Harris: Trump is going to lie
Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris is prepping people getting ready to tune in to Tuesday’s presidential debate for the torrent of lies that will come out of the mouth of ex-president Donald Trump.
“We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth. We should be prepared for the fact that he is probably going to speak a lot of untruths,” Harris said in an interview with syndicated radio host Rickey Smiley that was broadcast on Monday.
I mean, yeah, Trump lies, and as a strategy, if we can say he does this as a strategy, it’s worked for him.
That said, Trump lies like the rest of us blink – reflexively, uncontrollably, unconsciously.
Harris isn’t telling you something you don’t already know; she’s just prepping the battlefield, as it were.
“He’s going to lie,” she said in the interview. “He has a playbook that he has used in the past, be it, you know, his attacks on President Obama or Hillary Clinton, so we should expect that some of that might come out.”
Dumb questions
We like to pretend that we want questions from the moderators “on the issues,” but we neither actually want that – there’s a reason C-SPAN doesn’t ever beat Fox News in the ratings – nor do we actually expect to get that.
“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis will serve as the moderators for the debate.
Will they ask Harris and Trump to delineate their positions on how to give Americans better access to affordable health insurance?
Doubtful.
You’ll probably get one on inflation, though it’s highly unlikely that Trump will be pressed on his harebrained scheme to impose tariffs on foreign goods, and how that would exacerbate inflation worries.
Expect a run of personality questions: why are Democrats referring to Republicans as “weird,” was Trump wrong to question Harris’ ethnicity, will the two agree to another debate.
If we get to anything in foreign policy, odds are that we get one question, and that it will be about Israel, which isn’t near the top of our actual national-security interests, but is in the wheelhouse of Trump, or so he thinks, given how much he talks about it on the trail.
The first dirty little secret to these things
The moderators will almost certainly ignore the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is, for reasons including the threat to NATO, which Trump wants to destabilize, our most important foreign-policy issue, and they will ignore China, our top economic geopolitical rival, because those are issues Trump won’t be able to sound coherent on.
Here’s where I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret with this: the questions are going to be tilted so as to seem “fair” to Trump.
This is why you saw Harris working the refs with her comments on the radio about Trump being ready to “tell lies.”
It’s an uphill battle.
Trump and his stooges have been working the refs for nine years to get the media to play things in his favor.
This is how he can have press conferences with no questions from the media and not get called out on it, how he can offer up garbled word salads and have it cleaned up for him in post-production into being reasonably coherent soundbites, how pollsters can put their thumbs on the scale in the crosstabs to make polls say whatever they want them to say.
Donald Trump as a viable, serious politician is entirely a creation of the American news media, which is more than willing to elevate a carnival huckster like Trump over boring pols like Jeb Bush (remember him?).
The reason: because Trump will say and do anything, no matter how stupid or outlandish, to get attention – and attention, to the networks, to the New York Times and Washington Post, means ratings, means subscribers, and ultimately, means money.
The second dirty little secret
You’re going to think your favored candidate going in was the winner, no matter how poorly they did, or how great the other side’s person did.
Oh, sure, no doubt, a lot of us are going to be watching. We might get close to the record viewership for a presidential debate set back in 2016, when 84 million people tuned in to see Trump and Clinton go at it.
If the polls are to be believed, roughly 10 to 12 percent of us are either undecided or on the fence enough with who we think we support now to change our minds.
That would translate, if we get to the 84 million-viewer mark, to around 8 or 9 million of us being in the target audience.
The rest are watching to root for their favorite team – to hoot and holler when our candidate gets in a zinger, to howl in protest when the other side says something out of bounds, and to complain about the dumb moderators.
And to play drinking games.
Drinking game ideas
Take a shot when …
- Trump calls Harris a “communist.”
- Harris calls out “another Trump lie.”
- Harris mentions Roe v. Wade.
- Trump claims most people wanted Roe v. Wade sent back to the states.
- Trump mentions Afghanistan.
- Harris points out Trump has called military heroes “suckers and losers.”
- Trump tries to say he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Israel.
- Harris uses the words “cease fire.”
- Trump goes on and on about inflation.
- Harris eviscerates Trump’s tariff idea.
- Trump brags about his crowd sizes, and whines that the media never talk about his big crowds.
- Harris makes a certain hand gesture when she talks about Trump’s fixation with crowd sizes.
- Trump complains about being called “weird,” then uses the word “weird” 19 times in a row to reinforce the point.
- Harris agrees that Trump is “weird.”
- Trump, who most certainly is not “weird,” then says immigrants in Ohio are eating cats.
- Harris, after Trump says immigrants in Ohio are eating cats, puts Trump in a front facelock and chokes him out.
Careful: there is such a thing as alcohol poisoning.
Video: What to watch for in the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate
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Chris Graham
