More state polling is out showing that the presidential race is unbelievably close, which means the debate next week is going to mean pretty much everything.
If Donald Trump shows up and mops the floor with Kamala Harris or if Kamala Harris shows up and shockingly outperforms, that could be the deciding factor in this election.
What are Kamala’s lines of attack going to be? The answer here is that she is going to have to memorize a lot because she doesn’t have the ability to stick and move. She has no capacity to actually adjust on her feet to the things happening around her.
And so she’s going to have to memorize a lot. And her team is probably planning for that.
But that is why — despite all the protestations about how they’re mad that the microphones will be closed because they were hoping for some sort of Donald Trump silly statement in the middle of one of her statements so she can claim she’s being interrupted and victimized — you could see a world where it actually benefits her that Donald Trump can’t actually interject anything. That’s because if she’s got a bunch of questions memorized, then she can spit them out the way that you would in rote fashion on a seventh-grade social studies exam.
There are nine themes Donald Trump should pursue in the debate — and three things he should not. He doesn’t have to hit all nine, but these are the themes he should pursue.
Theme number one: Harris hides from any possibility of adversarial questions. Trump should start by thanking her for showing up, saying:
I’m so glad that you showed up because frankly, no one’s been able to ask you a question. You’ve been running away from every question. You pretended that you had earphones in your ear to avoid questions from the media. You don’t take questions because you don’t understand your own policies. You don’t agree with your own policies. You’ve changed your policies over and over.
Theme number two: She’s the incumbent. She owns this.
During the debate, Harris is going to make a lot of promises. She’s going to talk about how she’s going to lower inflation. She’s going to fight for the middle class. She’s going to shut down that border.
And what he should say over and over is, “So why didn’t you do it?” Every time they go back to him, he should say:
You know, Kamala, I hear you making a lot of promises. I notice that you’re the vice-president of the United States today. I’m not the incumbent. You are the incumbent. You own the inflation. You own the Afghanistan decision that left 19 million women in abject sexual slavery, locking them in the basement, getting tens of thousands of our allies killed, presumably leaving billions of dollars in military equipment over there and getting 13 American servicepeople killed. You are the last person in the room on that one. You’re the incumbent. You own it. So when you say you’re going to change things, why should we trust you? We know what a Kamala Harris administration looks like cause we’re in the middle of one and it sucks.
If she says I’m going to do X, he should immediately say, “So why didn’t you do it?”
Theme three: Harris is wildly dishonest. It’s not just that she’s vague; she is totally and completely dishonest.
And here he should hammer her on Joe Biden’s health. It turns out that 80% of Americans believe that they were lied to about Joe Biden’s health. 80% of Americans believe that people who continue to maintain that Joe Biden is totally with it are lying to them.
He should hammer her on that ridiculous interview she did with Dana Bash on CNN. She literally said that Joe Biden is “with it,” that he’s strong; he’s verbal.
Donald Trump should say:
You keep saying that, that he’s healthy and that he’s with it. That raises a couple of questions. One, why are you lying? Everybody knows that you’re lying. But that also raises another question, which is, why are you here? Why are you here if he’s so with it? If he’s so well why are you here? What gives you the reason to be the nominee? Is he ‘with it’ or is he senile? Are you lying to the American people?
The question of honesty is a really big one for Kamala Harris, because she is a liar. She lies an awful lot. Trump should point out that she is doing ads in which she walks next to his border wall and pretends that she’s hard on border security. She’s lying.
She can’t even keep her accent straight when she’s in Detroit. She starts dropping into a Southern accent, and the minute she’s in Pittsburgh, she suddenly sounds like she’s a business school student at Hofstra.
Theme four: Harris is totally incoherent.
You know that during this debate she’s going to drop a word salad. She’ll start waving her arms around making the weird hand motions.
When she finishes her answer, he should say the exact same thing to her that he said to Joe Biden. He should say:
I don’t know what she said and I don’t think she does either. That was nonsensical. I said that about her predecessor in this race, Joe Biden, because he legitimately didn’t know what he was saying at any given time because of his mental problems. But you don’t know what you’re talking about because you legitimately don’t know what you’re talking about.You can’t hold firm on a single policy. You can’t explicate any of your policy positions without randomly exploring the wilds of empty, vague rhetoric. You spin out bumper stickers and mix that in with nonsense, it doesn’t make it a coherent policy. And you’re incoherent. The American people deserve a president who actually knows their own policies.
