Kamala Harris successfully baited Donald Trump through the debate, drawing out his insecure white masculinity

The Sept. 10, 2024, debate between Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was a referendum on gender and the U.S. presidency – Trump’s, that’s.

Through the previous decade, U.S. voters have watched as Trump’s poisonous masculinity – a explicit model of masculinity that daunts empathy, expresses energy via dominance, normalizes violence towards ladies and associates management with white patriarchy – took over the Republican Social gathering, was celebrated by tech bros with outsized cultural affect and was matched by authoritarian political leaders across the globe.

Harris’ shrewd debate technique, nonetheless, prompted Trump to morph on stage – from an aggressive and aggrieved showman-provocateur to an insecure and indignant white man.

As a communication scholar who research gender and the U.S. presidency, I’m usually requested by journalists to touch upon ladies candidates’ health for presidential workplace. I’m not often requested to touch upon how some variations of masculinity may – or ought to – be disqualifying for a presidential candidate.

When Harris triggered Trump’s insecurity by questioning his reputation and political prowess, his responses had been narcissistic, racist and sometimes unhinged from actuality.

Trump’s efficiency within the debate towards Harris demonstrates not solely that white male insecurity is a strategic legal responsibility but additionally a risk to democracy.

‘She ought to bait him. He will be rattled.’

For many of Trump’s political profession, tutorial and journalistic critiques of his persona have emphasised his masculine excesses – penchants for patriarchal authority, a sample of sexual entitlement and a domineering disposition.

Students consulted by The Washington Put up prematurely of the talk speculated that Trump may come throughout as a bully, as he did when he debated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and, at occasions, adopted her across the stage.

After that debate, The Guardian described Trump “prowling” behind Clinton as she spoke and “menacing” her along with his “imposing presence and brash insults.”

Clinton later stated that whereas she was not intimidated by Trump looming over her, she wished to “current a composed face to the world.” Though voters settle for indignation and even righteous rage from males politicians, some assume {that a} girl politician having an outburst reveals her “entitlement and unlikability,” taking it as “proof of the sort of skinny pores and skin that folks insist makes a lady unsuitable for the presidency.”

However Clinton’s expertise positioned her to offer Harris an essential piece of recommendation prematurely of the Sept. 10 debate, recommendation she repeated to The New York Occasions: “She ought to bait him. He will be rattled.”

For the reason that Harris marketing campaign rapidly coalesced in July, it has executed simply that. The marketing campaign has trolled Trump with provocative political advertisements, posted clips of individuals yawning at Trump’s rallies on social media and allowed the Democratic Nationwide Committee to challenge Harris working mate Tim Walz’s cost that Trump and Vance are “WEIRD AS HELL” on Trump Tower in Chicago.

Through the debate, Harris taunted Trump to his face, asserting that, “individuals begin leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and tedium.”

After laying the bait, Harris addressed the viewers, saying, “And I’ll let you know the one factor you’ll not hear him discuss is you. You’ll not hear him discuss your wants, your desires and your, your wishes.” She concluded her level by promising, “I imagine you deserve a president who truly places you first. And I pledge to you that I’ll.”

Most politicians would acknowledge Harris’ apparent rhetorical lure as a ploy to show her level that Trump cares extra about himself than the voters. However an agitated Trump blustered proper into it.

After ABC moderator David Muir invited Trump to elucidate why he killed a bipartisan invoice geared toward bolstering safety on the Southern border, Trump replied, “First let me reply as to the rallies. She stated individuals begin leaving. Individuals don’t go to her rallies. There’s no motive to go. And the folks that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. After which exhibiting them in a unique gentle. So, she will be able to’t discuss that. Individuals don’t depart my rallies. We now have the largest rallies, probably the most unbelievable rallies within the historical past of politics.”

Trump’s hyperbolic response demonstrated how his personal insecurity about his rallies’ crowd dimension left him open to manipulation by his opponent.

Later within the debate, Harris reminded the viewers that she wasn’t the one one who might manipulate Trump, and she or he advised that this vulnerability might jeopardize American safety. She claimed, “It’s completely well-known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting so that you can be president once more as a result of they’re so clear, they will manipulate you with flattery and favors.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Harris instructed Trump, “would eat you for lunch.”

Scapegoating the opposite

Trump’s model of insecure white masculinity is harmful for democracy not solely as a result of it may be manipulated by opponents. A want to protect white male supremacy usually manifests as racist, misogynistic or transphobic scapegoating.

Communication scholar Patricia Roberts-Miller explains that scapegoating shifts focus away from coverage points and onto members of a marginalized group who will be blamed for society’s ills, fostering a tradition wherein individuals are dehumanized and degraded.

After Trump insisted that he had the very best rallies, he warned that “World Struggle III” was imminent due to immigrants who had been supposedly “consuming the canines. The folks that got here in. They’re consuming the cats. They’re consuming – they’re consuming the pets of the folks that stay there.”

This explicit falsehood originated as a weird and debunked conspiracy principle circulating in right-wing media that alleged Haitian immigrants had been consuming individuals’s pets.

Roberts-Miller explains that, traditionally, scapegoating rhetoric usually smooths the best way for extra severe civil and human rights violations, like when Jews had been scapegoated in Nazi Germany and Japanese Individuals had been scapegoated previous to internment throughout World Struggle II.

Trump’s fixation on immigrants all through the talk, and elsewhere, might assist rhetorically clear a path for authoritarian insurance policies he has stated he would enact, resembling utilizing U.S. troops to spherical up and deport mass numbers of immigrants.

Gender and democratic well being

Communication scholar Paul Elliott Johnson argues that Trump’s model of demagoguery is “outlined by a reliance on victimized, White, poisonous masculinity.” Some students have centered on how this rhetorical technique appeals to males who’re “secretly insecure about their manhood,” as The Washington Put up reported in 2018.

Trump’s personal white masculine insecurity was on clear show all through his debate towards Harris. It was a unique sort of pathological masculinity than the aggressive and aggrieved poisonous masculinity Trump perfected as MAGA stagecraft.

Trump’s efficiency within the debate illustrates why insecure white masculinity must be disqualifying for a presidential candidate. When triggered, it quick circuits the candidate’s strategic pondering and elicits demagogic and dehumanizing arguments.

The controversy between Harris and Trump revealed how vesting authority in an insecure white man is harmful for democracy.