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 11:17 p.m. ET:
Taylor Swift just endorsed Kamala Harris–at least sort of:
It’s not the strongest endorsement in the world, though she does say she’s voting for Harris, praises Harris’s running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and attacks Trump and signs the note as “Childless Cat Lady”–an attack on Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate. Swift, though, does not outright tell her followers to vote for Harris or to not vote for Trump. She encourages her followers to do their own research and make their own decisions in who to vote for.
UPDATE 11:13 p.m. ET:
On CNN, Gov. Shapiro of Pennsylvania does not seem very confident in Harris’s prospects in the state. He says the state is very close and used to close elections. Jake Tapper is now asking, through Kaitlan Collins, if the Harris campaign should focus more on independent voters in Erie in Pennsylvania or more on Republican women in the Philadelphia suburbs. In response, Shapiro says the election will come down to “tens of thousands of votes” one way or the other.
UPDATE 10:48 p.m. ET:
This take from Scott Adams seems about right:
It’s hard to see how this debate changes anything in the trajectory of the race. Trump is on the upswing, Harris is fading, and it does not appear that this debate changes anything.
The panel on ABC News afterwards is claiming that Trump was “rattled” and that the Harris campaign feels good after the debate, but again–it was not the slam dunk performance she needed.
UPDATE 10:46 p.m. ET:
Kamala repeatedly lied throughout the debate, including claiming she would not ban guns:
UPDATE 10:45 p.m. ET:
The debate has ended and the candidates are walking off stage without shaking hands.
UPDATE 10:44 p.m. ET:
Trump questions why she has not done the things she says she will do already since she has been in office for several years.
UPDATE 10:42 p.m. ET:
Harris cites her history as a prosecutor and says “I’ve only ever had one client: the people.”
Now, Trump is up.
UPDATE 10:41 p.m. ET:
Harris is delivering her closing statement in which she repeats the catch phrase “we’re not going back,” and claims there are two “very different” visions for the country offered by the candidates this evening.
UPDATE 10:40 p.m. ET:
Team Trump is declaring a clear victory:
UPDATE 10:38 p.m. ET:
The debate is entering the second commercial break, and then returning with closing statements.
UPDATE 10:30 p.m. ET:
Harris claims she is a gun owner.
UPDATE 10:25 p.m. ET:
“She is Biden,” Trump said.
“Clearly I am not Joe Biden,” Harris replied.
UPDATE 10:22 p.m. ET:
Muir next presses Trump on his recent comments that Harris “became black,” asking him what race Harris is. Trump said he did not care.
UPDATE 10:20 p.m. ET:
The gall of Harris to blame Trump for Biden’s and her failures in Afghanistan is pretty incredible. She is definitely not doing herself any favors in so doing this.
In response, Trump lays out how the deal he negotiated with the Taliban stopped all killings of American soldiers for 18 months but then laid out how he would have gotten out of Afghanistan without seeing Americans killed and without leaving tens of billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment behind.
UPDAYE 10:18 p.m. ET:
The conversation now turns to Afghanistan, and Muir asks Harris if she bears “any responsibility” for what happened in the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Harris dodged the question, and then started attacking Trump claiming the deal Trump negotiated to end the war in Afghanistan was “weak.”
UPDATE 10:15 p.m. ET:
Trump tells Kamala “quiet please” while he is explaining that Putin has nuclear weapons. “They sent her to negotiate peace three days before this war started,” Trump said of Harris, arguing she failed as a negotiator.
“She’s worse than Biden,” Trump says, “she goes down as the worst vice president in the history of this country.”
UPDATE 10:11 p.m. ET:
Coming back from the first commercial break, Muir turns to Trump and asks him how he would end the war in Ukraine and whether he wants Ukraine to win the war. Trump said he wants to end the war, and he noted how the U.S. has put hundreds of billions of tax dollars into the war and he called out Harris for failing to get Europe to pay its fair share. He noted how Putin and Zelensky do not respect Biden, and he warns that this could “lead to World War 3” and that President Biden is missing in action and he was thrown aside “like a dog.”
UPDATE 10:02 p.m. ET:
Trump says Kamala “hates Israel,” something Harris denies. Trump also says he would end the war in Ukraine before he even takes office. Then Harris claims Trump said Putin “can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine,” even though Putin did so when Harris was leading the country as Vice President.
UPDATE 9:57 p.m. ET:
The discussion has moved backward to the 2020 election, and now Harris is claiming that Trump was “fired by 81 million Americans”–the vote total for Biden in 2020–four years ago. Harris then claims world leaders are “laughing at” Trump, but then Trump cites several world leaders back at Harris including particularly Viktor Orban of Hungary.
Trump then bashes Harris for getting zero votes but taking the nomination away from Biden, who got 14 million votes. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Trump says. “He [Biden] hates her [Harris].”
UPDATE 9:50 p.m. ET:
There is another emerging theme here where the moderators keep “fact-checking” Trump–sometimes accurately, sometimes not–live during the debate, but allowing Harris to openly and repeatedly lie nonstop from the stage. Harris continues making ugly frowning faces.
UPDATE 9:48 p.m. ET:
Now, the moderators shift the conversation to January 6 and keep pushing Trump on it, but Trump asks why the radical leftists who engaged in riots have not been prosecuted. In her response, Harris touts the Charlottesville Hoax, which has been thoroughly debunked.
