Tuesday’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was not a battle of words, it was a battle of body language.
The facial language and the body language of Harris signaled strength, confidence, and authority. Those are usually the facial and body language signals we get from Donald Trump. But not Tuesday night. Tuesday night, Harris was on the offensive. Trump was frequently on defense.
Harris was on top. Trump was not.
In tribes of chimpanzees, there is a dominant male, a male who is in command. He’s called the alpha male. The alpha male displays the body language of dominance.
He is the center of attention. The eyes of all the other males are on him. When he sits, they sit. When he stands, they stand. This dominant male, this alpha male, even looks regal. If he’s challenged, his fur will erect into a mane of magnificence. The dominant male gets the best food and most of the sex.
How can you tell a dominant male, an alpha male? By his body language. He sits up straight. And how can you tell who is not a dominant male? The subordinate males slouch around with a hunch. They show with their body language that they are followers, not leaders.
Ever since 2015, when he came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower and announced that he would run for president, Donald Trump has projected strength, authority, and confidence. He has displayed the facial and body language of an alpha male.
But not Tuesday night.
Tuesday night, it was Harris who telegraphed the body language of control, the body language of confidence, the body language of dominance. Trump was the one who displayed the body language of submission.
For example, the leading pro-Trump media outlet Fox News interviewed “body language expert Susan Constantine” about the debate. In the resulting article, Fox wrote that “Harris knew Trump’s weak points, such as questioning crowd sizes at his rallies, and when she brought them up, he defiantly responded — to his detriment.”
Why? The Fox body language expert, Susan Constantine, said of Kamala Harris, Trump “fell for every one of her games; they were all tactics…So when she would poke the bear, he would growl back.”
More important, Trump slid into the body language of a subordinate, the body language of a loser. Pointed out the Fox body language expert, “At one point, he dropped his shoulders, dropped his head, and he sunk.” In other words, Trump did not stand up straight. He hunched.
All of this hints that Harris was the one steering the debate. She was in control. Harris was the alpha. Trump was the subordinate.
The result of the debate in the media was strange. Normally pro-Trump Fox will claim that Trump has won a debate. And pro-Democratic media like CNN and MSNBC will claim that their champion, Kamala Harris, has won.
But Tuesday night was different. Fox News was ambiguous. Fox headlined the fact that “House Republicans privately express dismay at Trump’s debate performance.” Fox reported that pro-Trump Republican Lindsay Graham felt Trump had “missed an opportunity.” And Fox allowed its in-house Democrat, Doug Schoen to write, “”It’s pretty clear to me that on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris won.”
But most important, Fox green-lighted the story of the body language expert explaining how Trump may have lost.
Yes, it’s true that Fox reported England’s Daily Express proclaiming that “Trump [had] won [the] debate, 45% to 34%.” And Fox quoted Trump saying, “That was my best debate ever.” But Fox also printed the body language story explaining how Trump may have lost.
Even further over on the MAGA right, Newsmax quoted Trump surrogate North Dakota governor Doug Burgum saying that Tuesday’s debate was “not a fair fight because the two ABC News moderators seemed to be on Harris’ side.” Former Fox anchor Megyn Kelly agreed. In other words, Burgum and Kelly subtly confessed that Trump had not come out of the debate well.
And conspiracy theorists postulated that Harris had microphones hidden in her earrings. Another subtle confession that Harris had won.
Meanwhile, Trump himself sent out fundraising letters claiming that he had wiped the floor with Harris and had ended her campaign.
But, to repeat, last night’s debate was not a battle of words. It was a battle of body language. And in that battle, Donald Trump may have lost his position as America’s uncontested dominant male.
References:
Full Debate: Harris vs. Trump in 2024 Presidential Debate, Wall Street Journal,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgsC_aBquUE
Frans de Waal. Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Paperbacks, 1989 (original date of publication: 1982).
Frans de Waal. Peacemaking Among Primates. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Golden escalator ride: the surreal day Trump kicked off his bid for president
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Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his eight books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He does news commentary at 1:06 am Eastern Time every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on the highest-rated overnight syndicated talk radio show in North America, Coast to Coast AM. For more, see http://howardbloom.net.
