It appears that Trump could not handle being labelled a coward and has agreed to the original debate scheduled for Sept. 10th on ABC. That should prove to be quite the show. A detail-oriented, woman of color, and former prosecutor versus a misogynist, racist, convicted felon. It will certainly be interesting. If I were to advise Vice President Harris, (which obviously will never happen!!), I would suggest she be prepared to call out every single lie Trump puts forth AND just let him self-destruct with his rambling, unhinged rhetoric.
Unfortunately, the bar is different for Harris than for Trump. Everyone already knows Trump is a bombastic, loudmouth who tries to bully people so if he comes across as aggressive, his supporters will just say ‘that is Trump being Trump.’ If, on the other hand, Harris gets very aggressive, there are many who will simply say she is being a bitch. It is clearly a double standard but that is the reality we unfortunately live in.
I have no doubt that Trump’s debate strategy will be focused on trying to rattle Vice President Harris rather than discuss any specific policy issues. I am sure Harris and her team are very aware of this after having watched Trump in action in previous debates so, hopefully, she will avoid falling into this trap. There is an old saying, “you never wrestle with a pig because you just get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.”
If I were Harris, I would make it a point to ask Trump three questions during the debate: 1) Who was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election? 2) Will you pardon the January 6th rioters who have been convicted? and 3) Will you accept the results of the 2024 election regardless of who wins and agree to a peaceful transfer of power? It is important for the American people to see how he answers these questions. He will, of course, weasel word his answer to each one, but it is important for people to watch him squirm to answer questions that should have a simple yes or no answer.
Given Trump’s increasingly unhinged campaign speeches, I am more and more convinced that his handlers want to minimize the number of those encounters which is why he is under ‘house arrest’ in Mar a Lago for much of the time. The old Trump would be on the campaign trail all the time. He relished the adulation. That seems to have changed these days. Trump’s team seems to be implementing more of a ‘do no harm’ type of strategy.
I find this extremely concerning because it tells me that the Republicans are not truly confident Trump can win the election outright so they are preparing to implement the strategy of disrupting the vote counting by failing to certify election results in hopes that the election will ultimately be decided by the House of Representatives which is almost a guaranteed win for Trump. Election deniers from 2020 are already in control of elections in a number of swing states so I believe there is a 100 percent probability of this scenario playing out to some extent.
The Republicans will do everything in their power to install Trump in the White House, not because they honestly believe he will be the best president, but because he will be the most compliant so they can attain their end goals. Trump in the White House will look like the movie, “Weekend at Bernie’s,” with the Heritage Foundation and Christian nationalists working together to prop Trump up.
The last debate between Trump and Biden sunk Biden’s re-election chances. Could the Harris-Trump debate put a serious dent in the Trump campaign? We’ll see. If Trump does poorly, the excuses put forth by Trump, the conservative media and his Republican toadies will make the ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuse look like a work from Shakespeare and the resulting narrative spinning could adversely affect the earth’s magnetic field.
Let the games begin.
