By Karrin Vasby Anderson
The Sept. 10, 2024, debate between Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was a referendum on gender and the U.S. presidency – Trump’s, that is.
During the past decade, U.S. voters have watched as Trump’s toxic masculinity – a particular version of masculinity that discourages empathy, expresses strength through dominance, normalizes violence against women and associates leadership with white patriarchy – took over the Republican Party, was celebrated by tech bros with outsized cultural influence and was matched by authoritarian political leaders around the globe.
Harris’ shrewd debate strategy, however, prompted Trump to morph on stage – from an aggressive and aggrieved showman-provocateur to an insecure and angry white man.
As a communication scholar who studies gender and the U.S. presidency, I am often asked by journalists to comment on women candidates’ fitness for presidential office. I’m rarely asked to comment on how some versions of masculinity might – or should – be disqualifying for a presidential candidate.
When Harris triggered Trump’s insecurity by questioning his popularity and political prowess, his responses were narcissistic, racist and occasionally unhinged from reality.
Trump’s performance in the debate against Harris demonstrates not only that white male insecurity is a strategic liability but also a threat to democracy.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
‘She should bait him. He can be rattled.’
For most of Trump’s political career, academic and journalistic critiques of his persona have emphasized his masculine excesses – penchants for patriarchal authority, a pattern of sexual entitlement and a domineering disposition.
Scholars consulted by The Washington Post in advance of the debate speculated that Trump might come across as a bully, as he did when he debated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and, at times, followed her around the stage.
Rick Wilking-Pool/Getty Images
After that debate, The Guardian described Trump “prowling” behind Clinton as she spoke and “menacing” her with his “imposing presence and brash insults.”
Clinton later said that while she was not intimidated by Trump looming over her, she wanted to “present a composed face to the world.” Although voters accept indignation and even righteous rage from men politicians, some think that a woman politician having an outburst shows her “entitlement and unlikability,” taking it as “evidence of the kind of thin skin that people insist makes a woman unsuitable for the presidency.”
But Clinton’s experience positioned her to give Harris an important piece of advice in advance of the Sept. 10 debate, advice she repeated to The New York Times: “She should bait him. He can be rattled.”
Since the Harris campaign quickly coalesced in July, it has done just that. The campaign has trolled Trump with provocative political ads, posted clips of people yawning at Trump’s rallies on social media and allowed the Democratic National Committee to project Harris running mate Tim Walz’s charge that Trump and Vance are “WEIRD AS HELL” on Trump Tower in Chicago.
During the debate, Harris taunted Trump to his face, asserting that, “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
After laying the bait, Harris addressed the audience, saying, “And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams and your, your desires.” She concluded her point by promising, “I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.”
Most politicians would recognize Harris’ obvious rhetorical trap as a ploy to prove her point that Trump cares more about himself than the voters. But an agitated Trump blustered right into it.
After ABC moderator David Muir invited Trump to explain why he killed a bipartisan bill aimed at bolstering security on the Southern border, Trump replied, “First let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
Trump’s hyperbolic response demonstrated how his own insecurity about his rallies’ crowd size left him open to manipulation by his opponent.
Later in the debate, Harris reminded the audience that she wasn’t the only one who could manipulate Trump, and she suggested that this vulnerability could jeopardize American security. She claimed, “It is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Harris told Trump, “would eat you for lunch.”
Scapegoating the other
Trump’s brand of insecure white masculinity is dangerous for democracy not only because it can be manipulated by opponents. A desire to preserve white male supremacy often manifests as racist, misogynistic or transphobic scapegoating.
Communication scholar Patricia Roberts-Miller explains that scapegoating shifts focus away from policy issues and onto members of a marginalized group who can be blamed for society’s ills, fostering a culture in which people are dehumanized and degraded.
After Trump insisted that he had the best rallies, he warned that “World War III” was imminent because of immigrants who were supposedly “eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
This particular falsehood originated as a bizarre and debunked conspiracy theory circulating in right-wing media that alleged Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets.
Roberts-Miller explains that, historically, scapegoating rhetoric often smooths the way for more serious civil and human rights violations, like when Jews were scapegoated in Nazi Germany and Japanese Americans were scapegoated prior to internment during World War II.
Trump’s fixation on immigrants throughout the debate, and elsewhere, could help rhetorically clear a path for authoritarian policies he has said he would enact, such as using U.S. troops to round up and deport mass numbers of immigrants.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Gender and democratic health
Communication scholar Paul Elliott Johnson argues that Trump’s brand of demagoguery is “defined by a reliance on victimized, White, toxic masculinity.” Some scholars have focused on how this rhetorical strategy appeals to men who are “secretly insecure about their manhood,” as The Washington Post reported in 2018.
