image captionDonald Trump and Kamala Harris held a presidential debate in September 2024Article information
- Author, Miroslava Peca
- Role, BBC Ukraine
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September 11, 2024
The debate between US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in Philadelphia promised to be the main political spectacle of the 2024 campaign.
And they did not disappoint.
Supporters of the Democratic Party feared the oratorical duel of the vice president with the Republican ex-president, because it was the first debate of this level for Harris, while for Trump it became the seventh in his career.
Before that, he debated three times with Hillary Clinton and the same number of times with Joe Biden.
How Trump and Harris prepared for the debate
The preparation of the candidates was also appropriate: Kamala Harris took the debates seriously, sitting in a hotel room in Pittsburgh for five days, where conditions were created for her as similar as possible to real televised debates.
Harris had the stage and the lights, and former Hillary Clinton adviser Philip Raines did a Trump impersonation and chased all possible questions away from Harris.
The Democratic camp thought this was their chance to add positive momentum to the campaign when Harris’ ratings stopped growing.
According to some opinion polls, she even began to lose to Trump.
image captionPhilip Raines, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, at a rally in New Hampshire in November 2016
Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his camp have openly played down the importance of preparing to meet Kamala Harris, portraying her as a weak politician with no presidential agenda and a negative record trailing her through the Biden-era vice presidency.
To prepare for the debate with Harris, Trump was helped by a member of the House of Representatives Matt Gaetz and former Democratic senator Tulsi Gabbard – both loud critics of Ukraine and advocates of the Russian view of the war.
In 2020, Tulsi Gabbard even ran for the US presidential nomination from the Democratic Party and quite successfully debated Kamala Harris in the primaries.
Since then, Gabbard managed to change her party identity and became a presenter on the conservative TV channel Fox News.
One thing is clear – Gates and Gabbard failed to adequately prepare Trump to win in Philadelphia.
Photo credit: Reuters
image captionDonald Trump was prepared for the debate with Kamala Harris by Matt Gaetz
In recent history, until 2024, presidential debates were considered an important part of the American political tradition. However, the results of the demonstration of will were practically not affected, because in most states the positions of the parties were concrete, and the results in “shaky” states were more determined by the trips there of the presidential candidates.
However, the duel between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on June 27 changed the role and vision of the debate in society. Then the whole nation, including the leading media, suddenly realized that the incumbent president simply cannot run for another term.
The effect on TV was so powerful that it forced the Democratic Party to turn the tables and replace the candidate in a record three months before the election.
New Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris hasn’t given an interview for more than a month, preferring to tour the country and talk to voters at rallies.
At the end of August, the politician talked to CNN and received mixed reviews.
Photo credit: Reuters
image captionKamala Harris approaches Donald Trump to shake his hand at the first presidential debate, September 2024
So Team Harris was aware that before the debate she needed to practice eloquence, which neither her critics nor her supporters considered the vice president’s forte.
Rehearsals in the hotel allowed Harris to confidently enter the stage of a real debate.
The vice president puzzled Trump by walking up to his part of the podium to shake his hand and wish him a good discussion.
That was in stark contrast to Biden’s uncertain stage appearance at the debate with Trump in Atlanta, where the president seemed at times to overlook or ignore his opponent.
In addition to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, presenters David Muir and Lindsey Davis from the ABC TV channel, who moderated the event, also prepared for the debate.
A special role was played by Muir, who always added fact checks to the candidates’ statements.
Photo credit: Reuters
image captionABC anchors David Muir and Lindsay Davis with the camera crew of the September 2024 presidential debate
The central topic promised to be an internal agenda, in particular, the state of the economy and inflation, the problem of illegal migration and the ban on abortion.
Trump rarely answered the presenters’ questions directly, often using blanks that he repeated several times.
The former president’s central strategy was to accuse Biden and Harris as his vice president of incompetence, the terrible state of the economy, and the porous border through which “criminals” enter America.
And after using the time allotted to him and listening to the opponent’s answer, instead of moving on to a new topic, the former president almost every time took the floor again without the permission of the presenters and tried to convince the audience.
Donald Trump spoke quickly and confidently, from time to time resorting to personal criticism of Kamala Harris, but American analysts who analyzed the debate on ABC and Fox News saw nervousness in Trump’s behavior.
Photo by EPA
image captionDonald Trump in Philadelphia during the September 2024 presidential debate
Trump: Migrants eat dogs and cats
It didn’t go by without memes either.
While discussing the crisis at the border, Donald Trump said that the situation with illegal migration is so out of control that in the city of Springfield, Ohio, migrants are catching “dogs and cats of local residents and eating” these animals.
To this, host David Muir replied that the local authorities have no evidence to confirm such information.
At the same time, according to Donald Trump, mass migration from the countries of Central and South America to the United States caused a decrease in the level of crime in these countries, but led to its increase within the United States, noting that “we will become Venezuela on steroids.”
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, spoke more slowly, as if weighing each word.
However, she did not give up personal criticism of Trump either.
Harris accused Trump that he received $400,000 from his family on a “silver plate” and that he does not understand the problems of ordinary people.
The former president denied this statement.
