In 'the lion’s den,' Harris shows us the meaning of strength

Kamala Harris was on Fox last night. This morning, most people seem to be focused on the moment when she called out host Bret Baier.

She had been addressing the fact that Donald Trump has been talking about using the US military against US citizens. Baier paused, saying “we asked that question today,” then played a clip of Trump speaking.

But what he showed was an edited version. Fox cut out the part that Harris was referring to. “That clip was not what he’s been saying about ‘the enemy within’ that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people,” Harris said. “That’s not what you just showed.”

Here’s what Trump said: “It is the enemy from within and they're very dangerous. They are marxists and communists and fascists. I use a guy like Adam Schiff. They made up the Russia, Russia-Russia hoax. … We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they're so evil."

In past remarks, he said acts of war against “the enemy within” are justifiable. Over the weekend, he named California Congressman Schiff. Yesterday was the first time he named the former House speaker and her husband as possible targets of assassination. (Paul Pelosi was in fact nearly killed by a home intruder inspired by Trump.)

Baier and Fox tried hiding that from its audience.

The vice president wouldn’t let them.

And the reaction this morning has been huzzah!

“Fearless and tough”
But if we really listen to what Harris said, we’d see there’s more going on than merely calling Fox out the sanewashing of Trump’s delusions and dissociations. She’s defining what is means to be strong in a democracy. In effect, she said that a president must have the courage to face dissent. He cannot fall to pieces whenever people complain. And he sure-as-hell can’t murder them when his feefees get hurt.

“We both know that he talked about turning the American military on the American people,” Harris said. “He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He’s talked about locking people up, because they disagree with him. This is a democracy, and in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. This is what is at stake …”

So she wasn’t just scolding Fox for sanitizing Trump. She was scolding Fox for preventing its viewership from seeing that Trump is actually a wimp. Indeed, he’s so brittle that Fox and the entire rightwing media apparatus must protect him by stopping their audiences from seeing the truth. “This is a democracy,” Harris said, with righteous fury in her voice. If he can’t tolerate politics, Trump has no business in politics.

Harris demonstrated what real strength is. And it’s that demonstration that will almost certainly leave an impression longer lasting than anything she ever said about policy. As a former politico noted, Harris is “a woman so confident she would go into the lion's den, so tough and ready to be president that she could take the heat. The non-verbal message was she is ready to be president, fearless and tough.”

Staring down Putin
Her strength is borne of experience, including the crucible of war.

In his new book, Bob Woodward recounts when the Biden-Harris administration learned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t believe it, though, not even after Kamala Harris met with him to say that he needed “start thinking about things like having a succession plan in place to run the country if you are captured or killed or cannot govern.” She worried it might be the last time she saw him again.

Woodward also recounts when with the Biden-Harris administration concluded that Vladimir Putin was ready to use nukes. Joe Biden twice confronted Putin in 2021. During the second meeting, Woodward wrote, Biden reminded Putin there are no winners in nuclear war. Putin, however, “raised the risk of nuclear war in a threatening way.”

The Biden-Harris administration stood its ground, though. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called the Kremlin to explain that if they go nuclear, “all the restraints that we have been operating under in Ukraine would be reconsidered,” according to Woodward. Two days later, the Kremlin tried lying its way to using nukes. It said the Ukrainians were planning to use a “dirty bomb.” “We don’t believe you,” Austin said in response, according to Woodward. “Don’t do it.”

And they didn’t.

That’s strength.

“This is what is at stake”
It’s tempting to imagine what Donald Trump would have done, but we don’t really need to imagine. On a podcast today, he blamed Zelensky for Russia’s decimation of his country. The rest of Trump’s remarks came straight out of the Kremlin playbook. If he had been president, instead of Biden, he would have believed Putin’s lie about Ukraine’s “dirty bomb.” He would have opened the door to a nuclear holocaust. And anyone who protested would have been subject to assassination.

That would be a demonstration of autocratic power.

But not strength.

“This is what is at stake,” Harris told Bret Baier.

Do you want a president who can handle criticism at home and who can face conflicts abroad? Or do you want a president who will crack down on political dissent and bend a knee to America’s enemies?

Do you want a strong leader?

Or a leader who will use power to cover up his weakness?