Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. On CNN's "Meet the Billionaire" on Monday night, she faced off against Donald Trump in a tense debate. But in the aftermath of the debate, the question of the day: Is she a smart or dumb human being?
00:06:36.000Is the way Kamala Harris thinks, processes information, interacts with people, avoids the press, and make decisions likely to make her a bad, perhaps even dangerous president?
00:06:53.000At least some semblance of an answer may be found in how modern psychology describes some of the various cognitive styles associated with Harris's observed behavior.
00:07:05.000For example, Harris's over-scripting and heavy reliance on rehearsed responses may simply be what is a well-traveled technique to manage performance anxiety.
00:07:16.000Such anxiety would be consistent with Harris's frequent nervous cackles.
00:07:22.000Similarly, Harris's strong need to prepare and control social interactions mirrors a cognitive style that seeks to avoid embarrassment or failure.
00:07:34.000Okay, this is going to blow your mind.
00:07:37.000Think about what happened when Vice President Harris received an invitation to dinner in April of 2022 at the home of DC news mogul David Bradley.
00:07:52.000It's probably the best thing Mike Allen did.
00:07:54.000He probably got his wrist slapped for doing it, unless Jill Biden planted the story, but that's another story.
00:08:02.000Harris was so socially anxious about this dinner, this informal salon-style affair with journalists and newsmakers, that she had her staff organize a highly unusual mock dinner to help her prepare.
00:08:18.000Staffers even acted as the mock dinner participants so Harris could practice interacting with the group.
00:08:30.000Now, regardless of how one might seek to categorize Harris's various behaviors, over-scripting, over-rehearsing, nervous cackles, reluctance to take questions, anxiety in social and performance settings,
00:08:52.000the question again for voters now is whether Harris's cognitive makeup would make her a bad and perhaps even very dangerous present.
00:09:11.000Based on my four years in the White House watching the master of improvisation, Donald Trump, interact with hundreds of business and labor leaders, foreign dignitaries, hostile journalists.
00:09:27.000Other politicians and his own cabinet officials and staff in venues as near as the West Wing Cabinet Room and as far away as a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
00:09:41.000Here, I can tell you that no American president can possibly rely on well-rehearsed scripts either to interact with world leaders or respond to rapidly moving events.
00:09:55.000The world is simply too complex for that.
00:09:59.000Indeed, any president that lacks the ability to think on his or, in Kamala's case, her feet in dynamic situations and improvise accordingly is likely to needlessly drag this nation into all manner of economic and geopolitical troubles and possibly, possibly war itself.
00:10:24.000To give this context, imagine a bar joke that begins with this.
00:10:31.000The American president walks into a bar to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
00:10:43.000Of course, we know what the punchline was with President Donald Trump.
00:10:54.000Kim Jong-un halted his nuclear bomb and missile tests.
00:10:59.000And the Ayatollah and his Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi proxies did not invade Israel.
00:11:09.000In contrast, the Kamala Harris we have seen so far, over-scripted, over-rehearsed, can't think on her feet, mock dinners, non-improvisational, she'd have no idea, no idea how to handle any of these world leaders.
00:11:28.000Nor would she be able to readily adapt to the almost daily crises that come across a president's desk.
00:11:37.000Instead, Kamala Harris would be beholden to her handlers and speechwriters.
00:11:43.000Hey, none of them, none of them will have been elected by the American people.
00:11:50.000None of them who are going to put in, putting words in Kamala Harris's mouth ever got a single vote from the American people.
00:12:00.000That's how this goes so wrong in Washington.
00:13:17.000And instead of having a sober conversation about this in the media, because this is very serious business, I am telling you again, it's like there's not a lot of people who could write these words, talk these words.