Abortion, abortion, abortion: Harris has a surefire path to knock Trump off his game
Can we stop calling these candidate get-togethers "debates?"
All that the thing on ABC tonight will have in common with a debate is two lecterns and two people...er, ah…one person and a mental health crisis in a jacket that doesn’t have the sleeves tied behind it. Other than that, to call these quadrennial Q&A sessions debates debases the moral and mental acuity of the viewing audience and the English language itself.
I have for years puzzled over the idea that a “debate prep” is necessary for any Democrat facing Donald Trump before a live television audience. There is only one preparation necessary for a “debate” with Donald Trump: provision of the vocal cords with enough throat spray to prevent going hoarse as you utter the phrase “that’s a lie” for the seventy-seventh time.
Every time the Republican candidate opens his mouth, a falsehood will fly forth. Kamala Harris can expect a flood of what we in les temps ancien used to call doozies from her opponent. He’s going to “round up and deport” 10 million or 15 million or 20 million – whatever number jumps into his head -- “illegal” immigrants. That’s a lie. His own staff, augmented by Secret Service and local and state law enforcement, can’t handle vetting the several thousand people who show up for his outdoor rallies, and they show up voluntarily and equipped with whatever form of identification that is required. He said on his social platform that he is going to put “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” in jail for “long term sentences” when he wins. That’s a lie. It’s not a crime to be a lawyer or a political operative or a campaign donor, and illegal voters and corrupt officials already face charges if there truly are any such creatures, which in past elections, there have not been, not at least in numbers sufficient to worry about. Trump is claiming at rallies that schools are plucking children out of class and taking them down the hallway to a secret sex-reassignment room and operating on them and sending them home with a gender different from the one they showed up at school with that morning. That’s a lie, and Kamala Harris shouldn’t have much trouble pointing at Trump and laughing her head off as if he’s a clown who just wandered in from a circus somewhere on the outskirts of Philadelphia.
Donald Trump is treated every single day by the various media that cover the presidential campaign as if he is a serious man. This is a grievous error, and Vice President Harris should not repeat it during the so-called debate. She does not have to fact-check Trump in real time. Every time he opens his mouth and another lie spills forth, all she has to do is look into the eye of the camera and utter those famous words of Ronald Reagan, “There he goes again,” followed by a reference to how dangerous it would be to have a man who spreads such lies as President of the United States.
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Salon. Link below:
I'm hoping that by not responding to his childish taunts or by saying things to him that she knows will get under his skin that he has a total psychotic break and starts ranting, yelling and melting down completely...in public, on tv, in front of a live national audience. A setting that cannot be sanewashed by the NYT or the WaPo or CNN. In spite of the fact that tomorrow's headline will probably be that Harris didn't talk about policy or distance herself enough from Biden.
“Donald Trump is treated every single day by the various media that cover the presidential campaign as if he is a serious man.” The two principal reasons Felonious Trump won in ‘16 = the media gave him $5 billion in exposure by covering his Nuremberg rallies in full (I.e., treating him like a serious candidate) and he had been on TELEVISION! To voters of a certain age, television celebrity equates to divine certification. (TV stardom = serious person.)