Trump’s own white masculine insecurity was on clear display throughout his debate against Harris. It was a different type of pathological masculinity than the aggressive and aggrieved toxic masculinity Trump perfected as MAGA stagecraft.
Trump’s performance in the debate illustrates why insecure white masculinity should be disqualifying for a presidential candidate. When triggered, it short circuits the candidate’s strategic thinking and elicits demagogic and dehumanizing arguments.
The debate between Harris and Trump revealed how vesting authority in an insecure white man is dangerous for democracy.
Karrin Vasby Anderson is Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
joe says
The debate only revealed what many of us of known for a long time…Trump is (like most bullies) really a weakling. His whole fraudulent life has been built on lies, bluster, fraud and deceit. Harris truly does “know his type” and puts all the Republican men who haven’t the guts to stand up to Trump to shame – if indeed they have any.
Well done, Madam President! (And long overdue)
JimboXYZ says
I think Trump did miss an opportunity with the rally thing. He could have been far more critical & brutally savage on the rally thing. Here’s what went on at the Atlanta, GA Harris-Walz rally ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyrkT-qnfH8
Here are the lyrics. And a good portion of the attendees most certainly left after the free Megan Thee Stallion part of the performance of a lite concert.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/megantheestallion/hotgirl.html
Crowd leaving mid speech, they weren’t there for Harris part of the show. Is MSNBC a pro-Trump network ? From the video provided, appears the venue wasn’t a full house audience as no shows or maybe those folks left long before her speech time.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kamala-harris-video-appears-to-show-people-leaving-rally-mid-speech/ar-BB1qWjDA
I’m trying to figure out the point Kamala Harris was making in the debate. That was an Obama tactic really. Trump not rattled, just addressed the point with the facts really, without criticizing her choice of celebrity performers ? The DNC had empty seats as well, maybe because the Democrats overcharge like a Taylor Swift concert tickets get scalped for ? If that’s the best of what Harris has for the solutions to distancing herself from Biden-Harris as Harris-Walz, I want no part of that to vote more of the same of the last 4 years. Me, I don’t care so much for what anyone has at their rally for music. But debating crowd size wasn’t part of the questions either would be answering as the format of the questions ABC provided. Harris was distracting in more of an annoying way than getting points in a debate. Her misdirection on rally crowds doesn’t make our groceries any more affordable. But that’s what the media focuses on ?
Marlee says
Huh???????????????
This makes no sense whatsoever…all over the place…just like Rump!
Jim says
What are you focused on? Trump was more interested in defending his “crowd size” and “pet eaters” than in debating Harris. Trump continues to rail about “Obamacare” yet only has “concepts of a plan” after 8+ years. Trump has stolen Top Secret documents and (I pray he loses) if he doesn’t get elected, I’d bet the house that those charges will stick and I sincerely hope he gets the same treatment many others have gotten for far less (I’m talking jail time). He’s a patsy for Putin and he quotes fascists dictators like Orban and Erdoğan because they know how to play to his ego. His administration “negotiated” the exit from Afghanistan without including the government of that country which led to the disastrous exit (and Biden’s administration deserves blame for how the final exit was done as well). Forty of 44 cabinet officials from his administration state that he is not fit for office. He rants about windmills, electric boats, sharks and Hannibal Lecter, for goodness sake. He thinks Nicki Haley was in charge of the Capitol police on January 6th. Project 2025 is led and consists of many members of his administration yet he “knows nothing about it”. He’s both for and against abortion.
I could go on and on but it’s a waste of time with you and people like you. I’ve stated more facts in this short comment than Donald Trump has stated in his entire campaign. He has no plan to make things better. He just says things will be better under him and the simpletons among us lap up the Kool-Aid.
Wallingford says
In addition to what has been previously mentioned, at a presser at Mar-A-Lago he said he was shot in the ear lobe and was a quick healer. The top of the ear is not the lobe!
.
Laurel says
Where was the guy who got killed trying to save his family? Why has Trump not said anything (to my knowledge) about him? Was the man near Trump? Gotta say, Trump is one heck of a fast healer.
Deborah Coffey says
You still can’t see what you actually see, Jimbo! Not one of your links shows people leaving the Harris rallies. By the way, MSN and MSNBC are not the same. Donald will go to prison and Kamala will be Madam President. What then?
DaleL says
Jimbo, none of your links prove anything. The last one, Newsweek via MSN, has this statement: “In the clip, some of the attendees can be seen holding “Kamala” signs, and it is unclear whether they were leaving the venue or had exited their seats for another reason, such as going to the restroom.”
