Remember the Wendy’s restaurant infamous commercial from the mid-1980s featuring an old lady (a yiayia-type character) customer with a giant bread bun and tiny beef burger exclaiming “Where’s the beef!?”

That catchphrase was adopted as a slogan by Vice President Walter Mondale in his 1984 Democratic presidential primary campaign to criticize his opponent’s hollow proposals. This slogan has come to represent proposals that sound good but lack substance.

Trump is demonstrably a blabber and rambler.  He talks a wild game, with subliminally planted words, sweeping broad strokes, and identity charged and instigative affirmations. But his ranting populist language is devoid of any substance, details or depth of knowledge.

Trump is infamous for making outlandish, ridiculous, and incredulous remarks. The list of unintelligent Trump quotes (not to mention gaffes) is too long. Recently, he said that he can end the Russia-Ukraine war in a day. Really? How!?

It would tactically behoove Vice President Harris to counterstrike Trump by pulling the curtain open on this “Wizard of Oz” with this “Where’s the Beef” meme as a campaign slogan. To defeat Trump, one has to expose his game.

Trump’s way of bolstering his proposals in incoherent sentences is by overusing a few of his favorite words, like “very” and “great” in a variety of statements for this or that proposition. (i.e., “Some people would say I’m very, very, very intelligent.” or “Make America Great Again.”).

Or it’s his self-proclaimed prowess that he can snappily fix things or get this or that done (i.e., “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”).

At first glimpse, these remarks may sound good but they’re all utter hogwash*. But that’s the extent of Trump’s articulable language and advocacy skills in defending his (undefendable) rhetoric.   

All politicians use campaign slogans and announce grand policy plans to solve or innovate this or that, but Trump’s malarkey is beyond the pale and defies rational sense. But they are catchy! – especially amid this Trumpism phenomenon. (The psychology and culture of political behavior and voting is a fascinating subject and abounds in literature).

Harris-Walz see this Trump personality style and intense political ploy and realize that to effectively debunk Trump’s populist rhetoric and expose his “Wizard of Oz” facade they need to (some extent) fight fire with fire. That’s why their “weird” slogan attack on Trump-Vance seems to be working.

So will “Where’s the Beef” meme tame Trump the braggart.

*Editor’s Note: a much more ‘technical’ term was originally used by the author. It was subsequently changed for printing purposes.

Michael Manoussos is the founding and managing member of Michael Manoussos & Co PLLC, a New York law firm.