Donald Trump thinks he’s showing up for a debate on Sept. 10. Kamala Harris should turn it into a trial.
Before she got into politics, Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. She’s undoubtedly handled commitment proceedings where it was necessary to convince a jury that a defendant has a mental disorder that makes them dangerous.
A good trial isn’t just about evidence; it’s about weaving that evidence together into a compelling story. Sometimes, it’s a matter of fitting the small, seemingly unrelated pieces of evidence together that really convinces a jury.
In Trump’s case, that should be easy to do.
For years, Trump’s weird statements and outright lies have been dismissed merely as “Trump being Trump.” How many times have we heard that you have to take the ex-president “seriously but not literally”? By normalizing Trump’s behavior as just the way he is, we’ve given him a pass on statements and behaviors that would have destroyed any other candidate.
In other words, even Trump’s future bad behavior has already been “priced in” by voters.
That works to Trump’s advantage — unless you can take what everybody already knows about him and reframe it. So when Trump begins lying about the 2020 election, for example, or the Biden administration’s record, or the polls, etc., Kamala Harris should look straight into the camera and say: “What you just heard is nonsense. But I don’t think Trump is lying. I think he actually believes all the ridiculous things he says. When you get that 3 a.m. call, you have to have both feet firmly planted in reality. Donald Trump doesn’t.
“The first requirement for the presidency,” she should continue, “before you get to policy, is having a firm grip on reality. Donald Trump wants to solve a whole bunch of problems that only exist inside his head. He thinks violent crime is out of control, but the crime rate is dropping and has been for years. He wants to ‘Drill, baby, drill’ to fight an imaginary energy crisis. America is producing more oil and gas now than at any time in history. He gets fixated on crowd size and ratings. He even thinks he can control the weather to his advantage.
“This is not amusing. It’s very sad. Let’s call these what they are. They’re delusions and they are getting worse. We can’t afford to have a delusional president in today’s world.”
Every time Donald Trump lies, whether it’s about election denial, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Russia or whatever, Harris should begin her response by framing the lie as part of his delusional disorder. And when Trump blows up at this treatment, as he will, his overreaction becomes yet another exhibit in the case she is building against him.
One big advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to spend your whole time fact-checking Trump. That’s a losing strategy in a debate setting because he can confidently assert lies and misinformation far faster than you can explain why he’s wrong. Confidently asserting that Trump is spouting nonsense and then explaining why that’s important — instead of trying to parse out the lies themselves — works because even his supporters recognize that Trump often lies and exaggerates.
There’s currently a dispute between the campaigns regarding whether one candidate’s microphone should be off while the other is speaking during the debate. The amusing thing is that now, contrasting the big Trump-Biden debate this summer, it’s the Trump campaign that wants to keep the microphones muted. The Harris campaign wants the microphones on so that Trump can be Trump — and everybody can hear it.
This strategy would work best with the microphones off. If Trump can’t interrupt, Harris will have a better opportunity to make her case that Trump is delusional and mentally unfit to be president. And having seen how forceful and relentless Harris can be when she wants to, there is no question that Trump will provide plenty of fireworks after he is forced to stand quietly and listen to Harris humiliate him.
You think Trump got off to a bad start at the National Association of Black Journalists? Just wait until Kamala Harris starts publicly fitting him for a straitjacket.
If you compare the Trump of 2015 with the Trump of today, it’s immediately clear that he has been progressively slipping. Eight years ago, I disagreed with his policies because I thought they were dangerous. I still do, but now many of those policies are both dangerous and untethered from reality. Wanting to build a border wall is one thing. Wanting to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens to fight an imaginary crime wave is something else.
Harris shouldn’t debate Trump, she should prosecute him in the court of public opinion. If she does, God knows there’s no shortage of evidence.
Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.
