Harris Takes the Fight to Trump (w/ Harry Kazianis)

On Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump faced Vice President Kamala Harris for their first and likely only debate of the 2024 election season. Harris, channeling her prosecutor background, goaded Trump into making a series of preposterous statements. How might her performance influence undecided voters, and what impact could it have on the November election, still several weeks away? In this episode, Jacob Heilbrunn speaks with Harry J. Kazianis, executive editor of The National Interest. Kazianis previously served as part of the foreign policy team for Senator Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi, I'm Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of The National Interest.

(00:26):
My guest today is the esteemed executive editor of the website, Harry J. Kazianis.
We're going to talk about my piece in The National Interest today about how Kamala Harris
took the fight to Donald Trump and established dominance over him at the National Constitution
Center in Philadelphia last night.

(00:48):
Harry, what struck me last night was that Harris began somewhat nervous for the first
five minutes, but that after 10 minutes or so, Trump was unable to hold his temper in
check.
And she, like an expert matador, twirled her rhetorical cape, enraging him to the extent

(01:10):
that he openly pined for his old antagonist, Joe Biden, to be on the stage, which prompted
Harris to retort that she was running, not Biden.
And Trump looks old and confused from there on.
What was your take?
You know, good to be with you.
You know, I would say that the challenge for Kamala Harris is it was really a couple of

(01:32):
things.
The first thing to look presidential.
I think that was the bar that she had to meet and exceed.
I think the second thing is to beat the old narrative down that she's often unprepared,
ill-equipped, doesn't know the playbook that's in front of her, doesn't know her brief and
has to create these weird words, salad answers to get by when she has her official vice presidential

(01:53):
duties.
She crushed all that last night.
I mean, look, I'm somebody who supported Donald Trump.
I voted for him in the past.
I'm, you know, registered Republican, but I have to be honest, Jacob, this might end
up being one of the worst performances of any presidential candidate by Donald Trump
in debate history.
Now, why do I say that?
Well, the real reason is the preparation of Kamala Harris.

(02:15):
She was ready to take on Donald Trump as soon as the debate opened.
She basically printed towards him, got a handshake from him.
He didn't know what to do.
He looked flummoxed.
He looks confused.
I couldn't make out exactly what he said, Jacob, but he definitely looked like he was
not prepared for that when that would have been an obvious tactic from Kamala Harris
for any sort of comms perspective or anybody would have prepped him.

(02:39):
And then from as the debate goes on, I actually didn't think that she looked nervous at all.
I think she looked presidential about, you know, as somebody who's done a lot of media
training for other organizations in the past, presidential candidates, I can tell you that
their game was extremely tight.
She was dressed for the role.
Her makeup looked good, wasn't overdone.

(02:59):
Her hair looked good.
I know these are sort of superficial things, but they're important how the media will portray
her and how the public will portray her.
Her present state presentation style was excellent.
She was looking right at the camera.
She had good facial expressions when Donald Trump was talking.
Her rebuttals were solid.
I mean, I could go on and on from a media perspective, but she was prepared.

(03:20):
She was focused.
It's obvious that she did the work.
And I think if she continues on like this, if there's another debate, for example, or
if, you know, her team unleashes her a little bit more to do more media and she preps for
it like this, she will win the presidency.
And that's hard for me to say, but you know what?
I've always said the truth and I'm not going to stop now.
Well, you could see that Trump was like an aging boxer.

(03:42):
The reflexes were there, but they were old, slow, tired.
He looked like he absorbed too many punches over the years.
She was fresh.
She kept jabbing him.
I think the narrow stage of the Constitution Center where I've spoken before actually worked

(04:03):
to her benefit because she was in his face.
I think he found her nettlesome and disruptive.
And yes, I think she was only nervous for the first couple of minutes.
But then, you know, she spent a lot of the debate with her hand rest, her chin resting
on her hand, simply watching him implode.
Some people are saying it's the cognate of the debate that Biden and Trump had in June.

