Fallout from the presidential debate between
Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee former
president Donald Trump has shown Harris solidifying her dominant position.
Trump increasingly looks as if the anger he has been displaying is a way to
hide the fear that he is losing control.
After debates, surrogates for a nominee talk to journalists
in what’s known as a “spin room,” where they try to spin the event in favor of
their candidate. John Bowden of The Independent described his
time in last night’s spin room as “the strangest moments of my political
career.” As usual, Republican surrogates immediately attacked the moderators
for fact-checking the debate.
But it was clear, Bowden wrote, that the campaign officials
were panicking. Even Fox News Channel reporters said that Trump had performed
badly, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the debate a “disaster.” But
MAGA Republicans, whom Trump has elevated far beyond any position they could
achieve without him, were lashing out on his behalf.
Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance attacked
the moderators and doubled down on the lie that Haitian immigrants in
Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets, despite statements from
Springfield police and the town manager that there is no evidence for such a
statement. Anti-immigrant Trump advisor Stephen Miller melted down when
Hispanic reporter José María Del Pino asked him where he got his figures saying
that crime in Venezuela had dropped dramatically.
The Trump campaign had told reporters that Vance would be the top surrogate for the evening, but after the debate, Trump himself appeared in the spin room to override his surrogates’ attempts to blame his performance on the moderators and instead assure reporters that he had won the debate.
It is
highly unusual for a candidate to go to the spin room in person, and his
appearance demonstrated that Trump was aware that he was in trouble. Reporters
seemed to agree: “If you won tonight, why are you here?” one can be heard
saying to him. “Why not let the performance speak for itself?”
“Trump has come in the spin room and he is desperately trying
to get the attention that I think he needs as oxygen at this point,” an MSNBC
reporter told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. “Is he literally standing there like
he’s his own surrogate trying to get people to talk to him about his own
performance?” Maddow asked. “Wow. That’s something. That is not a sign of
strength or confidence in your own performance when you’re trying to extend
past the final bell….”
Answering questions did not appear to help him. When asked
once again to answer whether he would veto a national abortion bill, he
answered: “It was a perfect answer on abortion, and I’ve done a great job on
that, and I’ve brought our country together.” And then he walked out.
All day, he posted and reposted statements that he had won the debate—including a message of support from former Tenet Media commentator Benny Johnson, whose paycheck was paid by Russia—but it was hard to miss that Trump’s performance was historically bad. Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, said that “[a]cross the board,’ a “focus group of swing voters from swing states” thought Harris won the debate.
Longtime Republican pollster Frank Luntz went on record saying that Trump’s
debate performance would cost him the presidential race. The Harris campaign’s
ongoing trolling of Trump was perhaps even harsher: it posted the entire hour
and forty-minute debate as a campaign ad.
Meanwhile, by 2:00 this afternoon, Taylor Swift’s endorsement
had prompted 337,826 people to start the process of registering to vote.
All day today, reporters fact checked Trump’s
statements, proving them lies. But lies have never damaged him; they reinforce
his dominance by forcing subordinates to agree that the person in charge gets
to determine what reality is. Victims must surrender either their integrity or
their ownership of their own perceptions; in either case, once they have agreed
to a deliberate lie, it becomes harder to challenge later ones since that means
acknowledging the other times they caved.
That’s why the lie about the size of the crowd at Trump’s
inauguration is so important: it is the foundational lie on which all the
others stand. Harris, who spent her legal career dealing with criminals and
abusers who depend on this technique, knew exactly how to undermine it. She
made fun of it, making his “obsession with crowd sizes” a national joke. The
jokes set him off not only because he cannot bear to be laughed at, but also
because challenging that lie challenges all the others.
Following Harris’s lead, posters on social media turned to
memes today, setting Trump’s assertion that “they’re eating the cats,” to
Vince Guaraldi’s theme “Linus and Lucy” from the Peanuts movies, for example,
and designing the same statement as a Dr. Seuss book, as well as posting
pictures of live pets wrapped in bread and rolls.
Observers correctly noted that the racist trope of immigrants
eating pets dehumanizes marginalized people who are already vulnerable, putting
them in danger. While posters and media have repeatedly pointed out that the
Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are there legally and have revitalized
the city, making fun of those sharing such a stupid lie has a different kind of
potential to defang it.
