe for defeated party leaders to resign their leadership posts. They may or may not return to the back benches–Jeremy Corbyn has managed to get himself effectively kicked out of the Labour Party, or instance.
But Trump is unusual in many ways.
Nixon was Eisenhower’s VP, and therefore an incumbent in office (both terms of Eisenhower’s Presidency), when he lost in 1960. One should not confuse stepping back from official leadership positions in a political party as stepping away from the strings of power. Obama still has quite a bit of pull in the United States, particularly within the DP. Obama’s just not loud about it like so many people in the US these days feel is a sign of political power.
Kamala apparently thinks she can handle a hot miced Trump better than did Hillary Clinton or Biden. I am skeptical. But maybe we’ll see. Worst case, it devolves into unintelligible cacophony. Will the mod(s) intervene if it does?
If it were, say, a Yale Debate Club event, one can predict almost with certainly Trump will lose. But that’s not what it is. Trump being an asshole at the debate did not help Hillary win the election.
I think Trump gave us a preview in June. While I was somewhat slack-jawed as to the performance of Pres. Biden, Trump was just awful too. Quick with easily disprovable lies, more disprovable than his usual collection, lacking in impulse control, regularly intemperate. Since he doesn’t practice (or work) I imagine he’s probably going to be less prepared to debate the VP
A couple of things to consider.
First, we saw in the Biden debate that the moderators were very passive and so the tools put in place to “maintain decorum” also served the purpose of creating a false equivalency between the substance of the remarks on both sides.
Second, for as reluctant as I am to say anything positive about Trump at any point in time, it’s very apparent at this point that Trump was a more capable public speaker and more focused thinker eight years ago.
Related to the above, the lopsided coverage of Trump vs. Biden has done a lot to obfuscate Trump’s decline to the nation at large. Given that the last debate effectively resulted in the incumbent dropping out, the next debate should generate a “cliffhanger sequel” level of interest from the electorate, and letting Trump parade his decline without Biden as a comparator should produce some pretty stark results.
Finally, I think Kamala’s specific experience as a prosecutor gives her tools in a 1:1 debate that Hillary did not have and which we did not get to see in the battle royale debates of the ’20 primaries.
Were I to express one concern here, it’s that the specific forum of a trial in court generally permits counsel to try and dominate, browbeat, etc. witnesses, who generally are not allowed to fight back and have to submit to the framing that the interrogating lawyer chooses to use. Opposing counsel has opportunities to bail them out on cross or redirect, but in general, witnesses are not allowed to filibuster either the prosecutor or the defense attorney, and attempts to do so will earn a rebuke from the judge. And evasive or non-answer answers are also not tolerated.
Harris won’t have a judge around to help her keep the hostile witness on the stand focused and herded into the chute. Different tactics will need to be in order.
As far as Clinton and Biden (in 2020) went, they won their debates with Trump–even then he looked like an intemperate fool. And “will you shut up, man?”, directed at the sitting President of the United States, was one of the highlights of the 2020 campaign.
Harris was on debate team in college.
She has already started practicing.
She’s a former prosecutor, unlike past candidates.
DNC speeches have provided some great memes to exploit. And, she made Brett Kavanaugh cry.
TFG should be very worried about the debate.
Yes! And she excelled in debate against Pence (“Mr. Vice President, I am speaking.”) Plus her interactions with Bill Barr and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III were something to behold. She will not disappoint.
She definitely appears to be sharper now than she was in the debate with Pence four years ago.
I remember years ago seeing Jessie Jackson being interrupted and talked over. He stopped it by repeatedly saying “uh, uh, uh…” Somehow it stops train of thought.
It’s wild how easy it is to manipulate Trump. Usually flattery is the easiest path, but this works just as well.
And here’s Trump’s court stenographer, once again, trying to normalize his crazy:
https://youtu.be/oobOvdjIANM
You have misinterpreted my comment on the million more votes Biden had over Trump.
Consequentially, Trump did not have the necessary electoral college votes.
My comment referred to The Apprentice.
You can’t groundlessly assume I am European. I am not!
By the way, I have a Master in Constitutional Law.
I know my way in these matters.
The hyperbole in your first comment makes none of your background obvious. And if you have a Master’s degree in the law, you understand the conditionality inherent in a phrase that begins with “if.” It’s not an assumption, groundless or othewise.
Proofreading is important.
Otherwise you’ll get wiseass questions like, “So who is your Master in Constitutional Law, and why do they get to boss you around without paying you?
