The only TV duel between the two candidates: After provocations from both camps, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will meet on Tuesday.
There were already plenty of skirmishes between the two camps before the duel, and now the opponents in the race for the White House are meeting head-to-head: On Tuesday, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will cross swords in their first TV duel. And it is the first time that the Republican notorious for his insulting attacks and the level-headed and often smiling Democratic candidate will meet in person.
Much is at stake, and some TV debates have decided the US election. Slip-ups or mistakes can have devastating consequences – in the case of outgoing incumbent Joe Biden, his mistake in the debate with Trump on June 27 meant the end of his plan to move into the White House for another four years despite his advanced age.
Trump is a veteran of the TV debate: For the 78-year-old former president, this is already the third election campaign and the seventh TV debate, for Harris it is the first. The former host of the reality show “The Apprentice” is TV-savvy and likes to use nasty tricks. In 2016, for example, he threw Hillary Clinton off track by walking up and down behind her back while she was speaking.
Harris has so far been unimpressed by Trump’s behavior and refers to her time as a prosecutor in California. Back then, she said, she “took on all kinds of perpetrators,” including those who abused women and deceived consumers. No one should be fooled: she knows “guys like Trump.”
In the television arena, the former prosecutor is now facing not only her opponent in the race for the White House, but also a convicted criminal: In May, Trump became the first former US president to be convicted in a criminal case for covering up a hush money payment to a porn actress.
It will probably be the only TV debate in this US election, and no further date has been agreed yet. After Harris took over the candidacy, Trump has already demonstrated several times that he wants to continue his political style beyond common decency in the duel with her. On his platform Truth Social, he recently shared a post by a user who suggested that Harris had promoted her political career through sexual favors.
The Republican mocked her frequent laughter, called Harris “crazy” or a “radical leftist” and fantasized that the 59-year-old only began describing herself as black later in her career in order to gain political advantages. Harris dryly declared that the American people deserve better. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us, that they are a fundamental source of our strength,” she said.
And Harris and her campaign team are not leaving the right-wing populist’s rude attacks uncommented. When Trump hesitated to agree to the TV debate on ABC, complaining that it was “by far the meanest and most unfair” in the industry, the Harris team released a campaign video accompanied by the sound of chickens clucking – “chicken” is a term for a coward.
The rules for the TV debate will now be largely the same as for the CNN debate on June 27. The duelists are not allowed to take notes to their lecterns and the microphone of the participant whose turn it is not is muted. The candidates have two minutes to answer, and two minutes are then allowed for a reply. There will be no spectators in the room. Read more about this here.
