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Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will meet for the first time face-to-face Tuesday for what could be their only debate before voters head to the polls in November.
The event will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and both sides chose their running mates.
But what can viewers expect to see in this highly anticipated moment?
Here's what to know:
When is the presidential debate?
The debate is set to take place on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
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It comes nearly three weeks after the conclusion of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, in which Harris formally accepted the party's nomination after a turbulent month kickstarted by Biden's withdrawal.
What time is the debate?
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The debate is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. CT, though on-air coverage will begin ahead of that.
What channel is the presidential debate on?
NBC 5 will offer a live stream of the debate in the player above and on air.
NBC News will broadcast the full debate live and offer extensive primetime coverage.
NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and TODAY co-anchor Savannah Guthrie will anchor a pre-debate primetime special starting at 7 p.m. CT on NBC, followed by a live presentation of the ABC News-hosted debate at 8 p.m. CT. Holt and Guthrie will continue special coverage following the debate.
Viewers can watch the debate live on their local NBC station or via the NBC 5 Chicago streaming channel, which is available 24/7 and free of charge across nearly every online video platform, including Peacock, YouTube, Samsung TV Plus and on smartphones and smart TVs.
Watch live in the player above or click here for more.
How long is the debate scheduled to last?
The debate is slated to last for an estimated 90 minutes.
Where is the debate?
The debate will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Who is moderating the debate between Harris and Trump?
"World News Tonight" anchor and managing editor David Muir and "World News Tonight" Sunday anchor and ABC News Live "Prime" anchor Linsey Davis will moderate the debate.
Muir joined ABC News in August 2003. Davis joined ABC News in June 2007.
What to expect from the candidates
Harris is intent on demonstrating that she can press the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden did. Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House.
Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.
The vice president, for her part, will try to claim a share of credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments while also addressing its low moments and explaining her shifts away from more liberal positions she took in the past.
Trump
Trump and his campaign have spotlighted far-left positions Harris took during her failed 2020 presidential bid. He’s been assisted in his informal debate prep sessions by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who tore into Harris during their primary debates.
Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.” Her campaign on Monday published a page on its website listing her positions on key issues.
The former president has argued a Harris presidency is a threat to the safety of the country, highlighting that Biden tapped her to address the influx of migrants as the Republican once again makes dark warnings about immigration and those in the country illegally central to his campaign. He has sought to portray a Harris presidency as the continuation of Biden’s still-unpopular administration, particularly his economic record, as voters still feel the bite of inflation even as it has cooled in recent months.
Trump’s team insist his tone won’t be any different facing a female opponent.
“President Trump is going to be himself,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a phone call Monday.
Gabbard, who was also on the call, added that Trump “respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be patronizing or to speak to women in any other way than he would speak to a man.”
His advisers suggest Harris has a tendency to express herself in a “word salad” of meaningless phrases, prompting Trump to say last week that his debate strategy was to “let her talk.”
The former president frequently plows into rambling remarks that detour from his policy points. He regularly makes false claims about the last election, attacks a lengthy list of enemies and opponents working against him, offers praise for foreign strongmen and comments about race, like his false claim in July that Harris recently “happened to turn Black.”
Harris
The vice president, who has been the Biden administration’s most outspoken supporter of abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, is expected to focus on calling out Trump’s inconsistencies around women’s reproductive care, including his announcement that he will vote to protect Florida’s six-week abortion ban in a statewide referendum this fall.
Harris was also set to try to portray herself as a steadier hand to lead the nation and safeguard its alliances, as war rages in Ukraine more than two years after Russia’s invasion and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza drags on with no end in sight.
She is likely to warn that Trump presents a threat to democracy, from his attempts in 2020 to overturn his loss in the presidential election, spurring his angry supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through comments he made as recently as last weekend. Trump on social media issued yet another message of retribution, threatening that if he wins he will jail “those involved in unscrupulous behavior,” including lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.
Harris has spent the better part of the last five days ensconced in debate preparations in Pennsylvania, where she participated in hours-long mock sessions with a Trump stand-in. Ahead of the debate, she told radio host Rickey Smiley that she was workshopping how to respond if Trump lies.
“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” she said.
What are the rules?
The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden.
According to ABC News, the candidates will stand behind lecterns, will not make opening statements and will not be allowed to bring notes during the 90-minute debate. David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the event.
“Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network noted.
A Harris campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning around the debate, said a candidate who repeatedly interrupts will receive a warning from a moderator, and both candidates' microphones may be unmuted if there is significant crosstalk so the audience can understand what's happening.
After a virtual coin flip held Tuesday and won by Trump, the GOP nominee opted to offer the final closing statement, while Harris chose the podium on the right side of viewers’ screens. There will be no audience, written notes or any topics or questions shared with campaigns or candidates in advance, the network said.
See the full list of rules here.
What do experts say?
The debate will subject Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.
“If she performs great, it’s going to be a nice surprise for the Democrats and they’ll rejoice," said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. "If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could break this race wide open. So there’s more riding on it.”
Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, said Harris, a former California attorney general, would bring a “prosecutor's instincts to the debate stage.”
“That is a very strong quality in that setting: having someone who knows how to land a punch and how to translate it," Hogan said.
If you ask Trump’s previous debate opponents what they’re watching for on Tuesday night, many say the same thing: Look out for the thing he says or does that Harris can’t possibly prepare for.
Donald Trump’s campaign says his unpredictability will give him a major leg up in Tuesday’s debate.
“You can’t prepare for President Trump. There’s just no way to do it,” senior campaign adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a call on Monday, comparing the challenge facing Vice President Kamala Harris to “a boxer trying to prepare for Floyd Mayweather or Muhmmad Ali.”
Are other debates scheduled?
Though the September debate is currently the only debate currently planned between Harris and Trump, Harris' campaign said that a potential October debate was contingent on Trump attending the Sept. 10 debate.
In addition to the planned Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance also agreed to a debate, scheduled to be hosted by CBS News on Oct. 1.
When is the election?
Voters will officially head to the polls just over a month later on Nov. 5 for Election Day, though early voting starts significantly earlier in many states.
In Illinois, early voting will begin on Sept. 26 and will run through Nov. 4, with Election Day voting held at a designated polling place from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Nov. 5.
