Next week, the two current candidates for the 2024 presidential election — Donald Trump and Kamala Harris — will take the stage at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center to state their cases to voters in a debate, and on Friday’s (September 6) episode of The View, the cohosts revealed their expectations for the event.
After reviewing footage of Trump’s winding and largely unintelligible response to a question about what his childcare cost relief policy might be, Sara Haines argued that audiences are in for much more of that.
“I don’t think I understand what he just said there and I don’t think he does either. And right now his team is saying he’s not doing traditional debate prep. I don’t admire that. … The only thing that’s helped him in his last debate — which his team said was ‘phenomenal, he killed it!’ — was President Biden,” she said. “If you weren’t watching President Biden, that was the second-worst performance ever in a debate. And that’s what we’re going to get… The contrast between Kamala Harris and him will be that kind of answer that he just gave you when you don’t even remember what the question was.”
Sunny Hostin disagreed slightly, saying, “I’m sure he’s going to prepare somewhat. He just perhaps doesn’t prepare in the traditional way where someone is standing there and pretending to be Harris and that sort of thing. He probably has all his policy advisors and they’re just yapp yapping and he’s maybe thinking about a cheeseburger.”
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Ana Navarro had a stark warning for both of them, though: “First of all, never underestimate Trump. That’s a mistake I made in 2016, and I do think he is preparing. He’s got Tulsi Gabbard apparently playing the role of Kamala Harris,” she said. “I think what Trump always does is try to game the system before so that if he loses, he can blame it on the journalists, he can blame it on the network, he can blame it on, ‘I didn’t prepare.’ I don’t know what Donald Trump is doing. I think he’s preparing.”
On the other hand, Navarro also indicated that Harris shouldn’t be underestimated either, saying, “I can tell you that no woman has reached the levels that Kamala Harris has reached without being incredibly prepared her entire life. And if you saw her questioning people, you know that she comes prepared and ready to go. And I think one of the things that’s driving Donald Trump crazy is that he always tries to define his opponent, throwing ad hominem attacks. ‘Lil’ Marco,’ ‘Lying Ted,’ ‘Low Energy Jeb,’ all of those things stuck. None of the stupid things he’s throwing … he calls her a communist. But you know why it’s not sticking because she is completely unbothered.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Republican and former Trump administration official, added her thoughts on the matter, saying, “I think this is going to be the most-watched debate in American history… There’s tremendous anticipation around it. Most Americans know who Donald Trump is. They aren’t going to see something they haven’t seen before. But there’s a lot of people who are tuning in to learn more about Vice President Harris on Trump.”
She also echoed Navarro’s point, saying, “On Trump, I never want to underestimate him because there’s a world in which he shows up, he talks about Hannibal Lecter, he talks about the Proud Boys, or he shows up and he’s the guy who made his career on TV, communicating to mass audiences and may be able to hold his own to Kamala Harris. The stakes are very high. We saw that the CNN debate tanked Joe Biden.”
The View, Weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC
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