Unfortunately There's a Debate Tonight
Plus: Columbia's outside agitators, E.U. antitrust crackdown prevails, and more...
What to watch for tonight: Hopefully, both candidates will appear cogent and awake, which will be a welcome change from last time.
That's not to say either is a great debater or speaker. It was back in 2019 that former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii)—then an actual Democrat vs. a Fox News talking head—forced Vice President Kamala Harris into a defensive crouch, saying Harris owed apologies to people who "suffered under [her] reign" as prosecutor, which Harris responded to ineptly.
Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been on a tear lately, holding a press conference on Friday during which he…reminded voters of all the sexual assault and harassment allegations against him, which is seemingly not in his best interest. ("The former president also repeatedly implied he would not have assaulted two of his accusers due to their looks," read a clinical Associated Press write-up of the conference.)
Though the candidates are neck and neck in the polls, Trump has had a bad August. Harris, meanwhile, was able to ride a bit of Democratic National Convention news cycle momentum but is now concerned about the debate format.
"Kamala Harris had planned to object, fact-check and directly question Donald Trump while he was speaking during their debate next week," reports Politico. "But now, with rules just finalized to mute the candidates when their opponents speaks, campaign officials said Harris advisers are scrambling to rewrite their playbook."
As for the issues themselves…Harris, as of this week, has populated her website with actual policy positions. We'll see now whether she can actually answer for them.
Expect border issues to be front and center during this debate, specifically Harris' record as border czar. Her campaign—and an obsequious mainstream media—has downplayed her role, claiming actually she was in charge of tackling the deeper root causes, so none of the chaos is truly her fault. The Biden/Harris administration has seen a record influx of migrants at the southern border, which they attempted to crack down on via a June executive order that placed restrictions on asylum seekers.
Expect economic issues to be highlighted, too. Trump will most likely look to ding Harris on the rampant inflation that has the made cost of living far higher under the Biden administration. But they've both converged on a broader gospel of economic populism—neither is a fan of free markets, and both want certain types of protectionism and economic interventionism. (Trump's tariffs would cause certain economic ruin, if imposed; but, of course, tariffs are woefully unsexy, so we'll see how much airtime such things get tonight.)
Abortion, a topic Harris' campaign has attempted to ding Trump on, will also likely be emphasized, especially with Trump's recent vows to provide free in vitro fertilization to those who seek it and his opposition to Florida's more restrictive abortion laws. (Another area of slight convergence: Though Trump appointed conservatives to the Supreme Court who ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade and made Dobbs the law of the land, returning the issue to the states, he's not especially pro-life and tends to favor some lenience on first-trimester abortions.)
It remains to be seen whether Harris will embrace far-left economic policies—President Joe Biden's policies, just bigger—or whether she will try to downplay the economic populist agenda she's cobbled together. It remains to be seen whether Trump will be able to effectively sell himself as the candidate with working-class voters' best interests in mind vs. someone interested in petty ranting, settling scores, and putting his opponent down. Perhaps the most telling thing of all about tonight will be that the two politicians have less ideological distance between them than we might have hoped.
Scenes from New York: Readers of this newsletter will remember the scene at Columbia University's Hamilton Hall this past April, in which a mixture of anti-Israel students and outside agitators—full breakdown unknown—broke into and occupied the building. This week, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg "announced the indictment of one of the most visible outsiders: James Carlson, a Brooklyn lawyer and activist, on charges of arson and criminal mischief," reports The New York Times. "Prosecutors said he ignited an Israeli flag with a lighter and destroyed a camera in jail. They say he also broke into a university building, for which he faces a separate case."
Carlson is 40 years old and "also among the anti-Israel protesters in January who wreaked havoc on the city by blocking traffic at the Holland Tunnel as well as the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges," a source told the New York Post. In San Francisco, back in 2005, he got in trouble with the law for marching against the Group of Eight (G8) summit (and capitalism writ large) and being part of a throng that ultimately cracked a cop's skull, nearly killing the man. He is the son of now-deceased millionaire ad execs and media reports claim that property records show him to be the owner of a posh multi-million-dollar Park Slope brownstone purchased in 2019.
I suppose sometimes your college-kid freedom fighters end up being middle-aged trust funders in the end; let's hope some consequences dissuade the man from continuing his illustrious rioting career.
QUICK HITS
- "This is the Harris-Walz media strategy in a nutshell: Avoid the press at all costs, even when asked questions that should be layups," argues The New Republic. "The Democratic ticket, or perhaps those who advise them, seem to believe that nothing good can come from talking to the media—that answering questions only invites negative coverage of pseudo-scandals (like [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz relatives endorsing Trump) instead of the real issues at stake in November. If this sounds familiar, it's because President Biden employed the same media strategy in his reelection campaign. That didn't work out so well for him—and it may not for Harris, either."
- Both Apple and Google just lost their court fights following European Union crackdowns on big tech companies. Google had challenged a fine for allegedly abusing its search engine dominance, while Ireland had given Apple preferential tax treatment that was undone by the courts.
- "The Miami-Dade Police Department has opened an investigation into Sunday's traffic incident that's raised concerns about police use of force after the MDPD released video showing [Tyreek] Hill, who is Black, being dragged from his car and forced face-down on the ground," reports Axios.
- The first private spacewalk is slated to happen over the next few days, courtesy of SpaceX and billionaire Jared Isaacman. It will occur as part of the Polaris Dawn mission, which took off from Florida early this morning.
