It was a debate that should never have taken place.
Donald Trump will not face the familiar opponent he expected when he agreed to the meeting in May in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. Instead, he will face an opponent he has never met before and whom he finds difficult to define: Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States whose emergence as the Democratic candidate has changed the direction and character of the presidential election.
The Republican candidate assumed that he would be in the City of Brotherly Love for a second meeting with Joe Biden, the US President with whom he has had a bitter debate history since the 2020 election.
Instead, the debate between the two in Atlanta in June has unprecedented implications. Biden’s hesitant and incoherent performance led him to withdraw his candidacy after increasing pressure from his own Democratic Party. Trump now faces an opponent for whom he has yet to commit to a clear line of attack.
Harris, for her part, goes into the event having been prepared by staff who have mimicked Trump’s often vicious and offensive debating technique – especially toward women – and she can draw on her experience from a previous career as a prosecutor. She is also buoyed by the fact that she is going up against an opponent who was recently found guilty on 34 counts.
The two face off in the midst of an election campaign that, according to several polls, is neck and neck both nationally and in the crucial swing states – especially in Pennsylvania, the site of Tuesday’s debate, which has more electoral votes up for grabs than any other swing state.
Tuesday’s event, hosted by ABC, will follow the same rules as the Trump-Biden debate. Candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is their opponent’s turn to speak. Harris’ campaign argued for the microphones to be left on the entire time – hoping to provoke the former president into the kind of undisciplined and unsavory interruptions that have marred his previous appearances.
While Trump was willing to agree, his entourage – determined to keep him on task and on track – insisted on keeping the original rules.
But it is Trump’s difficulty in coming to terms with Biden’s exit from the race that could have a decisive influence on the course of the debate, says Steven Fein, a presidential debate expert and professor of psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts.
“I think perhaps the most interesting and potentially explosive element of this is the fact that he was obviously very upset that Biden dropped out and was replaced by Harris,” said Fein, who said the debate had greater potential for mind games and psychodrama than any debate he had previously studied.
“It will be a huge task for him to control his urges. Whenever he is provoked by a woman, he usually behaves very meanly. And a woman of color is exactly the horror scenario.
“There will have to be a give and take, which was not the case in the first debate, when he didn’t have to say much and just let Biden dangle. So the potential for all kinds of drama is great.”
The former president has prepared for the debate with, among others, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman turned Trump supporter who ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and clashed with Harris in a memorable primary debate.
In a conference call with reporters on the eve of Monday’s debate, Trump adviser Jason Miller said Harris would be the one who would have the most difficulty preparing for Trump.
“The fact that Trump is out there every day asking questions without preparation means you can’t prepare for him,” he said, comparing it to training for a fight against Mohammed Ali. “You don’t know what style he’s going to have. He has an amazing mix of humor and charm, as well as hard facts.”
With Hugo Lowell
