Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s Debate Styles Compared

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will likely display wildly different tactics and styles while facing off in their first presidential debate.
Harris and Trump are set to meet for the first time in person at an ABC News-moderated debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, exactly eight weeks before Election Day and just over seven weeks after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris following his disastrous June 27 debate with Trump.
The Harris campaign will be hoping that the vice president utilizes her “classical” debate style and her background as a prosecutor in a way that will effectively counter Trump’s unconventional, fast-talking and often off-the-cuff style.
A Harris campaign aide recently told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that the vice president is viewing the debate like a “jury trial” and hopes to win the contest on “merit” while leaving voters with “key takeaways.”
Trump has a clear advantage over Harris in terms of experience on the national debate stage, with the former president having participated in six presidential debates against Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
A single debate with former Vice President Mike Pence prior in 2020 was the only high-stakes national general election debate for Harris, although she has participated in several other debates while running for state office and U.S. Senate in California.
On Monday’s edition of The NPR Politics Podcast, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez said that Trump’s staff had compared “his style or his debating prowess” to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, boasting that Harris would be unable to “prepare for him.”
During the same podcast, NPR senior political editor Domenico Montanaro said that he expected Trump to drift off topic and “lie” during the debate, while warning that the former president could damage his standing with women voters if he is seen to “bully” Harris.
“It’s not a secret,” Montanaro said. “Will he [Trump] be disciplined? No, he won’t be. We know what he does, he lies in a lot of these things and he meanders. He’s going to do what he does.
“We haven’t seen much movement from the needle on how people view Donald Trump and if he plays into that narrative of himself as a bully and somebody who doesn’t respect women, good luck with the gender gap.”
One of the most memorable moments from the Harris-Pence debate—when Harris briskly told Pence “I’m speaking” as he attempted to interrupt her—is unlikely to be repeated on Tuesday because of rules that include muted mics when it is not a candidate’s turn to speak.
If past performances are any indication, Harris will likely speak at a slower pace than Trump.
In an analysis published by The Economist last week, University of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman found that Harris chooses her words carefully at public speaking events, uttering 17 percent fewer words than Pence during their 2020 debate despite both candidates speaking for the same amount of time.
Meanwhile, Trump is rarely at a loss for words while speaking publicly. Liberman found that Trump spoke at a rate of 189 words per minute during a recent rally, although the former president also typically utilizes a smaller vocabulary and repeats himself often, according to the analysis.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email on Tuesday.
The candidates have reportedly taken a different approach to preparing for the debate. Harris has spent the past several days at a “debate camp” in Pittsburgh, utilizing a mock television studio with the help of a Trump stand-in, according to The Washington Post.
Trump has opted to forgo traditional preparations, reportedly instead holding a limited number of “policy sessions” with staff at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club and informally practicing responses to expected Harris attacks.
Tuesday’s debate may be the only meeting between the 2024 presidential candidates as additional debates have not yet been agreed upon, although Trump previously said that he had agreed to an NBC-hosted debate on September 25.
Follow Newsweek’s live blog for updates on the presidential debate.