Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off on the debate stage in Philadelphia for the first time ever on Tuesday evening on ABC News for the first debate between the GOP and Democrat nominees for president in 2024.
Trump, who knocked out incumbent President Joe Biden from the presidential race in the first and only debate this cycle between the two of them back in June, will be looking for a similarly professional performance and to keep the race on its current trajectory which is breaking hard against Harris. Harris, meanwhile, needs to turn things around from the current free fall she has slid down into after her meteoric rise when Biden dropped out and she quickly ascended to the nomination without any votes.
The debate, which is set to begin at 9 p.m. eastern time, will be moderated by ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis. ABC, as Trump regularly correctly notes, has been one of the most biased of all the networks in favor of Democrats and against Republicans, so it will be interesting to see if Muir and Davis can be fair or if they try to team up with Harris to kneecap Trump.
The debate is also the first time Trump and Harris have ever met face to face, so seeing the interaction between the two candidates could end up making fireworks–or it could be as stale as an interaction can be. Betting markets are literally offering odds on whether the two even shake hands–so that could be a key tell when they take the stage as to how things will go.
Harris has avoided the press and public off-script moments since she ascended the Democrat Party’s throne, so how she handles herself on a stage that will not allow pre-printed notes–candidates are given pen and paper and can make live notes on stage–could make or break her chances at remaining in the running for the presidency. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, prevailed in a fight to keep the same rules as the Trump-Biden debate from June which cuts off candidates’ microphones when they are not speaking. Harris’s team wanted to change the rules to try to use the live microphones to her advantage in a bid to bait Trump into coming across badly, but Harris failed in this respect.
Trump’s campaign has said ahead of time that he is going to seek to use the opportunity on stage to do something many in media have failed to do: vet Harris’s extremist and radically leftist record for the broader American public. Democrats and Harris’s team, meanwhile, have been repeatedly trying to lower expectations for her in case she has a performance as bad as or close to as bad as Biden’s back in June. It’s too late at this point for Democrats to drop Harris like a bad habit like they did to Biden, so they’re stuck with her come hell or high water–and frankly, given Harris’s historically abysmal performances without pre-written remarks in a teleprompter prepared for her by some official professional speechwriter it seems smart for them to try to lower the bar.
But if Harris is to change the trajectory of the race–Trump is leading nationally in public polling like one released this weekend by the New York Times and in enough swing states to easily win the presidency–Harris will almost need to pitch a perfect game or have a stellar performance at the plate. Whether she is capable of doing that, and doing more than just creating a couple inevitable viral moments with a pre-planned catchphrase, remains to be seen.
Almost as important as the actual debate is what happens afterwards in the spin room, and on television. It’s in the immediate post-debate environment where partisans will seek to press any advantages their side picked up during the debate or similarly defuse any problematic moments for their side from the stage.
As all of this plays out on debate night in America, follow along here on Breitbart News for live breaking news, analysis, and updates.
UPDATE 8:42 p.m. ET:
Kamala Harris will get a shorter podium, per Axios, because apparently she is much shorter than Donald Trump:
This was not supposed to happen but sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News that during a walk-through Trump campaign sources pulled out measuring tape and caught ABC News giving Harris the adjusted podium. ABC News officials apparently refused to rectify the mistake, instead aiming to give Harris the edge in terms of presentation. Trump’s height is actually a major advantage; Harris is significantly shorter than him and Americans have tended to elect the taller candidate president with rare exception in modern history.
