Kamala Harris. Donald Trump. Gish Gallop.
All three are expected at Tuesday’s presidential debate, even if most of America is unfamiliar with one name in that lineup.
GG, as I’ve come to call it, is a shell game/debate tactic that takes its name from Duane Gish, a prominent figure in the creationist movement who deployed dubious arguments, selective factoids and rapid-fire lies to overwhelm his opponents in public discussions about the theory of evolution.
The disinformation technique, dubbed the Gish Gallop in 1994 by the National Center for Science Education’s founding director, Eugenie Scott, is essentially the art of burying one’s opponent in falsehoods, outlandish rhetoric and red herrings, making it nearly impossible for them to cut through the subterfuge and correct the lies within the timed confines of a debate.
Making the GG method work in one’s favor requires criminal levels of confidence and showmanship. I’m not suggesting that former President Trump studied the late creationist’s playbook, if there is such a thing. That would require reading. But there is a set of instructional videotapes.
On those recordings, Gish advises potential debaters to avoid talking about too many subjects on the public stage, steer clear of arguments that are too technical, and stick with a few simple arguments, like insisting that fossils are not proof of human evolution but in fact fakes and hoaxes. Does this witch hunt sound familiar?
If the secret to Trump’s upward fail is available for purchase, why aren’t more morally flexible politicians cashing in on the technique?
“There’s a lot of mini-Trumps — Marjorie Taylor Green, Kari Lake. JD Vance wishes he was one, but he has a personality of a potato,” says renowned debater and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media organization Zeteo and author of “Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking.”
“The issue is that Trump, love him or hate him, clearly has something bigger to his personality. Shameless and bizarre, but it’s there. The only thing he’s ever done well in life was reality TV, not business or property development. He brought that flair and unfortunate evil talent to the presidential stage of 2016 and he’s rode it ever since,” says Hasan.
The Gish Gallop will certainly play a major role Tuesday when ABC News hosts the Harris-Trump debate live from Philadelphia. Need proof that I’m not trying to sell you fabricated fossils? Just last month, the Republican candidate spewed a minimum of 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in an hourlong news conference, according to a team of NPR fact-checkers and journalists.
Vice President Harris is better-equipped than most when it comes to pinning down an obfuscating opponent. She began her career in Alameda County prosecuting cases involving child sexual assault, homicides and robberies. She later became the managing attorney of the Career Criminal Unit in the San Francisco district attorney’s office, where she oversaw the prosecution of repeat offenders.
“In her DNC speech she did prosecute the case against Trump, and if she sticks with that [tactic] on the debate stage, he’s going to be in trouble,” Hasan says of her address last month at the Democratic National Convention. “She’s pointed out that he effectively has been found liable for rape. If she says that on the debate stage, he’s going to lose his mind.”
Despite eight years and two election cycles when Trump, knowingly or not, applied the Gish Gallop strategy during his fight for the presidency, American debates still operate around the assumption that each participant will argue in good faith. Trump‘s rivals Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton and President Biden are among the unfortunate who showed up to their sword fights with a sword (some sharper than others) only to find Trump armed with a the verbal equivalent of a leaf blower and chainsaw.
He consistently laid waste to debate protocol, knocking moderators and rivals off balance, leaving the audience less informed than they were before the debate started. Moderators have been essentially kneecapped during this round of debates because they’ve agreed that there will be no fact-checking of the candidates’ claims in real time. Biden’s last disastrous debate with Trump is one such example.
“The moderator has to just nod along,” says Hasan. “If you watch the first debate in June, there’s a moment where [Trump] says that Democrats kill babies after they’re born. And [moderator] Jake Tapper just says, ‘Thank you, Mr. President.’ No pushback. Debate rules don’t allow for that.”
It’s a scenario made for the Gish Gallop.
