Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are gearing up to take the stage for Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, where they’ll fight to sway 2024 election voters on the biggest stage in U.S. politics.
The event, at 9 p.m. EDT, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.
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Donald Trump has arrived in Philadelphia ahead of the debate Tuesday night with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris arrived Monday afternoon after spending several days at a downtown Pittsburgh hotel preparing for the debate.
Kamala Harris has a lot to accomplish in her first presidential debate.
She’s not an unknown, but she hasn’t been president already like Donald Trump. Now she gets the biggest audience she’s ever had to talk to voters still trying to decide whether they can see her behind the Resolute Desk.
But then there’s her opponent, a deeply divisive figure who has been convicted of felonies, regularly criticizes U.S. institutions and promises an unapologetic conservative agenda if he returns to the White House.
And Harris, though not an incumbent, is a face of the Biden administration, which has notable legislative accomplishments but also has presided over an inflationary economy.
So, how much time will the vice president spend making her personal case? How much arguing against Trump? How much trying to take credit for Biden’s wins while distancing herself from his liabilities?
At his rallies and other venues, Donald Trump paints an over-the-top image of an America under Kamala Harris.
“A crash like 1929 ... World War III ... the suburbs will be overrun with violent crime and savage, foreign gangs ... it will be crime, chaos and death all across our country.”
His crowds believe it. But the audience Tuesday is the broader electorate. And Harris will be standing right there able to rebut him, either directly or simply by performing as a steady, mainstream figure that belies the caricature.
It’s a risk Trump will have to weigh as he considers whether to employ his usual rhetoric.
It may look bigger on TV, but the set where the two candidates will be debating tonight is actually pretty small.
The candidates’ podiums are positioned about 6-8 feet apart in a small, blue-lit amphitheater with no live audience in the room. That means there will be no rowdy applause, and no cheers or jeers.
The candidates will enter at the same time from opposite sides of the stage.
It remains to be seen whether they will shake hands.
Democrats want Trump’s role in overturning Roe v. Wade to be front-and-center in the debate, especially after President Joe Biden missed a chance to hammer Trump in their lone debate in June.
“Trump owns every single abortion ban in the country,” the Democratic National Committee said in a statement Tuesday.
Harris brings up Trump’s position on abortion in every campaign speech, reminding voters that Trump has bragged that his three Supreme Court nominees were instrumental in the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe after nearly a half-century of women having a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Republican-run states across the country have since implemented near or total bans on surgical abortions.
Harris proved effective as an advocate on the issue ahead of the 2022 midterms, and Democrats relish the chance she will have as just the second female presidential nominee of a major U.S. party to confront Trump on the matter face-to-face.
The official debate action takes place on the stage, but both Harris and Trump will have a large contingent of allies making arguments on their behalf in the spin room afterward.
Harris will have a number of Democrats whose names popped up as possible running mates for her, including Govs. Gavin Newsom (California), Roy Cooper (North Carolina), Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (New Mexico). There are also a handful of members of Congress: Sens. Tammy Duckworth, Chris Murphy and Laphonza Butler, as well as Reps. Jason Crow, Veronica Escobar, Robert Garcia and Ted Lieu. Mini Rimmaraju, CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, and Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq who famously asked Trump if he had read the Constitution during an appearance at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
In addition to Vance, his running mate, Trump will be represented by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and his co-chair, Lara Trump, who is also Trump’s daughter-in-law.
There will also be several Republicans whom he defeated during the primary campaign — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who shuttered his independent bid and endorsed Trump just weeks ago. There’s also Tulsi Gabbard, a former House member from Hawaii who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and has backed Trump.
The former president will also be supported by other top surrogates like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Florida Reps. Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz and Rep. Mike Waltz of Texas.
It’s the scene of tonight’s debate, but the National Constitution Center has also played host to a number of other pivotal political moments.
The venue in the heart of Philadelphia is across from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, where the Founding Fathers debated and signed the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
In 2008, it was the scene of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech, largely credited as among the more memorable remarks of the campaign of the candidate who went on to become the first Black U.S. president.
That speech came also amid controversy around his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose anti-American rantings threatened Obama’s presidential campaign.
Harris is the first Black woman to serve as vice president, as well as the first Black woman who is a major-party presidential nominee in the U.S.
The center has hosted presidential debates before, including a Democratic primary matchup between Obama and Hillary Clinton, and a town hall with GOP nominee Sen. John McCain, both also in 2008.
President Joe Biden said he had a chance to chat with Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of Tuesday night’s debate. He seems to think she’s ready for her one-on-one with Donald Trump.
“She seemed calm, cool and collected,” Biden said in an exchange with reporters.
