Aaron Rupar outlines how Harris has neutered Trump through adeptly learning from the failures of those before her. Basically letting Trump self destruct and refusing to let Trump or his unwitting dupes, the press, drive the narrative with silliness. Her campaign has been masterful. She has stayed above the fray and has let her witty social media accounts do the trolling.
open.substack.com
Kamala Harris is succeeding in accomplishing something none of Donald Trump’s adversaries have since 2016: Turning off his political oxygen supply by refusing to engage with his manufactured spectacles of insults and taunts, or with the often wholly substance-free issues that preoccupy the press.
As last Thursday’s CNN interview of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made clear, she’s resolutely unwilling to let the press — or Trump himself — set the agenda for her presidential campaign. In the process, she’s managed to blunt the tools Trump has repeatedly used to undermine his opponents: drawing them into responding to his schoolyard slights, and turning the media’s pursuit of purportedly “legitimate” questions about his opponents — many of them formulated by GOP partisans — into political weapons.
Harris’s refusal to engage with Trump on his terms represents a break from how Democrats traditionally have dealt with him. In related news, her favorables continue to rise while an obviously flustered Trump flails at ghosts and searches in vain for a smear campaign that will allow him to regain the initiative.
It’s hardly a coincidence that over the past several weeks, the power of the press to impact the tenor and focus of the presidential campaign — and the power of Trump to do the same — has been suddenly thrown into question. By refusing to engage with Trump’s taunts or play by journalists’ rules, Harris has upended presumptions about politics that have dominated during most of the past decade. And that’s a good thing.
Kamala Harris is cutting off Trump’s political oxygen
She's also not taking the bait from the press.
open.substack.com
Kamala Harris is succeeding in accomplishing something none of Donald Trump’s adversaries have since 2016: Turning off his political oxygen supply by refusing to engage with his manufactured spectacles of insults and taunts, or with the often wholly substance-free issues that preoccupy the press.
As last Thursday’s CNN interview of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made clear, she’s resolutely unwilling to let the press — or Trump himself — set the agenda for her presidential campaign. In the process, she’s managed to blunt the tools Trump has repeatedly used to undermine his opponents: drawing them into responding to his schoolyard slights, and turning the media’s pursuit of purportedly “legitimate” questions about his opponents — many of them formulated by GOP partisans — into political weapons.
Harris’s refusal to engage with Trump on his terms represents a break from how Democrats traditionally have dealt with him. In related news, her favorables continue to rise while an obviously flustered Trump flails at ghosts and searches in vain for a smear campaign that will allow him to regain the initiative.
It’s hardly a coincidence that over the past several weeks, the power of the press to impact the tenor and focus of the presidential campaign — and the power of Trump to do the same — has been suddenly thrown into question. By refusing to engage with Trump’s taunts or play by journalists’ rules, Harris has upended presumptions about politics that have dominated during most of the past decade. And that’s a good thing.
