How Trump Is Baiting Harris

This is the time for closing arguments from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. But Trump’s closing argument is not a closing argument at all: It’s an invitation. He and his campaign are acting in hopes of provoking Harris, pushing her to muddle her final message.

The statements and sentiments on display from the Trump campaign this past week, and particularly at Sunday night’s rally at Madison Square Garden, have been racist, xenophobic, and violent. To note a few: The comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, invited by the Trump campaign, called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” The radio personality Sid Rosenberg described the Democratic Party as “a bunch of degenerates, lowlifes,” and “Jew-haters.” The private-equity fund manager Grant Cardone said that Harris has “pimp handlers.” And the Trump adviser Stephen Miller declared that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

This incendiary language is not only a crude attempt to bait critics; it’s part of a pattern of hate from Trump and his closest allies, and a type of rhetoric that Trump has made clear he intends to incorporate into his plans as president. But in continuing to push the lines of decency in American politics, Trump is also attempting to goad the opposition. His campaign is ramping up a familiar and often effective cycle: He says or encourages something inflammatory, then goes on to blame his opponents or members of the media for overreacting, sometimes attempting to rewrite his own statements in the process. After he told the Fox News anchor Sean Hannity that he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for day one,” he later said that he was just joking, in an effort to cast those who took him seriously as dramatic. It’s an example of what my colleague Megan Garber recently called the trolligarchy: “A troll reserves the right, always, to be kidding,” she wrote. “Even about matters of life and death.”

A strong reaction from Democrats or from journalists is strategically useful to Trump, and he knows it. As Trump said at Sunday’s rally: “When I say ‘the enemy from within’”—referring to the phrase he often uses to describe anyone who is not part of MAGA world—“the other side goes crazy.” Kamala Harris herself has usually avoided taking the bait, although in recent days she has gone on the attack, referring to Trump as a fascist for the first time after The New York Times published remarks from former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in which he said that Trump met the definition of the word. But she has returned consistently to a message of unity. Speaking to reporters today, she said, “When elected president, I’m going to represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me.”

Others on her campaign, however, haven’t been as careful. At an event earlier this week, Tim Walz said of the MSG rally, “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden,” in apparent reference to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally that took place in the same arena. And on a call with a Latino voting group last night, President Joe Biden remarked, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” Though Biden later claimed that he said “supporter’s,” referencing Hinchcliffe’s quote about Puerto Rico, and Harris quickly distanced herself from the gaffe, the damage was done. Biden’s blunder is reminiscent of the disparaging “basket of deplorables” comment that Hillary Clinton made about Trump supporters during her 2016 campaign, a comparison that Trumpworld has been quick to make. MAGA allies soon began campaigning off of Biden’s comment, and Trump’s campaign has even fundraised off it.

By provoking and then taking apparent pleasure in dramatic reactions from their critics, Trump and his team encourage his supporters’ feelings of vitriol toward fellow Americans—feelings Trump has spent years feeding by referring to his political opponents as enemies, “vermin,” “lunatics,” and “thugs.” Harris and her team will make a much stronger closing statement if they refuse to give Trump the satisfaction of being their campaign’s main subject. But it’s also up to the American voting public to resist being baited by the outrage that Trump stokes, and to refuse the path of vengeance that he represents.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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