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As presidential debates go, tomorrow’s duel between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is as important as they come. With so much on the line in an extremely close race, both candidates would usually lower expectations.
That way, if they perform poorly, they can say “I told you so.” However, if they do well, it makes their performance even more impressive.
Conversely, what you absolutely do not want to do is to pretend to be the greatest debater of all time.
And yet, that is precisely what the former president and some of his allies are doing.
Trump first claimed that mantle after Joe Biden’s abysmal debate performance in June that, ultimately, ended in forcing the president to withdraw from the race and make way for Harris.
Of course, it wasn’t because of anything that Trump did back then. He just happened to share the stage with an old man who was clearly no longer up to the task.
That did not stop the former president from claiming credit.
“As I walked off the stage on Thursday night, at the end of the highly anticipated ‘Debate,’ anchors, political reporters and all screamed that I had had the greatest debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates,” he wrote back then on his Truth Social website.
Don’t look for any videos of this happening since it did not.
Trump’s team far better understands how this stuff works, which is why campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles put out a memorandum Monday night trying to put pressure on Harris.
In the brief document, they use some variation of “high bar” five times… just to make sure everybody knows that the vice president must perform exceptionally.
Trump seems to not have gotten the memo.
He spent part of Monday amplifying a clip of one of his media allies, Charlie Hurt of the Washington Times, calling him “probably the greatest political debater we’ve ever had in American history.”
With regard to her own expectations, Harris made a prediction that is definitely going to come true.
On the The Rickey Smiley Morning Show, she said that Trump is going to lie, which seems like a very safe bet.
“We should be prepared for that,” she said. “We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.”
For their part, Harris surrogates also tried to raise the bar for Trump.
“He is a skilled debater. He is a guy who is willing to say anything at any time just to get through a question, and he’s a showman,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D). “He’s been on TV before, so don’t underestimate Donald Trump.”
Well, there is no denying that the former president has been on TV before.
And the next time, on Tuesday night, he will have to back up his “greatest ever boast” in front of a huge audience with the presidency on the line.
