Opinion: Harris’s button-pushing debate performance spoke to older siblings everywhere

A few years ago, my little sister Molly got a really unfortunate haircut that made her look like Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.”

Naturally, I mercilessly teased her with references to the 1990 American Christmas classic. For weeks, I’d go around slapping my hands on my cheeks like Culkin in the famous movie poster. It wasn’t much, but it worked every time. Molly always flipped out.

I was reminded of this dynamic (albeit with a pang of guilt) Sept. 10 during ABC’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

During the immigration segment, Harris began her answer by touting her own record and skewering Trump for his opposition to bipartisan border security reform — all of which was to be expected. But as she finished her answer, Harris pivoted unexpectedly.

“I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” she said.

I leaned in closer to the TV.

“You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills [causing] cancer,” she continued. “And what you will also notice, is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

Now, the casual observer might, understandably, assume that this was no more than a canned one-liner meant to stir up some discussion on Twitter. But they would be wrong. Harris could have dropped this line any time during the debate — and she chose to drop it during the immigration segment. This timing is significant because, as debate viewers probably noticed, Trump fixates on immigration. And for good reason: it’s the issue on which voters trust him the most, and Harris the least, according to a new poll from PBS.

But Trump contains multitudes. He also obsesses over the size of his rally crowds — a foible for which he was obliquely mocked by Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in August. Clearly, Harris had a hunch about which fixation would capture Trump’s attention first.

When ABC’s David Muir punted the immigration question to Trump, he sidestepped it.

“First let me respond as to the rallies,” he said, embarking on a lengthy diatribe about crowd sizes and finishing with a jaw-dropping act of political self-immolation.

“They’re eating the dogs,” he said. (“They” being…you guessed it: immigrants). “They’re eating the cats. […] They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Harris, like the rest of the country, just laughed. “This is unbelievable,” she said to herself.

Unbelievable indeed. Yet Harris knew exactly what she was doing — as did I, a veteran older sister and a master at the art of pushing people’s buttons.

And it is an art: slowly getting someone to lose their cool. When my sister got her unfortunate haircut, I didn’t go around saying “Your hair is ugly,” or “Nice haircut, Macaulay.” I subtly egged her on through a series of implicit, roundabout references and waited for her to freak out. It helped that I, like Harris, knew exactly which buttons to push.

And push she did.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” she said later on. “Clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

Here is a top-shelf teasing tactic: using the meltdown as fuel for further mockery. She also gets bonus points for the positively delicious insidiousness of pretending to pity Trump’s emotional instability.

Predictably, Trump flipped out once more.

And at that moment, behind her amusement and surprise, a look flashed in Harris’s eyes. It seemed to say: “I can’t believe what I’m getting away with right now, and I almost feel bad.” It was a feeling I used to get when my sister was just too easy to get a rise out of: at once a rush of guilt, exhilaration and genuine pity.

Now, it might be worth asking here whether all of this is a little messed up. For what it’s worth, I — like most older siblings — really do regret being so unkind to my siblings growing up. But what does all this say about Harris? That she’s mean? That she doesn’t pick on people her own size?

Hardly.

For one, Harris wasn’t needling Trump simply to be mean. She was trying to throw him off his game on a presidential debate stage. News flash: it worked!

But let’s also not forget who Donald Trump is. Since he entered the political arena nine long years ago, Trump has insulted and demeaned countless people, places, and things — from his opponents and critics to injured veterans and disabled reporters.

There’s a saying you learn quickly if you have siblings: “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.” Donald Trump, it seems, never learned this saying.

Besides, all it took was one snarky comment to send Trump into a paroxysm of rage. To my little sister’s credit, even on her worst days, it took a lot more than that to get a reaction. Which raises the question: if Donald Trump has thinner skin at age 78 than my little sister did when she was 8 years old, how can we possibly trust him to be the leader of the free world?

Contact Bea Neilson at neilson@oxy.edu