What To Watch For In Coverage Of The Kamala Harris-Donald Trump Debate

Ted Johnson
·6 min read
2

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will meet and debate for the first time tonight, in what might be the only time they face off this cycle.

ABC News is hosting, and even though parent Disney is in the midst of a dispute that has blacked out its channels on DirecTV, there will be no shortage of places to find it: The network is streaming the event on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu, while it is being widely simulcast by rivals.

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With no audience and muted mics, ABC News is a following a similar game plan that CNN used when it hosted the first presidential debate this cycle, featuring Trump and President Joe Biden, who eventually dropped out after his poor performance.

Other rules also are similar: Two minute answers and two minute replies, no notes, no opening statements.

RELATED: DirecTV Rejects Disney Offer To Restore ABC News Tonight Only For POTUS Debate

But the dynamics of this debate are very different — not just things like the generational divide between the candidates, but where things stand in the race: Polls show the campaigns are neck and neck, versus a slight edge for Trump at the last debate.

When it comes to coverage, here’s what to watch out for at this event, which starts at 9 p.m. ET from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Moderator moments. ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis have co-moderated primary debates, but this is their first outing in a general election event. On Deadline’s ElectionLine podcast cast week, the co-moderator of June’s CNN debate, Dana Bash, offered some advice to them: Don’t make it about you.

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It’s likely that the moderators will largely refrain from aggressive, real-time fact-checking, in keeping with a long general-election debate tradition of leaving that to the candidates themselves.

There’s also the matter of not taking the bait: Trump has spent recent weeks bashing the ABC and some of its personalities, so it will be no surprise if he does the same on Tuesday night. What he’s doing is a bit of working the refs, or laying the groundwork for blame should things not go well for him.

‘Sanewashing.’ Over the weekend, Trump threatened lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and “Corrupt Election Officials” with long prison sentences for unspecified crimes related to the 2020 and 2024 election. He also told a rally that his plans for mass deportations will be a “bloody story.” And he continues to repeat his absurd claim that schools have or will be performing transgender surgery on children.

But it was Trump’s incoherent answer to a question about child care last week that has popularized a term about media coverage of the ex-president: “sanewashing.” A comparison of Trump’s answer to the way it was initially reported in The New York Times was seized upon on social media as an example of how the former president’s remarks were cleaned, or sanitized, in mainstream media coverage. The Times, though, later reported on the rambling nature of his remarks.

That’s why there will be extra scrutiny on the moderators. The tendency will be to treat this debate like all previous general election debates, heavily focused on issues like healthcare and the economy, versus one that highlights the election’s impact on the future of democracy. Will they focus on the former at the expense of the latter?

Expect a post-debate punditry battle focused on a double standard of how Trump is perceived vs. Harris. There already is a great deal of consternation among Harris supporters that Trump has essentially “numbed” the media to get all that riled up over his most outrageous comments — like authoritarian threats to lock up his enemies. Meanwhile, Trump allies, like Sean Hannity, already are claiming that he won’t get a fair shake, and vow to boycott Disney if that is the case.

Muted mics. The Harris campaign lost a pre-debate battle over whether to keep mics on throughout the event, as they wanted, rather than muting them when it is not a candidate’s turn to speak, as the Trump team wanted.

The idea was that an unmuzzled Trump — particularly if he tried to interrupt Harris — would only help her. It would be a reminder to voters what they didn’t like about him in the first place.

Instead, Harris seems to be leaning to a strategy of calling out Trump as playing “from this old and tired playbook,” as she said on Rickey Smiley’s morning radio show on Monday.

“There is no floor for him in terms of how low he will go. And we should be prepared for that. And we should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth,” she said.

It’s a hint that Harris will try to remind voters of some of Trump’s most outrageous comments, albeit that comes with the risk of getting muddied in a back and forth with him.

Trump’s tactics. The Harris campaign is trying some pre-debate baiting of Trump, with an ad that features clips of his Vice President Mike Pence and other officials from his administration saying that he is unfit for another term. The spot will run today on Fox News in Philadelphia, where the debate is taking place, and West Palm Beach, the media market where Trump lives.

Trump is intent on casting Harris as an out-of-touch liberal and even Marxist, tying her to her past statements on immigration and other issues, as well as to her support for Biden’s economic policies.

Trump’s campaign said in a statement this morning, “Kamala Harris owns Joe Biden’s failed record on the economy and the border. The Harris campaign can try to deny this, but it’s hard to separate yourself from someone when you are copying all of their policies.”

The challenge for Harris is the more that she responds to the fusillade of attacks, the more it drags her away from her message, that she is the candidate of the future in the race.

There has been some expectations setting on the Harris’ team’s part.

“She is a very focused and disciplined leader,” campaign surrogate Pete Buttigieg told CNN this week. “But it will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate. It’s no ordinary proposition.”

Body language. One image that many remember from the June debate was that of Biden, his face frozen and his mouth open, as he listened to Trump. It reinforced fears about the president’s age. That’s why some of the most unexpected moments from a debate are not what was said, but in the demeanor of the candidates. Do they look at the moderators or do they look at the cameras?

Remember, one of the bigger takeaways from Harris’ vice presidential debate in 2020 was a fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head. These are also the moments that tend to get magnified on social media, which is how much of the younger audience will be consuming the content in the day after the event itself.

For her part, Harris has some experience with unexpected debate displays, even those that leave her a bit speechless.

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