Former CNN political analyst Chris Cilizza said Friday he believes that the upcoming presidential debate holds more significance for Vice President Kamala Harris than it does for former President Donald Trump.
Trump and Harris are slated to compete in their only scheduled presidential debate on ABC News on Tuesday. Cillizza said on his YouTube channel that Trump’s polling is unlikely to change much after the debate, but Harris could see “more movement.”
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“Look, she’s not been on this big a stage before, which, honestly, very few people have, though I think it’s important to note … This will be [Trump’s] seventh … general election presidential debate. Seventh. That’s more than anyone in history,” Cillizza said. “So, I think there is a level of kind of comfort there for him. And she’s never been in a presidential debate before. She’s been in a vice-presidential debate, but never a presidential debate.”
“So, I do think she is going probably to be a little bit more nervous. I think she has more riding on it … Trump has a very high floor in terms of voter support and a very low ceiling, he basically moves between 46% and 48% of the vote,” he continued. “He doesn’t go to 52% or 51%. He doesn’t go to 40%. So I don’t know how his numbers move. I think she has potentially more movement there. I don’t think she’ll fumble it, though.”
Newsmax political analyst Mark Halperin on Friday warned Republicans not to underestimate how Harris will perform in the debate, asserting the vice president “did pretty well” in previous debates.
“Some Republicans have been counting on her to screw up the debate … could happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it based on her past as a debater,” he said.
The Harris campaign consented on Wednesday to the Trump campaign’s request for the same muted microphone regulations as the ones CNN implemented during the June 27 debate against President Joe Biden. Trump challenged the vice president to two additional debates during an August press conference at Mar-a-Lago, but the ABC debate is the only officially slated face-off.
Harris has frequently been on-script since launching her campaign on July 21 as she has only given a single sit-down interview thus far. She also brought her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz along for the interview, which was with CNN’s Dana Bash and only lasted around half an hour.
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