A Beautiful Debate

Or, Finally, a Debater who Understands Trump Psychology

If the June 27, 2024, presidential debate was decisive for Joe Biden, the September 10, 2024, presidential debate was decisive for Donald Trump.

I have continually stated that Kamala Harris has the “secret” ingredient that is quintessential for this presidential race: a profound understanding of criminal psychology.  As a former prosecutor, she exemplifies someone who has dealt with many psychologists and psychiatrists and has received their advice.  Forensic mental health experts are constantly helping prosecutors, judges, and juries distinguish dangerous personalities, who are also the most deceptive and most likely to escape detection.  These personalities are convincing communicators, because no truth or reality hinges them; their con is complete.  First, one must recognize the type, which is not an easy task.

Then, one must manage them.  Studies show that they are 2.5 times more likely to escape prosecution and 2.5 times more likely to get out of prison than others who commit the same crimes, even though they are more dangerous and more likely to repeat their crimes.  They charm, manipulate, dominate, and mobilize their own symptoms to bulldoze their opponents.  They sometimes seem formidable, but it is actually only a façade.  They are in truth fragile, rigid, and predictable, and thus if one understands them, one can easily slay the paper tiger.

Debates in general have not worked with Donald Trump, since the very engagement of so severely disturbed a person in such a setting normalizes and “sanitizes” him, not to mention places him side-by-side with a normal candidate.  Contrary to ordinary expectations, the normal (healthy) candidate has no chance.

That Harris has consulted or worked extensively with mental health professionals was evident in her treatment of the entire debate as a therapy session!  First, she walked far past center stage to extend a handshake to Donald Trump and to say embracing words to him, which caught him off guard.  I have often said regarding Michelle Obama’s words, “When they go low, we go high,” that it was essential to go “even higher”—that is, consult experts and access specialized knowledge regarding the treatment of severely-impaired persons.

In this case, that is clearly what Harris did: her gesture was that of a therapist extending to a patient (or a prosecutor managing a defendant)—not that of equals.  That this level of “treatment” was necessary is what has escaped debaters, moderators, politicians, pundits, and news anchors so far—and what has been exceedingly frustrating to watch as a forensic mental health expert unable to contribute to a situation that would have been so easy to turn around, since Donald Trump is the truly weak and debilitated man, not any of his victims.

Some of Harris’ effectiveness was political savvy: “I was raised as a middle-class kid”; “opportunity economy”; and “Trump sales tax”—it seemed to me the first time the Democratic Party truly focused on psychological impressions of words, as the Republican Party had done so effectively.  However, she also understood that a session with Donald Trump would require much more.

Here are some of the ways Harris was an effective “therapist” for him.  She commented on process, rather than respond to content: “He is trying to again divide and distract from … reality.”  She set boundaries: “First of all,… you are not running against Joe Biden, you are running against me.”  She framed the entire session: “I am going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you are going to hear … a bunch of lies, grievances, and name-calling.”  And she repeatedly returned to her framing: “Yet again, I said it at the beginning of this debate, you are going to hear a bunch of lies.”  This “parallel process,” as therapists employ, allowed her consistently to stay above the fray and therefore to neutralize Donald Trump’s assaults, among other things.  One could see him visibly “crumble” through course of the session, which in fact is a process of healing through correct management.  This is what it means to go “even higher,” which is not easy to do and requires special training.

However, things do not stop here.  Just as the public sees only Harris’ success, not the processes that led to it, it will not recognize how “infectious” Donald Trump’s dark psychology is, being unaware of Trump Contagion.  He will continue to transmit his symptoms, and in two months’ time, this debate could easily be forgotten in the public’s mind.

This does not mean that a second debate is advisable—for the next time, Donald Trump will be prepared.  We must not underestimate the dangerous personality’s ability to coopt the situation, subvert reality, and turn things around to his inexorable needs.  We must follow the (mental health) principles, not the duplication of forum.

What laypersons witnessed on January 6, 2021, was violence, but what mental health experts saw was the depth of his disturbances, the fragility of his psychology, and the degree of his inability to tolerate reality.  This is how I was able to predict his violence in my 2020 book, Profile of a Nation.  What people heard from the debate is bizarreness (“They’re eating the dogs….  They’re eating the cats”) and a dystopian world view (“people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums”), but what we experts saw was Trump Contagion lifting for a short while, so that the public may see what has always been.

Knowledge is power, and in this case, knowledge of criminal psychology brought Kamala Harris immense power.  If her background as a prosecutor could offer such effectiveness, imagine what forensic mental health experts would have been able to do, if we had the opportunity to educate the public for the past nine years!  We have now seen that, just like Covid-19, pretending that a problem does not exist does not make it go away—indeed, it allows the problem to balloon to the point where we became the epicenter of the pandemic, with the greatest death toll in the world.  Now, we are the global epicenter of “Trump Contagion,” where much healing needs to take place.  The loving, positive, and visionary energy (actually, simple health) that Harris exudes gives us hope for the first time in a long while that we may indeed avert self-annihilation.  Her closing statement echoes the theme of my new book: “I do believe that the American people know we all have so much more in common than what separates us.”  E pluribus unum is the theme of my book, now out in paperback: The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind. Our major, National Press Club, “Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” conference will take place on September 27, 2024—please continue to lend your support! Live sessions on this theme will continue on Fridays at noon.