Biden wouldn’t reveal what advice he might have offered Harris.
The president is spending debate night in New York, where he said he planned to celebrate his granddaughter Finnegan’s birthday and watch the debate.
Biden will start his Wednesday in New York to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. He will also visit the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, memorials.
Former President Donald Trump seemingly has a uniform: navy suit, white dress shirt (pointed collar, no buttons) and a red necktie (always tied longer than the rules of men’s fashion dictate).
Vice President Kamala Harris is most often seen in custom pantsuits (“powersuits” in women’s fashion parlance) in solid colors but often with a contrasting blouse. Pearls are a go-to jewelry choice. And she likes American flag lapel pins of varying designs.
But there are plenty of potential surprises.
In 2016, Trump showed up for the first debate wearing a blue necktie, and Hillary Clinton donned a bright red suit. It was a reversal of the colors usually associated with each political party — to the delight and consternation of social media. Trump also has worn a striped necktie for debates, including one matchup against President Joe Biden in 2020.
As vice president, Harris has worn a range of colors, including bright hues that go beyond what men in politics typically sport. She’s also not afraid to wear serious heels — and the candidates will be standing, shoes visible, in Philadelphia.
There have been occasions that might offer clues about her choice against Trump.
In the 2020 vice presidential debate, when the candidates were seated, Harris wore a navy suit and blouse. She added a flag lapel pin and contrasting white pearls. Harris repeated the choice of a navy suit in her Democratic nomination acceptance speech last month. But that time, she opted for what fashion experts refer to as a pussybow blouse with a subtle pinstripe.
Earlier this year, at what we now know was Biden’s last State of the Union address, Harris also chose a dark suit, black by Alexander McQueen, with a cream Saint Laurent blouse. She mixed it up, though, for Biden’s earlier speeches on Capitol Hill: a maroon suit and blouse, with black pearls in 2023; a chocolate-brown coat and matching dress by Sergio Hudson in 2022, with pearl earrings but no necklace; and, in 2021, a cream suit by Prabal Gurung.
Many Americans are keenly awaiting tonight’s debate, according to recent polls.
A Quinnipiac poll of likely voters found that about 9 in 10 say they are “likely” to tune into the televised debate between Trump and Harris.
About half of U.S. adults (53%) said it was “very important” for there to be a televised debate between the two candidates, according to a Syracuse University/Ipsos Poll conducted in August. About two-thirds of Republicans (67%) called it “very important” compared to about half of Democrats and Independents.
The pressure may be a little higher on Harris. Americans are slightly more likely to expect Harris to “win” the debate over Trump, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll. About 2 in 10 either anticipate a tie or say neither will win.
But the stakes are high for both: National polls conducted after Biden ended his campaign show a close race between the nominees. Polls conducted in key swing states after Biden withdrew from the race — including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia — show a similarly close contest.
Polling shows that Vice President Kamala Harris enters the presidential debate as the candidate who Americans are more likely to perceive as honest, committed to democracy and as someone who cares about people liking them, according to an August AP-NORC poll.
But former President Donald Trump has an edge over her when it comes to Americans thinking he’s being better positioned to handle the issues of economy and immigration.
Harris has more of an advantage over Trump when it comes to handling issues related to race and racial inequality, abortion policy and health care. Americans may also expect her to appear as a composed candidate — about half (47%) of Americans say the phrase “disciplined” better describes her over Trump (28%).
And although Trump has spent the campaign championing himself as a strong leader who is capable of handling tough crises facing the country, the AP-NORC poll shows Americans overall do not give him an advantage over Harris on those traits.
Trump’s strength currently lies in the fact that Americans are slightly more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy or immigration. Independents are about twice as likely to trust Trump over Harris on economic issues.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz says Kamala Harris is the most qualified person for the job, and Tuesday’s debate will show it.
Walz was speaking at a fundraiser in Las Vegas ahead of the 9 p.m. ET debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
He said Trump might be a “showman” with a lot of experience debating — “no one in modern times has done more of these. The good news is that this is his seventh debate, and we know exactly what to expect.“
In her debate with Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris almost certainly will have to defend more left-flank positions she’s taken during her career, especially during her unsuccessful bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
It’s part of a key question in tonight’s debate: Can Harris successfully position herself as a mainstream consensus builder and rebuff the Republican caricature that she’s “dangerously liberal?”
Trump and Republicans already have been gleeful in circulating clips of then-Sen. Harris expressing opposition to fracking, support for “Medicare for all” and a softer approach on criminal prosecutions for migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally. She’s moved to the center on all those issues, while explaining to CNN recently “my values have not changed.”
