Kamala Harris Ready To Debate Racist Convicted Felon Without A Net Or Muted Mic
Kamala Harris Ready To Debate Racist Convicted Felon Without A Net Or Muted Mic
Don’t worry about Trump. He’s got Tulsi!
Vice President Kamala Harris continues dog-walking Donald Trump in advance of their upcoming debate on September 10. She’s taken the lead from the start: He tried to change the venue to Fox News. She said no. Now, she wants the microphones to remain on at all times, so viewers won’t miss any of Grandpa Grand Dragon’s gibberish.
“The VP is ready to debate Trump live and uncensored,” Harris’s senior adviser for communications Brian Fallon wrote Monday on social media. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”
This is a clever break from the Biden campaign’s debate strategy, which we can all agree didn’t work. The president’s campaign requested that candidates have their microphones muted when they weren’t recognized to speak, thus promoting an “orderly proceeding” where Biden would stare awkwardly into space while a staff member fell to the floor in despair.
Biden was apparently easily rattled when interrupted, but muting Trump’s mic didn’t stop the interruptions, so viewers had no idea why he was crumbling before their very eyes. During the first 2020 debate, Biden grew so frustrated with Trump’s constant Gish gallops that he shouted, “Will you shut up, man?” It wasn’t a rehearsed line yet it effectively summed up how a majority of Americans felt.
British journalist Katty Kay suggested prior to Biden’s disastrous debate performance that muting the mics would only benefit Trump and Biden might end up regretting the decision.
“I’ve spoken to enough people around Donald Trump now to start wondering whether actually that was a mistake,” Kay said. “Because the reason Joe Biden won that debate in 2020 was because there was Donald Trump interrupting him all the time.”
Harris’s diabolical scheme
MAGA world believes Harris’s request for unmuted mics is part of a trap she’s setting for Trump, who can’t control himself and needs an electronic pacifier while on stage.
Kyle Smith at the Wall Street Journal posted on social media, “Harris wants Trump to have a hot mic so that the first time he interrupts her she can go ‘EXCUSE ME I'M SPEAKING!!!’ and hope that that'll be the only thing anyone remembers about the debate.”
Smith is referring to the 2020 vice presidential debate when Harris politely but firmly kept Vice President Mike Pence from interrupting her. The moment has since become a popular meme. The confident stare down Harris gave Pence has turned up on T-shirts and mugs. (My wife has the mug.)
When Harris delivered her “that little girl was me” zinger during the first Democratic primary debate in 2019, she was responding directly to Biden’s past positions on busing and his weirdly fond memories of working with segregationists. It’s actually not hard to avoid the “I’m speaking” set-up — just don’t speak over the vice president. However, we all know that’s impossible for Donald Trump, who has what Richard Pryor might call a unique debating style — none. He just attempts to smother his opponent with his verbal diarrhea. This is the same man who seriously considered trying to provoke Biden’s stutter during the 2020 debate — and by “man,” I mean “all seven deadly sins personified and wrapped inside an ill-fitting suit.”
Trump thinks he can win a debate through brute force, which is psychologically consistent with someone who was found liable for sexual assault. Of course, the mainstream media spun that first 2020 debate as a disaster for both candidates, even though Trump was the one who behaved like a belligerent bully who sprayed COVID at Biden.
We’d all appreciate an “I’m speaking” reprise, but I think Harris might test some new material at the September debate. She’s previously said that if Trump tried creeping up on her personal space like he did with Hillary Clinton, she’d turn around and ask him, “Why are you being so weird? What’s wrong with you?” The weird messaging is distinct to her presidential campaign and definitely rattles Trump, who’s usually reduced to whining, “I am not a weirdo! She’s the weirdo!” Hitting Trump as “weird” is also better than trying to fact-check him in real time or expecting the debate moderators to do anything more aggressive than collect dust.
The reason Trump’s Gish gallop worked against Biden is because it’s impossible to adequately respond to all the lies and distortions. Harris is best advised to not bother and just dismiss Trump as a total weirdo, an “unserious man” who no one should take seriously but also never let near real power ever again.
The betting markets are probably already accepting wagers on whether an unmuted Trump will drop a racial or gendered slur against Harris — sort of like when he called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” but less PG-13 and more David Mamet/Quentin Tarantino.
Trump’s bigotry is a character flaw not a speech impediment, so he has only himself to blame if he can’t control his evil mouth. Although in fairness, the last time he was in the room with a prosecutor, he was convicted on 34 felony counts.
The Harris campaign is actively trolling Trump now. Brian Fallon told 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.”
This is a genius twist on the Karl Rove tactic where you turn an opponent’s strength into a weakness. The Harris campaign’s position isn’t that Trump won’t shut up, man, but that he can’t. Without a muted microphone acting as a muzzle, he’ll just slobber all over the stage like a rabid dog.
Harris has boxed in Trump so that he can’t walk away from a position of strength, as he did when he ghosted on the Republican primary debates. Monday, NBC News Jake Trayor asked Trump, “Would you want the microphones muted in the debate whenever you’re not speaking?”
“We agreed to the same rules,” Trump rambled. “I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me. I’d probably rather have it unmuted. The agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted.”
There was no “last time” with Harris, who’s under no obligation to accept the debate conditions that her predecessor negotiated.
During what passes for Trump’s debate prep, former House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who it turns out was MAGA All Along, is reportedly standing in for Harris, which is like me standing in for Idris Elba. There is a popular misconception among both the Right and the far-left that Gabbard single-handedly torched Harris’s first campaign when she attacked Harris’s record as a prosecutor. People forget that Harris curb-stomped Gabbard at a later debate, correctly pegging her as an apologist for dictators who regularly trashed Barack Obama on Fox News. I’m not the New York Times, so I’m not going to offer Trump campaign advice. However, if my opponent had footage on their YouTube channel of them beating someone’s ass at a debate, I would not hire that person for my “Eye of the Tiger” training montage.
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I can totally see her responding with “this is not a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman’s, we are not going to let you get away with any of that here tonight”, if he tried stalking her on stage.
Harris just needs to look Trump in the eye the whole time. He’ll melt. Also respond to every gabblefest fest with, “Those are lies. Here are some facts” if he doubles down, say, “Those are still lies and my facts are still facts.”