I had forgotten that President Obama referenced Lil John in his 2011 remarks on Donald Trump and “The Apprentice,” which is newly amusing in light of Lil John’s prominent appearance at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
Trump was also mocked that evening in about a half-dozen jokes by comedian Seth Myers (e.g., “Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for President as a Republican, which is surprising, because I just assumed he was running as a joke”) in a set that’s something of a time capsule. Not just Myers’ crack about Osama bin Laden (“Did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?”) on what turned out to be the day before the raid on bin Laden’s compound. (Was Obama, who laughed at that joke, the only person there who knew that action was imminent? Vice President Biden wasn’t present (Myers: “Is Biden still Vice President?”)) But Myers also referred to Hu Jintao — out of power two years later — as the world’s most powerful person. His joke about the 2007-08 financial crisis didn’t land (“I figured this was the only room that joke would work, and it only kinda did”) but would have gone better after the release of “The Big Short” four years later (“Margin Call” had played at Sundance by that point but wouldn’t get a wide release for a few more months). There are also references to topical news items that have faded from public consciousness: who remembers now that a cobra escaped from the Bronx Zoo and someone started tweeting in its name? Two further bits have some different resonances lo these thirteen years later. Complaining to Obama about the recent release his birth certificate, Myers said: “Who told you I had birth certificate jokes? It was Assange, wasn’t it?” And after joking about the Tea Party, he added: “Oh, I’m gonna get an angry voicemail from Ginni Thomas in 19 years.”
To return to Marcy’s points, it’s just striking how Myers not only roasted Trump but told several jokes at Obama’s expense, and Obama laughed along (there were several about Biden as well: ‘What can I say about Joe Biden that hasn’t already been said incorrectly by Joe Biden?”), and Obama told jokes about himself, but Trump just sat stone faced every time the camera pointed at him.
Now I HAVE to find the complete video of that correspondents’ dinner.
Seth Meyers 2011 WH Correspondents dinner
https://youtu.be/7YGITlxfT6s
Thanks for recapping that night. Only Correspondents Dinner I have ever watched, and I have recalled it often in the years since. In retrospect, it was a high point.
OT
Ohboy! Jack Smith!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/08/27/jack-smith-files-new-indictment-against-trump-in-jan-6-case/
We have a superseding indictment! This is not a drill! :D
Link to the superseding indictment document itself:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25075810-jan-6-superseding-trump-indictment
Is it at all surprising there is still only the single defendant? If the rationale for indicting Trump alone was to speed the litigation towards a 2024 trial, then surely that’s not a consideration now.
No insurrection charges, but 1512(c)(2) is still there.
Marcy has a post up about this now:
The Pared Down Superseding Indictment for January 6
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/08/27/the-pared-down-superseding-indictment/ August 27, 2024
Marcy has a new post up about this now:
The Pared Down Superseding Indictment for January 6
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/08/27/the-pared-down-superseding-indictment/ August 27, 2024
Does anyone know if Stormy Daniels will be in the front row of the debate with her rolled up newspaper?
I’m not sure its in the Harris campaign’s best interest to have hot mics. Based on the 2020 VP debate, she’ll likely cede a lot of her given time to allow Trump to ramble and repeat lies. Sure, he’ll come off as a bully and a prick, but it will make for uncomfortable watching, gives him more time to have the spot light and will possibly make her look weak if she sits there politely reminding him, “its my turn to speak”, but he keeps speaking over her.
Plus, she should honor the original debate agreement. They can have a second debate with hot mics if they really want him to have another platform to spew his nonsense.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. SECOND REQUEST: Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We have adopted this minimum standard to support community security. You attempted to publish this as “Jenny T2” which is your third username to date and still not compliant with the site’s standard. Your first known username, “A different Jenny,” complies with the site’s standard if you wish to revert to that name. /~Rayne]
Ok, will use the ‘A different Jenny’ moniker :)
The Little Emporer needs a kick in the nuts. He’s not an incumbent- he’s the loser of a former election. A loser. He’ll accept was he’s offered and shut it, or run away, his choice.
This comment thread is disappointing. It’s just horse race garbage in a different lane, and people here are for it. All the debate formats as currently constructed and discussed are stupid. Debates without a mute button are unwatchable. Democracy coming down to this entertainment genre is regrettable.
Did you want someone to comment about a thread you think is garbage? You’re free to read elsewhere.
Have a feeling you’re a “journalist”. LOL
It’s even more of a troll than that. They goaded Trump into all the confusion, they forced his handlers to make a call (for muted mics) thinking maybe it will make the Harris people back out, or threaten to. After all, that’s what they would do in her place. Instead, she “acquiesces” and says, ok, you win, I agree! NOW they’re trapped into a commitment, one way or another. She got them.
“Real happiness, in politics, is a wide-open hammer shot on some poor bastard who knows he’s been trapped, but can’t flee.” – Hunter S. Thompson
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Ah, Hunter Thompson…
I’ve read ‘Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas’ probably 12 or 15 times…
I can only imagine the kind of vitriolic prose he’d be cranking out about trump, if he were here to witness this madness…
RIP, Hunter… RIP…
The old goofist is facing a prosecutor, with gloves off, bare fisted – not like her ‘friendly’ with fellow Democrats.
