On the ABC presidential debate, Kamala Harris had a programming problem. Working towards an skilled reality-TV skilled, a savant of stay broadcasts, she needed to pull off a profitable reboot of Democrats’ least-favorite TV present of the 2024 season: the June debate that noticed the self-immolation of President Biden.
There have been some hurdles. The identical guidelines in place on CNN in June nonetheless held. There was no studio viewers, and every candidate’s microphone could be turned off when the opposite was talking. When Mr. Biden was nonetheless operating, these guardrails had been meant to keep away from the dumpster hearth of cross-talk and shouting that marked the primary 2020 debate. However that may frustrate Ms. Harris’s marketing campaign purpose, which was to encourage Mr. Trump to be his personal worst enemy.
So she, and whoever ready her for Tuesday’s showdown, did what prime-time producers have accomplished since TV’s early days: They labored inside the constraints of the medium to provide the present they needed.
If Mr. Trump couldn’t bluster and shout over her, she would wish to get him to soften down on his personal time. If he couldn’t stalk her onstage, as he did with Hillary Clinton in 2016, she must use the staging and the split-screen to create a dominance contest on her personal phrases.
It started earlier than the primary query was requested. Ms. Harris crossed the stage towards Mr. Trump and supplied her hand. The handshake was a small train of management, designed to be seen by a prime-time viewers: She was the energetic get together, initiating the encounter, and he the reactive one, accepting. She launched herself — “Kamala Harris” — as if to anticipate his behavior of mispronouncing her first title. Visually, she made herself the main focus of consideration, the protagonist of the drama.
Then she set about making Mr. Trump into the antagonist she needed, needling and baiting him, pulling his levers and pushing his buttons.
If ABC wouldn’t flip off the mute button — although it did, ultimately, enable some cross-talk as the talk grew heated — then Ms. Harris wanted to unmute her opponent herself, which she did with a collection of taunts microtargeted at his nerve facilities of ego.
Early on, she laced him with an outline of crowd members leaving his rallies out of “exhaustion and tedium,” hitting the previous NBC prime-time star the place it hurts — within the viewers. Vladimir Putin, she advised Mr. Trump, “would eat you for lunch.” She even turned his “Apprentice” catchphrase towards him: “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million individuals.”
Mr. Trump — who spent a comparatively disciplined June debate letting Mr. Biden do himself in — swam straight for the chum. Perhaps essentially the most memorable rant of the night time got here when he veered right into a false, xenophobic Fb rumor, elevated by his marketing campaign, that Haitian immigrants in Ohio had been killing family pets for meals.
“They’re consuming the canine, the people who got here in!” he insisted. “They’re consuming the cats! They’re consuming — they’re consuming the pets!”
His phrases had been … curious. However the TV split-screen was possibly much more telling. As Mr. Trump grew increasingly agitated, Ms. Harris turned towards him with an incredulous smile that grew right into a can-you-believe-this giggle.
The content material issues in a TV debate, however the photos typically say extra, particularly when somebody’s microphone is off. And the 2 candidates’ impacts had been very totally different.
When not in prosecutor mode, Ms. Harris wore a bemused half smile. Her go-to posture was a handheld to her chin in a “Do go on!” gesture. She made herself the studio viewers for a cringe comedy starring her opponent. Mr. Trump was combative and indignant, karate-chopping and finger-stabbing the air when talking, heavy-lidded and glowering when quiet.
Earlier than the talk, pundits and analysts had drawn up an extended must-do listing for Ms. Harris, reflecting the standard wants of a brand new nominee and the particular Catch-22s of feminine candidates in American elections. She wanted to speak plans however not appear overprepared; be presidential however personable; assault however do it cheerfully. (She additionally wanted to convey energy towards a taller man who likes to make use of his bulk to loom onstage; right here, the split-screen helped her, rendering them equal.)
As for Mr. Trump, he confirmed that he’s nonetheless most engaged on the assault, when he may preserve himself on message. And he took up extra of the talking time, partly due to the period of time he spent being fact-checked by the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis. (Mr. Trump contended that he noticed the dog-eating claims “on tv.”)
In at the moment’s digital media, in fact, the talk doesn’t occur solely on debate night time; it performs out in what will get clipped on TV information and memed on social platforms. John Dickerson on CBS guessed that Mr. Trump “can be on the unsuitable aspect of the replays.” However possibly essentially the most potent judgment got here on Fox Information, Mr. Trump’s standard nook of assist. Ms. Harris, mentioned Brit Hume, was “a distinct particular person from absolutely the dunderhead many people thought she was” — the Fox equal of a love letter.
How may Mr. Trump be bested in his pure medium, TV? He’s a actuality star who is aware of the way to research digicam angles and lighting, however he’s not an actor. He can lie and carry out, however he can not not be himself, and he can not or is not going to grasp his feelings when he feels them. Within the spirit of actuality TV, he lets all of it hang around, and Ms. Harris set him as much as grasp himself.