Photo credit: Reuters
image captionA migrant child plays in a temporary shelter in the US-Mexico border town of Ciudad Juarez, September 2024
Harris tried not to laugh, because her frequent laughter has become the subject of criticism from supporters of Donald Trump.
And if at first it seemed that Harris was overexcited and could not stand up to Trump, then in the course of the debate, this strategy of calmly talking with an expressive opponent, when she responds to criticism without drama and herself points out his weaknesses – on the same issue of abortion or sabotaging the Southern Border Act, helped her emerge victorious – nearly two-thirds of registered voters who watched the debate agreed that that night Kamala Harris demonstrated it better.
From the debate, the audience learned that Donald Trump still feels as if he was robbed of victory in the 2020 election.
To Trump’s thesis that he was “elected by 75 million Americans”, Harris replied that he was “fired by 81 million people”.
When Harris told Trump that world leaders mocked him, the ex-president replied that Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, for example, considered him a strong politician capable of instilling fear in Russia, North Korea, and China.
In response to Trump on racial identity, Harris called it a tragedy that the presidential candidate “wants to use race to divide people.”
Photo by EPA
image captionDonald Trump and Kamala Harris at the first presidential debate, September 2024
What Trump and Harris said about Putin and Ukraine
Between discussing a range of issues — from health insurance and student loan cancellations to how the candidates see the future of fracking, which is widespread in Pennsylvania, a swing state that would give a candidate 19 Electoral College votes — the conversation From time to time, the problem of the war in Ukraine became more acute.
It was the issue of Ukraine that sounded most often on the entire international agenda.
This came as a small surprise, because it was previously believed that the conflict in the Middle East was a priority for the administration in Washington, and the build-up of China’s military power against the background of Taiwan seemed in some places to be no greater threat than Russia.
However, time after time the candidates butted heads precisely on the Ukrainian issue.
Donald Trump once again emphasized that if he were the president of the United States, Russia would not launch a full-scale invasion, there would be no war.
Photo credit: Reuters
image captionKamala Harris at a presidential debate with Donald Trump in Philadelphia, September 2024
However, Trump also expressed something new about Ukraine.
He claimed that the Russian-Ukrainian war had already claimed the lives of millions: “I know Putin very well. He would never – and such a risk did not exist for four years [ред. – каденції Трампа] – would not have gone to Ukraine and killed millions of people when you count everything. The situation is much worse than people imagine.”
To the direct question of host David Muir, whether Trump wants Ukraine to win, the ex-president answered as follows:
“I think it’s in the best interest of the United States to end this war, to just do it. To negotiate a deal. Because we have to stop the destruction of all these human lives.”
Instead, Kamala Harris said that Ukraine is holding on thanks to the coalition of 50 countries built by America and American help, and expressed the opinion that Putin would “eat Trump”:
“If Donald Trump were president, Putin would already be sitting in Kyiv. And understand what that would mean, because Putin’s plans extend not only to Ukraine… We have preserved the ability of Zelenskyi and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence, otherwise Putin would already be sitting in Kyiv and looked toward the rest of Europe, starting with Poland. And note that I say this to the 800,000 Polish Americans here in Pennsylvania – how quickly would you give them up for favor or what you consider friendship with a dictator who would ate you for lunch.”
Photo credit: Reuters
image captionDonald Trump in Philadelphia for the first debate with Kamala Harris, September 2024
Trump denied accusations of playing along with Putin, reminding those present about the elephant in the room – Russia’s nuclear weapons:
“Putin would be sitting in Moscow, and he wouldn’t have lost 300,000 men and women. But he would be sitting in Moscow – much happier than he is now. But at the end of the day, you know, he has something that the rest of the people don’t have. He has a nuclear a weapon… And in the end, maybe he’ll use it, or maybe he’ll just threaten.”
At the same time, the ex-president called Harris a “terrible negotiator” who was unable to agree on avoiding a major war when she met with Volodymyr Zelensky a few days before February 24.
Harris replied that America’s responsibility is to take care of friends and not favor enemies. Trump objected and questioned why Biden resumed the construction of Nord Stream after Trump’s ban, which, according to the former president, showed himself to be a weak politician.
At one point, Trump repeated Putin’s statement about his support for Harris’ candidacy in the US election and expressed the opinion that he believed this to be true.
Harris did not respond to this accusation.
In her final speech, Kamala Harris urged Americans to think about the future instead of dwelling on the past, and Donald Trump used the time to accuse the Biden-Harris administration of incompetence.
After the microphones fell silent, the candidates avoided looking at each other and refused to shake hands.
The world will find out which politician will become the president on November 5.
Support Taylor Swift
However, the debate has already caused a wave of reaction.
Kamala Harris has been endorsed by America’s most popular singer, Taylor Swift, which could give the Democratic candidate the votes she still lacks in the election.
Swift argued for her decision, including the fact that the Trump campaign used messages generated by artificial intelligence about the artist’s alleged support for the ex-president.
And billionaire Elon Musk came to Trump’s defense, to whom the ex-president promised a place in his team if he won the election.
The struggle for the seat of the US president is only intensifying.
