This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 15 episode of “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
If getting totally embarrassed by Vice President Kamala Harris in front of more than 67 million debate watchers made Donald Trump furious — and you know that it did — it’s pretty clear the rest of the week’s events only added to his rage.
Let’s take a look at some of the things that are probably making Trump very, very mad right now: A Des Moines Register poll released on Sunday showed Harris cutting Trump’s lead in Iowa to just 4 points. To give you a sense of what that means, the same poll had Trump leading Joe Biden by 18 points in June. In 2016 and 2020, Trump won Iowa by about 9 points and Iowa hasn’t been a swing state since 2008.
Trump’s going back to the same playbook that he thinks won him the election in 2016: appealing to his base with fear.
On Saturday, at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner in Washington, D.C., Harris mocked Trump for his line in the debate about having “concepts of a plan.” And all week long, she filled stadiums with tens of thousands of people in crucial swing states such as North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
She also, of course, notched the endorsement of Taylor Swift, which is clearly still driving Trump nuts. On Sunday morning, he sent out a message on Truth Social, declaring, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
I mean, that debate was so galvanizing for Harris — and so embarrassing for Trump — that Karl Rove basically called Trump stupid in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal.
So yes, Trump was embarrassed on Tuesday night, and he’s been embarrassed every day since, but in response, he isn’t retooling his campaign team. He isn’t planning a bus tour across the Midwest to connect with voters. Instead, he’s going back to the same xenophobic and racist playbook that he thinks won him the election in 2016: appealing to his base with fear — a fear of immigrants, a fear of Black and Latino communities, a fear of basically anyone who doesn’t look like him and JD Vance.
He’s doubled down on a claim debunked by the local police, the mayor and even the Republican governor of Ohio that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating pets. It was a claim that originated with a Facebook post from one person who later disavowed it. But none of the facts matter to Trump … they never have. Trump prompted the explosion of this conspiracy theory himself by elevating it on the debate stage and later vowing mass deportations starting in Springfield.
The result? A city being terrorized.
On Sunday, Wittenberg University in Springfield was put on high alert after someone threatened to shoot Haitians on campus. On Saturday, a bomb threat forced two hospitals to go into lockdown. Earlier in the week, multiple schools and municipal buildings were evacuated or closed because of similar threats, at least one of which used hateful language toward Haitians. NBC News also reports that a neo-Nazi group, which helped push the false claim, is now doxing local residents and officials who have publicly spoken out.
And surprise, surprise, Trump is doing absolutely nothing to calm things down. When asked Saturday if he denounced those bomb threats in Springfield, Trump dodged the question, telling reporters:
“I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants and that’s a terrible thing that happened. Springfield was this beautiful town and now they’re going through hell. It’s a sad thing. Not gonna happen with me, I can tell you right now.”
When the question is “Do you denounce bomb threats that are terrorizing an American city?” … the answer should be unambiguous. But, of course, Trump’s wasn’t and, of course, in the next breath he kept lying about Haitian immigrants who are in this country legally.
When the question is “Do you denounce bomb threats that are terrorizing an American city?” … the answer should be unambiguous.
We’ve seen this pattern before: Trump stoking conspiracy theories and then commenting on them as if he’s some casual observer. He sets fire to the building, continues pouring gasoline all over it and then wonders aloud why it’s burning. This is what he does. Just ask anyone who was in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
So yes, Trump may be a buffoon who’s been roundly ridiculed but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. It’s a dynamic Harris captured perfectly all the way back at the Democratic convention: “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”
Allison Detzel contributed.
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