All the Details About the First Trump-Harris Debate

.

What time is the debate tonight?

The 90-minute debate will be held tonight at 9 p.m. ET. It will be hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia (without a studio audience).

.

Where can I watch the debate on TV?

The debate will be broadcast live on ABC and simulcast on multiple other networks, including C-Span, PBS, MSNBC, and Fox News.

.

How can I stream the debate online?

The debate will be streamed live on ABC.com and ABC News’ YouTube channel for people without cable or streaming-service subscriptions. It will also be streamed on ABC News Live, Disney+, and Hulu.

.

Who is moderating?

The debate will be moderated by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, and they alone will ask the questions. ABC News says the topics and questions will not be shared with the candidates before the debate.

.

Is Trump going to show up?

There were initially some signs Trump might back out of the debate, but at this point, there’s no reason to believe he won’t be there.

.

Will the mics be muted?

Yes: Per the debate rules the Biden and Trump campaigns originally agreed to, each candidate’s microphone will remain muted while the other one is speaking.

The Harris campaign made an effort to unmute the mics, but the Trump team refused.

.

Will there be a live studio audience?

No.

.

What are the other debate rules?

Per ABC News, both candidates have agreed to the following:

• There will be no opening statements, and Trump and Harris are not allowed to ask each other questions during the debate.

• Each candidate will only be allowed to have a pen, a pad of paper, and a water bottle at their identically sized podiums.

• No props or prewritten notes are allowed, and neither candidate can interact with their staff members during the two commercial breaks.

• The candidates get two minutes for each answer and rebuttal, and one minute for follow-ups, clarifications, and responses to rebuttals.

• At the end of the debate, they will each have two minutes for a closing statement. Trump will go last (he got to choose after winning a pre-debate coin toss).

.

Will the candidates shake hands?

As that hasn’t happened since the first Trump-Clinton presidential debate in 2016, probably not.

.

How are Trump and Harris preparing for the debate?

Harris is getting ready off the campaign trail at a hotel in Pittsburgh, where she has been doing mock-debate sessions using a replica stage with an adviser playing (and reportedly even dressing up as) Trump. Part of the Harris team’s strategy has been to come up with ways to help Trump defeat himself during the event — which will be a lot harder without hot mics. But as Gabriel Debenedetti reports, Harris’s debate prep isn’t just about going on offense:

In mock-debate sessions in Pittsburgh, planning meetings in Washington, and briefing-book cram sessions between public events on the campaign trail, the vice-president and her aides have kept much of their focus on fine-tuning ways to keep presenting her as representative of a new political era for the benefit of curious voters who are still interested in learning more about her — and who may swing the race come November.

The debate, say Democrats close to Harris, is simply not the venue for just pumping up her partisans or trying to fulfill a liberal fantasy of so aggressively confronting Trump that his own supporters have second thoughts about voting for him. Instead, Harris’s team believes it needs to be about finding moments to educate and convert the voters on the margins.

Trump doesn’t do mock debates. But he has done a kind of debate prep aided by Representative Matt Gaetz, who has reportedly helped him practice defending himself against tough questions and attacks. Former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who debated (and went after) Harris during the 2020 primaries, is helping Trump prepare as well, along with advisers Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, and Jason Miller, according to Politico. Per multiple reports, Trump’s allies and advisers have been warning him against launching personal attacks on Harris and steering him toward policy contrasts, instead.

Trump is also preparing for the debate by attacking its host and moderators and accusing them of rigging the event against him — which has become one of his standard ways of lowering expectation before any debate.

.

What do the candidates both need to do?

From our own Ed Kilgore’s debate preview:

Without question, [Kamala Harris] has the more complicated task: defining herself to viewers as an agent of change from the Biden-Trump era of politics, and a much safer option than an extremist second Trump administration. This means anticipating and rebutting Trump claims that she is responsible for Biden’s alleged policy failures and is more radical than Biden himself. And it also means casting some light through the fog of endless commentary about Trump to convincingly express concerns about what he will do if restored to power.

And for Trump:

When it comes to this debate, Trump’s biggest advantage is the extremely low standard he has set throughout his career for either coherence or civility. Almost anyone else would be afflicted with a dilemma as to whether to accuse Harris of being Biden 2.0 or a “communist,” since Biden is nobody’s idea of a dedicated Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. Trump can blithely pursue both angles of attack simultaneously, because that’s just who he is. Calling Harris a “radical” or a “Marxist” or a “communist” is what passes for a substantive comment from the former president, and he would be wise to stick with ideologically freighted criticism rather than slandering her personally (i.e., he should leave the blatantly racist and sexist patter to MAGA social media).

Above all, the 45th president needs to do everything he can to fan doubts about Harris, making her out to be the “risky change” candidate and returning the election to a competition between highly motivated party bases with swing voters ultimately focused on their unhappiness with life as it is.

.

Will there be a second Trump-Harris debate?

As of right now, no. Though both candidates have expressed a willingness to debate more than once, they have not yet agreed to another one — so it’s possible this could be the only Trump-Harris debate before Election Day.

This post has been updated.