Donald Trump limbered up for his debate with Kamala Harris by showing the extremism that risks playing into the vice president’s claim that he’s an “unserious man” who is an “extremely serious” threat if he’s returned to the White House.
Trump warned he will jail election officials he considers cheats; is complaining Pennsylvania’s voting is a fraud; vowed to pardon January 6 rioters; railed against women who accused him of sexual misconduct; and spent hours in recent days on sometimes incoherent rants that raised questions about his state of mind.
But new polling ahead of Tuesday’s showdown in Philadelphia shows the race tied up nationally, suggesting Harris’ momentum after replacing President Joe Biden on the ticket hasn’t resulted in a commanding edge.
The tightness of the contest shows both Trump’s enduring appeal to tens of millions of Americans as he seeks a political comeback and the huge task facing Harris as she tries to save an election Democrats seemed doomed to lose before Biden bowed out.
That makes Tuesday’s debate — the first since June’s consequential clash on CNN that eventually ended Biden’s campaign — the most critical scheduled event before Election Day.
The way each candidate is preparing highlights the different paths Americans can choose in November and the sharp contrast in the style of the presidency that will ensue if Harris or Trump are at the Oval Office desk.
Harris is holed up in Pittsburgh with staff to hone her skills for the test of facing Trump in a debate. Her choice of Pennsylvania for prep stresses the critical importance of a state she almost certainly needs to win to take the presidency. A source told CNN that her advisers are working out how she’ll deal with a rule that a candidate’s mic will be muted while their rival speaks. The vice president had pushed to overturn the restriction in the hope she could use her skills as a former prosecutor to dress down Trump in real time. But she told reporters, “I’m ready,” as she went for a stroll in the Steel City on Sunday with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reflected on Harris’ challenge as she tries to engage Americans who want to know more about her while dealing with a sometimes-unhinged force of nature like Trump. “It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” Buttigieg said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”
A New York Times/Siena College poll published Sunday showed that 28% of likely voters need to know more about Harris, as opposed to just 9% who say the same of her rival. This presents possible room for growth for the vice president. But she is also facing pressure to explain policy reversals on issues such as immigration and fracking while showing more precision than she did in some testy interviews early in her vice presidency. And her unwillingness to submit to major media interviews — apart from one last month on CNN — means that a candidate who has sometimes struggled to articulate coherent arguments in high-pressure and spontaneous situations is coming into the debate without much recent experience of adversarial political combat.
Trump’s Republican supporters have been pleading with him for days to drill down on issues such as the economy, immigration and national security and to avoid petulant behavior that could play into Harris’ argument that it’s time for the country to move on from the bitterness and chaos he represents for many voters. The GOP theory is that Harris, as a key member of an unpopular administration, is ill suited to act as an agent of political change.
But Trump’s conduct heading into the debate explains the concern he will botch the clear contrast spelled out by Sen. Tom Cotton to CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” The Arkansas Republican said Sunday: “People remember that, when Donald Trump was in office, prices were low, wages were high, we had peace and stability around the world.” He added: “Kamala Harris, as vice president, has brought us record high inflation. We have a wide-open southern border and we have war everywhere you turn around in the world.”
Trump, however, was unwilling to restrain himself in recent days.
In the most ominous development, the ex-president on Saturday used his Truth Social network to blast what he called “Cheating and Skullduggery” in 2020 by Democrats, then pivoted to the 2024 election, warning, “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.” He lashed out at “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” who he said would be “prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
There is no evidence that the 2020 election was corrupt. Trump’s multiple legal challenges were thrown out by judges and even his own attorney general, William Barr, said there was no widespread voter fraud. The fact that the ex-president tried to steal the last election makes his warnings that officials who do not echo his view of this one’s fairness an even more serious issue, and it bodes ill for the post-election period in November if Trump loses.
Trump’s warnings also show the consequences of his successful legal gambits in forestalling accountability for his election interference — in a federal case and in Georgia — until after the coming election. If he regains power, he will almost certainly use his restored presidential authority and new legal maneuvers to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s case in Washington, DC, district court and to try to prevent the Georgia one from coming to trial.
In another Truth Social post, Trump picked up on an interview by Tucker Carlson to claim with no evidence that 20% of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are “fraudulent.” This is not the first time that the ex-president has seemed to be preparing a rationale to challenge the 2024 election if he loses.
Trump’s debate prep is the most unorthodox of any modern presidential candidate.
In other public appearances in recent days, the former president has indulged the wilder sides of his character in streams of consciousness that delight many of his supporters but raise questions about whether he has the discipline and clarity of thinking traditionally associated with the presidency.
On Friday, in an extraordinary on-camera appearance in New York, he offered detailed and explicit appraisals of allegations of misconduct against him by women — part of a wider series of claims that he is an innocent victim of the weaponization of justice. His claims seem unlikely to improve his standing among women voters, among whom he trails Harris by 11 points, according to the New York/Times Siena poll.
At a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, Trump often embarked on confusing digressions — for instance about Al Capone and Hannibal Lecter — and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “chess player.” Trump promised he was the one thing standing between Americans and World War III. And he pledged to pardon people convicted and jailed “by the Harris regime” for trying to overturn the election on January 6, 2021 — a step that would short-circuit the justice system and legal accountability for crimes. In a self-indulgent aside, he praised one of his own speeches as delivered more “brilliantly” than anything since Franklin Roosevelt. His appearance was replete with exaggerations and distortions — although his conspiracy theories and falsehoods come at such a clip that they often escape scrutiny because of their sheer volume.
At one point, Trump mistakenly referred to SpaceX and Tesla pioneer Elon Musk as “Leon.” When Biden made such slips, Trump and allies frequently argued that the president’s mental acuity was in question. But the 78-year-old Trump’s unrestrained public appearances and apparent belief in fantasies and unproven facts also raise questions about his capacity to serve as commander in chief and the threat he poses to constitutional democracy. His grip on the GOP means, however, that he’s driven anyone likely to raise such concerns out of the party — for instance former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who last week endorsed Harris, as did her father, former vice president Dick Cheney.
Trump’s increasingly close relationship with Musk is also offering a preview of a potential second term for the ex-president. His promise to put Musk in charge of an effort to slash government regulations would mean the world’s richest man getting the chance to reshape federal rules and safeguards at a time when his businesses have massive interests that can be influenced by the government. This would create conflict-of-interest controversies that would dwarf those the Republican nominee encountered in his first term.
Despite fresh evidence of Trump’s turbulent character and the success Harris has had so far in improving on Biden’s performance in the race, the latest polling shows no clear leader between them. Harris has an average of 49% support, while Trump has 47% in the latest CNN Poll of Polls, which includes surveys conducted between August 23 and September 6. The new average is largely unchanged from before the Democratic National Convention, when Harris was averaging 50% to Trump’s 48% among polls conducted between August 1 and 16.
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