Donald Trump has called Vice President Kamala Harris \u201ccrazy,\u201d \u201cnasty\u201d and \u201cdumb as a rock.\u201d He\u2019s mocked her name, launched false attacks about her racial identity and said she would be treated like a \u201cplay toy\u201d by world leaders if elected.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Trump will come face-to-face with Harris for their first and perhaps only debate, where political analysts say there are particular risks \u2014 heightened by gender \u2014 in coming across as a bully.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one thing for a male candidate to attack a female candidate from a podium when he\u2019s giving a news conference, or in a campaign ad, or at a rally,\u201d said Jennifer Lawless, a University of Virginia professor who has written extensively about gender and politics. \u201cThe feeling is a little bit different when he\u2019s standing eight feet away from her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody,\u201d she added, \u201cwants to see a male candidate explicitly \u2026 intimidate or bully a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gender could influence how both Trump and Harris are perceived at the debate, experts say, as the presidential nominees offer a stark contrast in identity as well as policy. Trump \u2014 who has a history of lashing out at female rivals and critics in demeaning ways \u2014 could face a penalty for coming across as overly aggressive. And Harris, a Black woman, faces competing pressures to look tough but also project fraught attributes such as \u201clikability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has struggled with demeanor before. In 2016, he prowled behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on the debate stage and interrupted to call her a \u201cnasty woman\u201d \u2014 two moments that many observers viewed as politically harmful for him, despite his eventual victory over Clinton. Strategists often point to a cautionary tale further back from Clinton\u2019s 2000 Senate debate with Republican Rick Lazio, who memorably interrupted Clinton, walked over to her onstage and brandished a pledge rejecting \u201csoft\u201d unregulated funds supporting a candidate. Lazio unsuccessfully pushed Clinton to sign onstage in a move that some viewed as intimidating.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn substance, it was right \u2013 and on style and perception, it was a mistake, which I regret,\u201d Lazio later told Newsday. Clinton won that race handily.<\/p>\n
On a Monday press call with Trump staff and surrogates, a reporter noted that Harris is both a new debate opponent for Trump and a woman and asked whether Trump would take a \u201cdifferent tone\u201d with her than with President Joe Biden. Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said Trump would win by contrasting their policy records and suggested the former president was not trying to recalibrate.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump is going to be himself,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that candidates for president \u201cshould be held to the highest possible standards regardless of their gender. President Trump has been a fierce debater against all the opponents he has faced \u2014 men and women \u2014 since 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign declined to comment.<\/p>\n
How gender might affect voters\u2019 perceptions of Harris is complex, people who have studied the issue say. Women in politics have long expressed concerns that they are held to double standards \u2014 deemed unlikable or aggressive for behavior that would draw less scrutiny from a male politician.<\/p>\n
But political observers note that some of Harris\u2019s breakout moments as a politician \u2014 including her sharp questioning of Supreme Court nominees during her time in the Senate \u2014 have showcased aggressiveness she honed as a prosecutor, a key part of her identity. Some scholars have been surprised by their findings about gender and how candidates translate to viewers.<\/p>\n
One experiment enlisted actors to re-create a Clinton-Trump debate \u2014 repeating lines, gestures and facial expressions but with the genders swapped. Audience members were asked about their views afterward, and researchers discovered that many people who disliked Trump\u2019s performance responded better to a female version of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat project was really shocking for me,\u201d said Joe Salvatore, a New York University professor who co-led the experimental performance. He had thought that viewers would react more negatively to a female Trump and more positively to a male Clinton because of gender bias \u2014 for instance, an aversion to a confrontational woman. But plenty liked that the female Trump was \u201cstrong\u201d and \u201cconcise\u201d\u2014 and conversely took issue with how much the male Clinton was smiling.<\/p>\n
A single moment also can play very differently for voters with different backgrounds and values.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody views that debate through their own lens,\u201d said Kathleen Dolan, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans are nervous that Trump\u2019s penchant for personal attacks could backfire onstage on Tuesday. Trump has told advisers he will not be as aggressive as he was during a 2020 debate with Biden when his regular interruptions became a turnoff for some viewers, The Washington Post has reported. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman now allied with Trump, has helped the former president think through ways that Harris could use gender to her advantage, Trump advisers told The Post.<\/p>\n
On Monday\u2019s call with reporters, however, Gabbard suggested Trump did not need to adjust for gender. \u201cI say this from a place of experience,\u201d the former congresswoman said. \u201cPresident Trump respects women and doesn\u2019t feel the need to be patronizing or to speak to women in any other way than he would speak to a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Harris allies, meanwhile, hope that Trump is goaded into unflattering behavior onstage. They note Trump\u2019s angry responses over the years to those who challenge him and particularly to a host of Black women \u2014 including, most recently, Black women journalists at a sit-down interview that went off the rails. Trump berated an ABC reporter who asked him about past offensive comments, called her queries \u201crude\u201d and \u201cnasty\u201d and pivoted to falsely accuse Harris of identifying as Black only later in life.<\/p>\n
Harris has talked about her gender less than Clinton did in 2016, largely declining to explicitly rally voters behind the idea of a first woman president. But her identity has still factored into the race.<\/p>\n
Sophia Nelson \u2014 a former Republican congressional committee investigative counsel who left the party under Trump and now supports Harris \u2014 said the debate will give Harris a high-stakes platform to buck gender stereotypes.<\/p>\n
Harris \u201chas a chance here to rewrite the rules,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cRewrite the standards, rewrite the definitions of what women can and can\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has called Vice President Kamala Harris \u201ccrazy,\u201d \u201cnasty\u201d and \u201cdumb as a rock.\u201d He\u2019s mocked her name, launched false attacks about her racial identity and said she would be treated like a \u201cplay toy\u201d by world leaders if elected. On Tuesday, Trump will come face-to-face with Harris for their first and perhaps only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}