Vice President Kamala Harris kept slyly pivoting to “things that drive Trump crazy” like crowd size and her endorsements from rival Republicans during Tuesday’s presidential debate, a strategy that ultimately rattled her opponent — and that was by design, MSNBC guest commentator Julie Roginsky said Wednesday.
Appearing on “MSNBC Reports,” the Democratic Party strategist and TV personality first gave a shout-out to Karen Dunn, an attorney and Harris’ debate tutor.
“This is a typical Karen Dunn strategy,” Roginsky said. “You have to stick the landing. Kamala Harris stuck the landing. Issue after issue after issue, she did it by diverting attention from things that are not strengths of hers. When she talked about ‘Are you better off than four years ago?’ she immediately pivoted to talking about things that drive Trump crazy.”
Harris addressed the former president directly many times during the debate, more than once suggesting that military leaders had told her that he was “a disgrace” without further context — the kind of vague insult that Trump throws around regularly. She also said that 81 million people “fired” him, a reference to his former catchphrase (with a sprinkle of 2020 election grit).
“Whether it’s crowd size, whether it’s the fact that Republicans who he can’t stand are endorsing her, he immediately goes off on tangents because he’s so undisciplined,” Roginsky continued. “And anticipate any kind of question, because that’s what you do.”
Though it was clear Harris was extra-prepared, Trump has always maintained that he doesn’t do much prep, if any, and prefers to improvise at debates.
“[Trump] decided this wasn’t really that important to him and he was going to wing it because he’s a master debater, there’s a big difference between debating Joe Biden, who was not in the best shape of his life, and Kamala Harris, who is a former prosecutor, a former senator, sitting VP, 20 years younger than he is, and someone able to take it to him because she’s disciplined and showed that,” Roginsky noted. “That’s what you need in a president. Somebody who is disciplined, somebody who is able to rise to the occasion, somebody who is not going to freak out at the slightest provocation and somebody that can laugh at him.”
By using his own tactics against Trump, Harris cast the Republican in a different light, Roginsky added.
“She made him small,” she said. “She diminished him. It’s something he can’t stand and his voters can’t stand. He tries to pretend to be this powerful man. She made him small. She made him irrelevant and that’s something that was a master class in how to debate somebody like Donald Trump.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video clip above.
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