Donald Trump thinks he’s showing up for a debate on Sept. 10. Kamala Harris should turn it into a trial.

Before she got into politics, Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. She’s undoubtedly handled commitment proceedings where it was necessary to convince a jury that a defendant has a mental disorder that makes them dangerous.

A good trial isn’t just about evidence; it’s about weaving that evidence together into a compelling story. Sometimes, it’s a matter of fitting the small, seemingly unrelated pieces of evidence together that really convinces a jury.

In Trump’s case, that should be easy to do.

For years, Trump’s weird statements and outright lies have been dismissed merely as “Trump being Trump.” How many times have we heard that you have to take the ex-president “seriously but not literally”? By normalizing Trump’s behavior as just the way he is, we’ve given him a pass on statements and behaviors that would have destroyed any other candidate.

In other words, even Trump’s future bad behavior has already been “priced in” by voters.

That works to Trump’s advantage — unless you can take what everybody already knows about him and reframe it. So when Trump begins........

© The Hill