Harris-Trump debate is 2024 election’s latest landmark event
WASHINGTON: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will meet for the first time face-to-face Tuesday night for perhaps their only debate, a high-pressure opportunity to showcase their starkly different visions for the country after a tumultuous campaign summer.
The event, at 9 pm Eastern in Philadelphia, 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.
Harris is intent on demonstrating that she can press the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden did. He is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters sceptical he should return to the White House.
Trump (78) has struggled to adapt to Harris (59) who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as VP. The debate will subject Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning. “If she performs great, it’s going to be a nice surprise for the Democrats and they’ll rejoice,” said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could break this race wide open. So there’s more riding on it.”
Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, said Harris would bring a “prosecutor’s instincts to the debate stage.”
The first early ballots of the presidential race will go out just hours after the debate, hosted by ABC News. Absentee ballots are set to be sent out beginning Wednesday in Alabama.