"The same old, tired playbook": Harris baits an aging Trump into being his grumpiest, weirdest self

A few watchwords of Tuesday night's presidential debate in Philadelphia were "same," "old" and "tired." 

"I’m going to tell you on this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling," Vice President Kamala Harris said in the first few moments of the debate. It was a response to Donald Trump's first comments and she didn't portray him as scary, so much as sad. After he let loose with another round of lies about January 6, she said, "perhaps we do not have, in the candidate to my right, the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact." 

Harris never said Trump, as a person, is too old to be president. She didn't need to. He was glowering through pink-rimmed eyes under his combover, every inch the mean man everyone avoids at the retirement home. She even avoided the viral word of the campaign: "Weird." But she didn't need to say it because Trump kept saying weird things like, "I have been a leader on fertilization.” Harris, meanwhile, kept her jabs like "exhausted" and "old" focused strictly on Trump's tactics and policies. 

But everyone can tell that it's not Trump's policies that need a nap; it's the cranky old man himself. 

It's an ironic twist. Trump spent months hammering President Joe Biden with the age issue, successfully driving down Biden's poll numbers until victory seemed impossible. With Harris as the nominee, however, Trump must live with the consequences of making age-related decline matter so much to voters. Trump's age is also tied to his backward ideas, authoritarian grasping, and ugly tactics, which Harris routinely dismisses as having worn out their welcome. During a pre-debate interview with radio host Rickey Smiley, Harris said of Trump, "He plays from this really old and tired playbook, right?"

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Old, weird, and tired: Trump knew those were the words he had to contend with going into the debate. Yet he couldn't help but prove the charge. As practiced a liar as Trump is, he can't hide who he is and how much worse he's getting. He spent the debate vomiting out all the weirdest right-wing conspiracy theories as though he was a scowling human embodiment of an illiterate MAGA meme. He belched out a bizarre fantasy that doctors commit "execution after birth," which drew a fact check from moderator Linsey Davis. He yelled a lie about how immigrants are "eating the dogs" and "eating the cats," which triggered another fact check by moderator David Muir. He sounded very much like a chatbot programmed to speak only in far-right phrases, except worse, because it's shorting out. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it's not. He literally said, at one point, "she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison."

Harris, who has always nailed those "Jim in 'The Office'"-style reactions, took full advantage. She spent much of the debate staring at Trump in disbelief, while he refused to even look in her direction. After one of his unhinged rants, she simply reacted with, "Talk about extreme," punctuated with a giggle. The choice was visible on the split screen: Harris, the normal, competent politician; Trump is Gramps wandering in the streets without his pants on because he won't take his medication. As Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said, "He’s really doubling down on the crazy uncle vibe this evening."

Certainly, the MAGA commentariat on Twitter understood that things were not going well for their man, including Erick Erickson lamenting that Trump "SAYS STUPID SH*T."

"People leave his rallies early, out of exhaustion and boredom," Harris said at one point. It worked on two levels. First, it caused Trump to freak out. Second, it created a rare moment of national unity, as everyone can empathize with the almost physical need to leave any space that Trump is filling with his manic, endless blather. That Harris stood there and endured with a smile was a feat of strength enough to impress anyone.

But Harris didn't just bait Trump into showing off how much age has degraded his already low levels of coherence. She also tied it to his anger and authoritarianism. When Trump puked out his bizarre lie about how "I read where she said she was not Black and now she says that she is Black," Harris sighed and replied, "Honestly, I think it's a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people." The message was sent: Vote for this man, and be exhausted of four more years of listening to this deranged nonsense.

Democrats and left-leaning political commentators have grown especially frustrated in recent weeks with the mainstream media for ignoring how Trump is falling apart. Trump used to talk out of both sides of his mouth, but he's gotten much worse now that he's 78 years old. As Dan Pfeiffer wrote in his newsletter, "While he was never a particularly cogent orator, Trump devolved into someone who spews nonstop nonsense; he frequently misspeaks, refers to people by the wrong name, and constantly loses his train of thought."

Beltway journalists have fallen into a bad habit of rewriting Trump's babbling monologues so that they sound like coherent political speeches. For instance, when Trump was recently asked about childcare policy, he let loose with, "I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about . . . child care is child care. You have to have it — in this country you have to have it," before going into a rant about tariffs. This was characterized by the New York Times as Trump saying "he would prioritize legislation on the issue but offered no specifics." This imposes a coherence that wasn't there and is also flatly untrue, as Trump never said it was a priority. 

Media critic Parker Molloy dubbed this practice "sane-washing," arguing that "it’s a form of misinformation" that presents news consumers "with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality." Real-life Trump is not the normal politician presented in news coverage but is, as the Harris campaign memorably noted in July, "old and quite weird." Luckily, Molloy's coinage of "sane-washing" seems to be a wake-up call, especially after Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC picked it up.

On Monday, the New York Times seemed to hear the criticism. "As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity," read the headline of an article published on the front page. Instead of trying to make sense of Trump's word salads, Peter Baker wrote, "Trump’s rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent statements and extreme outbursts have raised questions about his own cognitive health." 

After last night's debate performance, hopefully, the questions about Trump's basic brain functionality will grow even louder. One of the biggest issues with Trump is every trait he has and everything he does is terrible, paralyzing efforts to narrow down criticisms into something digestible. The Harris campaign made their choice to focus on how Trump is old and weird. In this debate, Harris successfully zeroed in on that narrative, hitting it over and over. Now every garbled statement or odd behavior from Trump will reinforce her message. Luckily for her, Trump can no more stop acting weird than he can stop wearing orange makeup.