Team Trump Is Freaking Out That He’ll Blow the Debate With Harris

https://newrepublic.com/post/185715/team-trump-nervous-harris-debate

35 Comments

  1. I sincerely hope the post-debate media report is as accurate and brutal as it was for Biden. I don’t want to see any of these “Trump appears fired up and strong, while Kamala stumbled on a question about the border” headlines.

  2. Anyone think that these stories of Trump’s team freaking out are being leaked in order to set expectations so low that Trump can’t possibly underperform them?

  3. Trump’s handlers have such a low opinion about their candidate that they don’t believe he can handle himself for 90 minutes without the benefit of a mute button, even though Trump explicitly requested hot mikes. Very sad.

  4. How is that possible considering he is the best person debating ever? I watched him last time, with tears in my eyes. I was in awe.

  5. BarbellsandBurritos on

    I just want Kamala to hit him with the “I don’t know what he’s talking about, and I don’t think he knows either” line that he used on Biden.

  6. WhileFalseRepeat on

    > Donald Trump’s campaign team is worried that he’s going to mess up in his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday.
    >
    > Harris will have rhetorical skills that she honed in her days as a prosecutor, which could easily rattle a convicted felon showing signs of cognitive decline.

    Trump is toast.

  7. So they’re freaking out a potential bad debate performance but absolutely fine with Trump alienating women, blacks, Jews, vets, and active military? Campaign of delusional idiots

  8. They were panicking over the first debate and the shitbag was allowed to simply lie and ramble with impunity. Same thing is going to happen here 

  9. Orbitingkittenfarm on

    Stop lowering the bar. Winning a debate is mostly about exceeding expectations and this is basically doing the Trump team’s work for them.

  10. sorospaidmetosaythis on

    > If Trump is frustrated, he may resort to personal insults, taking aim at Harris’s race and gender and hurting voters’ perceptions, which some of his fellow Republicans have criticized as counterproductive.

    That would be a real shame if he hurt their chances of ending the United States as a constitutional republic. Poor things really want that to happen, quite desperately.

  11. I can almost guarantee that he’s preparing to attack her on trigger-worthy past topics. Controversial past events at D.A. Etc.

    I hope she’s preparing to address those topics, because like it or not, undecided voters who know nothing about policies will sadly care.

  12. I honestly doubt his performance will have a large impact on the people voting for him. By this point, his voters should know he is an idiot and they just don’t care

  13. He’s going to blow it but they’re going to say he won or held his own anyway. While bagging on Harris about some manufactured bullshit issue(s).

  14. Trump blew the first debate. Nothing he said made sense or answered any of the questions. Biden’s performance allow Trump to get away with his own sh*t-show on stage.

  15. In an article from the future: “41% of viewers think Trump won the debate”. No matter what, it’s the same people.

  16. Weekly-Somewhere-674 on

    It’s very important that he does AND that Kamala looks strong. Banking on him just being the massive fucking numb nuts that he is isn’t enough.

  17. BadgeOfDishonour on

    There are tricks to talking to a Malignant Narcissist – I’ve lived with one, so sadly I have a lot of first-hand experience.

    That Harris can leave the room when this is over and never see him again lets her play far dirtier with those tricks than I was ever able to.

    One of the big ones, the best ones to launch at them, is to predict their response. They *hate* being predicted. Most people hate it, but the Malignant Narcissist will flip their shit trying to keep you from being “right”.

    If Harris ever wants to metaphorically take out one of his kneecaps during the debate, all she has to do is say something like “We all know your position on X is going to be Y”. That’s it. That’s all she has to do and he’ll lose his mind trying to prove her wrong.

    If Team Harris knows that Trump has one or two specific policy points he intends to hit, or wants him to completely backtrack on something he has publicly promised, this is when they should apply that metaphorical crowbar to his kneecap.

    I’m sure Team Harris has experts in discussing how to deal with this sort of narcissist. I hope she keeps that trick in her back pocket for the debate.

  18. one_bean_hahahaha on

    Trump is a showman, but all he has in a debate is being the master of the gish gallop and with getting into a woman’s personal space. If that doesn’t work on Harris, if she stays on message and calls him out on his bullshit, he really doesn’t have anything else.

  19. It almost sounds like things like this are being intentionally leaked, so the bar is set so low for Trump where as long as he doesn’t openly drool on stage he will “exceed all expectations” and Harris if she doesn’t soundly get Trump in a choke hold and make him yell “Uncle” she will have not done as well as expected.

  20. Neat-Boysenberry-67 on

    It’s pretty telling that they are more worried about him blowing a debate than they are about him blowing Putin.

  21. Despite knowing Trump’s mental weakness, and and knowing that Kamala is far sharper than Biden, I’m still incredibly nervous about this debate. Everything is riding on what happens in November.

  22. They don’t know if a happy trump or angry trump will show up…HOW THE FUCK DID WE END UP WITH A TODDLER AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE??

  23. TerminalObsessions on

    I’m hopeful he blows it, that’s for sure. That said, Reddit should temper its expectations – Kamala isn’t a great debater. Her performance in the Democratic primary cycle of ’20 was middling, as was her showing against Pence in the VP contest.

    A lot of folks seem to think that being an attorney means she’s eloquent and talented at public speaking. You’d be surprised – some of the most awkward, clumsy talkers I know are litigators by profession. If you going in expecting Daniel Webster, you’ll be in for a rude awakening.

    I hope she slays, but the reality is that we’ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief if she gets through without a single gaffe that the legacy media can blast from now through November. Her goal here isn’t to destroy Trump. She can’t. Nobody can. The media and his cult will *always* give him a pass; there isn’t a single thing she can say on stage to change it. It doesn’t matter if she gets him red in the face, it doesn’t matter if he kicks over the podium and storms away, he’s still going to pull 45%+ in the popular vote.

    Kamala’s goal is to explain herself to voters who don’t know her, present an air of stability and calm (which could be undermined by goading Trump too often), and not give the media an opening to tear her down.

  24. cut_rate_revolution on

    Well yeah. He only looked better vs Biden because he could form sentences and words better, not because he made any fucking sense.

  25. Grand-Judgment-6497 on

    Ignore this and all articles like it. Before every Trump debate, articles like this appear. It serves the purpose of lowering our expectations. When the debate finally arrives, and he manages to speak in complete sentences–even he’s incapable of uttering a word of truth–he sounds better than expected. It’s an automatic, zero-effort “win” for him, and I’m not taking the bait. Notice there are no articles about how worried Harris’ team is. We all take for granted that she will meet the basic ability to speak words in order. Don’t fall for this tactic of creating two sets of standards.

  26. Since he won the coin toss to go last in closing, I hope she uses her last few seconds to introduce him and push him into a death spiral. “And now enjoy a word salad from my 78 year old opponent who has no detailed policies, doesn’t know where he is, and thinks he is running against Joe Biden or even Obama…”

  27. Come on, we already know what is going to happen.

    Trump will lie and go off on tangents on his favorite gripes and won’t actually answer the questions he’s being asked, and the media will nevertheless he was forceful or energetic or whatever blah blah they’ll use because his garbage responses are so normalized it’s par for the course and he’ll get a pass.

    Harris, on the other hand, will mispronounce a single word and the news will be full of calls for her to drop out of the race immediately.