Trump, Harris Prepare to Square Off in High-Stakes Debate

Donald Trump will square off Tuesday night against Kamala Harris in Philadelphia in what could be the only debate between the two major parties’ presidential nominees.

The stakes of the Harris-Trump debate couldn’t be higher.

For Harris, the current vice president, it could be her best chance to put the Trump era in the rearview mirror.

For Trump, the former president, it could be his only chance to personally and effectively brand the elusive Harris on key issues and point out where Harris has flip-flopped.

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., seems to believe it shouldn’t be all that difficult, given Harris is President Joe Biden’s sitting vice president.

“Any opportunity President Trump has to contrast secure borders, the Trump economy, and $2 gas with Kamala Harris’ disastrous record is going to help him on Election Day,” Banks told The Daily Signal. “The more voters are reminded of the Harris-Biden administration, the less they like it, which is why the vice president has only given one softball CNN interview since she announced her campaign.”

Harris spent the five days leading up to the debate with Trump in rigorous preparation inside a hotel in Pittsburgh. Her campaign brought in a full stage and TV lighting to give the vice president a feel for what being on stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the debate venue, would be like.

Harris was accompanied in her lockdown by lawyer and Democratic debate whisperer Karen Dunn, political consultant Sean Clegg, domestic policy adviser Rohini Kosoglu, Democratic National Convention chair Minyon Moore, and her campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond. The group worked around the clock, attempting to help Harris hone answers to follow ABC News’ debate guidelines.

That’s not all: Harris had a sparring partner. Philippe Reines, former deputy assistant secretary of state, reportedly was in full method-actor mode while playing Trump—even to the point of dressing like the former president.

Trump prepared a little differently. As he did before meeting Biden in June on the debate stage, Trump hosted policy roundtables with allies to prepare for the debate with Harris.

These roundtables featured commonplace figures in the Trump campaign such as campaign co-manager Susie Wiles, senior advisor Jason Miller, and policy adviser Stephen Miller. This time around, however, Trump was joined by former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii (who made a splash in the 2020 Democratic primary by attacking Harris) and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R.-Fla., who is peppered the former president with tough questions.

Last time Trump was onstage in a presidential debate he was opposite Biden, whose performance was so abysmal it triggered a chain reaction that ultimately ended with him dropping out of the race. Now Trump faces Biden’s current understudy and chosen successor.

Nevertheless, Harris isn’t to be underestimated. In less than a decade, she has gone from being the attorney general of California to spitting distance of the presidency. Since entering the race July 21, Harris has enjoyed what election observers called a “honeymoon” phase—high poll numbers and enthusiasm in response to her unpopular boss’ unceremoniously exiting the race.

The honeymoon, however, could be at an end. Harris surged ahead of Trump in the weeks after she took the top spot on the Democratic ticket. However, polls now have Trump and Harris in a dead heat, with some predictive models giving Trump a substantial edge in the Electoral College.

Harris’s regression in the polls could be because her campaign seems to have bungled aspects of its launch. It took nearly 40 days for Harris to sit down for an interview with a major news outlet. It took nearly 50 days for her to put an “issues” page on her campaign website.

Media figures on the Right and Left, much less the Trump campaign, were starting to make a stink about Harris’ evasiveness.

Alternatively, Harris’s honeymoon could be at an end precisely because American voters are catching wind of her policy proposals and aren’t impressed.

On the Harris campaign website’s new policy page, the Democratic nominee claims that she will be the candidate to enact “tough, smart solutions to secure the border, keep communities safe, and reform our broken immigration system.”

The question, then, is why she has not done so as Biden’s vice president and appointed border czar. Nevertheless, Harris’ website adds, “as president, she will bring back the bipartisan border security bill and sign it into law.”

“At the same time,” the campaign website adds, “she knows that our immigration system is broken and needs comprehensive reform that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.”

Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, says she isn’t buying Harris’ about-face on border security.

“No one believes Kamala Harris suddenly supports a secure border or wants to keep communities safe because, as vice president (really, as the acting president, given Joe Biden’s incapacity), she could change policies today to secure the border and keep criminals off the street. But she doesn’t,” Ries told The Daily Signal. “Remember, Harris repeatedly said during her CNN joint interview that her ‘values have not changed.’ With that, she was telling her base: ‘Don’t worry, I still believe what I did and said before July 2024.’”

“The failed Senate border bill,” Ries continued, “failed for a reason.”

The reason being that it wouldn’t have closed the southern border to illegal aliens.

Instead, “it would expand and codify the very open border tools the Biden-Harris administration has used to implement its mass migration agenda,” Ries told The Daily Signal. “The House-passed bill, HR 2, the Secure the Border Act, would, in fact, secure the border. The campaign’s final words are the buried lede–mass amnesty is Harris’ ultimate goal.”

Another key issue is the economy and inflation. Although inflation has slowed from its 9.1% peak in June 2022, it remains far above the 1.9% average during the Trump years.

The Harris-Walz campaign website claims that as president Harris would beat back inflation by “crack[ing] down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers” and instituting “the first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries.”

American Compass’ Duncan Braid told The Daily Signal that Harris’ proposed ban on price gouging is “a price control premised on gouging that isn’t happening.”

“Harris is targeting one of the lowest margin, most competitive markets out there,” Braid said. “Maybe instead she could propose some controls on Washington’s out-of-control spending.”

It seems like it was a catch-22 for Harris and her campaign: Either get attacked Tuesday night for not having a list of policies on her website, or list her policies and get attacked for those.

The campaign seems to have opted for the latter, but the risk Harris runs by releasing these policy proposals so close to the debate is having an incomplete mastery of her proposals when she goes onstage and contradicting herself yet again.

“We’re curious which Kamala Harris is going to show up to the debate,” Sen. Rick Scott, R. Fla., told The Daily Signal.

“Will it be the one who was the most liberal senator, more liberal than Bernie Sanders? Will it be Comrade Kamala who supported the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and amnesty and citizenship for illegal aliens? Or will it be the Kamala who has flipped on everything she believes via quotes from anonymous staffers?”

Whichever Harris shows up Tuesday night, the continuing positive media coverage likely will give Harris a tailwind.

“The media is trying to help package Kamala as new and the future,” Scott said. “She is not the future, she represents one of the oldest failed ideas in human history: socialism. That’s why she’s doing what most politicians like her do … lying about it.”

Scott said he believes—like Banks—that if Trump can keep it to the two candidates’ records and priors, Trump will be in the driver’s seat.

“The American people know Trump; they know how great our economy was and how safe our communities were when he was president,” Scott said. “Kamala is going to focus on viral gotcha moments, Trump is going to focus on real solutions to make our country great again. The American people want nothing to do with California socialism. That’s why he’s going to win the debate and on Nov. 5.”

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