UPDATE 9:44 p.m. ET:
Kamala falsely claims she never said she would ban fracking–she is quite clearly on camera saying she would do so. Trump hammers her on this, and on defunding police.
Then, there’s a moment where Trump says to Harris as she’s making funny faces at him–“I’m talking now–sound familiar?”–emulating her line from a previous debate. He pauses then stares back at her. Harris continues to make odd faces back at Trump.
UPDATE 9:40 p.m. ET:
Harris keeps making nasty faces at Trump, trying quite clearly to goad him and get under his skin.
Trump says he “took a bullet to the head” because of the narratives pushed by Harris’s government’s weaponization against him.
UPDATE 9:31 p.m. ET:
Trump says that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets, and Muir fires back at Trump quoting the city manager saying there are no credible reports of that. Harris in response has a shrill laugh, and then starts quoting establishment Republicans who are working to elect her.
UPDATE 9:29 p.m. ET:
Harris invites Americans to go to Trump rallies, arguing that people leave Trump’s rallies early. Trump responds by arguing that Harris’s rallies are small and that Harris is paying people to be there.
UPDATE 9:25 p.m. ET:
Trump is now fighting back, live fact-checking Harris on IVF and then he asks Harris directly if she would allow abortion in the 7th, 8th, and 9th months of pregnancy–or even afterwards–and she refuses to say she would not.
UPDATE 9:22 p.m. ET:
Trump is holding his own and he’s ripping Harris for lying. Harris is making frowning faces off the side of the camera, coming off childish.
UPDATE 9:21 p.m. ET:
Davis is now commentating instead of moderating, making commentary about Trump’s answer where she says there is no state in the union where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. But, Davis’s snide remark–which helped set Harris up for a snide remark of her own about Trump telling “lies”–ignores the fact that several Democrats including the Democrat former governor of Virginia Ralph Northam have openly said they want infanticide.
UPDATE 9:18 p.m. ET:
Kamala is not coming across as presidential. She seems like she’s trying to troll Trump, and Trump’s not taking the bait. He’s calm and confident, but not low-energy. Trump’s in-depth policy answers are a stark contrast to Harris’s angry and odd faces she’s making on the other side of the screen.
“She’s a Marxist,” Trump hit her at one point, something Harris did not deny.
Now, the conversation is on abortion, and Trump is laying out how Democrats are the radicals on this issue and Trump is trying to unite the country.
UPDATE 9:13 p.m. ET:
An early theme is emerging here–Harris has very little substance in her commentary throughout the debate, but seems to be trying to goad Trump by attacking him. Trump is holding his own explaining policy while Harris fires off catchy sound bites.
UPDATE 9:12 p.m. ET:
“That’s just a sound bite,” Trump viciously fires back at Harris’s critiques. Then he rips her for plagiarizing Biden’s website in her very thin policy page on her own website.
UPDATE 9:11 p.m. ET:
Trump is now explaining how the migrants that Harris let into the country are “dangerous,” and then the moderators come back to Harris to respond on the economy. She claims “Trump left us” the worst unemployment ever.
Harris then launches into a diatribe about “name-calling” that she claims Trump will engage in, then falsely says Trump wants Project 2025. Trump in his rebuttal corrects her lie again, saying he has “nothing to do” with Project 2025. Trump then explains how the economy was incredible until COVID hit the country, and then explains how he got the country through the pandemic and then the Biden-Harris administration did not actually create jobs but only got “bounce back jobs” post-COVID.
Harris then in her rebuttal says “Donald Trump has no plan for you,” and then proceeds to attack Trump’s economic plans.
UPDATE 9:06 p.m. ET:
Trump in his response corrects Harris’s false claims about his tax plans, and then explains how tariffs work and do not cause inflation. Trump then explains how inflation is ripping the country apart economically. Harris is sitting there shaking her head as Trump lays out how the economy under her administration has been a disaster.
UPDATE 9:05 p.m. ET:
Muir asks Harris the first question, which is whether people are better off today than they were four years ago economically. Harris immediately begins dodging and claiming falsely she was raised in the middle class. She does not answer the question about whether people are better off at all.
UPDATE 9:03 p.m. ET:
Muir and Davis are introducing the rules, and the candidates are coming out on stage. Trump won the coin toss and will deliver the final closing statement. Harris comes right up to Trump and shakes his hand.
UPDATE 9:01 p.m. ET:
The debate is beginning now as Muir and Davis introduce the program and begin with a video introduction of the candidates.
UPDATE 8:55 p.m. ET:
Kamala’s mini-podium is becoming a major thing people are noticing:
UPDATE 8:51 p.m. ET:
Your livewire host was on War Room earlier on Tuesday to explain how high the stakes are for Harris this evening:
In the interview, I stated that Harris to have a “career game”–something she is unlikely to be able to do–to be able to credibly continue to make her case for the White House.
UPDATE 8:46 p.m. ET:
Pennsylvania’s Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro is asked by ABC News before the debate if the debate is Harris’s “last best shot” to make her case why she should be president, a sign that ABC News–the network hosting the debate–understands like everyone else does that she needs a knockout performance this evening to continue her campaign seriously.
UPDATE 8:44 p.m. ET:
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is on ABC News before the debate and Jon Karl asks him “which Donald Trump” will show up to the debate tonight, and Cotton argues that the Trump whose policies as president were extraordinarily successful will be who Americans see on stage tonight.
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.
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