At a crucial moment in the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former president trump The two sides will face off in their first and potentially only debate on Tuesday.
With eight weeks until Election Day and early voting beginning this month in some key states, there’s no denying how much is at stake as Harris and Trump square off over 90 minutes of primetime at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
“This is huge stakes. This is going to be a really, really important moment in the campaign,” David Kochel, a longtime Republican strategist and veteran of multiple GOP presidential campaigns, told Fox News Digital.
With the presidential election approaching, the competition between the two candidates and their camps has intensified. Before the debate,
What Trump allies say the former president should do in a debate with Harris
“There’s no limit to how low he’ll stoop,” the vice president charged in a radio interview on the eve of the debate. “And we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for him to have no burden of telling the truth.”
The comment appeared as follows Latest effort by Harris to harass Trump in the days leading up to the confrontation.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s debate advice to Trump: ‘Let Harris speak’
Trump has repeatedly insulted the vice president for her intelligence, mockingly nicknamed her ‘Comrade Harris’, and even questioned Harris’ racial identity in the month and a half since she became president. President Biden At the top of the Democrats’ 2024 ticket.
And Trump, using his familiar tactics, is laying the groundwork for what he calls a “rigged” debate, as he has repeatedly criticized ABC News — the host of the 90-minute debate — and accused the network’s top talent of being biased against him.
MOSINEE, WISCONSIN – SEPTEMBER 07: Republican presidential nominee Former President Donald Trump leaves a campaign event at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wisconsin on September 07, 2024. A recent poll shows Trump trailing Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in this battleground state. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The debate comes at a time when Harris is experiencing a surge in polling and fundraising after taking over as the Democrats’ flagbearer, but the Trump campaign says Americans’ honeymoon with the vice president is ending.
Click here for the latest Fox News reporting on the Harris-Trump debate
Biden’s poor performance in a late June debate against Trump raised questions about his physical and mental abilities to serve another four years in the White House — and prompted calls from within his own party for the 81-year-old president to end his bid for a second term. Facing mounting pressure from fellow Democrats, Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed his vice president in a blockbuster announcement on July 21.
Kochel asserted, “I don’t know if we’ll ever see a debate that will be more important than the one that took Biden out of the race, but if there is ever such a debate, this will be it.”
Pointing to the latest national and key battleground state polls that indicate a margin-of-error race, he said that “this race has come down to a tie, and that may be the only real point that can create a dynamic where these candidates can move up or down.”
Harris and Trump are taking very different approaches to preparing for Tuesday’s contest.
Trump and Harris on a collision course as 2024 campaign enters final stretch
Harris spent most of the past four days at a downtown Pittsburgh hotel, where she participated in an intensive “debate camp” that included multiple mock debate sessions. She arrived in Philadelphia on Monday evening, less than 24 hours before the debate.
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a Labor Day campaign event at IBEW Local Union #5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 2, 2024. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Trump spent most of last weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he attended less formal ‘policy sessions’ with aides and allies. But Trump also traveled to swing state Wisconsin to address a campaign rally on Saturday.
Fox News has learned that Trump will confer with advisers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday, and then fly to Philadelphia a few hours before the debate begins at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, which will be broadcast on Fox News Channel.
“Trump is prepared for every style because that’s what he’s been doing throughout the campaign; he’s been doing press conferences, individual meetings, interviews, all without a script,” senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller told reporters on the eve of the debate.
The former president has repeatedly criticized Harris for having given only one major interview and holding no news conferences since taking over as the Democrats’ flagbearer for Biden. And on the eve of the debate, the Trump campaign announced the former president would hold another news conference on Friday in Los Angeles.
Go here for the latest Fox News 2024 election poll
Both candidates enter the debate with the aim of achieving certain goals.
The first task for Harris is to avoid major missteps and do no harm. The second goal is to appeal to undecided voters remaining in the race and to neutralize Trump’s repeated accusations that the vice president is more liberal than progressive rockstars Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The topic of discussion is how much pressure Harris will have to put on Trump’s false statements.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a top surrogate for Harris and a rising star in the Democratic Party, told reporters Monday that he thinks the vice president “is not going to spend her time fact-checking Donald Trump. I don’t think that’s a useful exercise.”
And Moore said Harris, who is far less well-known among Americans than Trump, should “spend her time presenting her vision of the future of this country.”
For Trump, who faces a huge polling deficit among female voters, the most important task in this debate is to avoid further insulting Harris, who, if elected, would make history as the nation’s first female president.
At the top of Trump’s to-do list is adding Harris to Biden, whose approval ratings are still low as Americans deal with steadily declining inflation.
“She can contest the election, but she can’t hide from her tenure during the Biden administration,” Trump senior campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski said Monday on Fox News’ The Story. “So when you look at what this debate is going to be, it’s going to be an opportunity for Americans to see two candidates who have fundamentally different visions of what this country should look like.”
Senator Tom Cotton A Trump ally, Rep. John C. Silveri, of Arkansas, told Fox News Digital that “the American people know where President Trump stands. They know what they got while President Trump was president.”
Referring to the vice president, Cotton charged that “Kamala Harris has tried to run as a blank slate.”
Another Trump ally, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, said his advice to the former president is to “let Harris speak.”
“The more she talks without talking into a teleprompter, the more she shows America that she’s actually not up to the job,” the three-term governor argued in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Click here to get the Fox News app
Republican consultant and Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer, who was the White House press secretary in then-President George W. Bush’s administration, said Trump “needs to attack him on policy. Just like you did with Biden in the first debate. That was a disciplined, tough, policy-oriented Donald Trump. I would love to see that same Donald Trump against Kamala Harris.”
But the biggest question in this debate is whether Trump will listen to the advice being given to him and whether he will be able to remain disciplined throughout the controversy.
“Trump is about to be his true self,” Miller told reporters.
After much debate over the debate, both sides agreed to follow the same rules that applied to the Biden-Trump debate.
The most controversial rule is that the microphone will once again be muted during the opponent’s response, which pundits see as a win for Trump.
And like the June debate, there will be no in-studio audience.
Both candidates will be given a pen, pad and water bottle, but they will not be allowed pre-written notes or props — and they will not be permitted to talk to their campaign staff during the debate or during ad breaks.
According to the rules, the moderators, David Muir of ABC News, and Linsey Davis will be the only people to ask questions.
After the debate, Harris will return to her campaign and make stops in key constituencies, starting with two rallies in North Carolina on Thursday.
“This is definitely a critical moment in the campaign, but it is a moment,” Maria Cardona, a longtime Democratic strategist and presidential campaign analyst, told Fox News Digital. “It was a margin of error before we went into the debate, and it will be afterward, too.”
Trump was also quickly back on his way, making a stop in the transformational state of Arizona on Thursday.
