Philadelphia Selected As Site For First Harris-Trump Debate

Philadelphia will host the first of two agreed-upon debates.

The city nicknamed the “Birthplace of America” has been selected to host the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. It will be held on Sept. 10 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

According to The Hill, the debate will begin at 9 p.m. EST and will be hosted by ABC News’s David Muir and Linsey Davis. Although Trump previously railed against ABC News and said he would not attend this debate, he has changed his mind and will attend this debate and two others.

Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, has committed to two debates, including the one in September. Trump was originally scheduled to debate President Joe Biden, but once he announced that he was dropping out of the race, Harris, the eventual Democratic Party nominee, inherited the debate.

According to The New Yorker, Harris may have no better assistance on her quest to become the first Black woman and Asian-American president than another former occupant of the White House, Donald Trump.

The outlet argues that this is largely due to his proclivity to melt down over the size of Vice President Harris’s crowds or to blatantly refuse to center policy over personal attacks on Harris. According to the Washington Post, several Republican political strategists have called for Trump to stop focusing on crowd sizes and insulting Vice President Harri and instead focus on policy and crafting a story.

J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick, told reporters that by virtue of his winning the nomination that Trump should be allowed to say whatever he wants.

“To the people who say that Donald Trump should do something different, they had an opportunity to make Donald Trump do something different by challenging him over three separate primaries — every single one of which he won,” Vance said. “So I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to run the campaign that he wants to run.”

Harris, by contrast, has changed the energy of the Democratic Party in a matter of months, as Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, told the Washington Post, “It is remarkable. An incredibly important election, which made the Democratic convention interesting from the start, is now truly distinct. The entire ticket has changed, the energy is different, and what the party is putting forth as the faces of the party has transformed the terms of the competition.”

The stage is set for a clash of ideas on democracy, and some say it’s only fitting that the debate should take place in Philadelphia.

As the National Constitution Center Communications Director Moira Bagley Smith told CBS News, “We are footsteps away from Independence Hall where it all started. The great experiment that is American democracy, and we’re seeing it play out here in our presidential debate. What a great moment for Philadelphia to have both these candidates here on Sept. 10.”

Bagley Smith expressed optimism, stating, “The Constitution Center is known for its reasoned and mature debate and we look forward to that taking place here.”