How To Watch Tonight’s Kamala Harris-Donald Trump TV Debate

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are set to square off on Tuesday evening for what may be the only debate of the 2024 Presidential election.
The first debate of this year’s race saw Trump maul incumbent Joe Biden in a tough night for the octogenarian.
The fallout from this encounter led to growing scrutiny of Biden’s advanced age, contributed to his eventual withdrawal from the ticket, and left Kamala Harris with the responsibility of getting Democrats over the finish line.
However, this debate comes amid a period of fierce scrutiny for Harris, whose relatively new candidacy, apparent media shyness and shifting policy stances have left some voters unclear what a Harris presidency would mean for the country.
The latest New York Times-Siena College poll found that 28 percent of voters still want to know more about Kamala Harris and her positions, compared to only 9 percent for Trump.
The poll also suggested Trump is only holding a narrow, one-point lead in the popular vote over the vice president.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump is trailing Harris in Pennsylvania, worth 19 electoral college votes in this election, holding 45.7 percent of the votes to Harris’s 46.7.
While Biden nabbed the 16-point battleground state of Georgia in 2020, FiveThirtyEight gives Trump a narrow edge, leading Harris 46.5 percent to 46.0.
In Michigan, another 2020 Democrat victory, Harris leads with 46.8 percent of the vote to Trump’s 44.9.
A lot is also still to play for in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, where polling shows the two candidates are scrambling for every percentage point
Held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the debate is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday and will run for approximately 90 minutes.
The debate will be steered by David Muir, anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” and Linsey Davis, anchor of “ABC News Live Prime.”
As the lead anchor of ABC’s evening news segment, which airs daily at 6:30 p.m. ET, Muir has become a familiar face to millions of Americans.
Muir conducted the first White House interview with Donald Trump in 2017, in which he questioned the president on his border wall promises, positions on torture and the media’s coverage of his inauguration day.
Muir is also no stranger to election year debates, having moderated presidential primary debates in 2016 and 2020.
Joining Muir is Linsey Davis, who alongside her role on the network’s evening newscast serves as a correspondent for “World News Tonight,” “Good Morning America,” “20/20” and “Nightline.”
Davis moderated two Democratic primary debates during the 2020 campaign cycle, and conducted a one-on-one with Harris in 2023.
The debate will be hosted by ABC News on its broadcast network, ABC.com, its streaming platform, ABC News Live, as well as Disney+ and Hulu.
Several other networks both inside and outside the U.S. – including Channel 4 in the U.K. – will air the debate, and audiences will also be able to stream the encounter on the YouTube channels of PBS, MSNBC and NBC.
Similar to the late-June CNN debate between Trump and Biden, there will be no live audience, and the candidates’ microphones will be muted except when each is given their turn to speak.
Both will be given two minutes to answer each question, followed by a two-minute rebuttal from their opponent, and a further minute allotted for follow-ups and clarifications.
Harris and Trump will be barred from asking each other questions, according to ABC, which will be only delivered only by the debate’s two moderators.
The “honeymoon” period of Kamala Harris’s nomination appears to be ebbing, and the vice president arguably has the most to gain, or lose, from Tuesday night’s encounter.
She will need to use the platform to give voters a sense of what her presidency would look like, amid accusations that she has flip-flopped on a raft of policies such as fracking, the decriminalization of border crossings and “Medicare for All”.
Biden’s poor performance proved a fatal blow for his chances of winning re-election, so the pressure is on Harris to not drop the ball – and show that she has what it takes to defend the Democrats’ corner under intense scrutiny and in real time.
Having only done one sit-down interview since becoming the candidate, during which she was accompanied by her running mate Tim Walz, Harris’s positions on key election issues remain unclear to many voters.
Her numerous policy shifts were questioned by CNN’s Dana Bash during the August 29 interview, to which Harris responded that her policy perspective has always been informed by her values which “have not changed.”
If Harris is unable to lay out a cogent agenda, this could give the GOP enough rope to continue their “Comrade Kamala” attack line, and maintain their characterization of her as a hard-left liberal.
A veteran of the presidential debate game, who appears to relish his time in the spotlight, Trump’s trademark attack-never-defend strategy is likely to be on display during Tuesday night’s encounter.
The tactic paid off in his July debate versus Joe Biden, after which Trump established an even healthier lead over the incumbent, gaining three points in the week following the exchange.
This was also courtesy of Biden’s historically poor performance, however, and while Harris arguably has the most to prove on Tuesday night, there is still the chance that a shaky answer or ill-considered rant could reflect poorly on the former president.
Deprived of an audience, upon which he tends to thrive, Trump’s personal attacks against Harris will also be met with silence in the hall of the National Constitution Center.
However, some believe the decision to employ muted mics – at the insistence of the Trump campaign – may shield the president from engaging in any nasty back-and-forth with Harris.
Unmuted mics resulted in the famous “shut up, man” jab from Biden in 2020, which become one of the best-remembered episodes of that year’s race.
According to the latest NYT-Siena poll, Americans consider the economy key in this year’s election, with 21 percent of respondents listing it as the principal issue deciding their vote in November.
While second-in-command during the country’s post-covid recovery and its ongoing struggles with inflation, Harris will need to convince voters that a vote for her is nevertheless a vote for change in the country’s fortunes.
56 percent of voters said they trusted Trump to do a better job with the country’s economy if elected, compared to only 40 percent for Harris.
The clear divide between the candidates when it comes to reproductive rights means there will be few surprises when the issue is raised by ABC’s moderators.
However, the issue is the number one priority for 14 percent of voters, with some 63 percent of the public believing that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to Pew.
A key line of attack for Harris, therefore, could be to focus on the stance and record of her opponent, widely credited as the man who killed Roe v. Wade through of his three Supreme Court appointments.
Characterized as the “Border Czar” by conservative politicians and talking heads, and having previously advocated for decriminalizing border crossings, Harris will be forced to defend her record on the U.S.-Mexico border from one of the anti-immigration movement’s most prominent figures.
Chalking up as the third-most important issue to voters, immigration will feature heavily in Tuesday night’s discussion, and will be central to Trump’s success in the encounter.
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