The many, nasty faces of Kamala Harris: VP only reinforced the fatal inauthenticity of her debate performance

The smart analysis of the first — and maybe only — debate of the Trump-Harris presidential cycle is that Don?ald Trump blew it. 

The former president, winging it as usual, missed numerous “kill shots,” was frustratingly imprecise and allowed himself to be baited by Kamala Harris. 

But on the optics, Harris committed far worse self-harm. 

If you switched off the sound for the ABC debate Tuesday night and just watched the images, you would come away feeling deep distaste for the haughty flibbertigibbet who kept making faces while Trump was speaking.?

Harris’ split-screen pantomime made her seem unserious and unlikable and was clearly designed for the sort of viral “Brat Girl” moments on social media her juvenile campaign staff imagines are vote winners. Kween! 

In reality, the novelty value is short-lived and even the Taylor Swift demographic will come to see it as unbecoming.

Cool aunt, sure, but president?

Nope.

Margaret Thatcher she is not. 

Far from being a masterstroke, Harris’ many faces only reinforced the fatal inauthenticity of the rest of her debate performance, which was a string of memorized set pieces with little relevance to the question being asked, and delivered in an odd staccato.?

Another Sybil 

While Trump was speaking and Harris knew her face was alongside his on the split screen, she would flash through a dozen different personas in 60 seconds, like an overmedicated Sybil. 

Her expression would switch between narrowed-eye incredulity, smug contempt, pursed-lip amusement, a condescending smirk, a tilted head, a disapproving eyebrow, a thrusting chin, eye-rolling, head-shaking, a little macho shoulder swagger, and even a ridiculous chin-holding pose.?

Of course, the media pundits were delighted with the contrived body language. 

“She turned to him with an arched brow. A quiet sigh. A hand on her chin. A laugh. A pitiful glance. A dismissive shake of her head,” the New York Times gushed.?

But to any normal viewer, her Marcel Marceau shtick was puerile, distracting and very fake.

Harris looked as if she had been practicing her multiple faces in the bathroom mirror for hours during the week she was holed up in a hotel doing debate prep. 

Political consultant and focus-group maestro Frank Luntz didn’t seem to realize it was deliberate and tweeted that Harris needs to “train her face not to respond [because it] feeds into a female stereotype and, more importantly, risks offending undecided voters.” 

He was attacked as a misogynist, but he’s right about how repellent the face-making was to the average viewer.?

Harris’ pantomime was also disrespectful to her opponent, taking liberties that no man would get away with.

Her wordless contempt was jarring beside her aggressive faux ?civility before the debate, when she strode past her miniature podium, custom-made for her 5-foot-4 frame, and thrust her hand out at the towering Trump.?

“Kamala Harris,” she said in a deep girl-boss voice, as if he didn’t know who she was.

The workshopped ploy was aimed at the “You go, girl” crowd online, who predictably praised it as a “power move.”?

But Trump, not exactly a stranger to power moves, was unfazed. “Good to see you, have fun,” he said, politely shaking her hand without crushing it like he did to Vladimir Putin and Mitt Romney. 

For a candidate whose true self remains undisclosed, Harris’ thousand fake faces only added to the confusion voters feel about her. 

“Kamala Kameleon” just further cemented the mystery about who she really is.

As the campaign grinds on, her identity is fast solidifying into an amorphous void. 

She is so afraid of alienating one group or another that she has emerged as a shape-shifting, hollow woman with as many fake accents as she has fake personas.?

Her personal backstory is replete with dubious anecdotes designed to offset her privileged upbringing in Canada, such as a job she supposedly had at McDonald’s as a student for which there is zero evidence, no photo, employment record or confirmation from a friend or family member. 

“I did fries,” she told a very impressed Drew Barrymore. 

Phony job listing 

The job is not listed on any ?résumé and her advisers refuse to discuss it.

Fact-checking website Snopes failed to verify the Golden Arches employment and declared the tale “unproven.” 

Other embellishments of her history seem equally phony, such as her claim that her parents took her to a civil rights protest as a toddler and when asked what she wanted, she exclaimed, “Fweedom.”

She never mentioned the story again after being accused of plagiarizing it from an identical anecdote Martin Luther King told Playboy in 1965. 

Since Tuesday night’s debate was held in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden had a home-state advantage due to his mythical blue-collar roots in Scranton, Harris repeatedly described herself as a “middle-class kid,” repudiating her upbringing in the wealthiest and most privileged neighborhood of Montreal.?

Even the pronunciation of her name is contrived: “Comm-ala” (like “Comm-耻苍颈蝉迟”).

She and her supporters have made a big deal out of the pronunciation, accusing anyone who doesn’t say it exactly right of being racist and sexist.

But a video doing the rounds online has Harris in Cleveland in 2020 mispronouncing her own name as “Camel-a.” 

People who have known for years, like Biden, pronounce it that way, too. 

It’s all part of her identity crisis, and it’s why accusing her of being a flip-flopper is so potent. 

Trump, on the other hand, never changes. What you see is what you get. 

As he said during the debate: “Everybody knows I’m an open book. Everybody knows what I’m going to do.” 

On optics, he came across as serious and resolute, which is what voters want in a president as they struggle in the Biden-Harris economy and worry about unchecked illegal migration, crime and the global drumbeat of war.

Smiles and frivolity are not on the menu.

Trump’s cut-through line was describing her economic plans as “Run, Spot, run.” 

He also took every chance to point out that she is vacuous and manufactured.

“That’s just a sound bite. They gave her that to say,” he growled. 

The times don’t suit a TikTok Kween, regardless of what talking heads on CNN and MSNBC tell you. 

That’s the message from a group of 10 undecided voters in a Reuters focus group, six of whom turned toward Trump after the debate.

Just three said they would back Harris and one remained unsure. 

It was the same story with several undecided voters interviewed by the Times. 

“Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers,” said Keilah Miller, 34, from Milwaukee, after the debate.

“I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision …?

“When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better,” she said.

“I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.” 

Finally, it goes without saying that the ABC debate moderators were a disgrace, but complaining about their bias is pointless.

Republicans just should resolve to never appear on the network again.