(04:29):
But this time it was Trump who floundered like Biden did.
Do you think that Trump is just too old for the job?
I don't think Jacob is too old for the job.
I think Donald Trump is very set in his ways.
I think it's very clear that he did not do debate prep.
I've heard rumors that there was policy sessions where he got groups of five to ten people

(04:50):
together, rotating people in and out and having conversations about policy.
I don't have any insider knowledge or anything beyond that, but I would argue probably Trump
just recycled his old talking points again and again and again and didn't have anything
new to say.
Where I think Kamala Harris shined Jacob was that she was able to bait him in ways that

(05:10):
I don't think any of the pundits really saw.
For example, she started making fun of his rallies, his favorite thing on earth where
he gets so much self-gratification and so much love from the MAGA crowd.
She basically spit that in his face and you could see him getting enraged.
And that's, I think, where the point where he really started losing very badly because

(05:33):
he didn't have any really come back for that.
If this had been a Reagan or a George W. Bush or Mitt Romney, I think they would have had
the skill to pivot off that, talk about it for maybe five seconds and then talk about
what you really want to say.
I recently saw the Reagan movie and while I can nitpick that apart, I can tell you that
one of the great things about Ronald Reagan is he never answered the question that was

(05:55):
asked of him.
He always asked the question that he wanted to answer, that was his strong point.
Pivot, counterpunch, pivot, counterpunch.
And Donald Trump didn't do that last night.
And I think that's one of the biggest reasons he got smoked in this debate.
Well, one of the things that Harris did, of course, was to expose the authentic Trump.
He was himself last night.

(06:16):
He's never prepared for any of these debates.
He's always relied upon the weakness of his opponents.
In this case, though, he faced a formidable prosecutor who went after him relentlessly.
So what was unusual about this debate, of course, was that Trump is usually the stage
master, the ringmaster, the one who establishes dominance.

(06:37):
But Harris, of course, did it as soon as she shook his hand and kept it up for the entire
debate.
I think Trump was obviously not rehearsed and was himself, but that was the problem.
I think it was, and I think as somebody pointed out to me, it's very close to me.
He looked a little worn out.

(06:57):
He looked a little beaten up.
And I think a lot of that is probably because, let's face it, somebody tried to kill me at
an assassination attempt on his life.
And from a psychological perspective, imagine if you had a piece of your ear blown off and
you came within maybe a half inch of your own death on national television.
That has to have, I think, a very big psychological impact.

(07:20):
Maybe he's saying to himself, Jacob, you know, I've gone through three presidential cycles.
You know, I don't feel maybe appreciated or loved.
I'm, you know, I'm having to now fight with these moderators.
So I don't think we're fair to him, to be honest with you.
I think CNN would cut it right down the line.
It was a much fairer debate.
So not only is he having to take on this formidable Kamala Harris, which is probably shocking

(07:42):
to him, he's now having to take on moderators who are live fact checking him.
And you can debate the authenticity of those fact checks that I'm not going to go down
that road, but I think for him, he's not only fighting, I think, some psychological trauma
of what he's been through.
He's fighting Kamala Harris.
He's fighting the media.
That's even maybe some of the best debaters out there.

(08:02):
You know, a Ronald Reagan or even a Barack Obama, if you want to flip it, would have
had a hard time in that scenario.
So I think for now, I think this is probably the last debate you're going to see.
I know Kamala's team last night was saying, oh, we'll have another debate.
I don't think so.
I think if she's smart, she'll she'll unleash herself a little bit to the media, prep more
for those those media hits and try to press this advantage.

(08:24):
I actually thought the moderators did a good job because they kept the thing moving at
lightning speed rather than getting bogged down.
But apart from that, I want to ask you the final question, the ultimate one.
Was the debate actually a game changer or doesn't it matter?
Trump still has a huge base of support.
Now it's true, he didn't really do anything to appeal to swing voters last night.

(08:47):
But there's still a long series of weeks to go before the actual election, even though
early voting has started.
What's your prediction, Harry?
Do you think the debate really was significant?
I think it was significant.
I think it will move the needle for a lot of undecided voters.
But I'm going to get a little dark on you, Jacob.
And I'm going to tell you what I hope doesn't happen instead.
But if you're on a rig, I'm going to answer the question I wish you asked.

(09:09):
What if the election is so tight that we get into some sort of horrific situation where
perhaps there's a tie in the electoral college?
Or what if we go down the road of 2020 where some states take a long time to hand in ballots
or there's some sort of controversy, contrived or not, from either side?

(09:30):
Because remember, Democrats also have cried foul at other elections too, so I want to
be fair on that.
What if we get into that situation and the election is contested for weeks or something
like that?
Clearly, I'm supportive of the Republican ticket and Donald Trump.
But what I hope for more is a clean result.
And I think that's really what America needs.

(09:50):
No matter who wins, it needs to be clean.
And I really hope that's where we get.
If we don't, all hell is going to break loose.
And I don't think our country wants to go through that again.
So whatever side you're on, whoever's listening, let's just hope for a clean result either
way.
Thank you, Harry.
And I hope everyone enjoyed this podcast and we'll look forward to doing another one soon.

(10:13):
Thanks, Jacob.