The perils of a kitchen-sink debate strategy

Trump is getting better polls, but hasn't fixed any of the problems with his message

Last night, we got to hear from Donald Trump on:

• Crime rates in Central American countries

• What Victor Orban thinks

• How, if he got a certain raw vote total last time, he couldn’t lose (not how this works)

• Migrants eating cats (!)

• Crowd size (of course, after taking Kamala Harris’ bait)

We did also hear Trump’s core campaign message on the border, global chaos under Biden-Harris, and why Harris didn’t do anything about the problems she talks about for the last three and a half years. It would have been helpful for Trump if that was all we heard from him—but it wasn’t.

We’re told Trump is a “counterpuncher.” He responds to absolutely everything. He throws the rhetorical kitchen sink at his opponents in these affairs.

That’s not how you methodically dismantle an opponent. And the stakes are higher for him than in most of his previous debates, because he’s going up against an opponent who hadn’t been in the limelight for decades. He needs to be the one to fill in the blanks with a few focused …