Noah Rothman: Harris Missed Her Marks, Too

Tony Katz:

Noah Rothman joins me right now from nationalreviewnationalreview.com. His latest book, The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back against progressives, War on fun available at Amazon.com or wherever fine books are sold. It’s a round robin over there at National Review. Which is not always, um, a Trump friendly spot. Andrew McCarthy writing about Trump’s train wreck. Or Rich Lowry, ‘is it too much to ask that we prepare for debates?’ And then there’s you, Noah Rothman. Harris missed her marks, too. Which is, I think, a pretty sober look at. We need to be looking at everything we saw last night. You were watching it. What did you see?

Noah Rothman:

I sort of bristle at the notion that National Review was not a friendly place for Donald Trump. We are not a friendly place for anyone. We call balls and strikes. And if you’re a referee in that match last night, it should have, if it was a fight, it would have been stopped in the third round. Donald Trump performed terribly. And if you’re really frustrated at the moderators today, or you’re really angry at Kamala Harris, or half a dozen other things that absolve Donald Trump of his performance or are designed to at least misdirect from Donald Trump’s performance, I think it should take a take a minute and reserve some of your frustration for a guy who’s supposed to be representing your interests and is doing a. terrible job at it, and doesn’t seem all that interested in doing a better job at it. Certainly, isn’t devoting the energy, effort, or time necessary to reflect your views in a way that approximates how you would articulate your views. And frankly, as from a point of just theatrics, just how these things work. The debates are not remembered for much beyond moments. We remember sentiments, how we felt watching them. And we remember one or two clips that maybe have a shelf life beyond the week after the debate. And there is one clip, and it’s the cats and the dogs and the eating of household pets. That’s it. That was the debate. Was over after that. And these aren’t new rules. The most salacious line of the night is what’s going to make the clips. And most people don’t watch the debates. They see the clips. And what are they going to see? They’re going to see that clip which forced Republicans across the nation, myself included, to roll over to their spouses, wake them up and explain to them what this 36-hour old naughty meme that had been plastered across the Internet was about otherwise nobody understood it. It was so bizarre and totally off message. That being said, Kamala Harris entered that debate with a job and the job as she demonstrated with her very first introduction or introductory paragraph was to alleviate voters concerns that they don’t know enough about her. We had a third of voters nationally in the New York Times Sienna polls saying I don’t know a lot about Kamala Harris, which is sort of a stand in for, “I don’t really believe what this person they’re retailing to me. Is this new persona for Kamala Harris. We don’t buy it. It’s even worse than the swing states or places like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It’s high 30s, low 40’s. The voters who say they don’t know what Kamala Harris stands for. So, Harris went out there and she tried to explicate who she is. That’s why you heard her say the word “plan” approximately 900 times over the course of 90 minutes trying to demonstrate. She’s got something going on here. You don’t have to know the particulars. You just have to know that she’s got she’s got it cooking. She’s ready to unleash the second she gets into the White House. I think that was the only mark she had to hit. But she set up some traps for herself over the course of her conversation with voters that may take some of the polish off of this performance in the coming days. 

Tony Katz:

Let’s talk about that. I want to go back to something you said because I think that it’s a mistake. It is wrong to say because the moderators were so aggressive towards Trump and so congenial towards Kamala Harris, clearly with bias that it excuses Trump, right? I hear what you’re saying there that it is different than recognizing that the moderators were very clearly biased, very clearly pushing back. On Trump and in no way pushing back on Kamala Harris and an audience I would argue that did actually spend time watching would be right to notice that, and not inventing anything.

Noah Rothman:

Nobody said they were. This is some this is a frustration for me as somebody who spent his entire life, professional life, in and around Republican politics, as a commentator… anti Republican bias in the media didn’t start with Trump. It’s not new. It is a fact of life, and I feel like Republicans have forgotten what it’s like to have a candidate. They’re minimally competent, so capable of just basic essential message discipline that they understand how to navigate media bias. I go back and watch the first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. That’s the one that Candy Crowley intervened in more than once.

