US Vice-President Kamala Harris has landed in Pittsburgh and will stay within Pennsylvania for five days as she readies herself for a heated debate with former President Donald Trump on September 10 in Philadelphia.
Harris was the only one to exit the plane. On the tarmac she was greeted by one of the two Senators from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman and his wife Gisele Fetterman. The Vice President stood up on her tiptoes to hug the taller Senator Fetterman, according to the pool report.
This will be Harris' first presidential debate and sixth for Trump, who debated Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, three times, and Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee and challenger in 2020, twice. Both Harris and Trump have done plenty more in their respective party primaries, though Trump sat out the 2024 primaries, claiming to be far ahead of the rest, which he was.
Though Harris does not have a publicly scheduled election event in Pennsylvania, according to news reports, she might meet with voters.
Pennsylvania is a must-win battleground state for both Harris and Trump. The Vice President would be trying to emulate the 2020 verdict when the Democratic ticket, headed by Biden, in which Harris was his running mate, won the state by 80,000 votes; Trump emerged victorious by over 44,000 votes in 2016.
The September 10 debate is being organized by ABC News, and will be 90 minutes long.
Both sides had been wrangling over debate rules until recently.
Harris wanted the microphones to remain on even when the candidate is not speaking, changing the rule proposed by Biden and agreed to by Trump that the microphones be muted when the candidate is not speaking.
Biden had insisted on it to prevent a repeat of the 2020 debates when Trump kept interrupting him, not allowing him to speak.
This happened between Trump and Biden during the first debate in 2024, this June, where the candidates' microphones were muted once through with their speaking time.
Trump insisted on keeping the rule for the September 10 debate, to which Harris relented.
The rest of the rules negotiated between Biden and Trump will remain the same. There will not be a live audience in the hall. It will only be the two candidates and moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis.
Trump has attacked the network and mused whether the debate is going to be fair, going as far as calling into a Town Hall on Fox News on Wednesday to say that Harris' "best friend" is the head of the network and, with no proof or evidence whatsoever, alleged: "they're going to get the questions I've already heard.they're going to get the questions in advance".
He didn't name her, but he could have been referring to Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden, who is an old friend of Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff.
Walden oversees, among others, the operations of Disney's ABC News. Trump said he was doing the debate on ABC only because "they wouldn't do any other network".
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