The Trump-Kamala showdown

The long-awaited debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is kicking off Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET on ABC News. This is a high-stakes moment, mostly for the Harris campaign: Kamala’s predecessor at the top of the ticket, President Joe Biden, was forced by his own party to drop out of the race after an abysmal performance against Trump in June, and Kamala has only done one unscripted event on camera since launching her own campaign. Unlike that CNN interview with Dana Bash, Kamala will be challenged and will not have her running mate, Tim Walz, sitting next to her for support.

“Harris will have to accomplish a lot more than Donald Trump, who really just needs to run it back for a repeat performance from June,” my colleague Ben Domenech wrote today. “Trump has momentum on his side after a polling reset that saw Harris’s post-coup bump disappear.” 

Kamala will need to adeptly defend the Biden administration’s record, her own changing policy positions over the past four years and her alleged role in covering up Biden’s mental and physical decline. She will not have prepared notes or a teleprompter to guide her through.

It’s also unlikely she will have the benefit of Trump coming across like a bully — the debate rules will remain the same as CNN’s in June, which called for muting the microphone of the candidate when not given time by the moderators to speak. Harris earned a viral moment in her vice-presidential debate against Mike Pence in 2020 when she repeated, “I’m speaking,” as Pence accused her of dodging a question. Hillary Clinton accused Trump of stalking her during their 2016 debate. Harris is clearly hoping for a repeat scenario from the former president; the Washington Post reports that Harris’s debate prep included having a Trump stand-in hurl insults at her.

She also said in a pre-recorded radio interview that she expects Trump to “lie,” asserting that he is “not burdened by the truth.” 

Meanwhile, Trump has reportedly been going through policy-intensive prep sessions and practicing responding to questions about his character. As always, the Trump team is expecting to not just battle his opponent, but also the moderators. The debate will be run by ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis. 

-Amber Duke

On our radar

NURSING A GRUDGE Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo will testify Wednesday in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic amid the group’s report alleging that Cuomo himself edited the state’s report undercounting nursing home deaths, purportedly to shield his office from accountability for a mandate that nursing homes admit and shelter Covid-positive residents. 

PRINCESS KATE CANCER-FREE Kate Middleton announced Monday that she has completed chemotherapy treatment for her cancer diagnosis and is now “cancer-free.” The Princess of Wales said in a statement, “I enter this new phase of recovery with a renewed sense of hope and appreciation of life.” 

GOOGLE IT The Biden administration and Google are in court this week as the Department of Justice’s antitrust division is seeking to break up the tech company for its alleged illegal monopolization of the digital ad market. Google earned about $74 billion from advertising last year. 

Kamala finally unveils policy platform

Vice President Kamala Harris has been the official Democratic Party nominee for weeks, but she lacked an official platform until a few hours ago. In response to running criticisms, the Democrat updated her website with a series of vague policies in the run-up to her highly-anticipated showdown with former president Donald Trump.

Trump’s campaign has been eagerly seizing on Harris’s lack of stated policies on her website; his campaign unveiled kamala2024policies.com during the Democratic National Convention. Prior to this release, Harris was scraping together unoriginal policies, like price controls from communists and eliminating taxes on tips from Trump.

Now, she is aiming to have a set of policies that will last her at least through November, even though her section on energy doesn’t actually list a single specific policy she would support as president. Her platform was also undermined by Senator Bernie Sanders, who said the quiet part out loud. “She is trying to be pragmatic and [is] doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election,” he offered.

In recent weeks, Harris has, via campaign spokespeople, changed her positions on everything from the Green New Deal (she now opposes it) to banning plastic straws (she now opposes that), so crafting a set of her policies posed difficulties, since she was scrambling to figure out what she herself believed on any given day.

Harris’s campaign site also somewhat bizarrely compares and contrasts her policies with those of Project 2025, the work of a think tank that Trump has disavowed at almost every opportunity.

–Matthew Foldi

Trump versus ‘Skullduggery’

Former president Donald Trump has vowed that justice will be served to anyone caught cheating during his upcoming showdown with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Taking to his Truth Social account over the weekend, Trump posted:

CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is calling attention to America First Legal’s lawsuit against fifteen Arizona counties “for failing to take action to remove illegal aliens from voter rolls” by writing, “This is crazy” on Twitter/X. In a game of social-media musical chairs, Trump reposted Musk’s X post on his Truth Social account. The Department of Justice announced yesterday that it had reached a plea agreement with an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who stole a US citizen’s identity and used it to vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections in Alabama. 

Still, though “Latinos had ranked among the Democrats’ most reliable bases,” the Guardian reports, “the party’s once dominant advantage has shrunk.” Democrats allowing illegal aliens to vote may not be a disadvantage to Trump after all; 45 also took to Truth Social over the weekend to wish happy birthday to Mary, whom Catholics venerate as Jesus’s mother. Trump cleverly used an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a popular devotion especially among Hispanics, a large percentage of whom are Catholic.

–Teresa Mull