Donald Trump’s advisers had a plan: to focus attention on Kamala Harris and paint her as a San Francisco liberal linked to all of Joe Biden’s mistakes.
It didn’t last even a minute.
Harris bemused him from the moment she walked across the stage, introduced herself by name and shook his hand like an eager freshman arriving on campus.
Minutes later, she sprang her trap with a choreographed dig at his rallies, ridiculing his speeches about Hannibal Lecter and cancer-causing windmills and, most scathingly, pointing out that his supporters head for the exits before he finishes speaking.
It struck a chord, as she knew it would.
Donald Trump quickly pivoted to personal attacks on Kamala Harris and wild claims about immigrants during the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.
“We have the biggest demonstrations, the most incredible demonstrations in the history of politics,” he responded, before blaming Harris for the uncontrolled immigration he says motivates his supporters.
‘The people who came in are eating the cats. They’re eating… they’re eating the pets of the people who live there.
“And this is what is happening in our country. It is a disgrace.”
Harris cocked his head, frowned, and put his hand to his chin.
Then she gave the biggest smile and laughed.
Her body language said it all: I can’t believe she took the bait.
Conservative commentator Matt K. Lewis said what the debate lacked in intellectual firepower it made up for in sheer entertainment.
And this betrayed Trump’s long-standing weakness, he said, in his apparent lack of discipline.
“I think the crazy thing is that his team has been saying for days that this was their strategy, that they were going to try to troll Trump and get under his skin,” he said.
“And then he did it.”
Harris made a beeline for Trump as they took the stage. “Kamala Harris,” she said, extending her hand and introducing herself as they met for the first time.
Harris looked at Trump as she spoke, frowning at times.
She laid a series of traps for him that he couldn’t resist activating.
Trump’s advisers have urged him, both privately and publicly, to focus on her and stay away from personal attacks.
Last week, in an article for DailyMail.com, Trump ally Kellyanne Conway laid out the reasoning and explained the advice he gave her when she ran against Hillary Clinton. The same applies to Harris, she said.
“If the race is primarily about you, it’s harder to win. If the race is about both, where people have a clear comparative binary choice and can neither ignore nor unlearn what they learn from and about you, you are the next president,” he wrote.
The plan for the debate was threefold: portray Harris as a lunatic liberal from California; link her to all of Biden’s policies — high prices, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, all of that; and use her own words, that her values have not changed, to pigeonhole her into her leftist record.
Plus, he’s been in office for three and a half years. If he had a plan to fix things, Trump would ask why he hasn’t put it into action yet.
Sometimes he succeeded.
He found a rich vein of attacks by linking Harris to the outbreak of conflicts around the world since Biden came to power.
“She’s worse than Biden, in my opinion. I think he’s the worst president in the history of our country,” he said.
“She will go down in history as the worst vice president in the history of our country, but let me tell you something: she is a terrible negotiator.”
Members of the Escondido Republican Women watch from their headquarters the presidential debate between Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Escondido, California.
Journalists and members of the media look on from the press room as US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump take part in a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
When he spoke, she stared at him, letting his facial expressions do the work. Sometimes she put her hand on her chin, adopting a mocking pose.
He looked ahead as she spoke.
While she remained calm, measured and aware of the details of the policy, he raised his voice.
“She was exquisitely well prepared, she set traps and he chased every rabbit down every hole,” Chris Christie, no Trump fan, said on ABC after the debate ended.
He returned to the track after the second commercial break, in time for his closing statement, when he recalled his talking points.
“So he started saying he was going to do this, he was going to do that. He was going to do all these wonderful things. Why hadn’t he done it?”
The question for regular Trump watchers is whether the debate will change anything. The 78-year-old candidate has long campaigned in a freewheeling style, with unsubstantiated claims and personal attacks.
“While Harris managed to unnerve Trump with her well-prepared attacks, it’s not yet clear that she has overwhelmingly convinced these voters to ultimately make up their minds based on this exchange,” said Ron Bonjean, a veteran Republican congressional strategist.
‘The question now is how much he actually managed to change the situation.
‘However, Trump did himself no favors by agreeing to do this debate.’
It’s also possible that she was strangled by her own speaking time. A tally by CNN showed Harris spoke for 37 minutes and 36 seconds, while Trump used 42 minutes and 52 seconds.