I can’t wait.
If it ever actually happens of course.
Referring to the Trump firm of Buck, Buck and Buckaw LLC..
Harris is a prosecutor, she wouldn’t take up the case, prosecute without a very good chance of a win.
Trump is shiting bricks.
She’s agreed to an interview with CNN.
She’s prepared her case in either case.
Perfect.
I think I heard the Trump team propose a debate where the candidates ask the questions of each other. I hope that circus comes to town along with sharks, electric boats, Hannibal Lecter, retail thefts by thieves calculating their thefts on their little computers, etc.
She’ll chop him down like an old dead tree.
Which is what he is. :-)
Praise to Biden and all he’s done, along with Harris, unprecedented.
I’m not an American, yet I know they’ve moved mountains – quietly, without fanfare. Like Waltz in his own community, and then in his own State. Quietly taking care of people, not looking for praise, or a stage to perform on.
That’s America.
The assault from within that is America is also unprecedented. Harris and Waltz need to remind people, through nostalgia as well – of the days before this day of assault on neighborly communities, to divide on a partisan basis.
Remind them of what they have in common – poll after poll of Americans over the years actually demonstrate, undivided by “politics” – they want many of the same things.
Harris/Waltz can be the party of the same things.
It’s the America we should be and too often are not, embodied in the man who’d give cash from his pocket to a guy down on his luck not expecting to be noticed at all doing it.
Trump would never do that. He’s far too transactional, too venal. He has been a lousy role model and a poor reflection of what this country should be.
Trump actually is not a reflection of who Americans are – quite the extreme opposite in fact.
Never let him or his ilk define who you are. That’s a fascist trick too.
Against them we can alter – we have to guard against it.
Americans are the likes of Waltz for instance, and not the likes of a Trump. That guy tries to convince that Americans are like him, and not Walz. We both know the truth.
Harris knows that truth. Why do you suppose she chose Walz?
They want to reflect who Americans really are – expose Trump for his revulsion of who you are.
And make no mistake, Trump, the Little Emporer, finds you and me the likes of Walz- losers. Those who serve in the Military – losers. Those who serve their communities – losers.
Does anyone actually believe he doesn’t regard most Americans as beneath him and contemptuous?
That’s all Americans.
All Harris and Walz need to do is expose his contempt for Americans. By lifting up what you do, in your communities, for men in need, women’s issues, minority needs – the néglect and cruelty in policy that touches everyone.
The neglect of people, Americans all, in pursuit of power.
Put your finger on that button – because it is real.
Your country made mistakes. We all know it. Don’t spend the rest of your lives defined by those mistakes. You’ve learned from them. We all know it too. Yours is a young country when compared to the world in history. Move forward, your mistakes are a lesson. You’ve more to be proud of in the history of the world we know of. You saved Europe, led the dissolution of the USSR. Led NATO. Don’t dream it’s over. You are the envy of the world, warts and all.
Ah well Rayne let’s have a song, soothes our souls if nothing else:-)
Check out Into the Mystic (2013 Remaster) by Van Morrison on Amazon Music
https://music.amazon.ca/albums/B07VMPCDS2?trackAsin=B07VPRWDHX&do=play&ts=1724824786&ref=dm_sh_JkvBtHHDlb1pQQ5UyJ7O7psq0
⁸
To trigger Trump Harris should stay on the crowd size issue. She should assert that she has more than 10,000 people at the Detroit airport. And then report that backstage she has a number of attendees ready to testify about the crowd, and some journalists also willing to report on the crowd.
Another trigger, a paper accordian. Another trigger, she declares to his face that she is indeed part African/American, and show her hands. Another possible trigger, the judgment debts that are accruing interest in the New York cases.
But maybe the best trigger would be to remind him that he lost to a 76 year old man and to her.
Meh, stupid stuff, he will say stupid stuff always.
No, zone in on the personal repercussions of his policies – on Americans, real people, real lives. He lives in a fantasy world, an online game – he is entirely removed from reality.
Which is to say – he is Entirely removed from Americans. He has no idea how you live and furthermore, he has no interest either. He views some Americans as a possible source of power, but other than that, has no interest in them or their lives.
No interest in you IOW, man, he has no interest in his “base” beyond how the eejits can serve him.
No interest in Harris and what she says beyond the fact she might make him lose.
I’m listening to Doo Wop. Seems appropriate.
I gotta say, reading that first Trump tweet at the top of this article, it’s kind of impressive just how many inane, juvenile insults he can fit into one tweet…
And to think that maybe 40% to 45% of the country think this man should be entrusted with a nuclear arsenal and the launch codes…
Ridiculous… infuriating… truly frightening…
BREAKING! NYT acknowledges that Parents have more than one Wit among them:
https://botsin.space/@nyt_diff/113039936125356010
Aug 28, 2024, 09:42