In any case, it is Mr. Trump who is fixated on crowd size.
Kamala Harris had basically three things she needed to establish in the debate.
1. That she was strong enough to be our president. She did this in the very beginning by advancing into Trump’s side (territory) and shaking his hand.
2. To be the candidate of hope, freedom, change, and the future.
3. To get Trump to demonstrate that he was the candidate of fear, hate, suspicion, and the past.
Harris succeeded. The latest polling indicates a small shift toward Harris. If this continues, I predict Trump will demand another debate in an attempt to reverse this. In the 1984 presidential campaign, Reagan lost his first debate to Mondale. In the second debate, Reagan won. Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan. Reagan, for all of his flaws, was a decent person. I view him as a mediocre actor trying to play the part of a great president. Donald Trump is not even a mediocre actor; he cannot stay on script. He definitely is NOT a decent person.
Tony says
What debate were you watching – she showed his true colors !!!
Ray W. says
Speaking of true colors, Tony, an evangelical Christian wrote a column published in The Atlantic.
“The accusation that Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city are abducting and eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs relies not on one falsehood but on a web of them. The rhetoric evokes racist tropes about ‘savages’ who do not conform to our civilized Western world. There’s also a religious angle: the idea that Haitian refugees are voodoo cultists who might be worshipping the devil. As an evangelical Christian who actually believes in the existence of Satan, I agree that we can see the work of the devil at play here, only it’s not on the menu of the Haitian families but rather in the cruelty of those willing to lie about them.
“There is little ambiguity about whether Springfield, Ohio, is a hellscape of raptured pets, held at the mercy of marauding refugees. Law enforcement has told the world that there’s no evidence of this behavior, and the mayor and governor have confirmed this. But, in the social-media age, none of that matters against A friend I know there knew somebody who said that she knew somebody whose cat was gutted and hanging from a tree. Other conflict entrepreneurs, when asked to provide evidence, sound like a radical deconstructionist in a 1990s faculty lounge, appealing to the ‘larger reality’ of immigrant crime that is so true that the facts of the particular case, even if shown to be untrue, are beside the point. …
“When we are willing to see children terrorized rather than stop telling lies about their families, we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment, and ask who abducted our consciences. That’s especially true for those of us, like me, claim to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who told us that on the Day of Judgment, ‘people will give account for every careless word they speak.’ (Mt 12:36)”
john stove says
WTF?
Thats what you got out of the debate?….Not that this orange face imbecilic buffoon talked about “peoples cats and dogs getting eaten”?…..or that he has “no regrets” over the January 6th insurrection?……or he has “a concept of a plan” to replace Obamacare but he has had over 8+ years to come up with one?
No wonder Trumpo and his weird Ilk are circling the drain….good riddance. Worst President in the history of the USA. No policy or details as to how he can make our lives better….just revenge BS 24/7
BillC says
@ XYZ Of the links you provided, only one shows a few people at a crowed indoor Kamala rally walking down stairs from upper tier to lower tier, not leaving the venue.
Here’s what people leaving a Trump rally in droves looks like. You can hear Trump talking in the background while there are hundreds every few minutes going out the exit. The time is notated every few minutes by the reporter asking exiting attendees “Do you have the time?” so the viewer can gauge the continuous mass of people walking out over time.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-rally-video-shows-mass-walking-out-during-speech/ar-BB1miYt8
Justbob says
What is equally disturbing, aside from a totally unhinged and felonious candidate, is the insane gullibility of his supporters. The dumbing down of America is in full bloom.
JW says
Most Americans vote with their (ignorant) gut which by the way produces feces, others vote with their brain which allows you to THINK and hopefully to distinguish between truth and lies. Unfortunately our educational system is doing a inferior job of teaching critical thinking. So, I admit voting is not easy. It seems more and more a form of sport or entertainment which is what the American culture is all about these days.
But you can see the difference between Trump (gut preferred) and Harris (brain preferred)
Just a hint: feces smells bad.
Laurel says
Narcissism is a “mental disorder” as described by Mayo Clinic, and would require “psychotherapy” as a path to health.
Look it up.
Sherry says
Thank you, Jim, Deborah, Marlee and Justbob. Trying to make any sense of comments by maga cult members is futile..
You are so right Justbob, when you say the “dumbing down of America is in full bloom”. I would add that Rupert Murdoch and his FOX media empire has taken full advantage with their 20+ years of right winged propaganda and sheer manipulation of millions of our fellow citizens in the US. The maga cult. . . with their mindless belief in whatever FOX talking heads say or whatever pops up on their phones is now a very real threat to our rule of law, moral code and democracy.