Theme number five: She’s radical.
This is perfectly obvious. Kamala Harris is the most radical presidential candidate in modern American history, which is to say all of American history, because if you’re a radical candidate, then your radicalism has likely flowered in the United States in the last half-century or so. She is easily the most radical candidate in American history.
He should say:
You told the truth about your positions in 2019 and 2020, when you ran for president. You say now that you don’t believe any of the things you believed then. So I want to know why you switched. What did you learn? Were you super-wrong? Then you say that you have the same exact values that you held then. So why are you switching all of your actual policies? Could it be that you are not switching your policies and you are lying and you are just as radical as you ever were and now you’re lying to get past Pennsylvania, for example.
You wanted to ban fracking in 2019 and 2020. That is radical. And now you say you don’t want to ban fracking. Based on what? You now believe fracking is safe and wonderful? I don’t believe you. You actually co-sponsored a bill saying that by 2035 there should not be gas-powered engines in the United States sold on the market. Now, you say you don’t want an electric vehicle mandate, but you were also asked just last week by Axios whether you would veto such a bill and you had no answer.
So I think you’re lying. Do you want to decriminalize border crossings? Back in 2019 and 2020. you said that you did want to decriminalize border crossings. When you were attorney general of the state of California, you sued to try to prevent the federal government from cracking down on sanctuary cities. So where are you on that? Should we decriminalize border crossings?
Now you say you’re tough on the border. And if you say that you’ve shifted, I want to know why. You said that you wanted to propose a tax on unrealized capital gains. Even your gigantic billionaire supporter, Mark Cuban, says that will destroy the stock market. So what’s the story?
You are pro-race reparations in the United States in 2019 and 2020. Did something magically change? Or are you just that radical?
You’re pro-abortion until birth. You’re pro-transing the children. The most radical candidate in American history.
Theme six. Harris is absolutely weak. Super-duper weak. Trump should say:
So you want to pretend that you are hard-core on the border. You are not. You’re presided over the single greatest invasion via the southern border in the history of our nation in terms of illegal immigration, bar none, not close. You say that when you were A.G. in California you cracked down hard on crime. Really? Did you? Because there was actually a massive crime lab failure that released 1000 criminals onto the streets because you were so soft on crime. You were a San Francisco prosecutor, and now you want to be a San Francisco president.
You say you’re going to be tough on terrorism. You’re going to have a lethal military. You haven’t even unleashed that lethal military on the Houthis, a ragtag bunch of bandits who have held up all shipping in the Red Sea.
What is it you would say you do around here? If you’re so tough, if you’re so rough on the world stage, that people actually fear you, why does no one fear you? Why are all of our enemies on the move? Russia invaded Ukraine while you were vice president. Iran has activated from seven different fronts attacks on Israel while you’re the vice president. China is casting its eyes at Taiwan while you are vice president.
They don’t think you’re tough. Xi doesn’t think you’re tough. Putin doesn’t think you’re tough. The Iranians don’t think you’re tough.
They think you’re a mark.
Theme number seven: Harris is a terrible manager. Trump should say:
You want to manage the economy of the United States? You’ve never run a popsicle stand. Your campaign was so bad in 2020 that there were vast articles about how terrible that campaign was. You had to drop out before you even got to your own home state. The amazing thing about you, Kamala, is that you somehow became the presidential nominee for a major American party after never winning a single primary vote in your entire life.
That’s unprecedented. It’s insane. You’ve never run a good campaign. You nearly lost your attorney general’s race in the far-left state of California to a Republican. That’s how incompetent a campaigner you are. You only won your Senate race in California because you ran against another Democrat, Loretta Sanchez.
You have a 93% turnover rate in the office of the vice-presidency — where you do nothing all day.
Now you want to manage America? You couldn’t even manage a campaign to win a nomination.
Theme eight: Harris is not just radical, she’s a threat to democracy.
Trump should say:
You’re not just radical. You are a threat to democracy. You have pledged to completely revise the bargain of the Constitution between the people in their government. You have pledged that if you become president and if you have a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, you will immediately kill the filibuster.
