After months of following the many twists and turns of this presidential election, we’ve all been zooming in on some very particular voters who will ultimately decide who wins in November.
It’s the undecided, moderate and independent voters in seven swing states who are going to be the difference between a second term for former President Donald Trump or a first term for Vice President Kamala Harris.
But sometimes it’s important to zoom out, too.
After the highly anticipated debate in Philadelphia, I took a step back for a second and was left wondering what outsiders must make of us as we’re stuck litigating things like childless cat ladies and pet-eating migrants.
Trump and MAGA have brought us somewhere truly bizarre, conspiratorial and embarrassing, all of which was evidenced in the debate. But it’s something that happened a day before the debate that summed it up for me.
“Oh, sweetie!”
The remark, dripping with condescension and mockery, came from Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia’s state-controlled media organization RT. She said it about Trump this week, rhetorically head-patting his seeming dismay over Vladimir Putin’s “endorsement” of Harris.
Putin had said it with a smirk and a wink — and anyone with a pulse knows Putin prefers Trump because he’s manipulable and ignorant. (Putin also earlier this year said he preferred President Joe Biden. Right. Sure.)
But Trump, of course, fell for it.
“I knew Putin. I knew him well,” he said. “And you know, he endorsed, I don’t know if you saw the other day, he endorsed Kamala. He endorsed Kamala. I was very offended by that.”
RT’s host Vladimir Solovyov laid into Trump.
“In the U.S., they think we care about the elections. Idiots, we care about your civil war! May you, political dirtbags, kill one another!” said Solovyov. “You are so pathetic and laughable. Honestly speaking, I was a bit disheartened, unless Trump is joking, I was saddened by Trump’s reaction.”
Trump, as we know by now, is not only deeply insecure and thin-skinned, he’s also mind-numbingly gullible.
It’s why enemies like Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un couldn’t believe their luck when he was elected. Not only didn’t Trump seem to care about democracy, free press and free elections — just like them — but he dopily went around praising two of the worst actors on the planet and parroting their propaganda.
One can imagine, as Harris woke up Wednesday after the debate, she was similarly thinking, “Oh, sweetie!”
Even she must be a little surprised at how easy a mark he was, how little effort it took to manipulate him, how willingly he took the bait.
What a sucker Trump was for Harris’ obvious plan. She laid out trap after trap after trap — not obscured, but visible to anyone watching — and he doltishly stumbled into every single one.
Her goal was to goad him into being himself, the insecure, thin-skinned, undisciplined and impulsive jerk who has absolutely no self-control.
Trigger words: crowd size, bankruptcy, fired
So in the midst of laying out thin policy plans and platitudes, Harris repeatedly dangled low-hanging fruit she knew Trump couldn’t resist: crowd size; Hannibal Lecter; sexual assault; bankruptcy; daddy’s money; fired; birther; John McCain.
By the end, she’d gotten him to wander into far-flung territory — repeating the bogus rumor that migrants were eating American pets; suggesting he saved Obamacare; defending his remarks on the Central Park 5; name-dropping Sean Hannity and Viktor Orbán; and, of course, fixating on the “stolen” election.
None of this is helpful for reaching those undecided swing state voters who will ultimately decide this election. They’ve repeatedly told us in polls and focus groups that they do not like the distractions, the divisive rhetoric, the personal attacks. They wanted substance, and Harris tricked Trump into chasing rabbits instead.
Now, she may be a prosecutor, but she’s not Houdini. If Trump had wanted to avoid these obvious landmines, he easily could have. Or maybe better put, if he could have, he would have.
It all just brought into sharper relief how truly unfit he is — to run the country and stand up to dictators who know they can outsmart him with mere flattery, like giving candy to a baby.
If this election were a psychological thriller, we’d liken Trump to a Manchurian candidate, manipulable and unknowingly working for the enemy.
But what happened on stage was more like “Zoolander,” the Ben Stiller movie about a dim-witted male model who’s brainwashed into assassinating the prime minister of Malaysia. Instead of playing “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Harris just had to cue up Trump’s many insecurities and triggers and watch him go to work. And he did not disappoint.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
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