Ed P says
So it’s settled. Style is more important then substance when it comes to selecting the leader of the free world.
Yeah! Like a beauty pageant.
Laurel says
Now normally, I would say that was a sexist statement. But maybe not, considering Trump wears more makeup than Harris.
Substance, huh?
Ed P says
Laurel,
Never thought about the sexist aspect, but you might be.
Ever heard of Mister International, Mister Global, Manhunt International. Man of the world features a crown.
Who knew. Thanks I learned something new.
Laurel says
No, I never heard of any of those. Had to look them up. I’m not sure what a male model, a male beauty pageant and an oil/fracking/gas industry expert have to do with each other. Must be something esoteric.
Sherry says
We should never ever forget that the substance of a “healthy”, evolving society begins with a strong foundation of positive human principles.
This from the National Center for Constitutional Studies: Just as a structure cannot stand without a sturdy base, a society cannot thrive without a clear comprehension of its foundational principles. In the arena of governance, principles stand as the bedrock upon which prosperous and free nations build their constitutions, laws, and systems.
On the “requirement” for good “Character” from leaders, this from Peter Drucker (basic ethics 101 in most universities, and advanced high schools) :
Why Character Counts and How Character Develops
But why worry about our character? The formation of our character creates predictability to our leadership. Predictability, dependability, and consistency: these three qualities ensure that our leadership is reliable and motivates people to place their confidence in us. Our effectiveness as leaders is built on trust. The leader is on constant display and cannot escape the spotlight of public scrutiny, lying, cheating and stealing makes “trust” impossible.
Our goal for the first principle of effective leadership is to identify and illustrate the natural and deliberate processes of character formation. Character formation establishes the foundation for great leadership success. When absent, it charts the path for colossal leadership failure. Because our character is formed by our beliefs, our actions, our self-reflections on our actions, and our corrective behaviors as a result of this self-reflection, we must recognize the way in which these beliefs, actions, and reflections both shape and reflect our character.
One of the great challenges of becoming a leader is to develop the capacity for moral self-reflection. So often what distinguishes great leaders from also-rans is whether or not you can develop a capacity to self-correct. Leaders get off track. They overreact. They walk into situations and do not respond as they should. This in and of itself is usually not a problem. What becomes a problem is if they cannot recover from their mistakes. The first step to recovering from your mistakes is to recognize you made them.
Ultimately, Drucker believes the moral tone for the entire organization starts at the top. He believed, and I think he is right, that the behavior of your senior executives fundamentally sets the tone for your organization. He amplifies this by noting that our people decisions must demonstrate that we will be unwavering in insisting that leaders at all levels of the organization must have basic integrity that can be trusted and relied upon. It is simply too crucial and cannot be acquired later on. This is also why moral failings are so catastrophic: they undermine the very trust that is at the heart of leadership.
Laurel says
Nice, thank you Sherry.
I hate to say it, but after looking around, seeing Trump and Vance, seeing how the Republican politicians react to Trump, realizing what the Supreme Court has done, watching and reading about DeSantis, seeing how things go right here in Flagler County, I pretty much don’t trust anyone outside my family and friends, and cats (!) anymore. Way too much bullshit. I scan the TV programs that focus on uplifting, which are difficult to find.
If people cannot be honest, and don’t care about facts…that’s not good.
Sherry says
Good Morning Laurel,
You are so right about TV. . . most of the new movies and series seem to be filled with gratuitous violence. I love a murder mystery as much as the next person. . . but, I don’t need to see necks slit and even fake blood gushing everywhere. Voluntarily subjecting myself to such violence is unacceptable to me. . . thank goodness my wonderful hubby agrees. The series “Suits” is really good, or reruns of SNL or Gracie and Frankie, etc.
Our current situation in which over 30% of our fellow citizens just may be living in a FOX built trump cult reality of “Alternative Facts” is unhealthy for our society and detrimental to our entire democracy.
Laurel says
Sherry: I remember when the Warner Bros cartoons were considered dangerous to vulnerable minds, if you can possibly imagine. I loved those cartoons, especially the 50’s and 60’s batch. The 70’s cartoons went downhill. Nowhere near as clever.
Anyway, what I’m getting at, is that the violence that is so gratuitous today is not good for us. I have a belief that a portion of the human brain takes it literally. I mean that we can visually parse out what we see, but somewhere, a part of us doesn’t separate the supposedly obvious acting from a reality. A non judgemental part of the brain, which may be why some of us have nightmares that seem silly when we wake up.
Anyway, there is a show called “Uplift,” I think it’s on CBS. Good show. I like Sunday Morning, Nature and Nova. I’ll look up “Suits.”