How was the debate between Trump and Harris?

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ABC hosted the first round of the debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The preparation was nervous for the Democrats, and the debate itself came out difficult due to pressure from the Republican.

Nervous preparation for the meeting

Debates between candidates are always the emotional peak of any election campaign, which can easily turn its course 180 degrees. For the U.S., with its political culture that values the ability to argue one’s point of view in a competitive manner, it takes on a special significance. That is why everyone was eagerly awaiting the public clash between Donald Trump and the “new and unexpected” Kamala Harris.

Negotiations between the candidates’ teams on the dates of the televised debates took place back in August. Then Trump announced three rounds of televised debates with Harris: the first on September 4 on Fox News, the second on September 10 on ABC, and the third on September 25 on NBC. But Harris did not agree with this schedule, she insisted on the first round on September 10 at a more convenient venue for her. Plus, other rounds of the debate have been shifted to unknown dates. Also, Trump claimed that Harris “could destroy the whole world,” which increased the tension ahead of the upcoming debate.

Donald Trump
*Photo by Charly Triballeau / AFP / NBC News*

The former president has been hard at work preparing for his upcoming debate with Harris on September 10 on ABC. He kept hinting that they might not take place, because the Democratic candidate was afraid to appear in public. And that was a very appropriate take, as Harris’ staff tried to change the terms of the debate after Democrats were afraid to debate Trump on Republican Fox News.

Ideally, Kamala’s team wouldn’t mind disrupting the debate altogether. Because she doesn’t perform well without a teleprompter and was afraid she’d make a lot of reservations and mistakes that Trump could exploit. As if on purpose, he brought in Tulsi Gabbard, a retired congresswoman and anti-war activist who is now a harsh critic of her former running mates and especially Harris. She has praised Trump for his lack of wars in his presidential term. That could help Trump to capture some of the left’s electorate, who are against Democrats because of their support for Israel in the Gaza Strip, or discourage them from voting in the election.

But most importantly, Gabbard helped Trump prepare for the debate with Harris. She trashed Harris at the June 2019 Democratic debate for hypocrisy when she tried to portray herself as a progressive prosecutor. Gabbard recalled how Harris put many innocents in jail and reveled in prosecutorial power over people. In fact, Gabbard destroyed Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, and now could give a lot of advice to the Republican. That’s why Democrats desperately hid Kamala from press conferences and tried to disrupt debates for fear of a repeat of the previous fiasco. After all, if Trump defeated her like Biden did in the June debate, the Democratic Party would have no backup but still, Harris decided to take the risk.

Kamala Harris
*Photo by Stephanie Scarbrough/ Pool / AP / CNN*

Democrats were very nervous with 24 hours left before the debate. Harris’s position had become dramatically more difficult, and the event could not be canceled. Harris’ ratings in the last polls before the debate were returning to July levels. The “honeymoon” with voters was over, and now Trump was beginning to regain the advantage he had before August. In the NYTimes poll, Trump was beating Harris by 1 point nationally, and when broken down by state, Trump was leading in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. Harris had small leads in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. It all came down to Pennsylvania, which could decide the outcome of the election. On the plus side for Democrats, local Governor Joshua Shapiro is as reliable as a Ford automobile and they know how to “count votes correctly” there. Many scandals about voting illegals or dead voters have erupted in Philadelphia over the past decades. Trump, for his part, has threatened jail terms for dirty politicians and Democrats who are caught rigging. This has already caused hysteria in the Democratic Party.

But it is not certain that even such fraud will help Harris in the end. Her rating is falling and she does not arouse much enthusiasm among voters. In fact, Harris’s campaign has had to bus busloads of “supporters” to her rallies just to show that she can supposedly hold electoral events on an equal footing with Trump. In case of failure at the debates, Harris’ campaign risked to “fall apart” and the Democrats are already looking for excuses in case of defeat. In their opinion, racism and sexism were to blame, and men, especially white men, did not want to support a dark-skinned woman and decolonize the United States.

Aggressive debate between the two candidates

During the debate, Trump and Harris argued with each other for an hour and a half live on ABC, even though they were in a key swing state in the election. As is tradition, both candidates declared their triumph at the debate, but neither Trump nor Harris was able to secure a convincing victory. This was in favor of the latter, knowing her initial vulnerable positions. Trump had to debate Harris and the two hosts playing along with the Democrats at the same time. They tried to constantly check Trump’s statements for veracity, but Harris’ blatantly false statements were deliberately not checked. This was not surprising and was part of the Democrats’ original plan because the same ABC media agenda is 93% favorable to Harris and 100% negative towards Trump.

Kamala tried to aggressively lash out at Trump more often, but she was clearly nervous, so she overplayed her hand. The grimace on her face whenever Trump responded to her looked odd. Well, the latter responded a couple of times to Harris’ attacks with her own barbs, which she loves so much. Trump tried to show Harris responsible for all the U.S. crises with inflation, migration and crime, as well as for failures in the foreign arena like the army’s flight from Afghanistan and failures with Ukraine. Harris responded by trying her best to distance herself from the legacy of her administration, even though she is nominally the second person in the U.S., and uttered memorized phrases about how bad Trump is. The thread of the discussion mostly revolved around Trump’s platform, because Harris essentially has no program and that’s also her staff’s plan. Still, Harris’ supporters are confident that she has succeeded in “punishing” Trump “like a criminal prosecutor.” That’s why Harris’ staff immediately called for another debate, since this one managed to avoid negative effects. But the question of whether Harris, who had a tie with Trump in the first debate, will be able to break the downward trend in her ratings remains open.

But given the clear resource of the Democratic administration on her side, this result of the debate can be considered good. As mentioned above, Harris’s strategy was to distance herself from the sad legacy of the Biden era and say nothing about her program, which de facto does not exist. In addition, she wanted to scare voters with “horrors” should Trump win. Allegedly, the tariffs he promised would lead to inflation, abortion would be banned, U.S. opponents would be strengthened, Russia would overpower Ukraine, and China would take over Taiwan. Harris could not offer any reform plan of her own, nor did she want to, and in response to Trump’s statements, Harris could only laugh nervously. Similarly, she tried to ignore any questions about why she changes her views so often. Even after the fact, scandals began to erupt that Harris allegedly used an earpiece during the debate, which told her the answers, so she did not suffer from her traditional eloquence.

Such tricks are in the spirit of the Democrats, who are trying to get the most out of the debate for themselves and their presidential campaign. If Harris had lost the debate in a landslide, her campaign would have been on the verge of collapse. That’s something the Democrats managed to avoid, but whether they can retake the lead now is still in question. Harris didn’t lose the debate, but she didn’t win it either. So in the end, it may even turn out that the effect of the debate will be negligible.

The Democrats are 100% happy with Harris except for singer Taylor Swift’s endorsement after the debate. Swift was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2023 and her concerts do have an impact on politics and the economy, though. After Harris gained official presidential status, Republicans even focused for a while on the fact that liberal Swift didn’t express a clear opinion for a long time because she didn’t trust Harris. And now it turns out she “trusts” her after all. And this focus on Swift as an “electoral yardstick” once again underscores the entire divide in American society and the unpredictability of what will happen in November.