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications experts at the University of Pennsylvania, said that argument on values is “the start of an answer” but added that Harris must explain for skeptical swing voters why she’s shifted.
Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who helped Sen. Amy Klobuchar prepare for the 2020 primary debates that involved Harris, praised Harris’ recent answers on fracking. Harris says she has since 2020 studied the U.S. energy market and concluded that the U.S. can continue fracking and still reduce carbon emissions to address climate change.
Still, Hogan said, “those answers will land differently on the debate stage when they can be questioned by an opponent.”
It’s easy to say presidential debates no longer matter in an a hyper-partisan era with dwindling numbers of true independents and swing voters. But one of the nation’s foremost experts on political communications and presidential debate history says that opinion is wrong.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said debates mostly “reinforce voters’ ideas” but still are important in moving voters who have yet to decide whom to support or whether to vote at all. And that “can change the outcomes in close races.” Indeed, both Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and Joe Biden’s in 2020 were decided by fewer than 100,000 votes spread across three states.
Jamieson said that even with the focus on theater and declaring a so-called winner, “the public does learn from debates” and that research shows debates “increase the likelihood that audience members can accurately report the positions articulated by the candidate.”
Many voters might sound skeptical that politicians follow through on their platforms, but Jamieson said research shows that “in general, candidates act on their promises.”
She said policy substance can be overshadowed sometimes — most recently in June when the debate fallout was about President Joe Biden’s fitness to seek and serve another term. But even in that Trump-Biden match-up, she said “there were at least seven or eight important issue distinctions” that were clear if you look beyond Biden’s rhetorical struggles.
“So debates are an important democratic structure,” she said. “They are what tie campaigns to governance.”
The June debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump was perhaps most consequential in the history of presidential debates, with the 81-year-old incumbent putting on such a disjointed, halting display that the Democratic party ultimately pressed Biden to end his reelection bid.
Trump has crowed repeatedly over that turn of event.
“As I walked off the stage on Thursday night, at the end of the highly anticipated ‘Debate,’ anchors, political reporters and all screamed that I had had the greatest debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates,” he wrote on Truth Social at one point.
The reality is different. Against Biden, Trump offered a litany of exaggerations and untruths, refused to disavow the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and had plenty of his own disjointed answers that reflected his stream-of-consciousness speaking style.
But some Democrats hope Trump maintains his confidence from June. The difference, they note, is that Harris is not 81 years old and has a history of successful debates, even if Tuesday night is her first presidential general election debate. (It will be Trump’s seventh.)
“It could really come back to bite him this time, because to the extent that people listen to him, he’s lowered the bar so much for her and raised it so much for himself,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season. “If Trump turns in a performance like he did in the last debate – which people said he won – he will lose this time.”
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet face-to-face for the first time in a highly-anticipated debate Tuesday night. The two presidential candidates describe the state of the country in starkly different terms. Trump often paints a dark picture centered around issues such as immigration and high inflation, while Harris focuses on optimism for the future, promising that “we’re not going back.”
The first debate of the 2024 election in June — at which President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance ultimately forced him from the race — featured multiple false and misleading claims from both candidates and it’s likely that Tuesday’s match-up will include much of the same.
▶ Read more about claims made by the candidates
This year’s presidential race is a genuine contest of ideas between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump — with clear differences on taxes, abortion, immigration, global alliances, climate change and democracy itself.
Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Harris has pledged to chart a new way forward even as she’s embraced many of his ideas. She wants middle class tax cuts, tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, a restoration of abortion rights and a government that aggressively addresses climate change, among other stances.
Seeking a return to the White House, Trump wants to accomplish much of what he couldn’t do during a term that was sidetracked by the global pandemic. The Republican wants the extension and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts, a massive increase in tariffs, more support for fossil fuels and a greater concentration of government power in the White House.
The two candidates have spelled out their ideas in speeches, advertisements and other venues. Many of their proposals lack specifics, making it difficult to judge exactly how they would translate their intentions into law or pay for them.
▶ Read more about where the candidates stand on issues
The debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes, according to rules ABC News, the host network, shared with both campaigns last month.
The parameters in place for the Tuesday night debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign.
It's the only debate that’s been firmly scheduled and could be the only time voters see Harris and Trump go head to head before the November general election.
▶ Read more about the rules for the Trump-Harris debate
In this combination photo, Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
The motorcade of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris passes a billboard in support of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, ahead of the presidential debate with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives on Air Force Two at Atlantic Aviation Philadelphia, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, near Philadelphia International Airport, ahead of the presidential debate with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Signage at the media filing center ahead of tomorrow's presidential debate between Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
