'Like a toddler with a firehose': Trump's absurd debate rhetoric reveals a candidate out of ideas

11 September 2024, 12:17 | Updated: 11 September 2024, 13:29

At some points, it looked like Trump was hoping to get shot again.

The problem is that while his self-image is one of presidential stability, he projects mayhem.

At last night’s debate, the cracks showed.

Trump’s attack lines on Harris are like a toddler with a firehose. Apparently, she has no policies. Or the policies are only “four sentences”. Or they are Biden’s policies. Or they are bad policies.

Or, even - they are Trump’s policies! He claims he was going to send her a MAGA hat.

Which is it already?

Biden came with 50 years of baggage, especially on recent foreign policy. His arming of Israel and Ukraine are almost Messianic. Harris probably believes the same things but Trump had little to pin on her.

Trump says Harris “is Biden” but simultaneously “hates Israel”. His only evidence is that she didn’t show at Netenayhu’s Congressional address which, given that the Israeli Prime Minister is wanted by the ICC for crimes including extermination - was just shrewd image-management.

In Trump-world, Harris is a radical liberal: “She has a plan to confiscate everyone's guns.” She simply denied it and said she and her running mate owned guns.

Does Trump think Harris is weak on crime or a monster who mistreated criminals in California? No one knows, because he has no coherent attack line.

Trump called her a Marxist. He tried to call her dad a Marxist - an octogenarian professor emeritus at Stanford University from a heterodox economic tradition.

Trump claimed that Biden "can't stand her” but this flies in the face of every public statement and cutesy phone call between her and the outgoing President.

In fact, by soaking up so much blame for four years, Biden has gifted Harris a run from a powerful position with few bruises.

Trump is instinctively no radical on abortion but has to cobble together a narrative on it to suit his pro-Life base. To offset this weakness in the face of Harris’ straightforward position, he absurdly claimed that babies were being executed after birth.

ABC News anchor Linsey Davis interceded: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

The electorate do associate Harris with a broken border policy but she doesn’t come across as an incompetent ideologue who is letting in more than 21 million people.

Trump’s reaction?

He smeared Haitian migrants: "They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live there. This is a shame”.

Both candidates landed blows when trying hard to discredit their opponent - but Harris had less need to lie.

Both have their spin machines firing on all cylinders. The problem for Trump is that his are unattached to the bearings.

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Dr. Matthew Alford analyses political communication. He co-produced The Writer with No Hands (2014) and Theaters of War (2022).

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