Scoffs, smiles, squints: how Kamala Harris’s face spoke volumes in Trump debate

As Kamala Harris, newly-installed as a presidential candidate, sought to change the weather on the Democrats’ faltering campaign in late July, she made an appeal to Donald Trump that delighted a crowd of her supporters in Atlanta.

Trump “sure seems to have a lot to say about me”, she told the crowd, before challenging him to debate with her: “As the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”

On Tuesday Trump did just in ABC’s televised debate, but which face did she mean? Throughout the 90-minute encounter, captured by the broadcaster’s split screen format, Harris displayed a diverse range of expressions as the former president talked, speaking almost as eloquently through her scoffs, smiles and slow blinks as she did through her remarks.

There was the amused head shake while scribbling notes. The sceptical, slow-blinking squint through heavy lashes. The stately lean, looking down her nose.

The economy under Biden has been a disaster, said Trump. Harris gave a small, sad shake of the head. I’m not given credit “for the great job we did with the pandemic,” he said. An amused scoff. Her economic plan is “like four sentences, like Run Spot Run”. A full what-the-hell-is-he-on squint, followed by a no-go-on-let’s-hear-it head tilt.

Trump’s declaration that his opponent is a Marxist – “Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics and he taught her well” – sent Harris into full emoji mode, leaning back and squinting with one hand on her chin.

When he snapped back at her jibe that people left his rallies out of boredom, she gave a wide grin that he had taken the calculated bait.

By the time Trump was declaring immigrants were “eating the dogs” of small town Americans, Harris was openly laughing, with a mouthed “Oh, come on.”

The vice-president had evidently learned from her boss Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance when debating with Trump in June, during which the president was left exposed not only by his raspy, stumbling statements, but his frozen and slack-jawed appearance while Trump was speaking, a vacant Biden pictured beside him. In the times when her mic was muted, Harris was determined not to create the same visual.

Not everyone was a fan of the Harris’s approach. Republicans inevitably dismissed her performance as pantomimic and inauthentic. But others declared the tactic a success. “Kamala Harris’s face kept saying, ‘Go ahead, Donald, have your tantrum, and then the adults will speak,” wrote novelist Stephen King on X. “He got more time than she did … but she didn’t need more time. Her face said it all.”

“He’s the former reality television star, but she clearly understood the power of the medium,” wrote the New York Times. “Her expression was her rebuttal.”