And, aside from Trump’s evident worry, there are signs that
Trump is vulnerable. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had scheduled a
vote today on the continuing resolution to fund the government before
the government will have to shut down on October 1. That measure included the
voter suppression measure Trump demanded yesterday in all caps. Today,
Johnson pulled the vote.
Republicans are also breaking with Trump over the idea of an interest rate cut. Trump does not want the Fed to lower the cost of borrowing money before the election despite the softening job market—cheaper money should bolster the economy and provide more jobs—and has vowed that if he is reelected, he will take control of the Fed, which is now an independent institution.
But Republicans are backing away from his demands. Representative
Dan Meuser, a Trump supporter from the swing state of Pennsylvania, told Jasper
Goodman and Eleanor Mueller of Politico that he supports a
cut. “You’ve got to put the greater good ahead of looking political,” he
said.
Today the share price of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), the owner of the Truth Social platform, fell to new lows. The stock fell more than 10% today, ending the day at $16.68 from a high over $60 a share in April. In May, Trump’s stock was valued at more than $6 billion, although the company is losing money and has very few users.
The drop over the
last several months has wiped away more than $4 billion of that value. Trump
needs money for his legal bills and settlements, as well as his businesses, and
can begin to cash out on his stock soon, but selling much of it was always
going to be a problem because if he dumped it, the bottom would fall out. Now
selling is a problem because its value is dropping.
In the face of concern that Trump and Vance have been
suggesting they would challenge the results of the 2024 election, the
Department of Homeland Security took steps to protect the January 6, 2025,
session of Congress that will count the electoral votes that will decide the
presidency. They have put January 6, 2025, on the same security level as
the Super Bowl or a major event like the U.N. General Assembly.
Finally, yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, the day terrorists from the al-Qaeda network used four civilian airplanes as weapons against the United States, and Trump used its commemoration to demonstrate another dominance trait: that he will behave however he wishes. Trump attended a remembrance with right-wing extremist Laura Loomer, who has shared not only the false pet-eating conspiracy theory, but also the false theory that “9/11 was an Inside Job!”
Recently, she posted an appalling attack
on Vice President Harris. Today she posted that she joined Trump
because “I believe in unconditional loyalty to those who are deserving. And
there is nobody more deserving of our loyalty and unwavering support than
Donald Trump."
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris each
issued statements about the anniversary. Biden vowed that the nation will never
forget the attack, those lost, their families, and “the heroic citizens and
survivors who rushed to help their fellow Americans. And never forget that when
faced with evil—and an enemy that sought to tear us apart—we endured.”
Harris echoed Biden. She also emphasized the national unity
the crisis created as people came together to deny the terrorists the
achievement of their goal “to attack and destroy our way of life—our democracy,
our freedoms, and everything we hold dear as Americans.” She thanked the
military personnel who served in Afghanistan and elsewhere to root out
terrorism, and urged Americans to “reflect on what binds us together as one:
the greatest privilege on Earth, the pride and privilege of being an American.”
All three were at a commemoration of 9/11. Trump and Harris
shook hands, and he tried the dominance trick of using the handshake to pull
Harris toward him, which she firmly resisted. His social media website
confirmed that the world of professional wrestling is very much on Trump’s mind
as he apparently tried to reassure himself he, and not Kamala Harris, is the
dominant political figure in the country. He clearly doesn’t want to agree to
another debate and is trying to spin his reluctance as a show of power.
“In the World of Boxing or U[ltimate] F[ighting]
C[hampionship] when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and
scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’” he wrote. “Well, it’s no
different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has
us WINNING, in one case, 92–8, so why would I do a Rematch?”
—Heather Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/11/republicans-defy-trump-fed-rate-cut-00178758
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/11/congress-election-certification-protection-riot-00178809
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/business/trump-truth-social-stock/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/11/us/politics/trump-media-stock-truth-social-debate.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-911-laura-loomer-conspiracy-theorist-rcna170743
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highbrow_nobrow/status/1833828542905295049
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Truth Social, September
11, 2024, at 12:01 PM.
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