By any affordable metric, Vice President Kamala Harris soundly beat former President Donald Trump in Tuesday evening’s presidential debate.
She did it by demonstrating superior data not solely of coverage, but additionally of her opponent’s psychology. Harris found out precisely tips on how to get Trump offended, tips on how to trick him into veering off target, and tips on how to preserve the talk on favorable terrain.
To place it extra bluntly: Harris manipulated Trump into spiraling at a number of factors throughout their first (solely?) debate.
Let me offer you an instance. Early on within the debate, the moderators tried to press Harris on President Joe Biden’s unpopular immigration file, asking her if she would have carried out something otherwise from her present boss — a subject favorable for Trump.
Harris answered the query — however then took a seemingly unrelated shot at Trump’s rallies.
“I’m going to ask you to attend considered one of Donald Trump’s rallies as a result of it’s a extremely attention-grabbing factor to observe. You will note throughout the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He’ll speak about [how] windmills trigger most cancers. And what additionally, you will discover is that individuals begin leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and tedium,” the vp mentioned.
This gave Trump a selection; both prosecute Harris on immigration, a difficulty the place she’s weak, or go on a rant in protection of his vaunted rallies. You possibly can guess what he selected.
“Let me reply as to the rallies,” Trump mentioned. “She mentioned individuals begin leaving. Folks don’t go to her rallies. There’s no cause to go. And the those that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there.”
That started a tailspin: a sequence of bizarre tangents, together with a humiliating rant in regards to the fully faux drawback of Haitian migrants supposedly consuming canines in Springfield, Ohio, punctuated by immense concern in regards to the honor of Trump rallies. He by no means actually received again to what he ought to have been doing — attacking Harris on migration throughout the southern border.
By needling Trump the place it hurts — the rallies he cares about a lot — Harris managed to get him off stability, and he truthfully by no means actually recovered.
Harris deployed this technique many times.
Throughout an alternate on crime, Harris introduced up Trump’s personal felony conviction — main him to go on a diatribe about “political prosecutions” as an alternative of successfully pushing Harris on her flip-flops on crime coverage.
She introduced up world leaders calling him a “shame,” pushing him into bragging about his relationship with Hungarian “strongman” (in Trump’s phrases) Viktor Orbán, maybe not a callout that the swing voters of Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania had been clamoring for. She needled his closeness with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, blasting “what you assume is a friendship” with a “dictator who would eat you for lunch.”
Every time, Trump took the bait — shedding management of his mood and going off message, whereas Harris appeared on what will need to have been glee.
In hindsight, this technique might sound modern, but it surely speaks to one thing well-known about Trump’s psychology.
Overlaying international coverage throughout the Trump years, one worry I heard loads from nationwide safety professionals was that Trump could possibly be simply manipulated: His well-known vainness and narcissism made it simple for international powers to extract coverage favors by means of private flattery and lavish receptions. This appears to clarify, a minimum of partially, how Trump went from hostile to pleasant with international leaders like Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping.
But when international leaders might determine tips on how to manipulate Trump’s self-absorption, so too might his home opposition. Harris performed on that immense pleasure Tuesday evening.
This tactic wasn’t the one cause she gained the talk — see her sturdy reply on abortion, amongst different issues — but it surely was a significant one.