Hillary Clinton thinks Kamala Harris is hitting Donald Trump where it hurts—and she loves to see it.
Clinton stopped by The View to talk about how she thinks Harris is doing against Trump on Thursday, and shared how Harris has managed to take her advice to “bait him” to a whole other level. “Back in 2016, in my acceptance speech at the convention, I said ‘You can’t trust somebody with nuclear weapons who you can bait with a tweet.’ Because he’s definitely bait-able,” she explained.
Earlier this month, Clinton told The New York Times what she advised Harris ahead of her debate with Trump. “The more that [Trump] can be exposed on stage [the better]—he’s not a strong leader,” Clinton said at the time. “He’s not a stable leader. The more that can be exposed, the more people will have doubts about him. And that’s really what this debate is meant to do, because the people already locked in to supporting either her or him are unlikely to change.”
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Clinton thinks Harris hit the nail on the head. “[Trump] has a very fragile ego,” she said, “that has to be constantly buttressed and people have to tell him how great he is and he has to tell himself how great he is. And he has to have people around him who are constantly just giving him all of this emotional support.” Clinton argued that Harris did an even better job of exploiting this obvious weakness of Trump’s than she did.
“Part of what [Harris] did so well—I was baiting him about nuclear weapons—which I think is pretty important. [But] she baited him about his crowd size,” which was much more effective, Clinton said. “He doesn’t care about nuclear weapons, he doesn’t care about policy—but his crowd size [gets his attention],” she added.
That said, Clinton emphasized that the goal in baiting Trump is not just a gotcha—it’s to show the public where his weaknesses lie. “I think that [Harris] understood and did it so effectively because it wasn't about just scoring points against him in a debate. It was about exposing him [and] letting the American people see [him for what he is],” she concluded.
As far as how she thinks Harris’ debate performance will affect things in the last leg of the election, Clinton added during an appearance on Morning Joe earlier in the day, “I have no doubt the Harris-Walz campaign, like mine, will win the popular vote. But as we all know, that doesn’t get you the election.”
“What needs to happen is what they are doing—just deeper, more intensely reaching out to people with the positive story,” she added, responding to naysayers who comment Harris should talk more about policy. “Go to the website. That’s where the policy is,” she said. “I had more policy than anybody had [when she ran],” Clinton explained, “but at the end of the day, that’s not what caused people to vote for me or against me.”
And, she added, “The Harris campaign knows that.”