Noah Rothman:

We only remember the one, but it was throughout that, that experience, that debate and contrast compare Donald Trump, who just allowed the moderators to steamroll him with Mitt Romney’s protestations. He was not sitting back and taking it. Maybe you don’t think he did as well as he could, but he certainly did a job of highlighting the fact that the deck was stacked against him and created a perception that he was the underdog in this situation. And I was just talking to my colleagues during the Editors podcast about this, I briefly in 2012 succumbed to Newt-mentum. When in January of 2012, Newt Gingrich managed to turn the tables on the moderators in a debate and make media bias an essential feature of his campaign. This way he would have Donald Trump would have paid 0 penalties for going after the moderators. On that debate, the the press is not well loved. There is cross partisan appeal in going after the press from whatever perspective you happen to take it, but the press has very few defenders on the right or the left. Donald Trump could have easily have gotten out of his head in that moment, but he didn’t. Why? Because Kamala Harris put him in his head. Kamala Harris managed to bait. And at every turn, going after his personal grievances, going after his honor as it’s been besmirched in the courts, going after the rallies that he holds, which, you know, he had to defend their consummate showmanship. He was all in his head the entire time and he couldn’t break out of it enough to have some sort of an inventive moment in extemporaneous effort to demonstrate as Republicans say today and are saying today, that it was a three on one affair. And if you had a different candidate up there who perhaps spent his life in politics or maybe prepare just a little bit for this debate and what you could all see coming, which is media bias is not new. Think it’s hard to avoid the assumption that you’re going to be piled on and disproportionately fact checked? Everybody saw that comment, but Donald Trump somehow didn’t. I honestly think Republicans should take more umbrage with the fact that their interests are not well served by a guy who doesn’t seem all that interested in preparing for them.

Tony Katz:

Let’s talk about Kamala Harris. While Trump did cloud himself with too much talking and too much nonsense focus, he did when he was in the middle of those things, he did hit on some policy things… some factual things, it just did not present as I see it, “Ohh well Kamala Harris provided nothing except the yes I said all those things before but now I’m saying all these things even though I’m not saying anything.” When you discuss missing her marks, give me two that you think she missed and at what level

Noah Rothman:

A couple of good ones. And for all the beating up on Trump that I’m doing, he had a very good moment. So, sort of later in the debate. So, who knows how many people caught it. But when he finally it dawned on him that he had to play moderator as well as debater… he turned on Kamala Harris… Forced her to get on record about late term abortions, you know, the 7th, 8th, 9th month. And he can’t articulate exactly what’s going on here. He says that they’re killing the babies. There’s a denial of care to infants who are viable, born in late term. That’s the issue that pro-lifers actually recognize and care about. But despite that, he turned to her and tried to get her on the record, and she declined, refused to. And for all you know, the Trump campaign’s efforts to sort of throw pro-lifers under the bus, I think that might reinvigorate. That portion of the electorate because it was a stalwart defense of their interests for once. Likewise, Kamala Harris laid some traps for herself when she insults voters intelligence. She was asked directly about the Gaza war and the fact that you know, there is no ceasefire to be had. The premise of the question was not none of the parties involved here, which is unfair for maybe. These moderators, it’s not. None of the parties won’t want to ceasefire. One of the parties doesn’t. We want to ceasefire the murderous terrorist group Hamas. Nevertheless, there’s no deal to be had here. Kamala Harris. So, what do you do? Well, she says, “well, we just got to get a ceasefire deal.” That’s not an answer. It’s a dodge, and it’s an insulting one at that, if it comes back again and finally end up actually hurting some of her. Her the assumption that she’s prepared on day one to manage American affairs abroad. Similarly, she kind of managed to maneuver herself out of the Afghanistan question, but she called the Doha agreement, which is this agreement that the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban, a framework that the Biden administration subsequently abandoned despite their protestations to the contrary, they say, ohh, we had no choice. This deal was agreed, you know, agreed to Trump. We had America’s word means something, Biden says. So, he had no choice but to abide by this deal. And then Kamala Harris comes out and says last night that it was, quote, one of the weakest deals. You can imagine. Well, why did the administration abide by it then if it was so weak and so ineffectual? Umm and the fact of the matter is that it’s a lie that the Biden administration was the author of the Afghan withdrawal and had no felt not at all bound, as the McCall report demonstrated this week, not at all bound by the agreements that the Trump administration hashed out. So, you know, there, there just was no sound bite friendly line for Kamala Harris that makes her look bad and Donald Trump had plenty. So that’s what’s going to dominate the post analysis.

Tony Katz:

And it dominated last night. I was watching the ABC footage afterwards. It dominated last night that outside of MSNBC, there was no standing. You know, Tom Cruise bouncing on the couch… There was no massive cheering. There was no thought that it was over, that she is established that she’s there. It was it was actually rather kind of mild in in its approval in your view, really quick. In one word, does this move the needle?

Noah Rothman:

Yeah, I don’t think it does. It does, however, demonstrate the Kamala Harris can’t go out there and speak extemporaneously and she’s not ensconced behind glass and the perception that she was fragile had been developing. I think she dispelled that. But no, does it change the political landscape? No.

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