The Harris Campaign’s Cheap New Debate Gambit Reveals Its Fears

‘D ebates don’t matter,” goes the old wisdom, “until they do.” Politico offers but one example of that truism, in advance of the first 2020 debate. And note the qualifier employed: “Debates don’t matter . . . unless someone faceplants.” Of course, back then, the first debate may well have mattered significantly: Donald Trump didn’t exactly faceplant, but — because he was suffering from an as-yet-undisclosed bout of Covid himself, one that put Chris Christie, his unlucky debate-prep partner, in the hospital and nearly in his grave — he gave a disastrously interrupting, impatient performance that night.

Very little, in fact, stands out from the almost nonexistent 2020 “shadow” campaign except the image of a blustering, incoherently angry Trump barely allowing an already visibly diminished Joe Biden to finish a sentence during that first encounter. For a nation still largely on lockdown and long since tired of Trump’s useless public fulminations, it was probably the final nail in the coffin of his narrow November loss. And that performance is driving Kamala Harris’s latest cheap campaign stunt — insisting on hot mics during their one debate on September 10 for ABC, despite a prior written agreement that the candidates’ microphones would be turned off when it wasn’t their turn to speak.

Because plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Debates matter, now more than ever. Everyone understands this after the events of late June. And while Covid is long gone and Joe Biden more recently departed (from the race — though by all indications this is a man whose mental concierge checked out years ago), the Democratic candidate is still, for very different reasons, running a contemptuous bubble campaign designed to keep her away from even a single unscripted exchange. Biden himself adopted this strategy (to conceal his mental decline) and was wholly undone by the first debate, simply because Trump sat back and let the old man speak. Given Harris’s identical approach — adopted this time to conceal her progressive vacuity and stupidity — and her past performance in similar situations, her team is rightly terrified of that one awful unscripted moment.

So the new play is to kick up a cloud of dust and try to bait Trump into defeating himself. Per Politico, the Harris campaign is now asking to change one of the pre-agreed debate rules. When the Trump campaign first agreed with Biden to two presidential debates — including one before either party’s nomination was formalized, a concession Trump may forever regret — one key stipulation was that the microphones be deadened in between each candidate’s response to the moderator, to prevent cross-talk and interruption. Biden’s team wanted it because they knew full well their man wasn’t exactly ready for a fierce free-flowing exchange of ideas. Trump’s team accepted it because they knew full well that his performance in the first 2020 debate had harmed him.

Harris knows that silence played to Trump’s strengths in the June debate, simply by muzzling his worst instincts. Her campaign is now desperate to unleash those instincts. Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, unctuous as always to the point of oleaginousness, issued the provocation on Twitter:

Trump should honor his commitment to debate VP Harris on ABC on Sept 10 and he should reject his handlers’ attempts to muzzle him via a muted microphone.

The VP is ready to debate Trump live and uncensored. Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button

Because Fallon is a poor messenger with tics inherited from the Clinton era, the calculation is far too nakedly displayed: He might as well have written, “Ooh, widdle Donny! Are you a big enough, bad enough man to come onstage and talk to Kween Kamala no holds barred?” The story is, predictably, being incorrectly reported online as a “crisis,” as if there’s anything really to discuss here. Politico’s Zack Stanton describes the two campaigns as being “at an impasse” over the issue, but there is in fact no impasse at all: Harris’s campaign is trying to change rules it already agreed to, and Trump’s campaign is having none of it — they are not fooled and are not taking the bait. Trump spokesman Jason Miller was appropriately dismissive: “If Kamala Harris isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize, that’s their problem. . . . My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump.”

What is appalling even to a confirmed cynic is the rank hypocrisy of the Harris campaign. Do they think we were all born into this life in the last ten minutes, unburdened by memories? It was in the week of August 4 that Team Harris — with the assistance of the mainstream media — was mocking the Trump campaign for wanting to renegotiate the terms of the presidential debates and digging their heels in. Trump’s argument, reasonably enough, was that he had agreed to those terms with Joe Biden — a man who was no longer running. The Harris campaign insisted that Trump was bound by the technical language of the contract his team had signed (which referred only to generic party candidates and not Biden by name). So no — no extra debates, just the one with the Democratic Party’s mystery candidate, explicitly running a mystery campaign. Open the box on January 20 and see what’s inside. They won the argument.

Now? Now they insist the rules be changed. They themselves know they cannot contractually demand this — they are bound — which is why the issue is likely to fade away. But it’s nevertheless rather comical to see the Harris campaign trying so transparently to plan their own Elizabeth Warren “then she persisted” viral TikTok clip weeks in advance. They desperately want video footage — clipped out of context however they need to — of Trump interrupting Harris, to which she responds with a regal “excuse me, Donald, but I’m speaking now” girlboss moment.

Trump would be a fool to do anything except insist on sticking to the rules as they are. More than any other danger right now, Kamala Harris dreads one thing: Being forced to answer a question on national television, without anyone there to bail her out by interrupting or changing the subject. ABC’s moderators won’t ask Harris the questions she deserves to be asked about her obscene prior political positions, her responsibility for a failed administration, or her fantasy campaign. That is Trump’s task to prosecute, on rebuttal. It may be the only chance he gets.