Trump, Harris to meet in highly anticipated debate Tuesday night in Philadelphia • Tennessee Lookout

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet in a highly anticipated and potentially momentous debate Tuesday night in Philadelphia — just over two months after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance that precipitated his withdrawal from the race.

The debate, which will be hosted by ABC News, is scheduled for 9 p.m. ET, and will be the first time Trump and Harris have met in person, according to Harris. Viewers can stream the debate live on ABC.com or on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. The debate will also be simulcast on C-SPAN.

The event is the only scheduled televised exchange between the candidates before Election Day in November, although early voting begins in the key swing state of Pennsylvania on September 16 and in four other states later this month.

“We will be ready”

Trump spokesmen said Monday that the former president plans to challenge Harris on views she has changed over the years, including on fracking and immigration.

“We’ll be ready tomorrow, President Trump will be ready. The question is will Kamala Harris be ready, because she’s got a lot to fight for,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said on a conference call hosted by the Republican National Committee that also included Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic defector who backed Trump.

“There’s no way we can prepare for President Trump. There’s no way we can,” Miller added later.

Trump will also seek to include Harris in all decisions made under the Biden administration. Gaetz has dubbed her “co-president” and said on the call that Harris is “in charge of the entire administration.”

Republicans are using this narrative to blame Harris for the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which 13 service members died.

The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee released a 353-page report Monday blaming the Biden-Harris administration for the deadly end to the two-decade U.S. war in Afghanistan. Harris’ last name is mentioned 285 times in the report.

“Kamala Harris is not fit to be our president and commander in chief,” Gabbard said on the call.

Retired US military leaders have released a letter defending Harris’s fitness to lead the country and accusing Trump of a “chaotic approach” to his negotiations with the Taliban before leaving office.

“He repeatedly fails to take responsibility for his own role in endangering service members,” the former generals wrote on behalf of the veterans advocacy group National Security Leaders for America.

Trump himself drew attention to the Afghanistan withdrawal when his campaign aides confronted an official at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 26, the third anniversary of the deaths of the 13 service members. The incident was first reported by NPR.

Trump has denied that his aides pushed the cemetery official aside to take photos in a restricted area, but the US military has confirmed the incident.

“Go to Bat 4 Harris”

The vice president prepared for the debate at a Pittsburgh hotel over the weekend before traveling through the swing state on Monday for the prime-time event the following night.

The Harris campaign began the week by releasing an ad Monday featuring several former Trump administration officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who have spoken out against a second Trump presidency.

The Democratic National Committee unfurled a banner Monday over Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia before the division-leading Phillies’ home game against the Tampa Bay Rays. The banner read: “Don’t strikeout Trump, go beat Harris.”

After about 50 days of campaigning and just 56 days before the election, Harris unveiled her policy agenda a day before the debate. The four-pillar plan includes promises to cut taxes for the middle class and build affordable housing, protect reproductive freedoms and civil rights, secure the borders and combat gun violence, and “stand up to dictators” and support veterans.

Harris also pledged to support an ethics code for the U.S. Supreme Court and to “ensure that no former president is granted immunity for crimes committed while in the White House” — a reference to the Supreme Court’s July decision that granted former presidents immunity for essential official acts and presumptive immunity for “outer perimeter” functions, but none for personal actions.

Trump’s campaign accused Harris’ platform of “dishonesty” in an email sent Monday. “We know the results of her policies: chaos, devastation and destruction.”

In July, Trump and the Republican Party released a platform centered on 20 core promises, including “seal the border,” “conduct the largest deportation operation in American history” and “end inflation,” among others.

Asked by reporters in Pittsburgh’s Strip District on Saturday whether she was ready to debate Trump, the former California prosecutor and U.S. senator said: “Yes, I am. Yes.”

What is the main message she wants to convey to Trump during the debate?

“There are a lot,” Harris said in response to the question.

“But it is time to turn the page on divisions. It is time to bring our country together to chart a new course,” she said.

Trump’s legal troubles ahead of debate

As Harris prepared for the debate, Trump has focused in recent days on his myriad legal troubles and staged lengthy appearances.

On Saturday, the former president held a nearly two-hour audience at a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, and repeated a debunked claim that Venezuelan gang members had stormed an Aurora, Colorado, apartment building. He told the crowd that deporting Venezuelan immigrants from the state would be “a bloody story.”

He also downplayed his conviction in New York state, calling it a “witch hunt,” as he has done several times before.

Trump, the only former president to be convicted of a felony, learned Friday that a Manhattan judge had postponed his sentencing until after the November election. Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a payment to a porn star before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump also spoke for nearly an hour Friday at Trump Tower in what was billed as a news conference but without questions. The speech followed oral arguments in his appeal of a civil trial in which he was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.

On Thursday, his lawyers entered not guilty pleas on his behalf in federal court to a new indictment charging him with conspiring to subvert the 2020 presidential election results. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan set a pretrial schedule that includes deadlines before and after the November election.

The vice presidential debate between Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is scheduled to be hosted by CBS News in New York on October 1.