You will then use a bare Senate majority in order to ram through a wide variety of radical proposals, ranging from stacking the Supreme Court to changing voting rules to mandating ballot harvesting across the nation to adding states to the United States Senate to permanently stack the United States Senate in favor of Democrats.
The administration under which you serve has used more executive orders than any administration in modern history. That administration has tried to use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in order to cram down a vaccine mandate on 80 million Americans.
You are a threat to democracy. You want to claim I am a threat to democracy, because there were riots on January 6? How about the fact you presided as a vice presidential candidate over some of the worst riots in American history and I say presided over because you tried to bail out the rioters in the Black Lives Matter riots.
Theme number nine: Harris is simply not up to the job.
Trump should say:
You failed at every single job Joe Biden ever gave you. He put you in charge of the space program. And now we can’t even have a rocket get up to the International Space Station to get down our astronauts. Joe Biden put you in charge of the border in the Northern Triangle and illegal immigration skyrocketed. Joe Biden made you part of the Ukraine team and Ukraine was promptly invaded.
You were totally sidelined in the White House, according to multiple reports, because you were so incompetent. In fact, you were an afterthought. The only reason we’re even talking about you right now is because your boss went totally senile and then you were rammed into the nomination by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. There’s literally no issue on which you have been given control that you have not botched beyond all belief. You’re not up to the job.
Those are the nine themes that Trump has to hit. It doesn’t have to be all of them. But he should hit a lot of them.
It should be a target-rich environment for President Trump. Harris has been able to shift this race to pretend she’s not the incumbent. Somehow she is running against Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That’s a lie and everybody knows it.
This brings us to the stuff that Trump cannot do.
Number one: He cannot lose his cool. The Kamala Harris campaign is betting on him losing his cool. This is the real reason why they’re upset about the lack of open mics during the actual debate. They are really pushing hard for the open mics because they were hoping to prompt him into a moment where he stepped on her toes and then she could claim that she was a victim. She could go crying to the audience.
They are desperately hoping for Trump to overstep his boundaries and lose his temper. And then Harris can whine, “I’m speaking. I’m speaking, I’m speaking.”
They’re waiting for that moment. So he can’t give them that moment.
Number two: He cannot make personal insinuations. This one’s really hard because, frankly, her life story is filled with stuff like that. And Trump loves that kind of stuff.
But Trump should definitely avoid her history with Willie Brown. He should avoid it because it’s not a winning tactic, even though it’s true.
It is amazing that we have now reached a point in the United States of America where it is considered more controversial and taboo to mention the fact that Kamala Harris got her start by having sex with Willie Brown, one of the most important men in California politics, than the fact that she actually did it.
He shouldn’t mention that. We are supposed to believe her rise was all done on political skill and her wherewithal and her strength. It’s no problem that she actually got her start by sleeping with one of the most powerful men in California politics who overtly talked about how much he helped her on her way up.
But Trump shouldn’t touch it because he will be labeled a sexist and it will open him up to all sorts of allegations about his own sex life. But most importantly, it will let her play the victim, which she desperately wants. That’s her last resort: she is Donald Trump’s victim.
He should not give that to her.
Finally, and this is the biggest one of all, he should not waste time on personal grievances. That is very hard for President Trump. His rallies are really funny and fun — until he gets to his Festivus grievances.
He’s been doing this a lot less lately; he’s been avoiding this. He’s been talking about her policies; he gave an excellent policy speech on economics just yesterday.
But he has an unfortunate habit. When prompted to talk about how the election was stolen and January 6 and the victims of January 6 and all that kind of stuff, it’s unhelpful, even if he believes it.
The same thing is true, for example, if he is asked about his comments regarding Kamala Harris’s race, which will certainly come up.
What he should say is:
Look, what I was talking about is your radical dishonesty when it comes to how you code-switch. You go from audience to audience. You change your accent in order to appeal to different audiences. And it is really, really dishonest. But of course, you’re black. Everyone knows you’re black. That is clearly true.
If he says that, that will be the end of it. But if he follows down the rabbit holes, that is what she is hoping for. That would be a large-scale mistake.
This is a very winnable debate for President Trump. Her entire strategy is to throw him off his game. Her entire strategy is to make him mad. Her entire strategy is to have him demonstrate on the stage why he is unfit. And so she will say nasty things or try to prod him.
He does need to push her on some issues.
But if he keeps his cool, he’ll be in good shape.
And I think he will.
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